It's that time of the year, and we have presents for you! Tonight we're rolling out the December 2017 update for SimAirport, and with it comes an entirely reimagined UI, multiple noteworthy content & feature additions, Aircraft mod support, tons of systems improvements and enhancements, and plenty of bug fixes too! We're excited to roll this one out to you tonight, and we hope you enjoy the new features & improved visuals that SimAirport will be sporting as our airports prepare to ring in the New Year!

December 2017 Update Video

In keeping with our new tradition, check out the SimAirport December 2017 Update Video that accompanies the patch! Check it out, let us know what you think, and we'll continue to do our best to improve each month, even as we work to overcome any remaining stage fright! =) We actually had a good bit more content for the video this month, but due to time constraints during editing we weren't able to get quite as much in as we had hoped for -- as always, we'll continue to do our best to improve on this front as well. See the SimAirport December 2017 Update Video, on YouTube

Milestones & Overall Progress - Whats Next?

Before we get to the patch notes we wanted to briefly touch on our overall progress and what you can expect to see from the next few updates as we prepare to head into 2018. We worked extremely hard to deliver to you an ever improving and consistently evolving gameplay experience -- throughout the course of 2017. In many ways, we hope you feel that we've done a good job at living up to that goal, to this point at least. That said, there are still tons more things that we know you want to see implemented -- and that we want to get implemented -- and, equally important, there are still a few items from the most recent Roadmap that we have not yet delivered to you. Most notably, Multiple Floors & Translations -- and so that's precisely what you can expect to see from in the next cycle as we head into 2018. Due to the size of the additions, as well as the holiday, it's likely that the next cycle may run a bit longer than usual by the time we get both of those features fully tested & stable -- but that's exactly what we plan to do, we'll be directing our focus towards those items.

There's more!

That's not all! We still have a lot more planned, even beyond those two major additions. We have a long list, but some noteworthy mentions include: random events, passenger & crew AI, lounge improvements/depth, luggage system re-revamp, general aviation, and a whole lot more. We're tentatively planning to put out another survey in Q1 2018, and additionally to release another updated updated not long after -- so that we can make sure we're in tune with what you want to see, and in turn provide you with a more concrete picture of what to expect from SimAirport in 2018!

Thank You & Happy Holidays!

Finally, we'd like thank you all for your continued support -- for supporting not only SimAirport, but also for supporting us, the dev team, and for supporting one another in the community. We wouldn't be here without that support, and we sincerely cannot thank you enough. Happy Holidays from the SimAirport Dev Team!

NOTABLE CHANGES

• Airline Mods & Steam Workshop Support, Improvements

  
  
  • Adds ability to have custom Aircraft mods so you can create your own aircraft models
  • Ability to Create and edit Aircraft entirely in-game, using a new editor tool
  • Includes full Steam Workshop support for Aircraft Mods
  • Aircraft Mod schema & how-to available here
  • Adds a mod demo airport and a "Demo Spawn" button for Aircraft & Airline mods, lets you quickly preview new aircraft & airline sprites
  • All Workshop UIs improved and streamlined, generally more consistent throughout
  • Adds 'Auto-Resolve' functionality; when opening a save that used mods the game will now prompt to automatically download those mods for you

• Adds new: First Class Lounge and Flight Crew Lounge

  
  
  • Passengers & crew prefer to wait in these areas when applicable
  • Passengers and crew may arrive to your airport a bit earlier when your airport has this amenity
  • Further lounge related features will be expanded upon in future updates (quality, airline-specific / dedicated, food services, etc)

• User Interface Revamp

  
  
  • All UIs have been revamped and streamline, both visually and organizationally
  • Build menu reorganized substantially for a more organnized and hierarchical feel
  • Adds new in-game cursors
  • Combined Airline screen and Schedule screen into a single Flight Management screen; can resize/minimize the top & bottom as needed
  • Reorganizes things more functionally; adds new Staff Hub & Finance Hub
  • Heatmap reports moved to bottom right of main UI HUD; they now update live and can be used even while building your airport
  • Game loading interstitial screen updated
  • Tons of general UI fixes & improvements; cursor/resize/drag improvements, schedule drag improvements, research-locked visual improvements, etc.

• Adds Kiosk Scheduling to the Staff Hub

  
  
  • Allows you to set how many workers are staffing each retail 'kiosk' at each hour of the day
  • Kiosk hourly costs are now based on worker count for the hour; kiosk objects have different max worker counts
  • Right click on any row to 'Apply to All' of the same type, or to copy/paste schedules between objects
  • Kiosk workers arrive and leave the airport by vehicle; they are not (yet) required to go through security
  • Object listing in the schedule UI is by "sector grouping"; highlighting a row in the UI will put a blue game-world highlight on the object being hovering
  • Scheduling UI will be receiving further improvements in future updates

• Adds Maintenance Systems

  
  
  • Objects will deteriorate over time with continued usage
  • Objects at 0% condition, or under active repair, will not be usable
  • Daily maintenance window, configurable in Ops Control Panel
  • Neglect will cost more (time & material costs) than regular periodic maintenance
  • Adds research for more advanced configuration ability
  • Active on all runways, gates, restroom objects, and security objects to begin

  New Objects

  
  
  • Sushi Kiosk, retail
  • Pizza Joint, retail
  • Apparel Stand, retail
  • Bar - Large, retail; will receive future improvements, wanted to get it out since we've had the art ready for a long time!
  • Phone Charging Station
  • Handful of new misc. decor objects including several varieties of Coffee Table objects

• Numerous RAM & CPU Optimizations

  
  
  • Notable areas include...
  • Zone drawing performance improvements, significant improvements (RAM & CPU)
  • Flight validations
  • Standby gates/gate change logic checks
  • Aircraft pathfinding
  • Rendering and draw calls
  • Road/taxiway “graph” representations and pathfinding
  • Construction indicators

• GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS & CHANGES

  
  
  • Revises staff distribution algorithm for smarter, holistic rebalancing (instead of arbitrary staff moving to higher priority objects)
  • Adds two new hotkey options, with defaults; Staff Hub (default: H) and Ops Control Panel (default: O)
  • Retail object monetary cost range effect on AI shifted down substantially; may require you to increase prices, likely requires further tuning
  • Optimizes memory allocation of passenger object selection
  • Runways can now be built nearer to Fences
  • Foliage objects (decorative trees/plants) will no longer produce a trash bag when dismantled
  • Vehicles will no longer complain “Stuck!” for 15 minutes if deserialized after having moved Dropoffs zone
  • Runway numbering scheme updated (a) 0 padded, (b) lower number always listed first on the name, (c) 10° offsets with more than 3 parallel runways (distinct names, was multiple sharing ’C’ suffixes)
  • Passengers & flight crew will no longer skip security when no bag scanners, metal detectors, or body scanners are active
  • Removes Gate <=> Ticketing Desk assignments and replaces them with Gate <=> Ticketing Zone assignments. Existing saves require re-assign, research still required.
  • Tweaks to money costs (negative utility), will impact various retail objects
  • Revise the money transaction display(s) to show the most recent 15 minutes of transactions; additionally performing intra-frame grouping of like-category transaction
  • Property taxes will now be applied before income tax calculation
  • Bank loan transactions are now excluded from income tax calculation
  • Fuel sell price spread increased to $0.15 (was $0.05)
  • Fuel off-site pending quantity is now limited to on-site capacity (i.e. requires infrastructure vs. just trading futures w/out ability to take delivery)
  • Fuel recurring quantity is now limited to on-site capacity, per day max
  • Aircraft will now select a departure runway prior to undocking from gate
  • Makes windows that overlook the outdoors have a positive environment effect
  • Adds 'Pax Timings Breakdown' button & display to Aircraft menu, shows categorical breakdown of where departing pax (for that flight) spent their time. Data is not serialized/saved, and is only computed while the aircraft is spawned. Will be improved upon further in the future.
  • Adds a visual helper upon selecting stuck aircraft which shows their current target and potential blockers (e.g. blocked by one-way taxiway markings, dead-ends, etc)
  • Functional warning icons are now centered on the object instead of positioned at corners
  • Encourages flight crew to substantially prioritize boarding; can now pursue the Gate Desk much earlier
  • Adds a Passenger AI 'debug report', bottom right icon on reports HUD.
  • Passengers now split between LRT and ground pickup based on your scheduled intervals; also will now only choose LRT if a train arrives within the next 2 hours
  • Passenger AI tweaks & improvements; no longer pursue negative-value objects, distance toned down, etc
  • Agents now use correct lighting when walking indoors vs outdoors
  • All new 'Career Mode' games will now begin with the Medium map size
  • Adjustments to Pax AI -- should result in more nimble & higher-awareness decision-making ability
  • Adds an auto-unstuck feature allowing passengers to get “out” automatically if new construction or zoning prohibits access to where they’re currently positioned. This can include temporarily walking through staff-only doors and lounges but does not include walking through walls.
  • Adds environment effects to a number of additional objects that didn't have them previously
  • ”Abort & Reconsider” will now also give passengers 15 minutes to ignore staff only doors (e.g. for cases where they accidentally got stuck)
  • Adds an additional heuristic to object selection that should result in better coordination and queue distribution
  • Prevents pax from using assigned security objects if they don’t fall within the same zone
  • Adds a tooltip displaying the assignment status of security objects, including a warning if they’re not in the same zone
  • Passengers in pickups zone will mostly idle in place instead of wandering, mainly for performance
  • Updated aircraft tooltip to show flight crew boarding status as a separate item
  • Edge scrolling will now activate after 2 seconds when otherwise in hit box region but blocked by UI elements
  • Adds a button to the object context menu that displays possible non-secure-only paths, to help troubleshoot when “Requires secure area” warnings are active on Runways, Aircraft Gates, Hangars, and Baggage Depots

• BUG FIXES

  
  
  • Adds a pathfinding fix for destination sectors surrounded by a single security zone
  • Small edge-scroll / WASD camera pan fix
  • Fixes agents sometimes appearing under chairs while seated
  • Fixes an issue that could allow passengers to skip through walls at high game speed and/or low FPS
  • Fixes an issue that could result in aircraft getting stuck on taxiway in certain conditions with presence of one-way markings
  • Workmen will be less likely to walk on or through walls
  • Fixed a bug that allowed zones to be functional without any entrance/exits
  • Fixes a sector generation bug that could rarely result in incorrect “everything is non-secure” warnings and havoc with stuck agents
  • Revises text formatting of sectors report
  • Fixes coach pax should not be allowed to use objects that require traversal past first class lounges
  • Fixes “Break Deadlock” on aircraft not always ignoring one-way taxiway markings (e.g. after having been edited)
  • Fixes a bug allowing assignable security objects when completing Advanced Ticketing Research (should be Advanced Security)
  • Makes the one-way taxiway markings never occluded while in edit mode (was resulting in sometimes hard-to-decipher stuck aircraft)
  • Fixes passenger sometimes getting through staff only doors
  • Fixes functionality warnings sometimes not preventing object usage
  • Fixes an issue preventing dismantle of roads/taxiways caused by abandoned reservations
  • Fixes stuck aircraft if gate destroyed (a) after undocking and (b) before takeoff, then reloading game
  • Fixes an issue that could allow aircraft to skip gate reservation upon game load, which could result in multiple aircraft using the same gate
  • Fixes a bug that could result in stuck retail workers if a retail inventory task fails due to dismantled object targets
  • Fixes passengers sometimes hopping through walls when their target object is adjacent to walls
  • Fixes sector bug when clearing Fences
  • Fixes flight crews not being completely disallowed from staff-only doors
  • Fixes aircraft taking off from middle of runway
  • Fixes aircraft taking off with improper alignment
  • Fixes a bug that would have caused trash drops to be lower than expected
  • Fixes retail worker carrying food box offset
  • Fixes null reference when flight crew use seating
  • Fixes boredom getting too high too easily
  • Fixes remote bag scanners should only be assigned to at most one monitoring station (could result in erroneous warning if assigned to multiple then unassigned)
  • Fixes a crash/freeze that could happen on very specific map layouts during runtime and load game
  • Fixes a bug causing passengers to randomly have no objects in scope resulting in idle/wander behaviors (e.g. at drop-offs)
  • Fixes a rare bug that caused all pax to stop moving, caused by a task manager exception
  • Optimizes memory and CPU overhead on very large Cafes
  • Fixes a reservation integrity issue that caused aircraft to get stuck on pushback
  • Fixes a stuck aircraft bug when trying to reserve a runway that hasn’t been selected
  • Fixes aircraft stuck during pullback from gate related to intersecting runways. Runway endpoints must now have at least 1 adjacent taxiway node (that is not also a runway) — temporary validation until more refined takeoff behaviors are ready.
  • Fixes agents getting temporarily stuck in various places due to perfectly opposite steering forces canceling out
  • Fixes aircraft sometimes landing backwards
  • Fixes UI scaling - window position, drag bounds, etc. Also resolves UI scale-related issues on schedule & runway UIs
  • Optimizes the opening of Save/Load menus; makes 'Save Game' menu text input filter/search the saved game list.
  • Fixes a (potentially large) memory leak with sector generation/re-generation
  • Fixes passengers not in (new) pickups zone if it’s moved
  • Fixes land expansion hitbox indicator sprites (border) being trivially incorrect
  • Fixes one case where passengers could walk through walls when traversing through queues
  • Fixes flight crew heading to Dropoffs zone when spawning from light rail train
  • Fixes some baggage sprites invisible after reload
  • Agents will no longer walk through prohibited lounges (bug existed in certain airport layouts)
  • Makes Information and Environment overlay updates use background threads when updating internal data representation
  • Adds ‘stuck’ thought bubble to aircraft when no path to target (e.g. blocked by one way taxiway markings)
  • Updates the gate validation to check if no runways are set to accept arrivals or departures