Hello!

It looks like intervals between our devblogs are becoming increasingly larger instead of smaller.

Well, the bigger the project, the more ends you have to tie and more work to complete for each next step. We will try (again) to issue next devblog faster than in 5 months.

What we did in all of the time that has passed:

We finally got Airlines (more details below) Roads and Traffic:

All the vehicles now make turns correctly(almost every time). Because of correct turns, we had to remake roads and taxiways. They are better now. Auxiliary snapping for roads and taxiways. Highlights and rulers assist in making a great road system. Tooltips and highlights are shown when a road cannot be placed. It’s easy to understand what interferes with road construction.



3. Services :

RAMP Service – After Flight Check. Agents inspect an airplane after arriving. ULD cargo load is (almost) done: special load vehicles and LD3 cargo units. Now the airport will be able to take in heavy airplanes.



4. UI/UX:

Vehicles’ deployment on the selected parking. It’s possible to determine the parking option for each unit. E.g. the player may want to have Fuel Trucks closer to the Fuel Station or Buses closer to the gates, etc. Now you just place a Parking Lot in the position you want and buy the vehicles you want to have on it. If you miss, just re-attach your unit to another Parking Lot.



Different cursors help to understand what mode you are in: bulldozer, traffic link, etc.



Outline for a hovered object. We got tired of missing objects we want to click on when choosing objects and vehicles. Now we have a cute outline for highlighting them to solve that problem. Tooltips. Many tooltips for everything. We will add this feature that the player could get information about any object or UI element.



5. Optimization:

A lot of new content was added: Airplanes, Fuel Trucks, etc. Some of those things we had shown on Twitter, some things not yet. Huge optimization on memory distribution and performance. The game is becoming more and more complex, but we try to keep the FPS and requirements within reason. Over 300 commits starting with “Fixed” or “Improved”



New services coming very soon:

Water supply

Lavatory drainage

Ground Power

Pushback Jet Bridge

Airlines

Now the player gets all flights from the Airlines. They are different – they have different demands, fleet, and passengers. The airport can work with limited airlines simultaneously. Of course, this limit can be increased with research and airport development.

Each airline has tiers of cooperation, At the start, any airline provides a limited amount of flights – Tier 0 flights. To reach the next level (Tier 1, Tier 2, etc) the player has to schedule all current flights and meet specific demands for the tier: apron services, terminal services, rating, passenger traffic, etc. Each airline has different requirements based on its type (International, Domestic and Discount).

The airport now can be “wide” or “tall” (yes we love 4x games 😉 ). Focus on work with specific airlines and become the main hub for them. Or try to work with as many airlines as possible. Or find a comfortable balance.

When

We are not ready to announce a specific date. But definitely, Early Access will be this fall. Fall 2019.