Update 82

I know it has been a long period since the last update, but we have been very busy with our works and exams. I hope we will soon be back to more regular updates, since we are soon starting our vacactions where there should be some time for the game.

In the past month we have managed some minor things in between the work related stuff.

We have fixed the issue where it was possible to add airliners to routes longer than the range of the airliner and also fixed some issues with starting the game in some countries.

The new features we have added for seasons is that the next season start and deadline is shown when hovering the game date. We have also added so it is possible to get notifications on season start and deadline.

We have also implemented so it is possible to set an airport to your hub, which gives some minor benefits and also added different turnaround times for the different routes.

Lastly we have implemented the use of flight schools where it is possible to educate pilot students.

On the data side we have added a number of images and new airlines as well as adding some new leasing companies, which are leasing some of the minor aircrafts.

 

Update 81

This past week has mainly been used on minor ajustments both in the code and on the GUI side.

A lot of the ajustments have been made on the cargo part of the game, so now the cargo capacities for airliners have been updated and more airports starts out with cargo terminals and facilities.

One of the new things I have implemented is the use of airliner history, so it is now possible to see which companies have owned a specific airliner. This was a requested feature and a feature we had in version 1 of the game.

For the scheduler I have implemented a feature which asks you to schedule a route for future seasons if you don’t have enough slots for the current season. This is mainly for coordinated airports, where you have to reserve a slot.

I still think the focus of this version will be implementing a lot of the requested feature and optimizing the existing ones. So don’t expect any major (larger) new features.

Update 80

As written last week I hoped to focus on the new version this past week which has also happened. So far I have look at fixing some of the reported issues like cargo demand, all airlines having the same airline license and not being able to add new airliner classes when they are “invented”.

The current thing I am looking at is the possibility of “refreshing” some of the pages. This means a button which reloads all the data on a specific page, so you don’t have to leave the page before entering again to get the newest data shown.

It is not implemented on all pages and I might have missed some, but if you see the recycle button on a page it is refreshable.

I am currently not sure what my next task will be, but I will look through the forum to see if anything urgent.

 

Update 79

Since last blog update we have used a lot of time testing the newest version, and we have also done the actually release of the version.

I still very much like our new file handling site on itch.io, since it gives me a lot of insight in some stats for downloads etc.

So far it looks like there are not a lot of bugs and issues, since I have only seen a couple reported. I will look into the few reported issues later this week, so hopefully I will be able to start on the new version some time next week.

The first focus for the next release will be on cargo, since it seems like it isn’t working as planned. This is both for the demand part and the scheduling of cargo routes. After that I will focus on some of the user requests and later on I will look into optimizing the AI.

Lastly I am sorry that I haven’t been active in the forum the last couple of days, but I hope that will change soon

 

Update 78

The past week hasn’t been that productive for the game, since I have had a lot to do at work. This means that the planned finished of the task for via routes hasn’t been done, and I hope that it will be done by the end of next week.

I have so far implemented most of the backend parts, so now it is just a matter of getting the GUI parts implemented, which is also why I don’t have any screens to show.

For the data it is very nice to see that the community are contributing with a lot of new data, so now we have a lot of new airliner logos, airport logos and airlines 🙂

Update 77

As written last blog update we are focusing on implementing features requested by the users. This means that we are currently implementing a lot of tasks which might be considered minor, but as long as it brings value to the game it is great.

One of the areas where we have started to add new features is on the aircrafts, where an aircraft now has a condition level which is influenced by the distance the aircraft flies. If the condition is below a certain level, the aircraft will not be allowed to fly, which is why we have also implemented the possibility of doing maintenance on the aircraft.

Another thing implemented is to being able to assign an aircraft direcly when creating a new route and also a button on the routes page where it is possible to quick assign an aircraft to the route.

And speaking on buttons we have also added tooltips for some of the buttons, since it was a little confusing what the different buttons were used for.

As you might have noticed on the screen it is now also possible to convert a passenger aircraft to a cargo aircraft.

For ordering of aircrafts we have also implemented so all aircrafts aren’t delivered on the same day, and it is also possible to specify on which day the delivery should start

And we have reimplemented the possibility of selecting to pay on delivery and also a discount if ordering multiple aircrafts at once

The only major thing we have planned for this version is the use of through/via flights which will take a little while to implement. As soon as that has finished I am planning the next release. Before the release I will need a few testers to test the new features for stability and usability, but that will be announced in the forum when the time comes.

 

Update 76

A lot have happened since the last blog update. We have released two more fix packs, so we now consider version 11 to be as stable as possible. This means that we now have started developing version 12.

For now the focus is on implementing a lot of the requested features from the users, starting with the smaller ones. All the changes can be seen in the ongoing changelog in the forum: http://theairlineproject.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=1308

A couple of the new features are the possibility of asking an airport to upgrade its custom to international

And also the feature of assigning an aircraft directly when creating a new route

 

Lastly we have started using https://pjank42.itch.io/theairlineproject to manage the downloading of the game. This is done both because it is possible to get more statistics on the file downloads and also to be able to reach a broader audience. The forum will be still be the main source for information regarding the game.

 

Update 75

In the past couple of weeks we have managed to release the latest version (version 11) as well as releasing a fix pack for the release.

The version has changed a lot to the existing demand model, which means that some part of the game still needs to be tweaked in order to get everything to work as planned. This is a work which will be focused on in the next release(s) where we will also optimize the newly created schedulers.

On the bug side it seems like the fix pack has fixed almost all bugs, but we will wait with the creation of the new version for the next week, until we are sure that the current version is stable.

The roadmap for version 12 looks at the moment like this:

• Research and Technologies
• Charter Flights
• Operating flights
• Optimized AI (was also a part of version 11)
• Stopover Flights
• Countries before 1950
• Codesharing

Beside those things we will also try to implement as many as possible of the requested features.

Update 74

This weeks blog update will be very short, since the this past week the focus has mainly been on finalising the route scheduler, so now we are ready for the internal testing of the game. If the testing goes well we are still planning to do the release by the end of next week. While the testing is ongoing we will also try to optimize some of the minor things reported, but it will only be things that we know will not be able to break the game.

We have also looked at the subsidiary feature and tried to change a few things, to get it to work more correctly. One of the things we have implemented is the possibility of transfering airliners not used between the main airline and the subsidiaries.

Update 73

Currently we are working hard to get the game ready for the next release, which is still scheduled for the end of this month.

One of the tasks we are still missing, is the possible of scheduling ahead of time based on the different season, so a route might have one more departure in the summer than in the winter.

 

We have also started on implementing two of the features which were a part of version 1, since we needed it for our new demand model.

The first one is advertisement where we have create a first take on it with a minimal of options, but it is still working and influences the demand for a route/the airline.

The second one is reputation where the airline is getting a score based on the service levels and prices. This is also the first take and will be implemented further in the later releases.