01-10-2020, 09:09 PM
Welcome to the community! I'm glad you like the game so far. 
Most of your questions related to the future will be answered in the next couple of devlogs. (over the course of 1-2 months)
I don't want to release too much too soon, in order to maintain a steady hype build up. I hope you understand.
I plan on releasing a devlog next weekend (worst case the weekend thereafter) with some information on the current direction we will be taking.
Last summer the our lead developer left the team to do other things.
The rest of the team (2 active developers and 1 chiming in every now and then) made sure the project lives on.
We decided we want to make some radical changes to the game. The teaser is a part of this change.
Like you said we're in an early development phase and there is a lot of work ahead of us.
But we are determined to finish this game! We too love the project, and we'd like to play it in its full glory with all the features we have in mind.
as far as I know everything is already run in memory. Once the game is running, it doesn't go to the database. (You could even remove it if you wanted to.) The lag is because of the many calculations that need to be done. Perhaps a good idea could be to do these calculations in advance too and store it as soon as you requested the page once.
It's good to note that we regularly perform performance upgrades too.
Balancing the costs and profit is indeed a higher priority than AI for now. More about our priorities in the next devlogs.
Updating our website and social media is on our to do list, and should be done in the next couple of weeks. We're not really advertising the game yet, since we're in an early stage. I don't really want to be flooded with the same bug reports and feature requests (that we're already planning on) yet.
You can support us -if you want to- on our itch.io page by donating. Though for now I'd recommend waiting a little bit. [WINK]
The time spent developing on the game has increased a lot in the past 2 months. I'm currently running overtime on the game. [WINK]
I have already said a bit too much, but soon it will click.
Most of your questions related to the future will be answered in the next couple of devlogs. (over the course of 1-2 months)
I don't want to release too much too soon, in order to maintain a steady hype build up. I hope you understand.
I plan on releasing a devlog next weekend (worst case the weekend thereafter) with some information on the current direction we will be taking.
Last summer the our lead developer left the team to do other things.
The rest of the team (2 active developers and 1 chiming in every now and then) made sure the project lives on.
We decided we want to make some radical changes to the game. The teaser is a part of this change.
Like you said we're in an early development phase and there is a lot of work ahead of us.
But we are determined to finish this game! We too love the project, and we'd like to play it in its full glory with all the features we have in mind.
Quote:On the technical side of things (yes, this might be more difficult to do a quick-fix for, I'd like for all systems, even low-end, to allow the game to read more data to memory. There is a lot of lag/slowdown from the game having to load stuff that could easily be loaded to memory, for instance airlines, route data for your own airline, aircraft purchases, airports and much more. My game, where I am admittedly only 8 years in or so, takes up between 150-300 megabytes of memory. By general standards, I run a relatively high-end system with 16GB of RAM, but most normal people today run at least 8GB, so using a little more memory shouldn't be an issue.
as far as I know everything is already run in memory. Once the game is running, it doesn't go to the database. (You could even remove it if you wanted to.) The lag is because of the many calculations that need to be done. Perhaps a good idea could be to do these calculations in advance too and store it as soon as you requested the page once.
It's good to note that we regularly perform performance upgrades too.
Quote:One of the more pressing things I've seen mentioned on these forums is the AI. I can see that the AI is already on the to-do list, but I actually believe the more pressing issue is, that the financial side of the game doesn't exist at all. I'd be absolutely fine with not having a decent AI, because making one can take a LOT of effort, if I'd just at least be competing with myself. However, right now the basic "autopilot" formula is: Start game --> Lease 747 --> Fly highest-density route and overcharge massively --> Buy 747 ---> Repeat ---> ??? --> PROFIT $$$. In a year or two, you'll be making so much money that there's no way for you to spend it all. I've read that demand is also being looked at, and that's nice. The more pressing issue is, that maintenance, upkeep on terminal/facilities and so on is non-existent. If only that was actually a thing, then there'd be just a little bit of a challenge for the first few years. Even lease prices could be 10 times higher, and you'd still be making money on the larger routes. In early 1980', I can easily make 20 million dollars a month PER ROUTE I fly with a 747, making the lease on a 747 seem ridiculous. And paying the full purchase price for a new one (about $50million) also just takes 2½ months, meaning if I have two 747's, I can fund the purchase of 747's faster than the aircraft supplier manages to churn them out.
Balancing the costs and profit is indeed a higher priority than AI for now. More about our priorities in the next devlogs.
Quote:The last thing I'd like to touch on has nothing to do with the game, and all to do with how it is "marketed" if you will. As a relatively new player wanting to try out something new, I was happy to find that the game was free at first. I've tried it out, I quite liked it, and even though there are a lot of issues that need to be ironed out, I am also aware that this is in Alpha, and therefore I am absolutely okay with that. However, my question now is: How do I support this project if I decide later on that I'd like to? Also, what do I get for my support? What I mean is not that I want a reward or something, but there is no way for me to really see how much time is spent on development, how many people are developing, what is next in the pipeline other than a very small teaser, and what the time horizon is for getting some of those features out there. I obviously realise that we are all humans that have a TON of other stuff we need to attend to, but I think it's hard to be a supporter of something if you have no idea when you will get a return on your investment/support. For me persoanlly, that is some of the stuff I'd want to see elaborated on before I'd seriously consider supporting the game financially. It's just not clear enough to me, especially because the website isn't really up-to-date, and while I realise it's not a priority when there's so much stuff to update with the game, I feel it might be a deal-breaker for a lot of people that take a look at this game but then decide to skip it.
Updating our website and social media is on our to do list, and should be done in the next couple of weeks. We're not really advertising the game yet, since we're in an early stage. I don't really want to be flooded with the same bug reports and feature requests (that we're already planning on) yet.
You can support us -if you want to- on our itch.io page by donating. Though for now I'd recommend waiting a little bit. [WINK]
The time spent developing on the game has increased a lot in the past 2 months. I'm currently running overtime on the game. [WINK]
I have already said a bit too much, but soon it will click.