The game is now live for a small circle of AirlineSim team members to figure out the worst weaknesses. After I had the time to fix these I will open up the game to a somewhat broader audience. Stay tuned!

I spent an awful lot of time on a basic set of master data. In fact the design of a single “product tree” for the basic types of trucks and ships took me one and a half day. The result are around 50 products and about 20 building types. These do not include any consumer goods. It’s just the raw and intermediate materials required to produce the mentioned vehicles.

As such it will

1. be impossible for a single player to produce any such product on himself and
2. require a very structured approach of the early players to build up the initial industries.

I will probably let the system sell some vehicles when the game starts because otherwise we’d run in a serious chicken-or-the-egg kind of problem ;-)

Whenever the game starts and you are wondering what industry to venture in and where to locate your enterprise it might be worth to take a look at the city of “Seska” in “Kaladania”. Geologists claim it to be the only place in the known world to feature both coal and iron ore deposits while providing a cheap supply of water. The perfect combination to gear up heavy industry - the key factor to later growth in all sectors - without the need for expensive transportation.

So far this has been a very productive day. I got a lot - if not all- of the polish done I had anticipated given the limited timeframe. But the things achieved today only cover “technical” aspects. I’ve decided to spend a bit more time beyond the initial two weeks to get a decent set of master data into the game. In theory I could upload the game onto a server now and most decently intelligent people would be able to grasp how to play it. But it wouldn’t be a lot of fun since there are just too few buildings and production processes built in right now and there’s virtually no balancing. As such a test wouldn’t make any sense.

Since time will be scarce this week-end I don’t expect this work to be finished before some time next week. Especially because extending the two-week timeframe is cheating and therefore I have to get other things done again ;-)

Final day. The way it looks right now I won’t have much time on the week-end to spend on 2WP so today is all about getting as much polishing done as possible.

The good news is that all core features of my original plan have found their way into the game. That is the production of goods, the transport of those by actual player-controlled companies and countries featuring their own currencies.

The bad news: I underestimated the amount of work required for polish, master data and balancing. The named features exist, but they are in a very rough state lacking many interface features that you’d expect to see. The transport feature in particular “works”, but in a way that could be optimized concerning the underlying logic since I expected more parts of AirlineSim could be of use which wasn’t the case. Also there is no balanced product tree yet…a lot of research (and time) still has to be invested to get a well-tuned system of buildings, products and production processes that “makes sense” in terms of quantities, costs etc. It’s somewhat hard to describe but you will see it as soon as I launch the prototype online (as soon as I get to it).

So it remains to be seen what needs to be done after these two weeks are over. It also greatly depends on you feedback and whether everybody trying out the game and myself think the basic idea is worth spending more resources.

Enough of the talking though…final spurt!

Sorry for a day without updates. Tomorrow will bring some news. Promise!

Addressing the final large feature today. It’s once again something that - to my knowledge - does not exist this way in any other business sim to this day. The feature is: Actual currencies!

In the beginning of the game there will be 6 to 7 countries, all featuring their own characteristics and their own currency. If you want to buy something in another country than your own you first need to acquire the respective amount of foreign exchange. As this is only possible if somebody else offers the amount in question, a currency exchange comes into place and actual exchange rates based on the economical situation of the countries involved. 

The handling of currencies has been built into 2WP since day one. What’s missing is the actual trading and some helpers that ease the day-to-day work with currencies in-game. If I can finish this today, the last 2 to 4 days - depending on whether and to what extend I make the week-end part of the two weeks - will be spent brushing up everything and making sure there’s enough master data for a good round of heavy tycoon gaming!

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This is a screenshot of the trip costing page. The setup should be largely familiar to regular AirlineSim players. The difference - as mentioned - lies in the fact that bookings aren’t a mere number in a table but actually correspond to a user actively having picked your offer over that of a competitor.

Maybe a word on the “allocated fuel” display in the info bar: Whenever a trip is “instanced”, the game tries to allocate the required amount of fuel from storage at the vehicles station. If required, it will try to do so again when the trip is about to start. If not enough fuel is available (the operator did not buy enough) the trip is postponed until storage is sufficient. This of course can cause severe delays and for multi-segment connections it could also mean that a later segment cannot be reached and a shipment “gets stuck”. So pick your service partners wisely ;-)

A little disclaimer concerning the screenshot: Don’t give too much attention to the numbers stated in it. When the picture was taken, no fuel price was available locally, the capital costs were based on a dummy value and the staff costs remain to be defined :-)

Once again, rather quiet today. But I really want to get this transport topic out of my head. I’m still somewhat ahead of my schedule but this feature (and the next one) has an inherent risk of posing nasty problems. The faster I get done with it the better. So talk to you later ;-)

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The booking screen is done! As you can see in the screenshot you can pick a storage position from your inventory for shipment and select how much and where to you want to send it. Depending on your sorting criteria - fastest or cheapest - you receive a listing of the top connections. Right now only one transfer and thereby only one- and two-segment connections are supported but I might extend that in the future.

Next up is the actual booking and after that I have to implement the respective background job that takes care of executing the transports.