Fuel system for vehicles

[Bakura]

I was thinking about a fuel-thingy for the ingame vehicles. Each vehicle has a certain amount of fuel when it spawns, and when you're driving, the amount will decrease, depending on the distance you drive.

A random car, for example the Remington, has a tank with 60 litres capacity. It spawns with (for example) 30~45 litres of fuel. For each kilometer you drive, one liter of fuel will be used. When the tank is empty, the car won't go forward or backward anymore, and the driver has to get another car.

In order to fill your tank up, you have to go to a fuelstation. There are enough fuelstations in the San Andreas map to get everywhere. However, all fuelstations need a car-refuel (or whatever it is in english ) place, otherwise you can't get everywhere anymore. The fuel prices should vary, to create some sort of real-life effect

Not every car should have the same fuel-tank-capacity, a motorcycle with 60 litres capacity is quite unrealistic. I don't know about helicopters and aircrafts, but running out of fuel during a flight would be fun too

I haven't got a clue how much work this sort of thing takes, but it would add a lot of realism to the game, in my opinion.

[theHolyCow]

I really like this idea. The realism of the cruise will also be expanded.
As far as I can see there are no major hurdles programming wise. If everyone likes it it should be implanted.

As some aditional fun: if you strand withouth fuel you should have to option to call a fuel truck. This truck should be parked at the fuel station near the ammunition, locked. When someone calls the fuel truck an annoucement should be made and the first person who enters the truck should get the job. When the truck reaches the stranded car the car should be refueled and 25.000 (or more depending on how much money there is ingame) should be transfered from the car driver to the truck driver.

[Peter]

I don't like the idea. I've seen it being implented on many servers, and removed the day after because players hated it, and I totally know why. If you strand with your vehicle, a towtruck would have to be called. A player has to search for the towtruck and drive all the way towards you. Would you mind waiting 10 minutes for that? I know I would.

Another aspect is the "just driving around", which drops if you implent this. I want to be able to get in a car and just drive around, with nothing stopping me because my virtual fuel bar run out.

[Sander]

Like i said on IRC yesterday: i do like the idea.

And cruising around doesn't need to be a problem.
My idea about that "problem" with a full tank, you can drive a full round, maybe more, at the map.
So you can drive without problems, and stop by a gas station when needed.

I think it could add something realistic to this surrealistic game

[theHolyCow]

I agree with Peter about the tow-truck it was a bad idea 
But I do like to see a fuel system. You should be able to refuel your vehicle with a command for 5-10 times the price at a gas station. That way you never really get stranded but it still pays to go to a gas station.

[Bakura]

I marked the fuel stations on a map. As a comparison, I also marked the Pay 'n' Sprays, where the cruise has to stop anyway. There are quite a few fuel stations not too far from a pay 'n' spray, and even near mount chiliad, there are two fuel stations. So if the fuel-system is configured properly (drive around the map with a full tank for example), running out of fuel shouldn't be a problem.

Also, like theHolyCow mentions, refueling outside a fuel station for a higher price is also a possibility, and there won't be a problem with a refuel-truck or something like that.
Another possibility would be a option to teleport to the nearest fuel-station, which would work as some sort of 'virtual' towtruck, just like the current taxi doesn't require somebody driving a taxi. This should be a expensive option, because players should refuel before they run out of fuel.

The map:

The red markers are the fuel stations, the green ones are the Pay 'n' Sprays. I think I forgot a few sprays, but maybe I'll fix that later.

[Rippance]

Perhaps this is a nice idea during cruises, but it wouldn't work in LV itself, because it haves enough cars already. A car shouldn't run that fast out of gas that its necassery to refill the gas tank whenever u driven like 5-10 minutes in LV.

So, what would be a good idea then, if a gas system actually does get implented?
Create several custom refill locations, for example at a barber shop, so that the users have enough places to pick from to refuel zhe car.

[Sander]

Or, since this is LVP 3.0/SA-MP v0.2 talk, create some objects. 99% sure that there are gas stations/pumps as objects
So we can have 10 gasstations in 1 street..

[Rippance]

Well that would be cool.
Creating enough opportunties to refill would give the idea a better prospective then it would in the current SA-MP situation.

[theHolyCow]

I've tried some coding on a fuel system and the biggest hurdle we are going to have to make is what happens with a car when its out of fuel. I've tried, and its not possible to totally freeze the car. So there are a couple of options:
Respawn the vehicle,
Throw the driver out of the car and make sure he cant get in again.
Or reset the location of the car every second or so.

None of the above looks very good from a realism perspective. Perhaps you guys have a thought on this one?