3-dimensional Z-level support, Core Part 4: inter-z-level movement [$100]

[GlyphGryph]

Master Ticket #6822

This will be a "bounty issue" for the development of z-line track development.

This issue concerns movement between z-levels, both voluntary and involuntary.

This has following requirements:
Unsupported items, furniture, vehicles and creatures on one level should fall to the next
Players should be able to be able to ascend and descend via stairs, ladders and slopes.
Creatures with the ability to fly should be able to ascend and descend anywhere (this does not require implementing an AI smart enough to choose do so, only that they have the ability)
Outside forces should have a method to work on items and entities to move them from one z-level to another - recommend implementation of elevators or catapults or both to demonstrate.

Did you help close this issue? Go claim the $100 bounty on Bountysource.

[KA101]

Hey, just gonna point out that unsupported terrain and whether/not it falls should at least be considered when evaluating bounty-claim candidates. The issue as literally written allows for Terraria-style floating structures, which we probably don't want.

[GlyphGryph]

Leaving that out (of this ticket) was intentional, though, as its a very different problem from the ones being solved here, and floating terrain is honestly a lot more acceptable than floating enemies and items, and a lot less important than flying players and enemies being able to move between levels.

[KA101]

OK, fair enough.

[kevingranade]

Agreed, making buildings detect when they should collapse is difficult,
tricky, and shouldn't much influence how data is stored, so it can be
deferred to after z-levels are working.

[Coolthulhu]

How do we want ladders and slopes to work?
I assume ladders could be just deployable stairs that need some adjacent obstacle. Possibly with correction on destruction of one side (upper/lower) to prevent "dangling" upper stairs and unusable lower stairs.
I see slopes as stairs, maybe with automatic redirection of movement similar to that in DF ie. if you try to move from slope onto an obstacle, you automatically move above that obstacle.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

I like both of those ideas.

[GlyphGryph]

I'd suggest just making slopes two tiles 'wide' (and any number of tiles tall), and having an up and down section. If you're on the down section and move in the direction of the up section you safely move up and vice versa for down. If you try to move in the direction of the up section but aren't on the bottom section you're blocked, and moving onto the bottom section from a non-up or off the up section to a non-down leads to falling. That sort of thing would realistically replace a lot of "stairs" as well, since they function more like fixed ladders would right now.

It would also make it easier if anyone ever wanted to add things "falling" down the ramp, since anything dropped or landing on the top section could just move past the bottom in the direction of the bottom.

Just an idea though.

[kevingranade]

Sanity check for dimensions. Squares are approximately 1m wide, but at least 2m tall, a 60 degree slope is more climbable than vertical, but it's not something you can walk up and down. A two-tile slop would give a 45 degree slope or so, which is still somewhat unreasonable, but at least it's getting closer.
The ideal IMO would be:

• Ladders: single-tile, allow for symmetric up/down.
• Stairs: Paired and adjacent up/down squares with the logic Glyphgryph describes.
• Ramps: A set of 4 different heights, (bottom, lowered, raised, top), and you can only move between adjacent segments.

If you don't want to get bogged down with all that that's understandable, I consider it separate from the bounty issue.

[chaosvolt]

Interesting. That reminds me, I could've sworn NPCs were recently given the ability to follow you up/down stairs, but this seems to be non-functional.

[Coolthulhu]

It is functional, just that none of the new z-level features work in 2D worlds.

[chaosvolt]

That explains it. ;A;

Hopefully once the kinks (and the lag) are worked out, making z-levels the norm will be interesting to see.