This is you captain speaking, eerrrr… welcome to development log 18, err….. first off we would like to apologize for our horribly boring april fools’ day “prank” where we announced that Airport CEO was going to be a virtual reality experience. Next year we’ll think of something better.

So what have we been up to the past week and a half? Since the game is growing a lot in terms of functionality and size we want to make sure the the performance of our code is relatively OK and that we don’t leave too much technical debt behind, which is why some of the time has been dedicated to squashing a few nasty bugs. Aside from that, we have mostly been consumed by integrating the three core components of a passenger’s life cycle, checking in, passing security and then boarding, into our build system. As you know, building your airport is 100% custom which means that you don’t only place out each individual check-in desk but that you also build (draw out) its queue, a good queue is critical for passenger throughput and terminal size efficiency. Don’t worry though, queues can be saved to a blueprint so that you don’t need to rebuild it for each new check-in desk you place as your terminal grows.

The security station has also been integrated and is placed by drawing out a rectangle area crossing both a security and a non-security zone, this also comes with the requirement of the player building the security station’s queue. Within this area you then individually place detectors and scanners for processing passengers and their luggage. Each station, which can be assigned to only process passenger, employees or both, requires a number of security staff to operate it and as passengers pass through it they or their luggage can get searched based on what they’ve brought with them and how effective your staff is att performing their job. A .gif of how the processing looks might find its way out on the Internet soon…

Finally, and pretty straight forward, is the boarding desk. This was seen in the teaser video and does not require any queue building as queues magically take shape by them selves when passengers line up for boarding. They do however need to be attached to a jet bridge (which itself is attached to a stand) in order for it to work, the attachment is lucid and is only constrained by distance between the two.

As a thanks for the continued amazing support, suggestion and ideas we continuously get from you guys we’ll reward you by a fun side project that was implemented this week, the moving walkway:

Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just testing the newly implemented moving walkways! #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #indiegames pic.twitter.com/PBx7pj2KKb

— AirportCEO (@AirportCEO) 10 april 2016

Take care and see you next time!

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