Dev Log Week 2024-29: Request for Games

If you aren’t all that interested in the usual “what I did” part, please feel free to skip ahead to the end of this post for the “request for games” bit. :smiley:

I started the week full of motivation by preparing all the work items required to wrap up the “website overhaul”. As you’ve surely noticed, the account management part of our website got a visual refresh for the Steam release. The plan was that we would to the same for the remainder of the website further down the road. Most of this work is done by an external freelancer, so I had to specify what needed to be done. This isn’t all about design, though. Account management and website are currently two separate projects, with the latter being a very much outdated, overly complex mix of technologies for something that’s essentially a few static pages and a blog. So I want to integrate this into the account management project (which happens to be one and the same project that also generates the Prosperous Universe website and account management pages).

After I got the prep work done, two things happened:

  1. I got started on some technical work of migrating the old blog content to the new project. Our freelancer is mostly concerned with frontend development/design, so I wanted to get this out of the way for her.
  2. The other one of my children got sick (for refrence).

Item no 1 took far longer than I anticipated (story of my life!) and item no 2 meant that I had to get this additional work done during nap times and in the evenings. Yay :sweat_smile:

Anyway, I got all of this wrapped up by the end of the week, so during an additional shift on Saturday I was able to also complete the first bits of my preparatory work for the DS integration, namely getting the integration testing framework back into a working state. Next up will be the test harness for the ORS so I can start implementing new DS functionality in parallel to the old way of how things work.

Request for Games

Last but not least, I could use your help: While I do want to work on cool new features like all of the DS stuff and the many things on the roadmap, with the Steam release we have also set ourselves the goal of refreshing AirlineSim’s UI/UX. Not just in the sense of mere looks, but also in terms of a better onboarding experience, an in-game tutorial and that sort of stuff. My colleague @molp and I want to sit down sometime over the next few weeks to do some initial brainstorming in this regard. And to prepare for that, I would like to spend some time looking at how other games in AirlineSim’s genre approach this. And this is where you come in:

Which games do you know/love/hate/play that are somewhat similar to AS and why?

It doesn’t have to be browser-based or even multiplayer. It should just be similar in the way it works: Very few graphics (so no city builders or “map-heavy games” like Factorio) and loads of numbers, tables, charts etc. There may be graphical elements of course…they just aren’t the primary means of interaction.

Please let me know on this thread!

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Anyone’s got any tips? :slight_smile:

I would love to see a game like Cruise Tycoon. Kinda how this game reminds me of Air Tycoon but obviously goes a lot more in depth. I think this could be a very interesting simulation. You could have both cargo traffic and passenger traffic. I don’t know just an idea but I would love to see a game like this.

I think the UI is appropriate to the level of depth of the game. It looks more like a corporate inhouse platform than a game, and adds to the feeling that the game is serious and that you are running a real airline.
Compared to the other airline simulation games (all I can compare with) the thing that maybe is lacking is the ability to create a corporate branding. Not sure if this is more a feature request, but an area where you could have corporate branding (aircraft colour schemes, FF cards, boarding passes, other service items), and also maybe where you could post press releases etc. This area would need to be viewable by anyone who is viewing the airline, not just the owner.

This would allow a bit more of a space for creativity and imagination for those who have those skills.

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The closest available game to compare AS with in my eyes would be the app AirTycoon5 even though its more “gamy” in terms of graphics.

Sorry in case my wording wasn’t clear, but I am not looking for new game ideas to implement - I got plenty of those but my hands full with the games I already run - but for UI/UX inspiration from other games in the same or a similar genre.

Totally, and that was the very idea when the current UI was introduced. But let’s face it…it looks incredibly dated and scary to beginners. I’m not saying the interface needs to be “dumbed down”…but there must be a way to make it somewhat attractive, easier to get the hang of and appropriately complex at the same time. I know…sounds like a steep ask :smiley:

Yes, more in the area of feature requests. But definitely something I’ve been thinking about as well when dealing with the very fuzzy topic of “why do pax prefer a certain airline over another?” during the ASTD project.

Doesn’t have to be “closest”. When we brainstormed for the ASTD, we also looked at stuff like football management games. I just want to make sure we didn’t overlook a great source :slight_smile:

I think the ability to create an area where players can imagine their airline beyond the stats that the game provides would be great. Every private server I have played in has had a Discord channel, and there’s always been sub channels for things like ‘Airline news’ and stuff like that.

I don’t want the final UI to be too different from now for reasons Pa747sp said…it’s a serious interface for a complex, in-depth game.

I don’t think changing the UI will make it less scary for newbies. I think in large part the scariness comes in from every option being available all at once and they don’t know what’s important or what to focus on. Newbies asking about terminals and IPO’s and such they’re on the wrong path.

You can always try making a free tutorial world that hides features and options from a player until an airline passes certain thresholds in either flights, or size, or even just time passed.

No reason for brand new players to see loans, terminals, interlinings, used markets, etc and all sorts of other stuff when they really need to do 3 things to make the game go for them.

Pick an HQ
Acquire a plane
Schedule a flight (with return flight)

They do that a few times and learn the most basic game loop there is in AS, then another feature opens and becomes available. Like creating a custom cabin config. Then a bit later service profiles. Then maintenance, then personnel, etc, etc. So over the course of a week or two the features are learned one at a time and build on lower layers.

Just my opinion.

Totally. I just assume that other, similarly complex game face the same issue. And I am looking for inspiration as to how they (concretely) address it.

The method you describe makes perfect sense and I figure we’d aim for something in that direction. But there are a million ways to go about it.

Airline-empires has sandbox worlds, which is what racsofp is describing. My experience of AS the first time round was that my airline seemed to go bankrupt so quickly that it was a bit disheartening and put me off.

AS is good because there are two things to learn:

  1. Technically, how to use the site
  2. Strategy, how to get an airline to thrive

Maybe a sandbox world that focuses on 1 first might be an easier intro to the game.

I can’t see ourselves spinning up sandbox worlds for individual players (or put in the likely massive amount of development to fake it). So I figure the most promising approaches include stuff like interactive (or non-interactive?) tutorials, restructuring the UI to make it easier to find stuff, adjusting what people see when they enter they game etc etc.

That’s for learning the game as such, anyway. For strategy, we need a different…strategy :smiley:

I guess it’s something that people will have to learn the hard way. Either by trial&error and/or by studying in-depth material that can be found both on the internet as well as in official docs (which might need a touch-up as well).

Here a list of the Airline Management games i know:
(i tryed most of them but only Stayed 1-2 Weeks befor stopping to play them)

Airline Manager 4 (very popular but bad UI)

The Airline Project (Its final version is not out but it has more UI than AM4)

AirwaySim (Very detailed UI about Planes/pax and more. No Transfers in this game)

Airlinesim.aero (the best one)

If you’re doing UI work anyway, would you consider exposing an API to perform common functions?
The AS community are a pretty innovative bunch (asroutemap and AES as examples) and an API would allow alternative user interfaces or tools to be created by third parties.

I’d be quite keen on a retro style text interface but I can’t see enough demand for that to justify simulogics spending time on it :slight_smile:

Thinking outside the box, football manager is also a data heavy game with a lot of dashboards and numbers and tables

I’m getting a feeling that people around here play nothing but airline simulations :smiley:

Considering it? Yes. Actually offering it? Not sure. The first thought that comes to my mind when thinking of a “writing” API is “fully automated slot-blocking” :sweat_smile:

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We do not. We play flight simulation games also!!

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@martin My thoughts on the interface.
Footbal Manager of all years and versions. This game, like AS, is a huge database of football clubs, players, coaches, scouts, doctors, football tournaments around the world. Lots of numbers and data.
I would suggest you look at this game from the point of view of how it looks. You can take a lot of ideas for the AS interface from there.

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