@scaramonga
I’d rather have something useful, like a ‘planning tool’, than ‘lighting at end of runways’
Nobody will be against a nice new feature like a planning tool, but is a pretty big feature that takes time and effort to think true, develop and implement, hence we have the feature voting. I assume these small ‘features’ like the REIL lights (and the new flood lights) are very nice ‘small features’ for Alexander to pick up and start learning the ACEO code. That brings him up to speed faster and we can benefit from that because he can start helping to add the bigger features sooner
This sums it up very well. A planning tool is several weeks worth of development (to get it to a default stable state), the REIL-lighting is about five to ten minutes of development as the texture asset was sitting in our backlog. As correctly identified by Puma, this is Alexander’s work which is a perfect entry assignment in line with all the other new minor asset he’s implementing. He gets to practically learn the basic parts of the code (which are necessary to understand the building system in general) while adding both value to the players by implementing new stuff to play with but also to us as a development team by reducing the backlog overhead.
In the meantime, in excess of working on bugs, me and Fredrik is working on the next big features which include multi-floor and the remaining catering services. A planning tool is perhaps something I’d prioritize over those two because I agree with you, we really need it (I spent a good two hours building an pretty big airport yesterday and was very annoyed by that fact) but with the community driving the big feature implementations the planning tool was not selected for this round.
Alpha 29.9-2 has been deployed to the default branch as it contains the super important CPU load fix together with other important bug fixes for remote stands and other person related processes. We have several more remote stand bug fixes scheduled for today and focusing solely on that for the remainder of this week.
Here’s the complete changelog between previous 29.6-8 and current 29.9-2!
Release notes - Airport CEO - Version Alpha 29.9-2
Improvement
[ACEO-9709] - FPS limited to 100 in start menu to lower CPU load
[ACEO-9775] - Enable passengers to find seating if no check-in desk has been booked for a certain flight
[ACEO-9776] - Enable passengers to walk around aimlessly within a certain distance as a wait activity if no other desired activity is executable
Looking forward to seeing the new update in action! Especially without the micro lag, any hints at the next aircraft that could be making an appearance in the next coming updates Olof?
The E170 and Vision Jet have already need announced in the Dev Blogs. In a couple of days the votes end as well so you could expect to see them forthcoming as well.
Cleaning if I remember correctly from one of the Dev Blogs/Forum posts is also happening. A lot of the logic used for Remote Stands can also be used for cleaning as well. I’ll see if I can find the relevant paragraph and update if I do.
Cleaning I believe will include a new staff member so that will take time to implement. Deicing will need a whole new series of logic as it will have to be weather based and new animations and vehicles will have to be coded and created graphically so it will take a while to do, especially as the Devs are fixing bugs at the same time.
Yeah, I don’t need to say much extra cause you all got it right… - catering, cleaning and then de-icing. Catering is the first one up because it’s quite straight forward and we have all sprite assets completed (almost), second is cleaning which will utilize the (soon to be stabilized) mechanics for remote stands, or something like that, depending on how we implement it in detail. De-icing is last because it’s contingent on an improved weather simulation system which I’ll have to redo first, but I have a pretty good idea of how to make the current system more realistic so that shouldn’t be a huge issue. After that we have as correctly identified requirements for vehicles, animation stuff and a new type of de-icing mechanism so that is naturally the most amount of work.
So Alpha 29.9-3 is now out on the experimental branch. This update really seeks to stabilize remote stands and we’ve spent the latter part of this week looking through all the great bug reports, loading saves, analyzing code and seeking out patterns and in the end we found a lot of logical flaws not only in vehicle behavior but also in relation to how persons traveling on a specific vehicle at a specific time are serialized.
We’ve now patched all issues that are frequent in the backlog and have ran several tests on a few different airports trying to break the remote stand process, and if you have some time over and would like to try and break if for us we’d greatly appreciate it. This is most likely not the last remote stand bug fix we’ll push out but it’s the first one where these types of bugs are solely targeted, and we’ll keep going until there are no bugs left.
Notice: Several of the bugs caused by the remote stand process may in rare cases be permanent. We’ve spent a few hours on implementing a few set of bug-effect-mitigation fixes but in reality there are too many unique cases in which an airport can have been broken for us to spend time trying to resolve them. This is the drawback of early access I guess, but in the long run it’s smarter to code for the issue not to happen again rather than fixes for when the issue has happened.
Here’s the change log:
Release notes - Airport CEO - Version Alpha 29.9-3
Improvement
[ACEO-10014] - Room now repeats placement after build
[ACEO-10031] - Disabled building buttons if a certain service (baggage, food, shop) is not procured
[ACEO-10049] - Minor performance and stability improvements to couroutine execution
Bug
[ACEO-9769] - Specific scanner does not set correct icon until after it has been placed
[ACEO-9866] - Airside shuttle bus and service car incorrectly returns assigned job task if work is disrupted while carrying onboard persons
[ACEO-9997] - Passengers get de-serialized and activated on bottom corner if saved while being transited in a vehicle (such as airside shuttle bus or service car)
[ACEO-10005] - Reroute 50 bags does not complete in tutorial
[ACEO-10015] - Vehicles shuttling onboard persons will immediately abort a job task and seek to deboard those persons if a path-finding request fails
[ACEO-10016] - Rock shadow too far away from object
[ACEO-10018] - Asset type text incorrect on bag tag
[ACEO-10035] - Flight auto planner can stop working
[ACEO-10037] - Missing back staff border extension on shop and café counter
[ACEO-10040] - Person cars are not spawned for passenger drop-off (only buses)
@Olof just wondering have you guys adjusted the fuel trucks lately… In my latest airport it looks like the medium fuel trucks are always going to the fuel depot to fill up after every aircraft handle
I have a random question, does aircraft size affect how much fuel is needed to refuel it on the large aircraft as I have numerous A320 and 757 ect that seen to take on the same amount of fuel.
- catering, cleaning and then de-icing. Catering is the first one up because it’s quite straight forward and we have all sprite assets completed (almost), second is cleaning which will utilize the (soon to be stabilized) mechanics for remote stands, or something like that, depending on how we implement it in detail. De-icing is last because it’s contingent on an improved weather simulation system which I’ll have to redo first, but I have a pretty good idea of how to make the current system more realistic so that shouldn’t be a huge issue. After that we have as correctly identified requirements for vehicles, animation stuff and a new type of de-icing mechanism so that is naturally the most amount of work.