SimAirport launched 6 months ago yesterday -- it's been an awesome ride so far, and we've got a great update for you tonight -- and we have a lot more in store for you still, too!
Just to give you an idea, and even though this patch took a bit longer than usual, this patch contains just under 500 "code commits", or individual sets of changes -- just in this patch alone! In total, we've shipped several hundred builds to you. On top of that, we've had hundreds of interactions with many of you directly, here in the forums & across many of our different channels. The community that has formed around the game is second to none, and we're sincerely grateful for the opportunity you've given us -- and for your continued support & feedback.
Most importantly, the game itself has improved dramatically -- hundreds of bugs have been fixed, numerous new features have been added, performance has improved by orders of magnitude, and overall we've implemented hundreds of things based off of player requests and your direct feedback.
The evolution you've seen so far -- just over this first short 6-month period of time -- we've come a long way. But we've got a lot more in store for you, and we're still here working hard every day, listening closely to your feedback, and iterating based off of it.
We're still incredibly excited for the future of SimAirport, and there's a lot more coming (we're already super excited about the next patch cycle's progress, soon to be on Edge branch!!).
If you haven't already, be sure to check out the most recent SimAirport 2017 Roadmap, and if you aren't participating in the forums yet there's no better time than now, and we'd absolutely encourage you to jump in!
Once again, thank you! We thank you for your continued patience, your support, and your participation and feedback. We truly do have a lot more planned -- and, as usual, we'll have more for you very soon! =)
And now, here's what you can expect from tonight's patch:
NOTABLE CHANGES & ADDITIONS
Adds Airline Mods -- Custom Airlines
- Create and play with custom airlines and custom art. Includes full Workshop support. See how-to / schema info for details.
- Working examples of more complex JSON setups, PDF templates, and more are available via the 'How To' topic
- Thank you @Plotz for the PDF templates!
Adds Runway Operations Control Panel
- Adds 'Runways' tab to the Ops Control Panel; allows you to set runways to allow only Departures, only Arrivals, or both.
- Requires researching the new 'Aviation Operations' item
- Adds 'Crosswind Maximums', makes various runway upgrades impact the maximum thresholds
- Numerous changes to Runway selection, including smarter distance & size-based priorities
Adds Small Aircraft Gate
- Has stairs and no jet bridge
- Aircraft adjustments to appropriate gate sizes
- Adjusted prices and material requirements for Small, Large, XL Gates
- Default map now comes with a Small gate
Revised Passenger Satisfaction
- Changes to top UI and hover, now shows trend direction & intensity
- First class pax now have an increased impact on overall satisfaction score
- Satisfaction now less volatile, will be a bit more challenging in general
- Tweaks to initial spawn values, object/action interaction modifiers, need rating weights
- Needs used only for driving AI no longer directly factored into rating
- Note: When loading a older version save, the satisfaction rating may temporarily be skewed. Old saves are compatible however it may jump up or down for the first few minutes after loading -- after a few minutes it'll be using the new algorithm entirely & behaving the same as it would on a newly-created save.
- As always, please let us know your thoughts & feedback. Too difficult, too easy? Too fast or too slow? Let us know, we're listening!
Performance Improvements
Numerous performance improvements! We've optimized numerous aspects, with a focus on movement and agent rendering: threading adjustments that will allow us to better utilize multi-core processors and parallelize computationally-intensive work; other various startup and runtime optimizations, including memory/RAM optimizations; multiples rendering pipeline optimizations and improvements.
Misc. Additions & Improvements
- Adds configurable key bindings settings to Preferences (page 2)
- Added 'Ramp' outdoor tile, can be used for aesthetic purposes around your tarmac area (via request on Reddit)
- Separates 'Break Deadlock' and 'Force Departure' buttons on Aircraft menu
- Adds additional columns to Flight Status UI; column visibility can now be toggled via the "I" button, top left of the flight status screen
- Adds a button to “Show All Queue Assignments”
- Passenger object/action selection improvements -- should improve passenger distribution & object selection variation. May increase missed flights a bit, likely needs some further tweaking, is hopefully a solid improvement to pax behavior in general.
- Adds aviation-style wind heading & velocity to the top UI weather hover
- Left control key now displays crosshairs when using build tools
Staff Job Selection
Revised to be more efficient. Includes fixes for a few staff-related bugs when more than enough staff are present (wander, stacking, fanning out evenly). Known: Janitors still need to be smarter.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
- Queues set to 'First Class Only' tinted a faint blue, helps distinguish them visually
- Further adjustments to improve boarding rates, early boarding, boarding time awareness
- Several queue adjustments, including a change aimed at improving the 'slow queue join' issue
- Changes to default Airlines: interest rating sensitivity, interest percentage component adjustments, and sizable changes to Airline pricing sensitivity (now more price-sensitive, especially at the high end of the spectrum) NOTE: This change may result in reneged offers when initially loading any existing saves!
- Zones that require non-secure area will now fail to meet requirements
- Relaxes pathfinding constraints when starting on security exit/dividers — should reduce number of MM370 warnings
- Passengers will no longer spawn for flights that are accepted but not yet scheduled
- Adds some additional zoom-based culling, including hiding of construction indicators at higher zooms
- Small adjustment to make passengers more likely to line up at Gate Agent Desks during pre-boarding
- Updates Baggage Depot description and tooltip
- Aircraft Gate hover info are now less verbose unless zoomed in
- Electronics vending machine tweaks
- Changed worker task assignments to prevent excessive 'task swapping' and retain priority properly
- Adds ability to cancel queued but not-yet-started research
- Updates descriptions on ILS/PAPI regarding maximum crosswind tolerance
- Further tweaks to Passenger action/object selection; should be more attracted to gate area pre-boarding, less likely to miss their flight during boarding, and a bit more 'decisive'
- Crosswind maximums adjusted: 12KT default; 15KT with PAPI upgrade; 20KT with ILS upgrade
- Realtime Flight Status now shows # of ticketed Pax and # boarded pax; can be toggled on/off via the column settings on the UI
- Aircraft will now prefer the smallest suitable runway that is available, and will select the nearest to their gate if multiple of that size are available when needed
BUG FIXES
- Improves the movement code to now anticipate collisions with walls, mitigating an issue where agents could become stuck behind a sheer wall after getting pushed too far off path by other agents. In certain cases, this could also result in stuck aircraft (if waiting for stuck agent).
- Fixes a few internal errors producing integrity check warnings
- Fixes construction sometimes failing to complete based on erroneous ‘path available’ validation
- Fixes an issue that could result in large swaths of passengers not moving because of a failed background job enqueue when engine is under extreme load
- Fixed a bug on Flight Scheduler that showed an incorrect gate size requirement
- Fixes LRT drop-offs, should always avoid Drop-offs zone
- Fixes a bug that caused saves (and Land Expansion) to fail when a Small Aircraft Gate was present on the map
- Fixes water emission position offset on sinks
- Fixes an issue with agent appearance position offset not getting reset after using chairs
- Fixes an issue with janitor serialization that could result in stuck after load game
- Fixes an issue with pax not leaving after missed flight
- Fixes an issue with passengers sometimes taking shortcuts through non-secure areas to reach a destination in their same sector (high chance of resetting their security status)
- Fixes inconsistent mouse position / 'offset' when placing objects
- Fixes an issue that could result in stuck aircraft if indoor luggage and no baggage claim zone
- Reliability improvements to task assignment/manager for employee agents
- Improvements to janitor clean floor task to be more resilient
- Resolves an issue that could cause passengers to occasionally walk through walls
- Fixes an issue that could result in queues becoming deadlocked (e.g. if placed on the edge of a sector or zone boundary)
- Fixes a 'Move To Object' failure abort condition
- Fixes a vehicle risk condition that could sometimes occur on parallel, half-offset roads
- Vehicles should no longer drive on pending construction roads
- Fixes indoor flooring, no longer removes walls (just excludes those positions now)
MISC
- Adds a new Command Line option ("RESET") / advanced option (or 'Safe Mode'), which forces the game to forget all settings, preferences & graphics configurations
- Updated code base to the latest engine version
- Multi-core/multi-thread code runner updates, now using higher performance sync structures
- Optimization to saving/loading game; reduces risk of 'Out Of Memory' crash and truncated output/corruption