描述
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I'm in the middle of moving, and have spent the last few weeks with a steel cargo container in my yard. Every time I see it, every single time, I think "why don't we have these in CDDA!?"
It is possible I have a problem.
That problem is, of course, THE LACK OF INTERMODAL TRANSPORT CONTAINERS.
For reference, these bad boys are what we're talking about.
Solution you would like.
I believe an intermodal containers should be a vehicle. The first and most important way to model them is as a vehicle, and for that we should have a few custom vehicle panels so that I can sprite them to look like what they are: the intermodal container is a very well recognized structure, and missing them in game is a big deal.
As a start, I'd just love to see someone go to the work of designing them, and maybe putting a few of them rarely in front of houses, and frequently in various industrial places. Then, in follow up, we can have some that contain interesting or boring things. Eventually we should see these in railyards and shipyards in huge numbers. However, those are later steps. This is a good first issue for someone who wants to learn how to make a custom vehicle in JSON, but it is a little bit involved so while I am flagging it "good first issue", I really recommend doing something very very small and trivial for your first first issue.
How I'd design them:
Intermodal containers are typically 8' x 20' or 8' x 40'. The 20' variety should look like this:
WWWWW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WfffW
WDDDW
Where W is a full height vehicle wall with a new custom panel style, "transport_container" - which comes in "container_side", "container_door_corner", "container_end_corner", and "container_end" And where D is a vehicle door similar to the trunk, where opening one door opens both doors, with a new custom sprite as well.
- Ideally, but not necessary, we could add code where opening one door opens the door next to it, but not all three doors, so that opening the middle tile opens both but opening the left tile opens only the left and middle and opening the right opens the right and middle. That would let us model it as two doors despite taking three tiles. However, I think doing it all as one door is the easiest way and we already have that code.
- These doors should be very loud to open! And a bit slow.
And where
fis probably just standard cargo storage space, but with a new visual variant.
We could add the 40' variety but as you see, they'd get pretty long in game.
Describe alternatives you have considered.
There was a time when I thought we'd also want them as terrain so that we could have furniture in them, but now that we can drag furniture into vehicles, that might not be necessary. For starters, we should get htese as vehicles and see how it works.
If we model them as vehicles then you can push them around and things, which is sooooo aaawwwweesome.
Additional context
Long-term, I would like to have different colour choices for these and put them into a vehicle group so you can just place a 'container' and get different skins. Then I might also be able to work in a few with graffiti and stuff, which would really enhance the look, but the odds of me getting that much sprite art done without getting distracted are... not great.
In the future, it may be possible to repurpose bicycle code to load intermodal containers onto appropriate flatbed trucks. That would be amazing
Eventually, intermodal containers would be a good way to begin thinking about some simple multi-z-level vehicle code, allowing us to stack them on top of each other.