Content Galore - July 2019

Grow your airline relationships, negotiate deals, lease office and lounge space, and try to grow your airport empire. Beginning today, you can even turn your airport into a 24/7 international powerhouse -- new high-efficiency worker scheduling capabilities, janitor patrols, you can even negotiate and schedule highly-requested 'EAM' flights!

Brand new mechanics add even more depth along with numerous QOL and UI/UX improvements, TONS of content, numerous bugfixes, and a little bit of everything in between. Dive in and let us know what you think!

Developer Live Stream - July 2 @ Noon PDT

We'll be hanging out and live-streaming on Tuesday -- stop by and say hi!

When: Tuesday, July 2nd @ Noon PDT
Where: On Steam, YouTube, and Twitch!

Thank you for your continued interest and support, and especially to those of you helping us test & iterate over on the Edge branch. Thank you!! :)

And now, the full patch notes...

Hotfix - July 2, 2019: This morning we became aware of a bug that could cause errors to occur in the background, causing log-file writes that might slow the game down. A hotfix was prepared and has been released to address this issue. :)

Airline Deals & Negotiations

Negotiate custom deals with airlines! Airlines now have new needs and desires, and you can work with them to build a partnership that helps you both. Charge them higher runway and terminal fees, or even negotiate flat-rate daily fees! In return, you may offer them exclusive Flight Crew Lounges, First Class Lounges, Offices, Gates and more!

Key Highlights

• New Tutorial Added: 'Airline Needs and Negotiations'
• New 'room value' mechanic added to Negotiatiable Zones, based on: size, open space, window view, ease of access, and environment (click negotiable zone to view)
• Airline Needs: Trust, Communication, Service Reliability, Passenger Satisfaction, Fuel Satisfaction, Facilities Quality

  New 'Sales Rep' Staff Type!

  
  Sales reps (and administrators) can be assigned to airlines; both improve communication with airlines, raise interest, and are a catalyst for fruitful negotiations!

  New 'Conference Room' Zone!

  
  Host meetings with the Airline Executives in conference rooms to further improve communication and overall airline relations. Leased conference rooms will host daily meetings.

  Negotiation Mechanics

• Negotiables include: Cafes, Cafe Profit Share, Stores, Store Profit Share, Fuel Satisfaction, Conference Rooms, Guaranteed % of Pax per Flight
• When offices are leased, airline executives will use them along with your facilities, providing additional profit potential
• Sales Reps are less expensive than administrators, but admins have negotiation abilities & skills that can have a bigger impact on your bottom line. Use both to nurture relationships most efficiently
• Take multiple rounds to negotiate, and see how offers progress via the negotiation history tab

  Airline Executives

• New 'Reception' zone & Reception Desk object. Reception desk must be staffed by a security guard & creates a secure area behind it
• All executives must use a reception desk to access the secure sector and cannot use regular security zones
• Facilities beyond a reception zone cannot be used by passengers
• Executive facilities, such as airline-offices and conference rooms, must be built in a secure sector

New Government Grants Mechanic

Six different 'tracks' in total, each a series of grants with unlockable rewards. Rewards include EAM Flights, objects, pricing abilities and more.

1. Airport Basics
   Helps provide boost for starting on new map, only available on 'blank-slate' starting maps.
2. Passenger Experience
   Expand the airport's number of passenger facilities and improve the environment.
3. Airline Services
   Make your airlines happy, provide fuel and baggage, and more!
4. Investments
   It takes money to make money! Invest capital and hope to see a positive rate of return.
5. Airport Efficiency
   The region's gateway to the world economy must not be held back by inefficient management!
6. Maximizing Profits
   This government cannot afford to bail out this airport. Ensure healthy & growing profits to appease the taxpayers.

Staff Scheduling Improvements + Janitor Patrols

• Staff Scheduling improved to allow creating distinct schedules per staff type
• Janitors can now be scheduled & you can assign them to areas / create patrols for them

Timelapse Capture

Create high-quality timelapse captures of your airport's construction without any third party software. Access via the 'Timelapse' tab of the in-game Preferences menu, or setup a custom keybinding to toggle recording. Utilizes a high-performance video capture via GPU, though is not supported by all hardware/drivers combos (is unfortunately unsupported on OpenGL/Linux).

Added 15 New Steam Achievements

1. Accomplished -- Win a scenario
2. Unaccomplished -- Lose a scenario
3. Environmentally Friendly -- Environment rating of 85% (min 200 pax)
4. The Open Road -- Have 5,000 cells of road
5. A* -- No missed flights in a 24-hour period (min 200 pax)
6. Local Airport -- Board 2,500 passengers in a 24-hour period
7. Regional Airport -- Board 6,000 passengers in a 24-hour period
8. National Airport -- Board 8,000 passengers in a 24-hour period
9. International Airport -- Board 10,000 passengers in a 24-hour period
10. Good luck, we're all counting on you -- Have an aircraft land in harsh weather
11. Oilgarchy -- Make $1,250,000 in profit selling fuel
12. Scientific Method -- Unlock all technology in the research tree
13. Sellout -- Sell your airport for a minimum of $25MM.
14. Beginner Operator -- One day of perfect ops
15. Overloaded Operator -- Ten consecutive days of perfect ops.

More Notable Additions

• Adds ‘Use Legacy Sprites’ option to Gameplay tab of preferences menu (near bottom)
• Adds new ‘Crosswalk’ object
• Escalators now allow you to ‘Switch Directions’
• Adds maintenance to moving walkways & can now set walkway speed; higher speeds require more upkeep to prevent breakdowns
• Adds new Agent Render Mode setting to preferences, allows you to use the most efficient rendering method that your hardware/GPU supports. Included render modes are 'V2' and 'Legacy' and a 'Aggressive Culling' version of each. Experiment to see if your GPU supports 'v2' and see which provides your system with the best performance. When supported, we recommend 'V2+AC'.

GAMEPLAY

• Adds new Security Zone validation for UI/UX purposes via multiple inquiries: if at least 1 security object is staffed within a security zone, require that at least 1 object of EACH TYPE has staff. Types: 1) ID Check; 2) Bag Scanner; 3) Metal Detector / Body Scanner.
• Tweaks to passenger pathfinding costs to not avoid one-ways & security exits as harshly
• Maintaining a runway will now take down crossing runways
• Reworked animation of vehicles entering and exiting hangars
• Changed airport vehicles "road priority" vehicles will now prefer a road that is on a gate over a taxiway
• Slightly increased cost for taxiing on runway vs. entering a runway to cross it
• Optimized maintenance of runways; planes will be blocked from taxiing on or crossing runways under maintenance.
• Pax now attempt to exit if they become stuck behind an area they shouldn't be able to access
• If AI latency becomes too high, the game will slow itself down automatically until the AI requests catch up. Should mitigate issues where construction in busy airports could cause delayed passengers; further work is being done to optimize this to make it less likely that this slowing occurs
• Janitor schedule mode now auto-moves & zooms to the garbage zone; is for convenience & to help new players figure out where janitors are 'based' when applying custom schedules.
• Tweak arrival pax Leave Airport need urgency (increased)
• Adds new Bag Carousels with network ports on 'same level' & 'from above'
• Can now hire/fire staff directly from the Staff Schedule Overlay
• Game now auto-pauses while the scheduler is on
• Picking up multiple dirty areas/floors now causes garbage bags to be spawned
• Steam Achievements no longer available in tutorials
• Adjustments to subsector partitioning and pathfinding weights to prevent pathing through objects on long-distance traversals
• Scenario Play Mode: no longer allows selling airport or importing additional airlines. You can still add custom airlines inside the scenario editor, but not while actually playing a scenario -- to ensure they're played as intended
• Tutorial no longer allows importing additional airlines until all objectives have been completed

UI/UX, OPTIMIZATIONS, AND MISC.

• Adds over 30 new base Aircraft models, courtesy @ThomseN -- HUGE THANK YOU!!
• Adds 'Mod Preview' feature back for custom aircraft / airlines
• Optimizations to state machine routines & janitor task assignment algorithm
• Updates to latest Unity game engine version and enables updated incremental GC feature; should any issues/crashes arise via this change then we have a hotfix standing by, fully ready to go -- it contains everything listed above except this item.
• Performance improvements for agent movement
• Update all translation files to/from i18n repo
• Optimize 'need update' routines and make multi-core capable
• Adds 'Agent Render Mode' dropdown user preferences
• Adds Clone Tool hotkey action (binding is 'V' by default)
• Optimizes all agent renderer modes & agent appearance/render controllers
• Adds distinct icons for each type of pax highlight viewed via aircraft/gate/pax flow overlay
• Aesthetic improvements on gate sprites, ramp, and adds blend feathering
• Optimizes sprite lookups and path-following routines
• Flight schedule UI improvements to better accommodate wrap-around EAM flights
• Quick Select Improvements: Deselect with second keypress; is now rotation aware; now works on construction-in-progress objects
• Adds hotkey action for 'Timelapse Capture Toggle' (no key set by default)
• Adds some simple non-rectangular visual flair to roads/taxiwys, runways, and gates
• Hovering level selector on HUD now allows scroll wheel to change levels
• Changes sector re-generation sequencing to greatly reduce the number of map-state generation cycles that are required for terrain/tile construction. Improves performance during construction.
• Most agents now actively avoid pathfinding through areas with ongoing construction
• Changes to agents detection of outdated map state, improves responsiveness & performance
• Zone text now appears above agents/objects when zone has warnings to display
• Pax hover now using a tighter absolute zoom before showing full verbosity
• Optimize 'path renderer' used for queues, patrols, and similar
• Consolidates pathfinding 'rules' for various agent types across all types of pathfinding systems
• Optimize allocations on some zone validation & text display routines

BUG FIXES

• Fix reachability checks, zones and sectors will again check for reachability to pickup/dropoff or an LRT station
• Fix and re-work bus and LRT hover texts
• Fix rare kitchen storage bug when containing legacy 'donuts'
• Fix long-named objects in build menu causing overlap
• Fix build menu UI not saving size setting
• Fix timing issue when deserializing tasks to empty trash bin
• Fix issue with workmen picking up tasks a bit too early
• Fix several kiosk marker positions for better aesthetics
• Fix vehicle pathfinding failure/error in certain scenarios where no target exists
• Fix and improve floor transition object load balancing
• Fix LRT platform usable before construction is complete
• Fix taxiway/runway reachability & distance calc bug related to one-ways
• Fix pax wander behavior not avoiding roads by default
• Fix and improve 'Rest Object' usage behaviors, movement & aesthetics
• Fix bug that allowed creating 'split' two-way conveyors, bypassing the validations
• Fix stretching image issues in the research screen
• Fix more dropdown 'scroll speed' UI issues
• Fix scaling on assignment dialog not always scaling with zoom
• Fix passenger hover on top HUD causing large framerate drops
• Fix maintenance tooltip not translating properly
• Fix assignment mode bug when switching between objects & floors
• Fix pax able to go through one-way objects in the wrong direction
• Fix ATC Tower lights & gate numbers not respecting underground opacity slider
• Fix pax boarding even when GAD not staffed
• Fix Pax AI consideration requests not correctly prioritized
• Fix underground level 'greyscale' and road visibility issues
• Fix zone overlay slider to be parabolic impact on color
• Fix conveyor connections not always visually 'connecting' correctly
• Fix passenger hover text not in translation files
• Fix and improve "adjacent ... already considered secure" warning message
• Fix Build Menu UI 'resize' cursor inverted
• Fix some reports inconsistently named ('Heatmap' is now 'Overlay')
• Fix pax standing at info screens in weird/awkward positions, facing wrong directions
• Fix Rest need activation threshold set too high
• Fix FCrew & First Class not using their respective lounges enough
• Fix wrong dialog text shader usage; should fix issue with dissapearing font/text
• Fix issue with retail supply orders sometimes failing to load & preventing retail deliveries
• Fix rare null reference in Food Display queue size heuristic
• Fix tutorial unintentionally able to be closed with ESC
• Fix fuel price change not getting exclusive keybindings
• Fix some debug-related allocation occurring in public builds
• Fix offers sometimes not being cleared for certain airlines after selling airport
• Fix high object-density areas having too much weight & causing poor path selection
• Fix numerous UI & presentation/spacing issues & non-translatable texts -- including:
  • Janitor not showing the cost in the Staff Hub.
  • Research text not fitting on the research tech tree screen
  • Keybinding dialog screen overlapping a lot.
  • Clock not formatting AM/PM correctly in languages that don't use AM/PM
  • Transport Operations titles heavily overlapping
  • In-game mod status menu now translatable
  • Passenger analysis screen UI converted to translatable text
  • Overlay titles are translated reusing tooltip names
  • Timelapse options screen now translatable