Hello,
I recently tested your elevator mod and found it really great! I especially love the ability to control the elevators using laptops, as well as the smoothness and reliability of the mod. I also really like the group system with the elevators, particularly the dedicated button that calls the nearest elevator…
However, I did notice one issue: when a motor is placed incorrectly above a car, it still announces coordinates as if it found a cabin, which makes us believe it's going to work — but it doesn't. I think it would be more helpful if it directly reported that the motor is misplaced.
As a suggestion for improvement, it would be nice to have an LED or some kind of indicator that lights up to show which elevator is going to arrive when using the group call button. That way, in addition to showing the letter (A, B, C, D...), there would be a visual signal to indicate exactly where the arriving elevator will be.
For example, there could be a new item — a letter A, B, C, D... — that you can place, and it would light up when elevator A, B, C, or D is being called.
That's it! Thank you very much for this mod, and have a great day!
Can you elaborate on the "placed incorrectly" part? As far as I'm aware, as long as it was able to find the car (shows coordinates) it should work to move the car anywhere from where the car was placed up to just below the motor.
As far as an indicator of which car is coming - the main thing making that a bit problematic is that the dispatcher is able to reassign calls to other cars if needed, for example if a car becomes available that could answer the call much sooner or if the initially selected car goes out of service for whatever reason. It should be possible, provided you have mesecons installed, to drive an indicator lamp using some of the mesecons output modules (using the "up/down call exists at landing" options). However, it's possible, especially during heavy traffic, that you may see it light on multiple different cars as conditions change before one finally arrives.
There is however one feature (perhaps a bit subtle) that's meant to help people get to the right elevator before it arrives - if you use the directional lanterns, they light a few seconds before the car actually arrives when it's answering a hall call. Specifically, they light when the car has "committed" to stopping at that specific floor and is beginning to slow down for it.
You can also use destination-based dispatching, see page 27 of the manual. If you use this, people are directed to a specific car when the call is placed, and will not be reassigned to a different one. The algorithms for this aren't as optimized as for conventional hall calls yet (I need to work on that more sometime) but for most in-game traffic patterns it works acceptably.
Well, when I place the motor, it has to be exactly in the middle with the pulley directly above the elevator shaft, and the motor itself offset by 1 block to the left. If I do the same thing but on the right — with the pulley centered to the right and the motor offset by 1 block (I hope I'm explaining this clearly) — the system does display coordinates, but as soon as I try to move the car, it says it can't find the elevator.
And so, if I understand correctly, even if the button tells us that car "A" is coming, it’s possible that car "B", "C" or "D"... might be reassigned instead?? In my tests — with admittedly light traffic — I haven't seen anything like that. Since the moment a call is placed, the car starts moving to respond, I didn’t think it could change midway.
As for the directional lanterns, do you mean the up and down arrows? I find that a bit unfortunate — it might clutter the limited space near the elevators... But yes, it could indeed serve the purpose.
Still, I think having blocks with letters on them would be interesting, even if the letters don’t light up. A friend and I have been trying to figure out how to position the buttons, add signs to indicate which level we’re on, which elevator it is, etc., and we haven’t come up with anything truly satisfying. If the mod directly included nice-looking signs with letters, or others to indicate the floor number, etc., I think it would help make everything much clearer.
Anyway, thank you very much for your reply — have a great day/evening!
Oh, were you already using DBD? Never mind about the reassignment thing then, I thought you were using the standard call buttons (it only applies to those).
I might add lanterns with letters on them someday, but it's not very high on my priority list. Often I use the labels from display_modpack to label the cars.
Typically I arrange things something like in this screenshot when using DBD.
I'll experiment a bit more with the motor stuff sometime and see if I can reproduce that issue.
Thank you very much.
So when we're in a group and call an elevator using the standard buttons, the system can actually reassign a different elevator than the one specified on the button?
Thanks for the sign mod — I agree, it looks really good in the screenshot!
However, I noticed that in the screenshot you're using indicators and lanterns, and I'm not entirely sure why. The client doesn’t really need to know where the elevators are — or is it actually meant to show which elevator is arriving?
And just out of curiosity, what is your top priority right now?
Thanks again for your reply — have a great day/evening!
If you use the DBD kiosk (the one where it says something like "Please use elevator A") then it will always send the one that was assigned. If you use the normal call buttons (the ones with up and down buttons) and connect them to a specific elevator by entering the controller ID, they will also always call that specific one.
However, if you use the normal call buttons (up/down buttons) and connect them to a dispatcher that itself is connected to multiple cars, it will try to pick whichever car can respond soonest. This may or may not be the closest one. If the situation changes (for example, the originally selected car goes out of service or has several more calls entered) it may change to a different car as appropriate. You can watch this happen on the dispatcher's display.
The reason there are directional lanterns and position indicators in that screenshot is for realism - where I live IRL, the following are required:
When a car arrives, a visual indication of which direction it is going (fulfilled by the lantern)
When a car arrives, an audible indication of which direction it is going, in the form of a single signal for up and a double signal for down (fulfulled by the bell built into the lantern)
For buildings over a certain height, an indication, on at least the main floor, of the current location of each car (fulfilled by the position indicators)
(split into a second reply because of the character limit)
My interest in Luanti modding kind of comes and goes over time, right now it's a bit on the lower side so I haven't been doing all that much. When it comes back (most likely in a few months) I'd like to work on the following, in no particular order:
Better DBD kiosk
Gearless hoist machine (the geared one is a bit silly at high speeds)
Techage integration (for communication, much like the current mesecons support - not for power)
More car designs
More door types (center-opening being the big one)
More operation modes (occupant evacuation, seismic, medical emergency, etc.)
Roller guides on the car
Better organization of controller parameters
Assorted refactoring
And some other feature ideas that would be nice but I may or may not do, as I'm not sure if they'd be worth the (rather high) effort:
Once again, thank you very much for your response. I find your ideas for future improvements really relevant, and I completely understand having a temporary drop in interest. Actually, at first I thought the rear door feature was already in — it would indeed be an interesting addition, though I imagine a complex one! Center-opening doors are definitely a great idea!
As for the operation modes, I’m not entirely sure I understand them. Of course, it depends on the people and your own goals, but for example, the fire mode — I don’t quite get it. Is it just meant to stop the car when there’s a fire? And is the fire detected manually or automatically? Is the elevator supposed to become a priority when there's a fire? I’m not sure — personally I don’t really see the point of the modes, but that’s just my opinion :)
And regarding the idea of a better DBD kiosk, what do you have in mind?
I hope I’m not bothering you too much with all my questions 😅😅
Thank you again for your quick and thoughtful replies — it’s really a pleasure to chat with you. Have a great day/evening!
And I really want to thank you for this amazing quality mod. I love how reliable it is, as well as the smoothness, the sound effects… I have to admit I haven’t tested the Mesecons and Digilines integration yet, but I’ll probably do that in the coming days. Also, being able to control the elevators with computers is so cool. It adds a kind of... personalized, “realistic?” and connected feeling that I absolutely love — this is exactly the kind of feature I enjoy the most.
The designs are also very well done, and thank you as well for the readme file — it’s really helpful and clearly written. In short, this is a mod that truly deserves more downloads.
By the way, I was a bit surprised when I looked at your profile and didn’t see many other mods with a similar focus on realism and technology — though I imagine this one must have taken an enormous amount of work. Was it your last mod?
This is my most recent (major) mod, yes - and if you like it that much, reviews are always appreciated :D
I do have a few other mods that focus on technology from real life, ltc4000e probably being the other big one but that one is really showing its age by now. I have plenty of ideas I want to put into a successor to that one if I ever get around to that. I also did a fire alarm mod a few years ago, never uploaded it here as it's admittedly kind of low quality, but someone else did fork it recently and uploaded their fork. I haven't tried said fork, but it sounds like it's still pretty similar to mine.
The various special modes in celevator mostly follow the applicable codes in the US (where I'm from), mostly ASME A17.1. This means you can probably find explanations of them elsewhere online and most of the information will apply to here too. Just in case though, I typed up a short version of what they do here - had to link to a text file as otherwise I'd have to split this whole thing into three comments.
As far as an improved DBD kiosk goes - I'd like to make the layout editable and add support for things like restricting access to certain floors from it, or even having the ability to have "home floors" for certain players where it just automatically selects the appropriate floor for them.
Thank you very much for your response.
Ahh, okay, your test file definitely helps clarify a lot. And yes, the existing mods are actually quite relevant — that’s great!
However, I didn’t really understand the improvements planned for the DBD kiosk, especially the “home floors” part.
And do you mean that you’d like to directly add the ability to restrict access to certain floors using the kiosk?
The "home floors" idea that I'd like to implement sometime is something that's occasionally used on these in real life, especially in places like office buildings and hotels. The idea is that in those kinds of buildings, everyone really just has one floor they ever go to (the one they work on, the one their hotel room is on, etc.), and there might be some need to prevent them from going to other floors. So what gets done is that things are configured such that everyone arriving at the elevators has to authenticate somehow (often a keycard), and in doing so their floor is also automatically selected.
For example, if you worked on the 37th floor of such a building, when you arrived at the elevators in the morning, the DBD kiosk would just say something like "please tap card on reader". It might also offer a few floor selections like a cafeteria and parking or something, but that's it. But then when you tap your keycard on the reader, it would not only unlock floor 37 for you, but automatically select it too. It might go something like "please tap card on reader" -> tap -> "please use elevator C to floor 37"
In celevator, it's just for decoration. You can set a car number on it and it will spin when that car moves. It's relatively new, so it hasn't made it into a manual update just yet.
In real life, it's used to protect against overspeed. There's a separate rope/cable that runs in a loop between the governor at the top (for overhead traction installations like what celevator is meant for, it's usually just on the floor next to the machine) and an idler down at the bottom (in the pit). This rope is attached to the safety gear on the car, and in normal operation the governor moves freely, not doing much other than spinning the governor as the car moves.
However, if the car moves too fast (only downwards on older installations, either direction on many newer ones), a switch in the governor opens (electrical trip). This switch is in the safety circuit along with things like the door locks, stop buttons, etc., and causes an emergency stop. If a rope brake is installed, it will possibly apply too. If the car continues to accelerate, for example if the hoist ropes have all failed or if the brakes are not working for some reason, the governor locks up (mechanical trip) and prevents the governor rope from moving. This pulls on the safety gear on the car, causing it to apply. In its most basic form, this is just a metal wedge that gets pulled in between the car and the guide rails and jams it in place. Higher-speed elevators have more elaborate systems to prevent the deceleration from being so strong as to cause injury.
Additionally, if an elevator is located such that there is a room or similar underneath the pit, such as an elevator that goes down to the lobby but then has an underground parking garage below it, the counterweight will often have its own set of safety gear and its own governor. This is to prevent the counterweight from crashing through the bottom of the pit and into the area below if the hoist ropes were to fail. Even though celevator doesn't (yet?) have counterweights, you can kind of simulate this by placing a second governor if you want... actually you can place as many governors per car as you want, and at one point I had something like 20 of them connected to the same car as an experiment. There also aren't any restrictions (in celevator) as to where you put them, meaning if you use one as a desk ornament or something, you can connect it to an elevator across town and it'll spin when that one moves.
Hello, I recently tested your elevator mod and found it really great! I especially love the ability to control the elevators using laptops, as well as the smoothness and reliability of the mod. I also really like the group system with the elevators, particularly the dedicated button that calls the nearest elevator…
However, I did notice one issue: when a motor is placed incorrectly above a car, it still announces coordinates as if it found a cabin, which makes us believe it's going to work — but it doesn't. I think it would be more helpful if it directly reported that the motor is misplaced.
As a suggestion for improvement, it would be nice to have an LED or some kind of indicator that lights up to show which elevator is going to arrive when using the group call button. That way, in addition to showing the letter (A, B, C, D...), there would be a visual signal to indicate exactly where the arriving elevator will be.
For example, there could be a new item — a letter A, B, C, D... — that you can place, and it would light up when elevator A, B, C, or D is being called.
That's it! Thank you very much for this mod, and have a great day!
Can you elaborate on the "placed incorrectly" part? As far as I'm aware, as long as it was able to find the car (shows coordinates) it should work to move the car anywhere from where the car was placed up to just below the motor.
As far as an indicator of which car is coming - the main thing making that a bit problematic is that the dispatcher is able to reassign calls to other cars if needed, for example if a car becomes available that could answer the call much sooner or if the initially selected car goes out of service for whatever reason. It should be possible, provided you have mesecons installed, to drive an indicator lamp using some of the mesecons output modules (using the "up/down call exists at landing" options). However, it's possible, especially during heavy traffic, that you may see it light on multiple different cars as conditions change before one finally arrives.
There is however one feature (perhaps a bit subtle) that's meant to help people get to the right elevator before it arrives - if you use the directional lanterns, they light a few seconds before the car actually arrives when it's answering a hall call. Specifically, they light when the car has "committed" to stopping at that specific floor and is beginning to slow down for it.
You can also use destination-based dispatching, see page 27 of the manual. If you use this, people are directed to a specific car when the call is placed, and will not be reassigned to a different one. The algorithms for this aren't as optimized as for conventional hall calls yet (I need to work on that more sometime) but for most in-game traffic patterns it works acceptably.
Hello/Good evening, thank you for your reply.
Well, when I place the motor, it has to be exactly in the middle with the pulley directly above the elevator shaft, and the motor itself offset by 1 block to the left. If I do the same thing but on the right — with the pulley centered to the right and the motor offset by 1 block (I hope I'm explaining this clearly) — the system does display coordinates, but as soon as I try to move the car, it says it can't find the elevator.
And so, if I understand correctly, even if the button tells us that car "A" is coming, it’s possible that car "B", "C" or "D"... might be reassigned instead?? In my tests — with admittedly light traffic — I haven't seen anything like that. Since the moment a call is placed, the car starts moving to respond, I didn’t think it could change midway.
As for the directional lanterns, do you mean the up and down arrows? I find that a bit unfortunate — it might clutter the limited space near the elevators... But yes, it could indeed serve the purpose.
Still, I think having blocks with letters on them would be interesting, even if the letters don’t light up. A friend and I have been trying to figure out how to position the buttons, add signs to indicate which level we’re on, which elevator it is, etc., and we haven’t come up with anything truly satisfying. If the mod directly included nice-looking signs with letters, or others to indicate the floor number, etc., I think it would help make everything much clearer.
Anyway, thank you very much for your reply — have a great day/evening!
Oh, were you already using DBD? Never mind about the reassignment thing then, I thought you were using the standard call buttons (it only applies to those).
I might add lanterns with letters on them someday, but it's not very high on my priority list. Often I use the labels from display_modpack to label the cars.
Typically I arrange things something like in this screenshot when using DBD.
I'll experiment a bit more with the motor stuff sometime and see if I can reproduce that issue.
Thank you very much. So when we're in a group and call an elevator using the standard buttons, the system can actually reassign a different elevator than the one specified on the button? Thanks for the sign mod — I agree, it looks really good in the screenshot! However, I noticed that in the screenshot you're using indicators and lanterns, and I'm not entirely sure why. The client doesn’t really need to know where the elevators are — or is it actually meant to show which elevator is arriving? And just out of curiosity, what is your top priority right now? Thanks again for your reply — have a great day/evening!
If you use the DBD kiosk (the one where it says something like "Please use elevator A") then it will always send the one that was assigned. If you use the normal call buttons (the ones with up and down buttons) and connect them to a specific elevator by entering the controller ID, they will also always call that specific one.
However, if you use the normal call buttons (up/down buttons) and connect them to a dispatcher that itself is connected to multiple cars, it will try to pick whichever car can respond soonest. This may or may not be the closest one. If the situation changes (for example, the originally selected car goes out of service or has several more calls entered) it may change to a different car as appropriate. You can watch this happen on the dispatcher's display.
The reason there are directional lanterns and position indicators in that screenshot is for realism - where I live IRL, the following are required:
(split into a second reply because of the character limit)
My interest in Luanti modding kind of comes and goes over time, right now it's a bit on the lower side so I haven't been doing all that much. When it comes back (most likely in a few months) I'd like to work on the following, in no particular order:
And some other feature ideas that would be nice but I may or may not do, as I'm not sure if they'd be worth the (rather high) effort:
Once again, thank you very much for your response. I find your ideas for future improvements really relevant, and I completely understand having a temporary drop in interest. Actually, at first I thought the rear door feature was already in — it would indeed be an interesting addition, though I imagine a complex one! Center-opening doors are definitely a great idea! As for the operation modes, I’m not entirely sure I understand them. Of course, it depends on the people and your own goals, but for example, the fire mode — I don’t quite get it. Is it just meant to stop the car when there’s a fire? And is the fire detected manually or automatically? Is the elevator supposed to become a priority when there's a fire? I’m not sure — personally I don’t really see the point of the modes, but that’s just my opinion :) And regarding the idea of a better DBD kiosk, what do you have in mind? I hope I’m not bothering you too much with all my questions 😅😅 Thank you again for your quick and thoughtful replies — it’s really a pleasure to chat with you. Have a great day/evening!
And I really want to thank you for this amazing quality mod. I love how reliable it is, as well as the smoothness, the sound effects… I have to admit I haven’t tested the Mesecons and Digilines integration yet, but I’ll probably do that in the coming days. Also, being able to control the elevators with computers is so cool. It adds a kind of... personalized, “realistic?” and connected feeling that I absolutely love — this is exactly the kind of feature I enjoy the most. The designs are also very well done, and thank you as well for the readme file — it’s really helpful and clearly written. In short, this is a mod that truly deserves more downloads. By the way, I was a bit surprised when I looked at your profile and didn’t see many other mods with a similar focus on realism and technology — though I imagine this one must have taken an enormous amount of work. Was it your last mod?
This is my most recent (major) mod, yes - and if you like it that much, reviews are always appreciated :D
I do have a few other mods that focus on technology from real life, ltc4000e probably being the other big one but that one is really showing its age by now. I have plenty of ideas I want to put into a successor to that one if I ever get around to that. I also did a fire alarm mod a few years ago, never uploaded it here as it's admittedly kind of low quality, but someone else did fork it recently and uploaded their fork. I haven't tried said fork, but it sounds like it's still pretty similar to mine.
The various special modes in celevator mostly follow the applicable codes in the US (where I'm from), mostly ASME A17.1. This means you can probably find explanations of them elsewhere online and most of the information will apply to here too. Just in case though, I typed up a short version of what they do here - had to link to a text file as otherwise I'd have to split this whole thing into three comments.
As far as an improved DBD kiosk goes - I'd like to make the layout editable and add support for things like restricting access to certain floors from it, or even having the ability to have "home floors" for certain players where it just automatically selects the appropriate floor for them.
Thank you very much for your response. Ahh, okay, your test file definitely helps clarify a lot. And yes, the existing mods are actually quite relevant — that’s great! However, I didn’t really understand the improvements planned for the DBD kiosk, especially the “home floors” part. And do you mean that you’d like to directly add the ability to restrict access to certain floors using the kiosk?
The "home floors" idea that I'd like to implement sometime is something that's occasionally used on these in real life, especially in places like office buildings and hotels. The idea is that in those kinds of buildings, everyone really just has one floor they ever go to (the one they work on, the one their hotel room is on, etc.), and there might be some need to prevent them from going to other floors. So what gets done is that things are configured such that everyone arriving at the elevators has to authenticate somehow (often a keycard), and in doing so their floor is also automatically selected.
For example, if you worked on the 37th floor of such a building, when you arrived at the elevators in the morning, the DBD kiosk would just say something like "please tap card on reader". It might also offer a few floor selections like a cafeteria and parking or something, but that's it. But then when you tap your keycard on the reader, it would not only unlock floor 37 for you, but automatically select it too. It might go something like "please tap card on reader" -> tap -> "please use elevator C to floor 37"
Wow, that’s an awesome idea! I love it. I hope you’ll be able to make it happen in the future.
By the way, I didn’t really understand what the “governor” is for. I couldn’t find any information about it in the manual.
In celevator, it's just for decoration. You can set a car number on it and it will spin when that car moves. It's relatively new, so it hasn't made it into a manual update just yet.
In real life, it's used to protect against overspeed. There's a separate rope/cable that runs in a loop between the governor at the top (for overhead traction installations like what celevator is meant for, it's usually just on the floor next to the machine) and an idler down at the bottom (in the pit). This rope is attached to the safety gear on the car, and in normal operation the governor moves freely, not doing much other than spinning the governor as the car moves.
However, if the car moves too fast (only downwards on older installations, either direction on many newer ones), a switch in the governor opens (electrical trip). This switch is in the safety circuit along with things like the door locks, stop buttons, etc., and causes an emergency stop. If a rope brake is installed, it will possibly apply too. If the car continues to accelerate, for example if the hoist ropes have all failed or if the brakes are not working for some reason, the governor locks up (mechanical trip) and prevents the governor rope from moving. This pulls on the safety gear on the car, causing it to apply. In its most basic form, this is just a metal wedge that gets pulled in between the car and the guide rails and jams it in place. Higher-speed elevators have more elaborate systems to prevent the deceleration from being so strong as to cause injury.
(continued below because of the character limit)
(continued from above)
Additionally, if an elevator is located such that there is a room or similar underneath the pit, such as an elevator that goes down to the lobby but then has an underground parking garage below it, the counterweight will often have its own set of safety gear and its own governor. This is to prevent the counterweight from crashing through the bottom of the pit and into the area below if the hoist ropes were to fail. Even though celevator doesn't (yet?) have counterweights, you can kind of simulate this by placing a second governor if you want... actually you can place as many governors per car as you want, and at one point I had something like 20 of them connected to the same car as an experiment. There also aren't any restrictions (in celevator) as to where you put them, meaning if you use one as a desk ornament or something, you can connect it to an elevator across town and it'll spin when that one moves.
Thank you for your response. Ahh, okay, got it. It’s definitely an interesting feature!