Wow, the 40th issue of the weekly development blog! That calls for a celebration: Go to the fridge, get something you really like and then sit down and follow us into the depths of the previous week’s development progress.
Last week we showed you ours and the community’s collective idea (collective as of all the suggestions and ideas we’ve received) of what the initial stages of the eonomy could look like. We got a lot of great feedback and generally it looks like we are on the right track. For this reason, we made some minor adjustments and then started connecting the different variables with input controls from the UI as well as starting to implement the overall processes responsible for simulating, monitoring and executing the economy. For now, we have a given life to a bunch of methods that collect vehicle operating costs, salary expenses, business rents, fuel supplier bills, airline fuel purchasing bills and stuff like that. We’re also collecting a lot of statistics on how each segment performs with the purpose of populating data sets and supplying the CEO with information. The economy operates on a per-hour basis meaning that all expenses and incomes are transacted each whole hour. This might change in the future, but for testing reason it is currently the best way to go.
What we didn’t show you last time is the contracts. They needed another week of design in order to bring them from placeholder state to something more playable. While it is still very much in the test stage, and while there are a lot of text and variables that are to be determined as we finalize the business processes and models of the various companies that you interact with, this is, in terms of style, what we’ve come up with so far:
And yes, there was a hurricane rolling through during the recording, lol. Now, as you can see, there is still some work that needs to be done in terms of overview and usability. What’s left to implement is a system, or some kind of way, for you to easily and quickly track your performance in regards to the variables agreed in the contracts. In the case of airlines, it has do with stuff like turnaround time and general operations, when it comes to other companies like fuel suppliers and contractors it’ll mean paying your bills on time (payment is automated by the system, but if you have insufficient funds you can’t pay).
As you probably know, two weeks ago the community decided that the next aircraft to be implemented is the Boeing 737-600 (… or perhaps we should start calling it the Böeing) and as promised we are sharing the development procedure with you!
The first step was to outline the aircraft using blueprints inspired from the real world model. These are traced and outline using Illustrator. Once that’s complete, we move on to the coloring and detailing process using Photoshop. This is where we are today, the sprite is about 90% finished (as you can see there’s some more work to be done on the tail and fuselagex) and then it’s time to implement the aircraft into the game. This is the story told in pictures:
In terms of work percentage distribution each area takes roughly…
Next week it’ll most likely see its maiden voyage. We’ll continuously share the story via Twitter and in the official forum thread!
As a part of our very agile and iterative development methods the finalization of the UI panels have been given a short break in favor of some big adjustments to the construction simulation. We introduced this a number of weeks ago and have carefully collected your feedback and given the gameplay process a lot of thinking. The system itself is not complex, but the conditions it must function and rely upon on are. In ACEO you are dealing with vast scale differences on different objects, therefore you are also dealing with large distances which could result in the construction process being a boring a long-drawn process. Also, it is very unrealistic for an airport to have 100 to 250 contractors on standby for whenever there’s a construction to be completed and it would be bad game design to force you to hire and then fire several employees just for a single project. Lastly, ACEO is all about simulating agents, therefore we want to allow the CEO to streamline the game experience by not being forced to have a large amount of idle employees hired. These are only a few, but the most important, aspects to consider in regards to ACEO and construction simulation. It would be so easy just to abstract simulation out and have instant placement, but we recognize the community’s desire in this feature and… it does feel very nice to see your airport put up brick by brick.
The important decisions we’ve made this week, as a result of our internal testing and the community feedback, and are currently in testing is the following:
What we’re aiming for is a system where the cost benefit of using contractors can be weighed against the convenience of having contractors on site. While the construction panel we use for interacting with the system has seen a lot of work this week it is not yet ready to be revealed. Instead, enjoy these 50 contractors building a terminal foundation structure. We’ll continue listening to your thoughts and testing different approaches.
So that’s it for this week folks! Oh, and one more thing: We have not forgotten about the promise of a full length end to end gameplay video. We have been discussing potential release dates and are somewhat confident on a scope not too far away. We won’t say anything yet but we simply wanted you to know that we haven’t forgotten it…
Have a great week and se you soon!
Innovative rotor configurations, sleek cockpit designs, and formidable thrust! These are just a handful of features that define the helicopters in Airport CEO, a new type of...
Read moreUnique engine placements, see through nose cones and raw power! Those are just a few of the components that summarize the eastern aircraft, birds rarely seen flying in the west...
Read more
