SimAirport's birthday is/was today! March 6th! Happy Birthday!! :) At this time last year we were nervous & flooded with emotions, the hours & days leading up to the release were tense & challenging, thrilling even, though absolutely nerve wracking to say the least. Release day, and the time that followed, would prove to be an incredibly unique experience for us -- one filled with a wide array of emotions, numerous challenges to face, and plenty of mountains to climb. We worked hard through those first few days, finding bugs and sorting through the chaos -- often working through the night to ship another set of fixes. All told, we shipped 20 patches in the first seven days -- all while riding the emotional waves. It was truly unlike anything we'd experienced in our careers -- there's just something different about building a game that draws you in closer than in any other part of our careers prior. While there are definitely things that we would do differently if we could, we're thrilled with the progress that was made in this first year. We consider ourselves to be incredibly fortunate for the support that many of you extended & continue to extend to us. SimAirport's community, the level of engagement, the interest and intellectual discussions that we are so lucky to be able to spectate & engage with, on a daily basis -- it's incredibly humbling and is beyond anything we imagined or had hoped for. For that, we cannot thank you enough -- for sharing your time and your insights with us, and the community as a whole; for your support of not only SimAirport but also of us, the developers. We thank you, and we look forward to continuing to work with you as SimAirport continues to evolve into 2018.

What was accomplished?

SimAirport was a very different game one year ago and it continues to rapidly evolve -- we're incredibly excited to continue sharing that journey with you -- but we'd like to take a few minutes to reflect back on the first year to see what we've managed to achieve so far. Here are just a few highlights (more here too, though slightly dated), including some of our personal favorites, and a few charts to give some perspective on our development paradigm.

• Continuous, Consistent, Unrelenting Development Let's visualize it: SimAirport Patch Releases by Day which also included patches on 218 days of the 365 days in the year!
• Multiple Floors We'd never have imagined it'd be in already (edge only, so far)
• Localization Support Chinese, German, and more (edge only, so far)
• Completely Revamped UI Modernized and entirely redesigned UI for a this-century feel
• Systems Fuel Systems, Baggage Systems, Upkeep Systems, PA Systems, Vendor Scheduling, etc.
• Everything's Bigger Larger maps (up to 20X+), larger runways, gates, and terminals, and more.
• Aircraft & Airline Mods, Workshop Support Easily share your experience with the community
• Numerous Reports & Heatmaps Night and day difference in management-oriented features since launch
• Weather, Retail, Objects, Lighting, and More Plenty of refinements, too.

So, What's Coming in 2018?

Of course, this is what you came for -- you want to know what you can expect, where things are heading, and especially now that we're getting closer to moving Multiple Floors over to the Default branch! :) We're still working on the next official roadmap and you can expect it to drop a bit after Multiple Floors hits Default but, in the meantime, here are some higher-level pieces that you can definitely expect to see us addressing as we move further into 2018.

• In-Game Tutorial After a year, it's due time that we explained how to play instead of having to rely on YouTube! :)
• Performance We'd like to see ~10k pax. No promises, but we know we can do much better than right now & we're certainly up for the challenge.
• Gameplay Balance Should be a solid, ever-increasing progression ramp and not a single hurdle.
• General Gameplay Polish Refine the user experience, fix the 'small stuff', finish the half-finished, update and improve tooltips, etc.
• Smaller Additions Especially items that we have systems in place for already. EAM flights, passenger connecting flights, one-way doors, pricing imrpovements, deals/negotiations, etc.
• Cafes & Duty Free/Shopping Fix and/or decide on the destiny of Cafes as the workings currently stand, re-implement new or fix existing to function better. Implement Duty Free and general shopping. Improve Passenger AI to utilize them appropriately.
• AI & Behavior Refinement Shore up any recurring issues and rare problems, begin considering and initial implementations for random events.
• New Gameplay Mechanics Government lobbying & grants; airline partners/relationships & negotiations; parking; transit additions/upgrades; scheduling; etc.

There's plenty more on our mind, too, but these are some of the things that we're really antsy to work on and get improved, fixed, or polished up. We'll get an official roadmap out soon to provide a more concrete timeline, and we're going to actively work towards a "live roadmap" both to save us time for future roadmaps and to improve our overall communication and invovement in the planning process on an ongoing basis.

Closing Thoughts

This first year went by so quickly, and it's incredible how much things have changed since the initial release. We're so fortunate we have the luxury of being excited about our work, and about what we're going to tackle each day. We're very excited for what 2018 holds in store and we hope you are, too. We sincerely look forward to working with you this year, each and every day, to continue building SimAirport into the best game possible and ensuring that it lives up to it's fullest potential. Thank you for supporting SimAirport, and thank you for supporting us. -Arthur & Rob

[ 2018-03-07 11:09:47 CET ] [ Original post ]