The impossible is never easy, but we’ve managed to do it.  Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition is now available for instant download.

We were fashionably late, as usual.  I must learn to better estimate a project’s size before making promises.  Initially, RCHE seemed like a simple spin-off of the original Radar Chaos.  However, we were determined to pack more features into the control panel, add life-like procedures and a real-world location.  In the end, the entire project was basically rewritten from scratch.

Our first instinct was to add “Hawaiian” music, since the location of this radar simulation is the Hawaiian Islands. However, this gave the simulation a feel which we did not like.  We hated it, actually (especially after some 50+ hours of testing the beta version, which contained such music with ukuleles and flutes).  Ukuleles and air traffic control?  They don’t go together.  One is relaxed, happy and care-free.  The other is intense, and it puts you at the edge of your seat, stresses you out, and causes you to mutter, “How am I gonna handle THIS mess?” repeatedly.  So we went with that.  In fact, the music we chose for Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition is filed under the genre of “horror”.  You may think that sort of music wouldn’t fit inside a game,  but I actually like the fit.  It is suspenseful, dark and haunting, created by composers Roland Rudzitis and David Flavin.  Music only exists during the introductory screens of the game, not during game play.

Our coder worked hard until late last night (and early this morning) to get everything functioning exactly as it should.  We are now in ‘wait and see’ mode, poised at the computer with the email program open, waiting for any complaints or bug reports we can jump on.

We really hope that you enjoy Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition.  It truly is a fun game, for those who love aviation.  Airport Madness 4 is by far more popular, but it’s content aims at a much broader spectrum of users.  Radar simulation is a niche market.  It’s my favorite type of game, by far.  In fact the very first game we ever created was a radar simulation, originally intended to be a commercial training product.

It’s not easy to write instructions for air traffic control.  Our original promise was a radar game with “no instructions required”, but that quickly became an impossible promise.  We have created nearly a dozen tutorial videos for this game, as well as several pages of written instructions, which should be enough to get you going.

Enjoy!

Big Fat Simulations is a small company. We read all our e-mails, we love our customers, and if you are sad, we are sad. We’re literally a Mom & Pop company, and we believe in the personal touch. So here are our three promises to you …

1. No Obnoxious DRM! Pirates exist. Sad, but true. But we won’t let hatred of people who rip off our games drive us to annoy our paying customers. When you order from us, you immediately get a download link to your game, requiring no keys or passwords. That’s it. No online authentication. No need to keep a disk in the drive.

• If your computer dies and you need a new registration key? We’re sorry to hear that, and your replacement is free.
• Register on the Mac and switch to Windows? A new key is free.
• Your child wants to play the game on his or her own machine? That’s awesome, and an additional key is free.

2. Money-Back Guarantee! If you don’t like our game, we don’t want your money. We have a no-questions-asked One Year Money-back Guarantee. Game stops working? You wake up one morning and realize that it sucks? You decide that you hate us personally, and our adorable children too? Money back within one year. You might think, “Hmmm. I wonder if people ever buy the game, play it through, and demand a refund.” The answer is: No. This has never happened. You know why? Because our customers are awesome people.

3. Free Demos! That means that you get a chance to play and make sure that 1. It works, 2. You are having fun, and 3. The retro graphics don’t enrage you. If the demo works for you and is fun, you can buy the full game and be confident that it will still work and still be fun. And if it doesn’t? Have we mentioned our Money-Back Guarantee? We love that almost all of our customers played a demo first. It means we’re earning our pay honestly. Because, again, If you don’t like our game, we don’t want your money.

Wow, great work everyone! Holy smack. That’s a lot of airplanes moved in Airport Madness 4 within just seven months. That’s 200 times as much traffic as Chicago O’Hare moves for the same time period. I’d better hurry up and get the next edition of Airport Madness 4 out. You folks are going to LOVE this one!

Enjoy!  Radar Chaos: Hawaii Edition will be releasing soon, hopefully by the last day of July.  If it’s not available by July 31, just wait longer 🙂

Download the HD version here!

Radar Chaos Hawaii: Honolulu TRACON from Big Fat Simulations on Vimeo.

If it seems quiet around the website, our Facebook page, our blog and Twitter feed lately, it’s because we are focused on the completion of Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition.  Our original goal was June 1 (thankfully we kept that one a secret from you, because we missed it).  In May, I mentioned on Facebook that RCHE would be available July 1, but later deleted the comment.  We have since been keeping the date vague, but promising ‘some time in July’.   We are aiming for the last day in July.

Our sincere apologies for not being quick with the email responses these days.  Of course, we always respond to emails involving issues or complaints immediately.  However, it’s those daily emails that we get from users who have an idea for a game that we should make:  “Hey, you should totally make a game that involves trains.  People love trains!  Can you make that next?”.  I always try to respond to these idea people, since this is where all of our great ideas come from.  However, while we are in production mode, sprinting for the finish line, our email efforts are minimized to that of keeping existing customers happy.

Our dream is to take August off.  However, it will likely be dedicated to resolving bugs, assisting customers with their downloads, and adding critical game features that players feel are missing from Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition.   Not to mention, a new version of Airport Madness in time for Christmas (you will love this one!).  There is no rest for game developers.

Look for news of Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition’s release right here in about two weeks!

Radar Chaos Hawaii is coming along, folks!  We hope for a release in about two weeks.  Check out the new screenshots of Oahu and Hawaii here.  We will be adding a second video shortly, including screenshots of Kauai and Maui. 

Our newest radar simulation is approaching completion, and should be available for purchase by the end of July 2012.  We have decided to offer six different levels, instead of four as originally intended.  Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition consists of two ‘enroute’ levels and four ‘TRACON-style’ levels.

You have seen airport environments in our earlier radar games, Radar Chaos, Air Traffic Controller, and The Simulator.  In these levels, aircraft land and depart from busy airports.  Hawaii Edition’s two enroute levels offer something a bit different.  These sectors have no airport.  They are designed to collect arrivals and stream them to the ‘approach’ controller for a specific airport.  They also disseminate departures to their correct flight routes.  There are many conflict points, and an understanding of the airspace shape is required.  In some areas, you are in charge of only the airspace that lies above 16000 feet. In some ways these levels are far more complicated than the approach TRACON’s.

We’ve fallen behind.  The original promise was for July 1.  However, we’ve expanded the project, by adding levels and features.  We’ve run into challenges that eat up time.  And, the Well of Inspiration does occasionally dry up.  Some days this project feels like a concentration camp of the mind.  We love it, though.  And like the rest of our games, we poured our hearts into this one as if we were building it for ourselves to play and enjoy.   RCHE will definitely ‘bring it’ on release day.

As with the original Radar Chaos, we ran into this issue of ‘what’s going to be fun’ versus, ‘what’s going to be real’. We could make it more realistic but it would become too complicated for most, and the instructions would be lengthy.  At the end of the day, a simulation that is dead real isn’t going to interest the majority of our customers.

If we really wanted, we could add multiple SIDS, assignable STARs, VFR climb restrictions, non-radar separation, and flow control. I’ve done this stuff in real life, and trust me, it gets boring.  The fun stuff is the vectoring, the sequencing, the handling of six aircraft that are all tangled together somewhere.  An arriving Cessna that’s getting overtaken by a B757, that’s fun.  A departing 737 that is stuck beneath a slow-climbing prop, that’s fun.  These are situations where you get to put your ATC cap on and do some air traffic controlling.  It’s crazy scenarios like these that make the work interesting.  Nobody enjoys relaying IFR clearances, coordinating time estimates to  adjacent sectors, or talking on the phone with the flight planning. So we are building something that will ultimately be a whole lot of fun, in risk of offending a few real-world air traffic controllers who will immediately recognize that this is not an exact replica of real-world ATC in Hawaii.

We should hopefully have another video up shortly.  If you haven’t watched the first one you can find it in our blog below.

Shortly after we finish Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition next month, we will be pushing out a new version of Sky Madness as well. Better graphics, improved game play, and way more levels!

This video isn’t the best quality, but it gives you an idea of what we are working on.
Radar Chaos Hawai Edition: Part 1 from Big Fat Simulations on Vimeo.