Hello airport CEO!
It's been a while but finally Alpha 23.0 has made it to the default branch. You can learn more on why it's been delayed in this week's devlog but for your convenience and excerpt of the development discussion will be included below:
"A lot has happened under the hood, as the full patch notes can be seen here, and we've mainly targeted path finding performance improvements, general bug fixing and new UI feature implementation such as the long awaited employee job task overview sub panel and a vehicle stock overview panel.
The main reason for the delay has been stability concerns regarding the path finding system as we've been implementing new technology to improve performance. This initially brought a few critical bugs which we simply could not ship and took a few days of work to figure out and mitigate. Since a part of the solution to these bugs was to cycle the version of a key underlying component we had to do additional testing to the basic systems, one of which broke, before being confident in the stability of Alpha 23.
After soaking for a few hours on the experimental branch it has now been deployed and given its large changes we will continue to monitor its stability over the coming week. In the meantime we will split the remaining development time for this week in three halves, continued bug fixing where severity is prioritized, implementation of the new service vehicle pack and script profiling and optimization. When the ACEO development team is fully transitioned into their roles as professional game developers we will provide a set release schedule for the upcoming default branch deployments, most likely on a monthly basis but more information on this will be provided at a later stage."
New Versioning System
We'd also like to highlight that we have a new and final versioning number system in place, here's a short summary:
Airport CEO A B.C-D
A: Major build type (incremented on major version transitions)
B: Minor build version (incremented on larger and more stable changes to the code base (default branch))
C: Revision number (incremented as new features and bug fixes are tested (experimental branch))
D: Build version (incremented only when a new build is deployed on the experimental branch)
Do check out the devlog if you're interested in getting the full picture! Here's the patch notes for Alpha 23.0:
Release notes - Airport CEO - Version Alpha 23.0
Improvement
- ACEO-2157] - Further improvements to sprite packing to increase performance (very minor improvement)
- ACEO-2158] - Routes are now generated more realistically and fuel leves are more realistic
- ACEO-2159] - Updated icons to show aircraft size in flight planner
- ACEO-2196] - Luggage cart turn simulation improved
- ACEO-2228] - Several blocks for changing cargo (baggage) related object connections removed to ease gameplay
- ACEO-2229] - Several blocks for demolishing cargo (baggage) related objects removed to ease gameplay
- ACEO-2233] - Minor UI improvements and adjustments
- ACEO-2255] - Jetway position now correctly deserialized
- ACEO-2265] - Experimenting with some pathfinding optimizations (don't expect much, mostly for testing)
- ACEO-2286] - Jetway not reachable to ATR 42
- ACEO-2421] - Different font and text size in build menu for 1366 width resolutions
- ACEO-2434] - Four additional road pieces on pre-built world road added to prevent delivery and contractor site deadlocking
- ACEO-2481] - Sprite improvements to concrete
Bug
- ACEO-13] - Prevent baggage toggle in operations overview from being toggleable at all if requirements are not met
- ACEO-18] - Building two lines fences next to each other and then removing one of them does not update sprite of remaining fence
- ACEO-788] - Traffic uses wrong side of holding point
- ACEO-954] - Extend runway does not remove trees
- ACEO-1122] - Save games in loading panel not ordered by most recent date time
- ACEO-1221] - Fuel truck tank capacity incorrect
- ACEO-1472] - Cargo (baggage bay) connection cannot be changed with scheduled flights
- ACEO-1976] - Issue with boarding procedure can cause deadlocked passengers
- ACEO-1994] - Weird numbers in person though bubble
- ACEO-2059] - Null reference exception on room reset can cause rooms to lock down and become unaccessible
- ACEO-2083] - Fuel service requires a full truck bug
- ACEO-2099] - Delivery sites connected to unbuilt road causes delivery deadlocks
- ACEO-2106] - GA planes sometimes do not request fuel which causes tutorial to stall
- ACEO-2148] - Lacking null reference handling on bank loan container can temporarily break UI functions
- ACEO-2149] - Lacking null reference handling on product procurement can temporarily break UI functions
- ACEO-2150] - Minor correction on selection controller to avoid multiple objects invoking selection in one clikc
- ACEO-2155] - Jet A1 service toggle cannot be disabled
- ACEO-2173] - Aircraft not refueling much fuel
- ACEO-2177] - Refueling has no impact on truck fuel load
- ACEO-2187] - Passengers don’t sit at gate seatings near boarding desks
- ACEO-2188] - Bad handling of UI panel not closing when a tracked object is removed can cause UI to freeze
- ACEO-2213] - Cannot build taxiway nodes on extended runway
- ACEO-2214] - Minor issue with aviation fuel truck not filling up fuel depot
- ACEO-2220] - Passengers cannot get nearest secure zone node if stuck in staff zone area
- ACEO-2272] - Franchise staff do not leave counters upon completion of contract
- ACEO-2279] - CLM aircraft can randomly appear without airline livery
- ACEO-2290] - B737 appears inside terminal building
- ACEO-2298] - Lost deliveries are sometimes not properly processed causing a delivery deadlock
- ACEO-2300] - Employees with tools cannot get past security checkpoints on second try
- ACEO-2304] - Bags for departing passengers are not properly deserialized when owning passenger has boarded flight
- ACEO-2305] - Ramp agents sometime do not load all bags in cargo (baggage) bay or at aircraft stand
- ACEO-2308] - Vehicles using closed vehicle depots
- ACEO-2318] - Medium stand parking fee slider references small stand parking value
- ACEO-2319] - Stationed employees picker appear on small security check-poin
- ACEO-2331] - Construction workers get stuck when trying to leave the airport
- ACEO-2363] - Building walls on zone tiles, or zone tiles on walls, should be ignored by the builder to mitigate incorrect zone merging
- ACEO-2364] - Construction queue calculation not correct rendering "construction demand exists" label to show incorrectly
- ACEO-2365] - Improvements to path finding thread
- ACEO-2380] - Boarding procedure at random not correctly taking leaving passengers into account
- ACEO-2420] - Issue with building and dragging wall
- ACEO-2433] - Game menu panel appearing when pressing escape with bulldozer tool selected
- ACEO-2435] - Management panel scrollbar not displaying correctly on certain panels
- ACEO-2446] - ATC tower can be build on objects
- ACEO-2474] - Issue with tutorial steps size fixed
New Feature
- ACEO-5] - Implement a job task overview panel to get a better sense of workforce supply and demand
- ACEO-33] - New Selection Highlighting System: Click on an object to see which persons or vehicles are interacting with it
- ACEO-2231] - New aircraft model type added: Airbus
- ACEO-2232] - New vehicle graphics implemented: Service Truck
- ACEO-2381] - Implement a vehicle stock management panel to properly manage vehicles