To simplify implementation, how about a much simpler feature: “gate exit”?
Works like a secure exit, but attaches/links to a gate as an optional add-on. A gate without a “gate exit” works just like today. However, once the player adds the “gate exit” and links to the gate, all PAX comming out that gate will immediately seek to pass through the gate exit before doing any other path-finding. And “gate exit” needs to be one-way.
It solves 99% of the flow segregation issue we experience today and avoids the need to re-do path-finding entirely, as once the PAX goes through the exit, it will just operate path-finding as today after passing a secure exit.
I haven’t played since Alpha 27 before and now, after all those new features, I tried again. You really did an amazing job, especially with R & D, the game feels much deeper now, more stable and more challenging (though maybe still not challenging enough after a while). Pathfinding still kills me. I spent so many hours on issues I could not explain, and every time I find a way to make it work, a new problem appears. Ramp agents not moving, passengers queueing up in weird places and taking stupid paths, desk agents not appearing for work. Sometimes, it seems it was my fault, sometimes, I do not really know what I did wrong.
What I do not really understand is the new rating system. It looks great but I had SO many problems with baggage and remote stands (probably, because they were new to me) and countless planes were late or left without a complete turnaround process - but my passenger rating was far away from catastrophic. Maybe this was because I fixed a lot of issues within 2 days, but 2 days in the game are long. Also, I made heaps of money during this process, although almost nothing really worked. Normally, they should have taken away my operating license…
I did not build multi-floor yet, so maybe, worse things to come
This wouldn’t solve the main (but not only) reasons I believe must of us wants to have one way doors for, which is departing passengers wandering around baggage claim area.
I understand that the devs wants to make the game as friendly to new users as possible, but, in my humble opinion, it should not be the only thing to consider at the moment of implementing a new feature. If that were the case we wouldn’t have things like remote stands, for example.
I think that at this stage of the game one way doors (and possibly one way escalators) are a must.
As other user said, they doesn’t need to be a different type of door, but instead, have a right click menu as the tilt tray to choose the door direction, having both directions as default. I don’t know anything about programming, so I’m not aware if this would be a piece of cake or a nightmare for the devs, but I think it should be part of the next update.
Copenhagen Airport @Olof First when going from the gates to baggage claim. There is a big sign saying no going back, it’s illegal and you’ll be fined 3000 Euro something. Then again when you leave baggage to go to main check-in. You pass customs, and then thru a one way door.
I have seen through many European airports that you pass through immigration and security through a one way system. At Frankfurt, we went through a one way system, but there wasen’t really any rules. There were large glass panes separating us and one way doors. Other than that I really don’t have and probably won’t have any use for one way doors.
in some places - OSLO airport has one way doors from domestic/EU to internional but different arranagemnets for arrivals
one way door to domstic or EU then other set of one way door in the bagggage claim
then baggage claim to exit - one way door
in some airports - one way doors are used on public side as well - they are either control flows in and out of check in area and arrivals and transportion areas
There just needs to be a system in place, whether its through one-way doors, zoning etc., that doesn’t allow departing passengers into secure arrival areas, and doesn’t allow arriving passengers into secure departure areas (for reasons such as using a toilet or sitting on a bench). This reflects the vast majority of airports in the real world that us players would like to create in our own designs.
I think back to Roller Coaster Tycoon’s ‘no entry’ signage option and wonder whether something similar could be created. That successfully controlled the flow of people with a simple tick box.
I’d love for this to come with Alpha 35 as I’ve been very excited for the wealth of new content, and would be fitting for the Terminal update. Looking forward to the next development blog!
Have you fixed all the rating issues with the baggage yet?
To be honest though, I forgot about that contest because I get so many emails that I forgot that it was even a thing. Maybe we should also have a “focused” inbox in-game?
They might be needed to get passengers to go to baggage claim and passport control when arriving, so that they don’t go back into the waiting area and shops of the terminal from the gate. If the doors were open then it wouldn’t be realistic, as in most airports international arrivals lock in passengers and force them to go to passport control first before anything. My airport would have a walkway above the terminal for people arriving, and people need one way doors to block passengers from escaping and wandering off.
The way I see it is that most of the issues described here do not really relate to one-way doors per se
but instead of zone control. It’s more an issue of instructing passengers to walk within certain areas instead of blocking path requests with directional doors. Another issue here is that all examples discussed are perfect solutions, but as game developers we must also always think of the broken cases, when people build incorrectly and how the simulation engine will handle that in a sensible way while also instruction the player of the cause of the issue. It’s only us, the developers, who have insight into the code so it’s of course impossible for anyone outside so estimate the technical challenge of this feature but I’ll try to explain the core issue:
If a seat, toilet, or some other intractable item is placed in an area that is only accessible in one direction, which without a doubt is something that will happen if this feature were released to the public, a passenger has no sensible way of checking whether or not they can get back to their main point of interest (such as a check-in desk or boarding desk) which would cause them to deadlock and thus break the entire flight. This could be solved in two possible ways, none of which are feasible:
Verification using path finding, i.e. before a passenger would interact with a seat they would need to run an additional path request from that seat back to themselves. Since a one-way door could be placed anywhere, we would need to run this check every time a passenger would make any path request meaning that we’ll double the number of path requests in any game, which is simply not going to happen due to the extra performance load we put on the simulation engine. We need to be extremely careful with path requests and keep them to a minimum at all times, and this would be a luxury that we cannot afford.
An arrival zone and a departure zone. In ACEO we have two levels of zone depth, generic zoning which is either open (default) or secure. On top of that zone we layer a specific zone which is at this point either staff or international (only in Alpha 35). To make the above screen’s layout feasible, you would have to individually zone areas for arrival, departure and both which would not only be very tiresome and unintuitive but also, of course, add a lot of extra performance overhead.
Zones are a core part of the difficult work the path finding system needs to do and adding more layers will mean a very notable, additional performance cost.
With realistic international stands we could after your feedback make time to provide you with additional complex behavior, because the code would allow for a toggle that could switch it on and off. Path finding and zones however, are much, much, much more complex and something, for us to be able to maintain, that needs to be generic and the same for all. With the above technical challenges in mind versus the value the feature would bring, we cannot deem it feasible at this point. Things might change, adapt and improve before or during beta but that would be contingent on us or anyone else providing a good solution that is both intuitive and that works with the code base but so far we have not seen it. I hope this text sheds some light on what the challenge is.
This is a game in development under an early access flag, we make multiple changes during each sprint with both addition and removal of planner content as a result of how the current work progresses. Sometimes we discover that we can cram in additional content, sometime we discover that we need to move around or cancel features due to technical limitations.
Well, as I wrote above none of those solutions are unfortunately feasible and are thus not going to happen, either due to insane performance costs, unintuitive design or a combination of both.
I respect and appreciate the hard work it must take to create a game of this great standard, but if there isn’t going to be an ability to truly segregate departing and arriving passengers then am I even running an airport?
Thank you for your explanation, I know that if you don’t implement certain feature is not just because you don’t want, but because of the huge problem said feature could bring instead of solving anything. I also understand that you change a lot along the way, that last message was me being a little bit troll, I apologise for that.
Anyway, and I think that I speak for a lot of people here, passenger segregation is a deal breaker when playing the game. It put me away from the game because it was too chaotic (always talking from my perspective) with the passenger flow, and that was before the big birds, which I assume brought a lot extra headaches in that matter.
So, my question here is, is there any plans for the future to be able to separate arriving and departing passengers and have a nicer passenger flow?
How about the “gate exit” solution I suggested? Cause pax comming out of a gate necessarily pass through a checkpoint. This checkpoint only would be non-return and pax would only request a pathfinding after crossing the checkpoint.
This avoids double requests for path finding and also the zoning subdivision. Then it’s up to the player to build the arrivals corridor in a way the pax wont be able to access the departure area.
Add to the game the “2 story stand”, where pax enter and exit the jetbridge in 2 different floors. Then it’s up to the player to “isolate” the arrivals floor so pax won’t mix back again.
Issue solved without changing anything substantial in the game.
