Five by five, loud and clear -- yes, we are still here!! steamhappy We want to provide everyone with a brief update -- it's been a while since we provided an official update and although we've had a few live streams & are easily accessible via our various channels, we're still long overdue for an official status report! :) We've definitely been quieter on the public announcements front, and our overall development pace has slowed compared to what we previously had been able to maintain, but we want you to make no mistake about it -- we're still here every day, working extremely hard, and there's still a tremendous amount going on -- both behind the scenes and in the code, as evidenced by the latest Edge branch updates. For those of you who haven't had a chance to check out Edge lately or if you've missed any of the live streams, here's what's been going on!

Dev Cycle Status - On 'Edge' Right Now

• FULL MOD SUPPORT! Custom code, custom graphics -- the sky is truly the limit. We're just now beginning to see some of the stuff that we expect modders to be able to create; we expect to see awesome stuff as the API continues to mature.
• Remote Gates. One of the top most-requested features, your ability to expand operations grows dramatically with this new mechanic.
• Multiple Pickup/Dropoff Zones. Another one that was highly-requested by players -- it required some new Pax AI 'smarts' but opens up new possibilities & some new transport-related challenges, too.
• Game Speed & Balance Improvements. Agents now move faster and 'timings' have been adjusted, which is especially impactful when playing at high speeds or with lots of passengers.
• And More, Including... Individualized cash register reporting; Pathfinding improvements; Dynamic air-traffic control audio; and hundreds of bug-fixes, balance adjustments, and general quality-of-life improvements.

Overall Status & Timeline

As mentioned in previous posts, we had aimed to transition to full release by end of Q3 2019 -- perhaps not surprisingly, we've missed that target, though we are making great progress towards that goal. 'Full Release' Transition Target: by EoY 2019 Of course, we could simply hit the big red button now -- but, as those who have followed closely likely already know, that really is quite simply just not how we do things. Since the beginning we've done our best to do things "the right way" -- even if we were perhaps a bit naive at times, we have always done our absolute best to be extremely transparent with you, and to generally just do things correctly. Whether that meant facing technical challenges head-on, putting in the time to debug and fix bugs, or the undertaking of large-scale projects like 'performance' overhauls, 'multiple floors' mechanics, or 'full modding support' -- and to be honest about the time/dev impact they would have. Similarly, to "do it right" and be in a position where we feel the game is sincerely ready for transition to 'full release' means that we want to meet specific gameplay/feature/UX goals that we have for the game -- once we hit those goals and we've had a chance to polish up the player experience and fix any lingering bugs, that's when the transition will occur; we're hopeful that will be by EoY, but we intend to do things the right way. If that takes a bit longer, then so be it, but that's our goal and it has remained the same since day one -- to make a great game!

LVGameDev - Growing Our Small Team

We're a very small team here at LVGameDev, as many of you know and evidenced by the fact that many refer to us directly by name. Despite being small, we have been making a steady & concerted effort to grow over the past year or so -- to improve our capabilities and bandwidth, maintain development pace, avoid burnout, and begin gearing up for another game -- and to do so while ensuring we're able to not only get SimAirport to the finish-line but also continue to support it well into 2020, as long as we can really! One of our primary goals in increasing the team size is to ensure that we can continue to support SimAirport -- with both bug-fixes and content -- well into the future, to allow us to face the economic realities & work on the 'next game' but without stealing resources away from SimAirport. It's certainly a tricky balance, and the reality is that new additions to the team actually causes temporary slow-downs (somewhat counter-intuitively), simply due to the required ramp-up period with the code and team workflow dynamics. I'm happy to say however, we anticipate being able to support SimAirport long into the future -- while also facing the economic reality that is the business of making games!

One More Thing: 'Dev Therapy'

We're going to do a short series of dev-blogs over the next few months -- perhaps for our own purposes more than anything and, as a result of that, we're going to call it "Dev Therapy". We've tossed around the idea of doing something like this before, on the update videos & live-streams, but essentially it's going to be an outlet for us to reflect on the development process, and will provide a venue for open and candid introspection. We'll be talking about the good & the bad, the mistakes we've made, the successes we've had, the things that we'd do differently, and providing insight into the day-to-day challenges and stresses -- technical, emotional, physical, personal -- and looking look back at how we tackled the challenges and the effectiveness of those approaches, and probably ranting about some of the failures, too! steamhappy

TLDR Summary

SimAirport - Release & Support
• At least TWO 'Default' patches before exiting Early Access
• Transition to 'Full Release' by end-of-year 2019
• Continued SimAirport support -- bug-fixes and content -- into 2020+

Coming Soon from LVGameDev
• Dev Therapy, a short series of 'behind-the-scenes' dev-blogs
• All-new title from the team slated for release in 2020!