After more than one year in production, Big Fat Simulations proudly presents Airport Madness: Time Machine, the latest from the Airport Madness Series. We pushed hard last night to meet our May 31 deadline, and version 1.00 only shipped with a few major bugs (now resolved in version 1.01 🙂
We appreciate your feedback and support with this project, as with all of our games. We hope to deliver many more of such games in the years to come.
Hi guys,
I’ve been looking forward to AMTM and from my first few tries it looks like you’ve made another entertaining game. I have just one question. What does the “Total Delays” mean? I have been looking around, but haven’t found and explanation. Maybe I’m blind or maybe there is no explanation… 😉
Total delays is a snapshot of how you are doing. Points earned are based on how much an aircraft gets delayed. If you have 10 planes sitting in a lineup for takeoff for one minute, your total delays = 10 minutes.
You indicate both a PC and MAC version, but you hardly ever mention Linux which the PC version runs on. I use Linux, and it runs perfectly with a program called Wine. I wish you could give more support to Linux users, and not omit Linux in your dialogue as much.
Great suggestion, James. Will do.
I’m only on 1937 at the moment, so lots more to see I know. I really like that aspect of the game. You see your airport developing. For those of us who played AM4 the controls feel familiar and easy to grasp. I do miss the radar, particularly as some of aircraft are quite hard to see on the screen against the background. I would also have liked a more international selection of types though you did put in the Junkers F.13 which is one my favourite aeroplanes of all time! One tiny pedantic point – the DC-3 didn’t enter service until 1936 and you have it appearing in 1934. Overall though I’m really enjoying it. Thanks for all your hard work!
Great points, thank you Matthew.
I just experienced an incident regarding my wish to have the radar back. I’m now in 1969 and an aircraft was coming into land on the “left to right” runway when suddenlly another one popped into view on the edge of the map and crashed into it before it could land. Had I had the radar I would have been able to anticipate this.
Matthew, we pulled the radar, as well as pilot voices in this game because they were a tremendous amount of work. Adding these features would have meant ‘ending’ the game in 1954. I really wanted players to have 50 years of play. These features didn’t seem to be in popular demand with AM4. BTW, we will be adding more years to this game as time progresses.
Well lack of radar combined with flight paths that skim the edges make the futuristic airport maddeningly unfair. I can get past 2170 simply because traffic inbound to the top runway always happens to be in the way when traffic inbound to the crossing runway enters a screen. There is no warning and no time to react.
I have improved this with 1.03 (hopefully:)
I’m still having issues with the auto saves. I’ve played it twice now for around 2hrs each time. The first time I had to restart from 1925 after 2hrs of game play (on a different day). and the second time I had to unlock all levels to carry on up to 1954.
Tonight I have come to play it and back to 1925. Lost all my trophies and achievements. Game extracted to local drive so not playing from the zipfile.
Yes, we’ve had lots of reports regarding the game not saving data. There are numerous solutions listed here that may help, but ultimately we should add a user login system. However, this comes with new headaches.
I’m seriously considering unlocking all levels from the get-go. Less of a challenge, but fewer frustrated customers.
Jason
There’s no such thing as abort take off or am I just in 1943…?
You are correct, we’ve chopped out a few things from the earlier versions.
Well done guys – great game!
I usually find with the other games after a few hours I’ve experienced all there is to see, but I’m finding with this I’m hours into it and there are years left to play… then I can go start from the beginning (or any other year) anytime I like. Yahooooo
Great to hear, thank you.
I don’t mind not having all levels unlocked from the start. Great game up to 1970. Then reaching 2170 was a turn off by default. Even if I tone down the traffic, this level just doesn’t click with me. Here are my concerns:
1. Unable to manually assign aircraft to land on 09L.
2. Close proximity of aircraft on taxiway prohibits no-delay takeoff on aircraft holding short. Doing so results in a collision.
3. Converging taxiway for runway 09R. Whichever aircraft’s nose is “sticking in” closest to the runway is #1 for takeoff. Though not feasible here, it should have a hold line for each taxiway near the runway like London Heathrow.
4. Intersecting approaches for 09L and 36L. This by far could be the most irritating with no radar.
5. Predictable approaches/sequences. Approaches for 09L and 36L will almost always collide without vectors or speed adjustments. Also approaches to 10R and 36L will almost always collide upon landing without any action. It’s manageable but annoying when there’s ground traffic to handle.
-Scott
By the way, how does the scoring system work? How many points do I need for three stars? Also, sometimes my take off yield no points (a “0” pops up as the aircraft takes off) – how long can I afford to make the aircraft wait before it will give me nothing at all?
The star ranking system needs a lot of work. Currently, it’s a formula, based on a perfect, undisturbed flight earning 500 points. The problem is in the harder levels, where delays are inevitable. This means that often, 3 stars is impossible. I need to work through each and every level, and customize the stars for each. Should only take me a couple of days to do this.
Since my last post I have been able to get three stars on all the main campaign levels by playing them all on “2” difficulty which means I can generally get all aircraft taking off and landing promptly with little or no delay. Any higher than “2” and this virtually impossible.
Matthew,
Yes, I need to alter the star system to be more fair. There is no point in having three stars if it’s impossible. I will get to work. Can you tell me which levels are ‘impossible’? What I would LOVE, is to know what levels you can only get 2, and what levels you can only get 1.
Well as I said I now have three stars on all the main levels, but a difficulty “2”. I could manage three on “4” or “5” difficulty up to about 1965 prior to that. As soon as you added the third runway (which I believe is 1965) it becomes a lot harder and took me a couple of goes even on difficulty “2”. The only frustrating of the earlier levels is, I think, 1939 (the one where you only have Lightnings and they use the runway as a taxiway). That one took a few goes.
Thank you, this can be changed.
I have 2 bugs on the 1802 timeline. The zeppelins do not dock and when I hit takeoff on the gyrocopters, they just sit there and I can’t do anything with them.
Please make sure you update to 1.03, from the game’s main screen.