Dev Blog 144: Soon releasing Alpha 34, beginning work on Alpha 35 and the Airport CEO soundtrack now available!

Airport CEO Development blog
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I like @MPR’s suggestion, would provide the segregation of passengers which it seems it what most of us are craving.

@awtkn - In most cases, stands which have access to the jetway from multiple floors have arrivals on level 1 and departures on level 2. Departing passengers then go down stairs/escalators either in the terminal building or withing the jetway structure to get to the aircraft. Level 0 in most large airports is baggage handling/service vehicles (with small areas for bus boarding if needs be

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@ls4a535 Yeah, thanks for pointing this out! I’m aware that the majority of airports are designed this way - I’m just thinking about how to create a true Heathrow terminal 5 design to the best of my ability :wink:

I would love to be able to have a departures jetway on level 2 and an arrivals jetway on level 1, providing I could position check-in and security on a playable level 3.

But I do prioritise a form of departing and arriving passenger segregation. :man_shrugging:

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@MPR I think the multi-storey jetway upgrade option is a great alternative to segregate arriving and departing passengers. Hopefully it can be implemented without impacting user intuitiveness or sacrificing game performance!

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I too suggested a while ago about having a setting on the stand to set which floor pax depart from/arrive too.

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Hm, it’s tough, I understand the problem with coding such doors, but to me, the separation of arriving and departing passengers is one of the most important achievements of an airport at all. It’s not a “pro thing”, it’s what makes an airport an airport.

I still think that, if you carefully explained the use of one way doors and would deliver a clear error message where people use them wrong, it should be possible to have them. Or maybe, you just enable them as pro features and hide them for regular players. :wink:

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Of course game gives the possibility, to build “dead ends”, where pax can not move anymore, see xample of one-way-door to bathroom.

But in reality

So I do not understand, why there is so much worring about “dead ends”.

And for mor complex “misdesigns”:
I have never understood, why pax can not restart their path, if anything malfunctioned.

E.g. if a pax -because of stupid behaivour or “wrong” airport design- suddenly finds itself at a point, where it can only exit a secure zone or can not reach it’s actual destination, out of any reason: Why pax can not reset it’s path, walk back to where it entered airport (bus stop/metro). and there restart it’s path? Yes, there is risk of circulating pax, but this could be prevented by

  • if you only allow this reset one time, afterwards giving either an incident report or use a “vanish-solution”
  • sooner or later, plane will leave without him, which sets pax to “leave airport”.
  • if “leave airport” or “got to entrypoint and restart” (which is in fact the same, here) is not possible, again, pax will pile up and incident report says “can’t find way out of airport”.
    So this should work for outgoing and incoming pax.

If I understood devs explanaitons correctly, this wouldn’t raise pathfinding calculations a lot, as these pax would -as usual- calculate one step after the other. Except of massive desing errors - but in these case it normally is very fastly obvious what went wrong. And an “halt-and-catch-fire”-solution for this worst cases should not be too difficult, I guess.

I am not a coder, so I really would appreciate, if community or devs could point out, if there is a massive misunderstanding in this proposal.

In general, all the concerns about players building “wrong” are imho “easy” to solve. There always will be some customers, not willing to dig in deep enough, and finally leaving frustrated. This is imho not avoidable. But you can minimise these, by additional work in tutorial, better incident reports, better/more tooltip-explanations, good FAQs, perhaps a kind of manual, and one or two sample-airports, delivered with the game. With a steep learning curve, when players start the game, they normaly stick with it and dig in and it needs a high level of frustration to step back from it, if they have reached some reasonable succeses before and if there is some additional explanation, they can read up on “advanced features”/problem solutions.

In the end, I estimate 90% of target group of this game will be able and willing to go for this “journey” and finally be happy. That’s not a professional estimation, but my personal experience from playing this type of games for >25years.

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Yes. Saving people, workers or baggage that got stuck somewhere - due to my stupid building or to bugs in pathfinding - have probably added up to 30 percent of the time I put into this game. It has just made me understand the game better and not make this errors again. Every airport I made was better than the airport before.

I would almost say this game is about building a very complex structure in a trial-and-error-mode. When everything runs smoothly, there is not that much depth left - which worries me a little right now. There are no scenarios and not that many challenges.

But yes, as airport design can be very complex, I guess you would have to explain the meaning and use of one-way-doors at some point, so people do not build them for fun because they look good.

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May I ask, if these errors really related to your designs, or was it more about “learning about setting zones correctly”…?

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Some were due to mistakes in zoning, so, learning process. But I also made design mistakes due to careless and not-foresighted planning, that were hard to fix later on. You know, building stuff because you can, without thinking about the space which is required for it, the infrastructure which is required, without having a real plan how the airport should develop.

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Yeah, I understand, same for me at the beginning.

But, as you said, imho learning and optimization is a fundamental part of gaming-experience in this type of games.

Did you find yourself in situations like “wtf, what went now wrong, again?” Probably. But I guess your “level of frustration” rarely reached a “critical point”, or am I wrong? Cause, otherwise, you wouldn’t be here anymore… :wink:

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I agree. Airports are complex buildings at the end of the day, and successful passenger segregation would be a core part of making this strategy game, strategic. The game should have learning-curves and should incur problem solving - it shouldn’t be easy. Easy can become boring. Airports aren’t easy. I’ve built many designs through trial and error. Making a strategy game too easy/simplistic and not representative of real life design and management is what frustrates me into never playing again.

Anyway, I can’t wait for all the new content!

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Sad to read that one-way doesen’t seem to be coming due to technical problems, i really feel this is a very important feature, many airports doesen’t allow the mixing of departing and arriving pax and also considering the problem with departing passengers walking in to the baggage-claim but i can understand the technical problems now when explained, but hopefully it can be done / revisited in the future.

Regarding the worry of players doing it wrong i can’t see the issue either, i have played a similar title that has one-way doors and stairs, yes there are questions in discussions from time to time but as i understand most people asking questions goes away quite happy after it has been explained and they have been urged to double check their design, and the current routing alerts would just need one more line telling the player to double-check their design, and if hidden in the settings / r&d needed etc you would not risk so much unintentional mistakes. (in this other title one needs to research )

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To be honest, I think the game, with that tremendous amount of detail, has already crossed the line to a nerd game and will not appeal to the mass market that much. I bet there are many mass market gamers and game magazine journalists outside that will complain how difficult and unnerving it is to connect everything with everything, fix all the processes that get stuck and how easy this should have been solved - maybe, like in SimAirport (which I don’t like).

With that said, I of course understand that developers want their game to be a commercial success, but I think the line that has to be drawn is not one between casual gamers and expert gamers - you have already decided that this game is a game for experts. And I don’t think they will have such a big problem with understanding one-way-door design. Maybe once, maybe twice, but then not any more.

To me, it’s more a question if ACEO wants to be more a serious business simulation (as the word “CEO” implies) or to be a detailled simulation of an airport as much as humanly possible. Because tycoon game fans and simulation game fans definitely are different target groups and right now, I would say you have achieved to keep both of them quite satisfied. I - though an aviation fan - would count myself to the first group and I have no problems with smaller things not perfectly in detail if not feasible, but all the people running around in my baggage claim area really bother me. And I think there are people around, belonging to the “simulationi nerds”, who are bothered by that even more.

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That is also my concern. Just like in real life. A check is needed if the passenger can still reach the flight on time flight and if not, the passenger is left behind. That should drain airport ratings.

You only need that check if the forward-path is passing a one-way door. That increase every path-finding effort(by adding checking of what is passed), but not doubling it as you described.
Those of us who could do without one-way doors will be rewarded by faster tracking.

BTW: Isn’t that already implemented? For security exits are also one way doors and staff pass them all the time, don’t they?

Just curious. As I said, I am rather indifferent about one ways atm. I might change my opinion in some future sprint. :innocent:

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I am indifferent to the one way doors. Most of my travel experience is in USA and Asia, an has been that terminals don’t have one way doors. What is prevalent is that domestic bag claim is in non secure arrival area (just as it is in the game right now. An all the international bag claim, customs and immigration is in secure zone. That is once you leave secure zone you can’t go back (as it is with security exits in the game right now).

One of things that is at international gates in USA is there is a second door that is attached to immigration zone and one door open to just the domestic side it is also the door thru which boarding happens for all flights.

Also all terminals I have seen have connection between arrivals and departures for passengers in both secure and non secure zone.

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@Puma except Schiphol doesn’t anymore either, for international (and non-schengen) flights. Feel like the game should be adaptable to passenger segregation, especially with the proposed international zoning coming to alpha 35.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayqPp41n_qg

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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This is a great idea and I could see this being applied to a gate that is set to allow both international and domestic flights. Perhaps a switch could be added to the “Gate Exit” that if the arriving aircraft is international, the “Gate Exit” is activated and all deplaning passengers exit through that. Then you can design the path to connect to the passport control area. If the inbound aircraft is coming from a domestic destination, the “Gate Exit” is deactivated and deplaning passengers exit into the terminal as they do now.

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i agree with above - gate exit - a one way door to exit to secure corrdior so a switch - example arriving or departing on one way door so its would more easier in transfers - you might need create transfer desks - simllar to check ins but Minus baggage areas

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Two thoughts Olof,

Since the game already has the secure zone exit which effectively makes it a one way door, what about creating another specific zone exit for baggage claim? A “Baggage Claim Exit” which would force arriving PAX to claim their bags and then exit only through that one way door? This prevents players from using one way doors randomly and possibility with detrimental effects.

Personally, I do not care much for this as being from the US, pretty much every airport here has domestic baggage claim outside of security anyway, so this would need to be optional somehow. Perhaps on the Baggage Claim zone an optional toggle to require a “Baggage Claim Exit” be attached? I realize this may require a new zone like the security and staff zones that are present in the game now to function properly.

For the second use, see my post above piggybacking off what fabiopinto originally posted.

From reading all the comments, it sounds like what people are really asking for is someway to segregate International arriving passengers from Domestic arriving passengers and to make Baggage Claim not accessible except to arriving passengers.