Hand Truck for moving furniture indoors

[EvanBalster]

Summary

Content "Portable hand truck for moving furniture and appliances"

Purpose of change

Provides a realistic tool for moving furniture and appliances indoors.

Recently @RenechCDDA made it possible to load furniture into cargo spaces, introducing the new FURNITURE_TIEDOWN flag. The long-term plan for that feature is to remove item versions of large appliances like fridges. Currently it's relatively easy to carry these items (albeit with rapid stamina drain) but once itemized they can no longer be loaded into a cargo carrier as before. Dragging furniture on the other hand is much more difficult than lifting it, which is very strange.

Describe the solution

• Added a new vehicle part, the "nose plate", modeled on this generously-sized aluminum hand truck part: https://www.magliner.com/extruded-aluminum-nose-flush-mount-300248 I'm pretending this includes skid runners in case someone implements the ability to drag vehicles up stairs later. It also includes a strap (seat belt) to justify securing fridges and such. It is very mediocre as an item cart.
• The Nose Plate has lifting 1 and jacking 1. Neither of these currently help with loading appliances, but perhaps they will later on. It isn't good at carrying items, being limited to a 15-liter pile.
• Added a new vehicle, the "hand truck", composed of a foldable extra-light frame, large 10" casters and the nose plate.
• Add spawn locations: Light industry, mansion basements near the generator, sewage treatment plant, pump station, certain sewer tunnel sub-tiles, home improvement store and superstore.

Loading large appliances onto a hand truck still requires enough strength to drag it along the floor, unless you have a strength bonus from strong back and/or a lifting buddy. @RenechCDDA intends to add some kind of vehicle part quality that gives a lifting bonus when tying things down, but that isn't here yet.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Renaming set of large casters to set of small cart wheels and revising its description from "a set of wheels mounted on pivots" to "a set of solid-rubber wheels". This still makes sense for all the vehicles that use these and avoids needing to invent a new very similar type of wheels for the hand truck or nonsensically have casters on it.
• Non-aluminum or non-foldable frames. Currently this would be the only source of non-crafted foldable extra light frames making it disproportionately valuable as scrap. But most of these in the real world are aluminum and easy to throw in your truck! Folks have talked about making single-tile vehicles itemizable under certain conditions even if not foldable; the hand truck would be an ideal application for that.
• Renech was thinking about introducing a single-tile dolly vehicle for this purpose. I see no reason the game couldn't include both; I imagine a dolly would be non-foldable and suitable for heavier loads.

Testing

Spawned the hand truck, loaded some furniture on/off, rolled it around. Experimented with strength bonuses: fridges and freezers usually require STR 10 to move, but "strong back" or a friendly NPC can help a more average survivor to manage it.

Tested spawns in light industry, sewage treatment and superstore.

Additional context

Evan — 12:09 AM
The lifting bonus isn't really necessary if a single-tile draggable vehicle has FURNITURE_TIEDOWN, is it? Handjack allows for wacky stuff like wielding an enormous engine block but that's pretty different.
Would that flag still work on a part with little to no cargo capacity? Like a frame with straps on it basically
Renech — 12:10 AM
It is because the tiedown action checks if you have the strength to move(lift) the furniture at all.

Evan — 12:45 PM
do you know if any tool quality bonuses or anything besides a friendly NPC affects FURNITURE_TIEDOWN interactions right now? The code makes it look like only an NPC will help, but somehow my main character with STR 9 is able to tie and untie chest freezers without assistance.
Renech — 1:15 PM
Nope that was all I coded

[db48x]

Very nice.

More/different spawn locations…

I recommend office buildings, mansions, apartment buildings, furniture stores, schools, the occasional box truck, etc.

[ggmeshgg]

airports / trans coast logistics?

[EvanBalster]

See commit logs / OP for spawns I've added so far.

@db48x Thanks for the suggestions, I followed most of those. Currently I'm not sure how to make it spawn in box trucks, as I'm not clear on any way to put folded and unfolded versions of a vehicle into the game data. For example, all concrete mixers spawn as items while all handjacks spawn as vehicles.

@ggmeshgg Also good suggestions! Haven't done them yet though. Those locations might be more appropriate for a heavy-duty dolly.