AirlineSim 2000
Manage the ever growing network of a brand new airline! Add new routes, buy new airplanes and upgrade airports.
AirlineSim 2000 is the latest installement of the *Sim X000 series after successful titles such as TrainSim 4000 and CitySim 3000. Take the role of managing a new airline. Buy new airplanes, define routes and upgrade airports. Can you successfully build the network and bring all the passengers to their destination as fast as possible?
The game starts with just two cities. Click on the "buy airplane" button in the bottom left. In the now opened window choose the Cessna and place it into one of the two cities. After buying an airplane the route editor opens. You can later access this editor by either clicking on a flying aircraft or by clicking on the "list airplanes" button in the bottom left and then choosing the desired aircraft. In the route editor you can decide where the airplane should fly. Add a new entry with the plus button and a new row with a question mark should appear. Click on the new row to change it. In the newly opened window you can edit one entry of the schedule. You can change the city by clicking on a city in the list (you can scroll with the scroll wheel). You can also change how long the airplane will stay in the city with the six buttons at the bottom. The possibilities are wait until the plane is empty, wait until it is full (default), wait until x seconds passed or wait until at least x passengers are in the plane. For now, choose the second city. Now as soon as the plane is full it will fly to the second city, drop off the passengers and fly back with new passengers. Sometimes a new city appears and you should set up new routes to this city. Maybe you can fullfill the demand with existing aircrafts but probably you have to buy a new one.
If you click on a city you can see an overview of its airport. You can see how many aircrafts and passengers are at the airport and for how many it would have capacity. You can upgrade an airport by clicking on the level up button in this overview. Below you can see for each city how many passengers currently at this airport want to travel to this city. Passengers will try to find a suitable path to their destination themselves. If there are no direct flights they will try to fly the fastest possible route. They will automatically change planes at airports.
Each time a plane takes off you have to pay something. The amount only depends on the type of the aircraft and the distance it will fly. It does not matter how many people are on board. As soon as a passenger reaches its destination she will pay you something. This depends on how far apart the two cities are and how long it took to fly there. So if the passenger has to change planes often you will earn less than if she could have flown directly. You will also earn less if the passengers have to wait a long time at the airport until their flight leaves. So if a route is always full you should probably buy an additional airplane for this route.
The goal of the game is to connect all cities with routes which are as efficient as possible. Furthermore, you should try to earn some money so you can buy more airplanes and the ones you have can fly. The more expensive aircrafts have more capacity for passengers and travel faster, but they cost more per distance.
You can not go bankrupt but it might be possible that you don't have enough money for any plane to take off, which means you lost and should start a new game.
At the moment the game is a bit boring as I did not have enough time to implement everything I wanted and to balance everything.
Some people reported sinking earnings for later flights. This is by design (and not enough time to balance). The longer passengers have to wait, the less they pay. If one of the routes has way more passengers than plane capacity, they will have to wait. The later flights take passengers who already had to wait a long time, so they don't pay as much, so you get less money for this flight. You should schedule more flights on this route to ensure maximal profit.
Comments (7)
The close buttons of the windows are way too small. And so are the clickable areas of the cities, especially so when there is an friggin airplane between the mouse cursor and what you're trying to click.
Some of the UI components are very unclear on what they do and even if they're something you'd need to click on (I'm looking at you clickable city name next to +/- on the plane window). And the clock buttons etc on the next window that opens from that said city name are also very confusing. And I still have no idea what the up arrow on the city window does.
And I have no clue on how to make money. I've bought and placed 10 cessnas on various cities. I think I planned routes for them and set them to leave when there is a passenger in but I don't think they're moving at all. And now I fully read your description and seems like they're not moving because I have no more cash. A message on the info are about "you're out of moneys, planes won't move" would be nice. And strike that, I see that now on top of one of my cities (on the second try).
Third times the charm, now I'm actually racking in some winnings. But there is still one more think I don't get, why am I making less and less money each time each time a plane takes the same trip?
The connecting lines between cities should also be a lot thicker and maybe even consider a different color scheme. You know, red green color blindness isn't that uncommon really.
So my biggest takeaways are: bigger buttons (or at least their hitboxes) and tooltips for everything.
All in all, good job!
Someone has been playing Transport Tycoon, AMIRITE?
Airplanes! That's a change. Buying planes and assigning routes is easy enough. Unfortunately there are bugs, most stemming from the fact that the planes are very eager to fly away once they have at least two airports on the list. You see, changing the routes while flying most of the time breaks everything. The vehicle's location is marked as unknown and it is grounded for good.
The income per plane keeps dropping over time. A strange decision taken how real life does not work like that. Competition on the same route from other companies would certainly affect the ticket prises, but there doesn't seem to be any.
Generally speaking I'd implement a durability value for each plane. Their maintenance cost, fuel efficiency and accident hazard keep getting worse each flight. The player gets to choose for how long to keep each plane in service. Accidents would be very expensive to cover up, of course.
The viewport resolution is awfully small resulting in a cramped GUI. Many overlapping panels without spare screenspace makes me sad beyond expectation. Craving for the resolution options and multiscreen support of OpenTTD… I didn't expect those, just so you know.
The graphics aren't any good. The colors, the background, the planes, my goodness, the planes! What happend to them? You've got a lot to improve on this front.
Ok idea. The bugs and visuals aren't up to par.
Overall: Below average (4)
Graphics: Bad (3)
Gameplay: Buggy (3)
Originality: Below average (4)
Theme: Good (7)
I like the game idea. There's a lot of elements in it and I like how you can set up a timetable and leave it alone to just let it automatically making money. However, the profitability is pretty low and it'll take a looong time to actually get enough money to expand. There are a couple of UI issues, as others pointed out too. I think the game needs a more gentle difficulty curve, like giving players more boost (funding) initially to let them explore, or build a basic infrastructure. Has a lot of potential.
It looks promising, however I find the UI really hard to navigate, and I wasn't able to play it properly. That's also why I won't be rating it! Hopefully someone else can figure it out and add a rating.