We are glad to welcome you back to our irregular blog!
Much has happened since the last letter. First of all we took part in a conference – DevGAMM Minsk 2017. We are eager to share some interesting videos from Game Lynch (one of the events on the conference) with you. We all had lot of fun and useful feedback. Many new weird bugs as well.
Look at this landing airplane, it’s a bit strange (may be it is because we still don’t have RWY lights):
Try to find the table with a game about airports:
Design
Today we will talk about an airport zoning. All spaces in the terminal are split into zones: international, domestic, clear, common, etc. Some of these zones can overlap onto each other: Clean Domestic, Clean International, Common Domestic, etc. But some can not: impossible to have “Common International”.
Zones are formed by entrances and gateways. E.g. Security check has “Clear” zone on it’s exit, “Passport control” has “International”, etc. Of course there are several rules how to resolve instances where different gateways lead to different zones in the same area.
Zones determine which objects can be constructed. Duty free can only be in the “International” zone, Passport control – only in “Clean” zone, etc. However gates coulcand be placed in almost any zone. At the start you don’t really care about this. Only the most undemanding airlines will agree to work with you. But when you will want to cooperate with bigger companies, your airport will have to provide Security Checks and Gates in “Clean” zones. With International flights you will need Passport controls and “International” zones.
In a big multi-zoned terminal it could be pretty challenging to manage all the flows and gateways.
Development
Thanks to the DevGAMM preparation we greatly improved game stability and polished a lot. When you demonstrate a game to a fresh audience, you want to have all the small bugs cleaned. Also Game Lynch and the showcase event gave us a lot of new ideas and inspiration.
We have improved our core apron management. The system known as “Ground Units & Landed Aircrafts’ Guidance” has been cut. We have new one “Enhanced-On-Land-Guidance” instead. It much more advanced and fast. New abbreviation for the system sounds much better as well.
A lot of small but important improvements in the interface were made. E.g. new fancy zone highlighting:
Do not hesitate subscribe our twitter. There are something interesting there: new remote ramps with “drive-through” for aircrafts(Twitter) or super awesome take-off and landing. Checkout this video (Twitter).
May be we are forgetting something. Check out the gameplay video. Something interesting can be found:
Plans
- First of all we will make an effort to post devblogs more often.
- Currently we are working on a Catering system. It will be ready soon.
- Each service can demand more than one unit. Especially for big planes. E.g. 3 or 4 apron buses.
- All tech vehicles will have correct waiting positions near ramps. And smaller versions for ramps and runways will be added soon.
- We will continue to make the economy system and other stuff. Now it’s time for us go back to development.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!