Airports

And this is the part that acts as both a runway termination point AND a driveway for the dirt road connection. It's actually placed into the cap tile with a 130 block offset, so that it spawns over the final 10 blocks of the runway on the adjoining straight tile. Why do it like this? Because the cap tile NEVER rotates. It's fixed. But the straight tile can rotate 180 degrees whenever the townplanner feels like it. A patch like this requires a fixed point of reference, and the only fixed point we have is the cap tile. So, yes -- now I can get rid of the dirt stripes on the straight tile, as they are no longer needed.

20250731210752_1.jpg
 
So the driveway-style patch got me thinking... What would happen if you stuck the entire runway extension in a part file? And then used a fake entry in rwgmixer for the straight tile -- without using an actual rwg_tile_straight prefab at all? Would it work? Here's the answer:

20250801020340_1.jpg

This is a custom version of the old Army Airport POI (not sure who the original creator was). A couple weeks ago, I rearranged it a bit to fit on a 150x150 tile, but of course that meant the runway was cut really short. The runway is off-center, so placing the runway directly into a straight tile wouldn't work due to the chance of a 180 degree tile flip.

20250801020644_1.jpg

20250801020502_1.jpg

So to recap, this is a 2-tile airport with only one ACTUAL tile prefab (a cap tile). The straight tile is sort of "virtual" in that it's defined in the rwgmixer but there's no actual corresponding prefab file. The townplanner doesn't care about little details like that, though, so it happily draws a road to the non-existent straight tile anyway. The runway extension and dirt road connection you see here are built into a HUGE part_ which is spawned by a partspawn marker on the cap tile.
 
I'd love to roll up on this little airport in the wild, it looks great...don't get me wrong, the big airports look amazing, and that's before they get the curtains and drapes applied. thank you for frigging with it...and frigging with it...and frigging with it...did you ever get that other stuff done?
 
So to recap, this is a 2-tile airport with only one ACTUAL tile prefab (a cap tile). The straight tile is sort of "virtual" in that it's defined in the rwgmixer but there's no actual corresponding prefab file. The townplanner doesn't care about little details like that, though, so it happily draws a road to the non-existent straight tile anyway.

Do I understand this correctly? You count on RWG leaving the second tile spot blank since it doesn't have a tile to use. Then you use a part on the first tile arranged such that it extends from the first tile into the flat space of where the second tile would have been?

If I have that right, I expect the part extended beyond the Tile to keep working as TFP counts on that for POIs with driveways and for how the checkpoints put content out onto the road. But if it failed, it would be because there was a change to Parts on Tiles but not Parts on POIs.

The behavior of RWG (Townplanner as you say) could change such that it does something different when it wants to place a Tile but doesn't have one to use. Or, if it doesn't have a Tile to use it could stop flattening the area in preparation for a Tile. I don't know that either of those risks is large, but I'd say it seems to be picking on unintentional behavior ... well, as most of this topic does. So, rock on. :)
 
I'd love to roll up on this little airport in the wild, it looks great...don't get me wrong, the big airports look amazing, and that's before they get the curtains and drapes applied. thank you for frigging with it...and frigging with it...and frigging with it...did you ever get that other stuff done?

Yeah, but I keep getting pulled back to the airports. I think I'm happy where they're at though. There are some pretty cool tricks you can pull with the tiles and part spawn markers to get around the townplanner and get the results you want.
 
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Do I understand this correctly? You count on RWG leaving the second tile spot blank since it doesn't have a tile to use. Then you use a part on the first tile arranged such that it extends from the first tile into the flat space of where the second tile would have been?

Exactly. It's a neat trick, but honestly I think the 130-block marker offset from the prior airport experiment was more impressive. I still can't believe the game let me do that!

If I have that right, I expect the part extended beyond the Tile to keep working as TFP counts on that for POIs with driveways and for how the checkpoints put content out onto the road. But if it failed, it would be because there was a change to Parts on Tiles but not Parts on POIs.

I highly doubt that behavior will change with either POIs or tiles because certain streettiles use different partspawn markers for their connection points. I can't remember the specific tiles off the top of my head, though. Rural tiles, I think? Anyway, I wouldn't count on any changes happening there.

The behavior of RWG (Townplanner as you say) could change such that it does something different when it wants to place a Tile but doesn't have one to use. Or, if it doesn't have a Tile to use it could stop flattening the area in preparation for a Tile. I don't know that either of those risks is large, but I'd say it seems to be picking on unintentional behavior ... well, as most of this topic does. So, rock on. :)

That's definitely a possibility. What I did with the Army Airport was an abuse of the system, no question. But it was really just an experiment to see if it would work -- which it did. But there's no guarantee that it will keep working.

So no, I probably won't do that again. However, it does show that you can get good results from relying on partspawn markers to do some of the heavy lifting. All that needs to be added to the Army Airport in order for it to be a "proper" settlement is an actual straight tile. BUT that straight could be totally blank because I don't need it for the runway and dirt road at all.
 
Here's the final version of the Army Airport broken up into its individual sections. I'll post the xml afterwards.

The airport POI (148x148):
20250801192908_1.jpg

Cap tile:
20250801193036_1.jpg

Blank straight tile:
20250801193122_1.jpg

runway part (151x90):
20250801193208_1.jpg
 
The xml is super simple. It's just like an Old West town.


<!-- ARMY AIRPORT TEST -->
<append xpath="/rwgmixer/world[@name='tiny']">
<property class="aap01">
<property name="count" value="1, 1, 1"/>
<property name="tiles" value="2, 2"/>
<property name="distance" value="2"/>
</property>
</append>

<append xpath="/rwgmixer/world[@name='small']">
<property class="aap01">
<property name="count" value="1, 1, 1"/>
<property name="tiles" value="2, 2"/>
<property name="distance" value="2"/>
</property>
</append>

<append xpath="/rwgmixer/world[@name='medium']">
<property class="aap01">
<property name="count" value="1, 1, 1"/>
<property name="tiles" value="2, 2"/>
<property name="distance" value="2"/>
</property>
</append>

<append xpath="/rwgmixer/world[@name='large']">
<property class="aap01">
<property name="count" value="1, 1, 1"/>
<property name="tiles" value="2, 2"/>
<property name="distance" value="2"/>
</property>
</append>

<append xpath="/rwgmixer">
<township name="aap01">
<property name="spawn_trader" value="false"/>
<property name="spawn_gateway" value="false"/>
<property name="biomes" value="desert,snow"/>
</township>

<district name="aap01">
<property name="tag" value="aap01"/>
<property name="prefab_name" value="aap01"/>
<property name="spawn_weight" value="1"/>
<property name="required_township" value="aap01"/>
<property name="preview_color" value="0,0.5,0"/>
<property name="poi_required_tags_all" value="aap01"/>
</district>

<streettile name="rwg_tile_aap01_cap">
<property name="mintiles" value="1"/>
<property name="maxtiles" value="1"/>
<property name="maxdensity" value="3000"/>
</streettile>
<streettile name="rwg_tile_aap01_straight">
<property name="mintiles" value="1"/>
<property name="maxtiles" value="1"/>
<property name="maxdensity" value="3000"/>
</streettile>

<prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="Army_Airport_01" bias="20" biomeTags="desert,snow" min_count="1" max_count="1" />
</append>
 
Here are pictures of the 2 airports i created....1 rural and 1 suburban...the video files i cannot get working for some reason....not very comp savvy......they were created when we still had the prairie/grassland biome..... very basic with outhouses that had traps and a mini bunker.....it was supposed to be a place to get gyro copter parts for the final stage of flying off to wherever the drop plane came from....into 7DtD 2.0.
 

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Here are pictures of the 2 airports i created....1 rural and 1 suburban...the video files i cannot get working for some reason....not very comp savvy......they were created when we still had the prairie/grassland biome..... very basic with outhouses that had traps and a mini bunker.....it was supposed to be a place to get gyro copter parts for the final stage of flying off to wherever the drop plane came from....into 7DtD 2.0.

I'm almost 100% certain that one of those airports is in the Compopack.
 
Here's the final version of the Army Airport broken up into its individual sections. I'll post the xml afterwards.

The airport POI (148x148):
View attachment 35997

Cap tile:
View attachment 35998

Blank straight tile:
View attachment 35999

runway part (151x90):
View attachment 36000

Sorry, just catching up on this discussion. Why use a blank tile when you can just incorporate your part into a straight tile? Interesting tile work btw. In recent tile R&D I worked on, having a 2 tile configuration should yield a straight + cap configuration.
 
Sorry, just catching up on this discussion. Why use a blank tile when you can just incorporate your part into a straight tile? Interesting tile work btw. In recent tile R&D I worked on, having a 2 tile configuration should yield a straight + cap configuration.

My early attempts were with a straight tile, but the problem with a straight is that they can be flipped 180 degrees by the townplanner. So if you build your runway strip along the west side of the straight tile (for example) the townplanner could flip it and then it's on the east side and no longer matches up with the other half which is built into the west side of the cap tile.

By using a super long "runway Part" attached to the end of the cap tile's runway section, you can *always* be guaranteed that your runway will extend up to nearly 300 blocks without any chance of the townplanner ruining your day.

Initially the way I did it was with a "fake" straight tile (defined in the rwgmixer but with no actual tile file) just so that the long runway Part would always have a designated area to stretch over, and so that a road was always drawn to where I wanted it to be. This exploits a vanilla logical error with the townplanner that causes it to draw roads where it WANTS to place tiles, not where it actually CAN place tiles.

But @zztong pointed out that the method was pretty hacky (which it was) and if TFP ever decided to change the townplanner behavior, it would bork my airport. So I went ahead and created a blank, 150x150 straight tile with nothing on it to use as a proper placeholder.

Honestly, the ONE thing I'm unhappy about with my rwg airport is that you don't have any control over where the dirt road gets drawn to. The townplanner is always going to draw a road to the dead center of a tile's edge. It doesn't care about RoadExit markers at all when you're using tiles. I tried setting up my example airport in such a way that the dirt road connection always looks "okay" but it would be perfect if I could plop down a RoadExit marker anywhere along the straight tile's connecting edge and have the townplanner draw a road to that spot.
 
@EvilPolygons has really run with this and it's been fun to watch.

The issue with using a large Part sticking off the end of a Tile is we don't know what else RWG has planned for that space and I'm not sure RWG plans with Parts in mind. In the case of a POI (like the checkpoints) you're certain to always have a defined roadway to overwrite.

Couldn't the runway extension Part extend into a mountain, a wilderness POI, or even beyond the bounds of the map? Couldn't the runway extension wipe out another Tile, or be wiped out by another Tile that gets placed or filled out later?

Sorry, just catching up on this discussion. Why use a blank tile when you can just incorporate your part into a straight tile? Interesting tile work btw. In recent tile R&D I worked on, having a 2 tile configuration should yield a straight + cap configuration.

This is both cool to read and puzzling to me. What I mean is if you were interested in a series of Tiles being placed in an explicit order, wouldn't you lobby for some support within RWG? But then I likely know the answer. One POI probably isn't worth the RWG development cycles unless there's a really quick solution. I mean we can cook up some XML for rwgmixer to express that relationship of Tiles relative to one another and their rotation. The tougher part the integration with however RWG works now.

But you taking advantage of RWG quirks puts you in the same potential dilemma for future function as we are. Or am I missing something?
 
@EvilPolygons has really run with this and it's been fun to watch.

The issue with using a large Part sticking off the end of a Tile is we don't know what else RWG has planned for that space and I'm not sure RWG plans with Parts in mind. In the case of a POI (like the checkpoints) you're certain to always have a defined roadway to overwrite.

Couldn't the runway extension Part extend into a mountain, a wilderness POI, or even beyond the bounds of the map? Couldn't the runway extension wipe out another Tile, or be wiped out by another Tile that gets placed or filled out later?

Only if you use a fake tile, which is why I switched it back to using a real (but blank) tile. The runway part extends out over that blank tile so there's no chance of it spawning inside a mountain or anything else. The blank straight tile IS a proper straight tile with its own associated files, it just doesn't have a roadway or anything else built into it.

As far as the townplanner is concerned, this style of rwg airport is no different than an Old West town. But it only has two possible tiles to choose from, so you will always get exactly that airport straight tile and exactly that airport cap tile.
 
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Oh, I see. So the Part won't overwrite anything important because it will extend out over the tile which is blank. I suppose the only trip up would be if RWG changed to process the blank tile after having applied the part, then it would overwrite the Part. Perhaps?

I thought the Old West town was 3-4 Tiles. I've not looked in a while.
 
Sorry, just catching up on this discussion. Why use a blank tile when you can just incorporate your part into a straight tile? Interesting tile work btw. In recent tile R&D I worked on, having a 2 tile configuration should yield a straight + cap configuration.
Cmon Laz....You Can Do It!!! Coughs * Airport POI * Coughs
 
Oh, I see. So the Part won't overwrite anything important because it will extend out over the tile which is blank. I suppose the only trip up would be if RWG changed to process the blank tile after having applied the part, then it would overwrite the Part. Perhaps?

I thought the Old West town was 3-4 Tiles. I've not looked in a while.

Not likely to happen, because vanilla relies on this (sorta kinda) for driveway parts, for example. Driveways were the inspiration for this because I realized, "hey, what happens if you make a really big driveway part? I mean REEEEALLY big?" Parts always override tiles, otherwise parts just wouldn't work correctly.

Old West towns can be as short as 1 single (cap) tile on small worlds. It depends entirely on world size how many tiles the townplanner allocates to them.
 
@Laz Man
Looking at the images and reading, made me want to ask.
Can something like this be done, with the tiles.
If it is possible the air port could be built in the lower left of the large picture.

View attachment 36397

View attachment 36398

I can't say for sure if it's possible. The reason I opted for airport "settlements" is because with a 2-tile settlement you have absolute control over which tiles get placed, and where they get placed. The only thing you can't control is the rotation of the entry tile -- which is why I opted for a supersized part attached to the cap tile to act as a runway extension (cap tiles can't rotate because they only have one entry point).

But with cities, you have very little control over how and where the townplanner places tiles within districts, and districts within the township. There's a property that lets you exclude district neighbor types, and so there may be a way to finesse the townplanner into doing it. You'd have to experiment.

Just spitballing here...this might not work at all, but:
Create a new district type named "airport_C" and another district named "airport_S."
Set the airport_C district with only one valid tile -- your airport cap tile.
Set the airport_S district with only one valid tile -- you airport straight tile.
Set airport_C's "avoided_neighbor_districts" property to EVERY kind of district EXCEPT for Airport_S.
Hope for the best.

I haven't tried it because I don't think it will work reliably. Even if the townplanner doesn't get tripped up by your exclusions, you never have any guarantee that BOTH of your airport tiles are ACTUALY going to spawn in the same same city. Sometimes they might, and sometimes they might not. If anything at all goes wrong, you end up with a broken airport.
 
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