Hi and welcome to the 65th edition of the ACEO development blog. This issue was delayed due to intense Swedish Valborg celebrations and the fact that we needed a rest before having a go at making sense again. So without delaying any further, let’s indulge…

‍

Starting to Implement New Airlines

As you might have heard, we recently arrange a community contest where future CEO’s looking to get a free copy of the game could participate by creating an airline concept. We received a total of 100 submissions way before the contest’s deadline and had to pull the plug early, and got some really amazing work sent to us. It was really difficult but the 10 submissions that fitted the game the most were selected by the development team and per those 10 the community was invited to vote.

The winners, Air Strada by Bjorn, followed by SkyLink by Reece and Maple by Shaun were selected and their craft is now being eternalized in ACEO. Those logos look really sweet in the flight planner, and while there is still some work before we get the new liveries in the air we simply wanted to let you know that we have now started the implementation.

‍

Once again, thank you to all the contestant and to those who won! However, we ourselves consider us as perhaps the biggest winner with such an amazingly talented community.

‍

Save Load Testing

With the baggage claim system now fully implemented, the passenger life cycle is finally complete. We have moved on to deep testing mode and are running long gameplay cycles, but primarily now focusing on serialization and deserialization test. ACEO is a detail oriented game which means that there is a big challenge in regards to saving and loading. Everything from basic and easy stuff like the CEO name, airport coordinates and current funds down to the exact position and rotation of a small bag on a moving baggage truck cart has to be saved correctly so that it then can be loaded without breaking. Since there are so many different processes simulated and ongoing at the same time, it takes a lot of effort to thoroughly save and reload, evaluate the results and then make necessary adjustments.

The testing is going well and we are currently hunting for “obscure situations”, critical moments in complex processes such as job activation, baggage handling, construction and queueing. There’s nothing fun to show here, so instead we’ll link the apology image from last night’s tweet.

Mayday. DevLog is postponed until tomorrow evening. Please accept this screenshot as our apology. #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #gameart pic.twitter.com/fRKr99teQf

— AirportCEO (@AirportCEO) May 1, 2017

And yes, we are very aware of the different bugs here, stuff like the jetway not correctly aligning, employees walking through cars, stuff like that. These are logged, but we have more critical work to do (we have a very structured way for developing and dealing with tasks) and this is why we are currently not addressing those.

‍

Gameplay Video 3 Update

We also want to give you a quick update on this matter. As we’ve stated several times before in various devlogs, we cannot currently keep a constant schedule in regards to releasing these videos. We also understand that this information might have bypassed you, which is why we are iterating it. This project is still, sadly, subordinate to our private lives such as school and jobs. Finding a day where we can come together and consequently spend that entire day shooting the video is difficult, but developing on our own is not which means that while there yet is no video we are still progressing every day. So, to iterate, everything we need to shoot passenger handling is done, we just need to find time to do it. Hopefully we will do so within the next few weeks. Don’t worry though, a different kind of video might pop up before that, more on this next week.

‍

This Week’s Changelog

Aviation:

• Added better jet sound.
• Fixed an issue with the aircraft door system
• Fixed a small issue related to route generation, only temporary until new maths will generate more realistic routes and correct fuel levels

Economy and Business:

• Improved the franchise system to allow shops to sell different goods
• Implemented three new airlines (liveries are in the backlog)

Building:

• Newly built shelves now spawn correct goods
• Fixed a room placement issue
• Correct helper text is now visible on rooms
• Fixed an issue when building object with multiple zone layers
• Fixed an issue with rooms not displaying franchise contracts correct
• Reduced the smoke on fuel depots for a more subtle effect
• Fixed an issue with toggling the zone layer on/off
• Implemented baggage claim areas
• Much more…

Simulation:

• Persons does now have the correct sprite for inside an outside, meaning no more shiny passengers and employees and assets (baggage, materials, etc…) at night (outside)
• Fixed an issue with incorrect matching passenger names to gender and country
• Implemented passenger baggage claim
• Solved several issues related to the shopping activity simulation
• Revamped parts of job task action completion
• Performed a lot of serialization and deserialization testing and solved numerous bugs related to this
• Re-wrote parts of the static queueing code allowing for a somewhat more realistic and less robotic queueing
• Much more…

UI and Other:

• Fixed some minor issues with contracts
• Continued with implementation of the new map

What else… what else… we’ve advanced our positions in relation to realizing Apoapsis Studios. We’re not there yet due to paper work and other bureaucratic nonsense but its moving at a slow but steady pace. We’re also putting effort into planning the Steam Greenlight campaign, looking at other projects and what the best practices for a successful campaign are, whilst preparing the ACEO one.

That’s everything we have to say for now. Thank you for reading, and have a pleasant week! It’s only 1AM here right now, so there’s still more time for writing code and running tests… see you soon and fly safe!