Beta Node Balloons 0.10.0

Node Balloons
Gravity was more of a suggestion anyway

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Ever looked at your car and thought: this would look better with balloons?

Ever wondered how many balloons it takes to lift a bus? (About three, if you're brave with the lift)

Ever wanted to tie sixty balloons to a Pigeon, just to see what happens? Same.

Node Balloons lets you click any node on any vehicle and tie a lifting balloon to it on a wire. Then real physics takes over. It won't make you a better driver, but it will make you a higher one.

What it does

• Tie a balloon to any node of any vehicle: yours, a parked one, or the traffic car that just cut you off.
• Each balloon pulls on its node through a real wire, 2000 times a second. Lift goes from 0 to 5000 kg, wire from 0.5 to 50 m.
• No limit. Per vehicle, per node, per bad idea.
• Balloons push each other apart and rest on their own car and on the ground. Roll the car over and it lands on its balloons.
• Bigger balloons catch more air, so they trail behind when you drive off. A wire that goes slack sags like a real one.
• Balloons feel the game's ground wind. Turn it up in the Environment panel or the Winds app and they lean with it. Lift a car off the ground and it sails away at the speed of the wind, so check the forecast first.
• Remove a balloon and it pops. Remove all pops once, however many balloons you just gave up on.
• Nine colours, and a new balloon never gets the same colour as the one before it.
• A realism slider: at 0 every balloon is a tidy 0.6 m, at 1 it's the size real helium would need (100 kg of lift: 5.8 m across). The default sits in between.
• Reset (R) keeps the balloons and blows them up again above their nodes.

Keybindings

• Ctrl + O: placement mode on/off. Hover any vehicle and the nodes near your cursor show up as dots. The one a click would pick turns yellow, with a faint preview of the balloon above it.
• Left click: tie a balloon to the yellow node. Hover a balloon instead (it gets a red shell, with its lift, wire and tension above it) and click to remove it.
• Shift + mouse wheel: more or less lift.
• Ctrl + mouse wheel: longer or shorter wire. It winches in and out, it doesn't teleport.
• Ctrl + Shift + O: remove all, your panic button. It clears the vehicle under the cursor, or with nothing under it, every vehicle.

Over a balloon, the wheel changes that balloon. Anywhere else, it sets up the next one you place. New balloons start at 100 kg and 4 m of wire.

The mouse bindings only work in placement mode, and while it's on, a click places a balloon instead of grabbing the car with the game's node grabber. Press Ctrl + O again to leave: the balloons stay. Everything can be rebound in Options > Controls (look for "Node Balloons").

There's a UI app too!
Rather click buttons? Add Node Balloons from UI Apps (Debug category). It has:

• a switch for placement mode
• lift and wire sliders for the next balloon, and the realism slider
• a Randomize box next to Wire: every balloon you place gets its own wire length, and the more balloons a car already has, the longer they can get, so a big bunch spreads out instead of piling up
• every balloon, grouped by vehicle (yours first), with its node, live wire tension, - / + for lift and wire, and a remove button
• a coloured dot per balloon: click it for the next colour
• a cog for the settings. Instant lift is on: every balloon fills in half a second, however heavy the car, so a big one throws it into the air, which is the point. Untick it and the car rises gently instead.

Hover a row to see which balloon it is. Too much app? The arrow in the header folds it down to the switch, the balloon count and Remove all. Want it somewhere else? Move or resize it in HUD Layouts > Edit layout. Your settings are saved between sessions.

Watching the tension number climb right before a node rips out is half the fun.

How to use

1. Install the mod and load Free Roam.
2. Press Ctrl + O, hover a car, click.
3. Keep clicking (or Shift + scroll) until it leaves the ground.

Good to know

• A lot of lift on one node pulls that node out of the body, just like the node grabber does. Spread big loads over several nodes. Or don't, it's your bus.
• Balloons don't bump into other cars or buildings yet, and the wire goes straight through everything.
• Coming next: bursting balloons and cutting them loose.