[WIP]Airships - Update 0.2.7 [22 Sept 2020]

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BoneofMalkav
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by BoneofMalkav »

haloterm wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2020 2:09 pm 2. The guy at the city gates is very often levitating when I use the Distant Terrain Mod (which I really need to use, as the landscape is soooo much better than without it).
It doesn't just happen on mods that alter terrain, happens on vanilla terrain too. Mostly seems to happen when DFU updates.

FoldedDice
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by FoldedDice »

I love the immersion from this mod, but I've had some very unusual and glitchy behavior with the charter ships that I'd like to report:

Boarding works about as expected, although I did have one experience where the a ship flew in to wait for me, parking directly above the city wall! It was trivial to just climb up the wall and grab the rope from there, but I suspect that's not an intended behavior.

In transit there seems to be an incompatibility with the Mountains and Hills mod, specifically in the case of long trips involving a dramatic change in elevation. On one trip in particular I began at a city near the Daggerfall coast and set my destination to a town next to the northern border. Partway along on the trip I clipped straight through the terrain and by the time I reached my destination I was quite a long ways beneath it. The mod did not register this as an arrival (although the "you are entering" game text did appear), so the ship kept right on going, most likely forever if I had not reloaded.

The arrival in particular is where the really messy bugs seem to be, particularly when traveling to a smaller village. In that case I've had all sorts of things happen - it's quite common for me to find myself dropped off on top of a roof after clicking the rope and in one case where I did land at ground level I ended up clipped fully inside the exterior model of a large tavern.

I also had one quite bizarre incident where I clicked to disembark and the "rope warp" dropped me off so high up that I immediately died from fall damage. Neither I nor the ship were moving at the time when I clicked, so I definitely did not just fall off. I ran the same route again after a reload and that time made it to solid ground without a hitch, so I have no idea what might have gone wrong the first time.

Regarding game balance, I do feel that as it stands the charter flights are vastly under costed in light of their utility, particularly in comparison with Tedious Travel which I also use. This mod allows for a character to zip across the landscape in mere hours for a trip that would normally last for days (and it skips all of the hostile encounters!), which seems like a service that would carry a dramatically higher cost. Think less "bus ticket" and more "personally chartered air flight." With that in mind I'd like to suggest for the cost to be multiplied substantially, at least as an optional setting.

For the purpose of meshing with Tedious Travel I might also suggest at least as an option to limit airship charters to walled cities only, for both departure and arrival. That restriction feels much more balanced to my mind and it fits in well with TT's restriction of only allowing fast travel between port cities, without just redundantly copying the same rule. It'd also fix all of my glitches involved transport to villages if that possibility were to be dropped from the equation entirely. Of course, a person could just follow that restriction now as a matter of personal conduct, but it would be nice to see as a choice to have it officially codified into the game rules.

Now that all of my constructively-intended criticism is out of the way, I also have a few suggestions for new features that I think would be interesting:

Perhaps another way to balance charter flights would be to add in a wait time for their availability? My thought would be to have the player talk to the charter guy as normal, but rather than to have the ship fly in instantly he'd instead give information about when the next ship was due to be available. I'd imagine the easiest way to do this would be to randomly roll from 0-X number of days and set that as the date when the next ship is due to arrive, with a dated entry in the quest log if possible so that the player is able to keep track. If this were implemented I would suggest to allow a window of several in-game hours for boarding, though, in order to avoid too much player frustration due to missed flights.

My final thought is copied directly from the immersive travel mods in Morrowind, to which the charter portion of this is certainly quite similar. In those mods, there are certain points along the trip where the driver will have something to say about the surroundings. It would be a nice bit of immersion to see something like that here, too. Perhaps the airship drivers might do the same thing and engage in a bit of occasional banter, or they might even have something to say about whatever location the ship is currently passing over. It doesn't need to be anything too fancy, just an assortment of randomly-selected phrases that could be picked from occasionally to add a bit of extra flair.

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Kaedius
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by Kaedius »

Thanks for the info FoldedDice!
Partway along on the trip I clipped straight through the terrain
When this happened, did the ship ignore the terrain entirely and slip straight through, or did it crash and then work its way in? Also, was it the small or medium ship? The autopilot will need some touching up it sounds like, as others have reported crashes as well although I tested with Mountains and Hills enabled.
Regarding game balance, I do feel that as it stands the charter flights are vastly under costed in light of their utility
Agreed! I wasn't sure where to put the cost with the first pass, but definitely will add the option to set whatever price the user wants.
For the purpose of meshing with Tedious Travel I might also suggest at least as an option to limit airship charters to walled cities only
Absolutely agree, that was my original intention. I wanted ships to be used for long distance travel and then hoofing it from the main hubs to any smaller destination. I think when I put in the small airship I felt the need to shoe-horn it into the charter system, but next release will likely remove them from charters and remove the ability to charter to anything but the cities. Makes more sense that way.
My thought would be to have the player talk to the charter guy as normal, but rather than to have the ship fly in instantly he'd instead give information about when the next ship was due to be available.
Great idea. I didn't like the instant aspect of it and thought it would be neat to maybe have other travelers gathering to hop on or disembark.
haloterm wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2020 2:09 pm
My WIP questline about the "Black Horse Courier / Iliac Bay Edition" assumes also the possibility of airships (only story-wise -- not forcing players to have it installed, of course).
Thats awesome, good stuff!
I noted two minor things, though:

1. The airship traffic one can observe from the ground is quite fast. I would imagine they sail majestically through the sky, but they race like a fighter jet :) Of course when I am inside, they should be fast, but from the ground, maybe their speed can be reduced a bit.

2. The guy at the city gates is very often levitating when I use the Distant Terrain Mod (which I really need to use, as the landscape is soooo much better than without it).
I tried to slow them down, but my efforts were futile. Next release should slow them down a bit.

The floating guy should be fixed next release as well.

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Dubiousintent
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by Dubiousintent »

Happy to see some progress on this.

I've only recently used this mod: once for a charter. For me at least there did not seem to be any way to increase travel speed across the terrain (as with Tedious Travel), though from the clock display the trip did seem more rapid than using a horse (which was my goal at the time and worked out well). If you did adjust the elapsed time scale, might be worth mentioning in the docs.

I did not have any collision problems using "Distant Terrain", though some times it came close.

The "gangway" for disembarking appears as if a stick rising out of the aft railing. Took a while to figure that out in despiration. You might consider adding a "tool tip" to it, and a penion (banner/flag) or perhaps some steps leading up the side of the rail at that point to focus attention.

You really need to add collision to the gunwales (sides) of the ship.

While you are at it, you might look into increasing the size of the capsule on the boarding ropes. Seem to need to be quite precise to get the teleport onto the deck to trigger. At one point I was "climbing" and fell off instead of teleporting.

If you are going to restrict charters to only between "walled cities" (which seems reasonable), please consider adding those cities to the "Ports" display on the world map when your mod is enabled.

However, "airships" would seem to simply be an "overland" version of the nautical variety, and priced accordingly. Allowing the player to set the "base charter price" or perhaps a "discount/surcharge" would be a desirable option. In the cartage business, it's just as important to know if you are going to be "empty" coming back from some remote desolate place where a return manifest is unlikely, as it is to know if a quick turnaround will mean more charters per day. "Empty cargo holds/cabins pay no bills."

FoldedDice
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by FoldedDice »

Kaedius wrote: Sat Feb 15, 2020 10:31 pm When this happened, did the ship ignore the terrain entirely and slip straight through, or did it crash and then work its way in? Also, was it the small or medium ship? The autopilot will need some touching up it sounds like, as others have reported crashes as well although I tested with Mountains and Hills enabled.
Clipped straight through like the terrain wasn’t there. Of course I have no idea how your coding is set up, but it felt like it was trying to follow the vanilla heightmap when the ground for the one I was using was much higher up. This was a charter flight in the smaller ship.

Incidentally, the game did not crash. The ship just kept trucking along and I could see the ground passing by above me the whole way. Your code also seemed to have no awareness that the destination had been missed completely, if that matters.

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Kaedius
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.3 (20-02-2020)

Post by Kaedius »

- Added Decorator mod compatibility

NOTE: Be sure to upgrade to latest release of Decorator before placing objects!

- Charter flights now only provide service to other cities.
- Substantially increased charter flight costs by default. Made cost a flat rate based on distance.
- Added charter flight cost adjusting to mod settings. You may use fractions for the multiplier, the total cost is always rounded down.
So, 0.5 will only add 1 gold every other map pixel.
- Fixed occasional floating airships merchant.

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Aleryn
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Re: [WIP]Airships - Update 0.2.3 (20-02-2020)

Post by Aleryn »

Thanks for the huge update. Combining this mod with tedious travel makes DFU have that magical feeling of both convenient and rugged travel that Morrowind had. Never thought I'd want a flying silt strider equivalent til today =)

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Midknightprince
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Re: [WIP]Airships - Update 0.2.4 (22-02-2020)

Post by Midknightprince »

Sweet an update
Check out my YouTube Channel!

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Midknightprince
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Re: [WIP]Airships Mod Update 0.2.0 - Charter Flights (9/27)

Post by Midknightprince »

Kaedius wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 6:05 am Thanks for the write up, I'm glad you like it! There really is a nice feeling to dropping ropes and hopping out of the ship.

I'm not gonna lie though, it's fairly damning as far as performance! I'm able to walk around even during the terrain loading, though that's without any additional mods. Could you fill me in on what mods you are running and maybe what your rig is?

The biggest culprits during testing for me were Real Grass and Distant Terrain.

I've learned that Real Grass can be toggled off, so I'll likely add the option to turn off Real Grass while on the ship which should help performance. Also, the way the ship takes off like a bat out of hell when manually clicking a destination certainly will be looked at!
Yes real grass, I don't use distant Terrain, it's way too laggy for me.
I have Hills.
It's real grass, and distant train together that's a Whopper...

So I have all the mods, even the archaeologist thing from j h.
But the only thing that's making it Lagg and bump is real grass.
If you turn off distant terrain and just use the Hills mod you'll see a difference but with distant terrain I know what you mean.
Oh yeah and my view distance is set to 3, trilinear filtering, FOV @ 71, and the reshade thing from dream in 1080p.

My setup is an i5 2300 16 gigs of RAM at 1333 Windows 10 x64 fully updated all the drivers are up-to-date my graphics card Etc..
1050 TI OC and a standard old school hard drive.

If I didn't have a good card I could barely run this thing I bet especially with all these mods, all these beautiful beautiful mods, of which the boats are one of my favorite now.

Just a last edit: it looks like its coming up outdated in the mod menu ?
But it still works.
Check out my YouTube Channel!

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Kaedius
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Re: [WIP]Airships - Update 0.2.4 (22-02-2020)

Post by Kaedius »

Thanks for your streams with airships Midknightprince, I mostly just test specific situations and don't get a good look at how airships are used in normal game use. Couple things I'll improve after watching your videos:

1. Speed shouldn't be locked at 10 when using the map to navigate. I'll make it just lock in the target, but the wheel can be used to set a speed and I'll keep whatever speed was set when a destination is picked. Maybe a default of 3 if location is selected while ship is at 0?

2. Autopilot does a decent job of landing, but it's trickier manually. Add a "Land ship" button? Or would it be helpful to have the altitude displayed somewhere so the sweet spot can be hit manually easier. Both seems like the right option here...

3. I can toggle off Real Grass when you are on the ship. This adds a noticeable lag when boarding the ship and a much more noticeable period of lag after leaving; but it should smooth out flight a bit. The worst thing is feeling like walking on thin ice when the ship is moving.

4. Ability to rest to the destination. That way you can take a charter flight, or hop on your own ship, and have the option to instantly appear at the destination via resting. I'd like to limit this ability as it relates to the player ship, so maybe some sort of fuel would help reduce how often this is available.

In my mind the lore is that ships operate off of a large-scale permanent levitate spell. That makes me think captured souls should somehow be used to power ships, but just magicka itself might be a decent substitute. I just want to make sure pure warriors can still use the ship without much difference depending on what fuel I decide on.

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