We have made some changes to the way we collect money and provide download links to customers.  After five years with PayPal, we’ve switched to Fastspring, a leader in the eCommerce and merchandising industry.  PayPal has always been a handy service, one that I use personally for a great deal of online shopping.  But what I dislike about it is the experience a customer has after they click that shiny yellow ‘Buy Now’ button.

You are immediately whisked away from our website to a checkout page, much like when you buy a pair of used ski bindings on eBay.  After payment is made, some are redirected to a download link, others not.  Our back end system attempts to send customers an email with a download link, but not everyone receives this.  I have always stood by, waiting for angry emails so that I can manually send download links to customers, but it’s probably not the best way to do business.

We tried such a change three years ago to a different eCommerce company, but immediately noticed a sharp drop in sales.  I suspected that customers felt safer using PayPal, so I switched back to them.  Are people more likely to purchase when it’s the familiar PayPal form?  I am personally very cautious about where I give out credit card information, but when I see that the website is verified with the ‘lock’ symbol in the address bar, I feel safer.

I sincerely hope that this new system pleases everyone.  All customers are now receiving their product links immediately and securely.  Fastspring is the best in the industry.  By the time Airport Madness: Time Machine releases, the new system will be running like one of those fancy Swiss pocket watches.

Notice how vague I was just now, regarding Airport Madness: Time Machine’s release date?  That’s another blog post entirely 🙂

Our office is feeling a bit like Santa’s workshop these days.  We are hard at work on our fifth version of Airport Madness.  Back in July, when I decided that there would be a fifth version, I made a clear rule that our assembly line be super efficient, capable of building additional game levels with ease.  But of course, this game has taken on a very interesting shape, and now contains a great deal of complexity.  The efficiencies that we built in early on are now feeling rather slow and antiquated.

It really amazes me how much code is required to drive a few planes around.  In Airport Madness, an aircraft must have a reasonable degree of logic.  It must have the ability to recognize a runway that it isn’t supposed to cross.   And know that it must wait for a parking gate that’s occupied.  A 747 must know better than to attempt to park at the flying school, and vice versa.  No Piper Cubs are allowed to park directly in front of the main international terminal.  Conflict management is complicated, too.  I’m not just talking about the ability to detect collisions.  When two taxiing aircraft are converging, they must mutually decide who will give way, and who will keep taxiing.  This requires a bit of trigonometry magic (anyone remember inverse tan?).  It gets interesting when you have four or five aircraft in a cluster.  Sometimes you get a dead-lock, a stale mate.  There must be logic that deals with this.

In the fifth edition of Airport Madness, your airport grows.  Slowly.  And as the little changes are introduced year after year, the code must change with it.  In 1938 I decided to lengthen a runway.  This means every aircraft must understand the specific new taxi routes, arrival routes, and departure routes.  But only for that particular year, because in 1939 high speed exits get added, and every aircraft must now understand these new routes, too.

The biggest nightmare I think has to be the artwork.  Our artist must be an architect, an airport designer, a city planner, and must be an expert at dealing with people like me.  The game’s timeline is very delicate, as airport and city objects are in a constant state of either generation or destruction.  The artwork for AM5 is going to be truly amazing.  There’s a great deal of it, and it’s demanded that we be as efficient as possible with regard to the user’s CPU, GPU and system memory.

We will keep you posted as we make progress!

There is an update available for Airport Madness 4, free to those who have already purchased this product. We’ve added some really cool effects to nearly all levels, and fixed a few minor bugs. I will admit to you, we’ve been sitting on this artwork for nearly six months, but have been too busy to implement it. There are still a few more pieces yet to be incorporated, but we will definitely get to it by Christmas. Most of these effects don’t happen right away. You have to patiently play, for roughly 10-15 minutes before these occur.

Level 2 (the City) now has smog. It comes and goes throughout the level, making it slightly harder to see the aircraft (as in real life).

Level 3 (the Caribbean Island) has a “flood” effect that changes the topography during the monsoon. I really like this effect. Some may feel it’s a little “too soon” to be making video games about flooding, but we assure you, this was in the production pipeline since May. I find it darn near impossible to control the situation with the clouds rolling over top of the airplanes. A few updates ago we came close to removing this weather, but one of our users pointed out that it is entirely real. Air Traffic Controllers sometimes cannot see airplanes when there is poor weather.

Level 4 (Area 51) gets a couple of cool effects added. At the beginning of your session, the airport gets hit with a terrible sandstorm, which looks like a ghostly orange gas, but if you look closely, you see the entire topography get blanketed and partially buried with sand. Later on in the sequence, after the military training flights rip across the airfield, and after the pilots start complaining about seeing strange things, and after the odd red gas appears, and after the bright flashes, and after the UFO sighting, everything kind of settles down to normal. That’s when the military decides to do some heat-seeking missile experiments, which don’t end well.

Level 6 (ski resort level) gets proper runway snow removal activity.  Once the snow storm hits, the supervisor informs you that one of the runways is closed due to snow removal.  Scramble to get arrivals moved to the other runway, while holding those departures.  Watch the pretty snow plows clean the runway, strip by strip.

We’ve had issues with planes jamming up on congested aprons.  With each new version of this game, we learn stuff.  So we’ve borrowed some of our hot new code from Airport Madness 5 and stuck it into Airport Madness 4 and it seems to have done the trick. Hopefully no more issues.

Definitely grab the update, as I promise you will like the additions. If you haven’t bought Airport Madness 4 yet, you can get it here.

We are pleased to announce that we are working on something very exciting, for release in the near future. I know, I know. I have promised an update for Radar Chaos Hawaii Edition, some fixes for Airport Madness 4, and Radar Chaos for iPad. These will be done soon, but I cannot ignore the demand I get for more “Airport Madness”.

Airport Madness 5 will release in April of 2013. That’s a very realistic guess, based on all of my past release date failed promises. AM5’s theme goes back to the core of what made Airport Madness cool in the first place. It is inspired by Airport Madness 2, believe it or not. AM2 was fun because it was an airport that grew, level upon level. AM5 will not offer a 6-pack of fresh airports like it’s predecessor, but rather, an airport that grows up over time. We take you back to 1925 and put you into the control tower (Although radio-equipped towers did not start appearing in the United States until 1930, controlled fields began to appear in the United Kingdom as early as 1921. Take that, aviation history buffs :). As the game progresses, you will witness the airport grow from just a tiny grass field in 1925, to a multi-runway wartime airfield in 1944, to a giant sprawling airport in 1975, with passenger jets and several terminal buildings. Witness Lindbergh, the breaking of the sound barrier, the first passenger jet, and the birth of the Boeing 737.

Imagine what it might have been like to witness aviation in 1925. After WW1 there were many fighter pilots looking for something to do with their flying skills. Many of them created air shows where they would perform stunts, while others offered paid rides to the public (think “Great Waldo Pepper”). In 1925, flying mail services became very popular, and the world saw such aircraft as the Curtis Jenny, Ford Tri-motor, and Boeing Model 40. There was some passenger travel, although this did not truly begin developing until the late depression. In 1940 WW2 came along, giving aviation a giant boost. It wasn’t until after WW2 when the passenger travel boom truly began.

This next version of Airport Madness will definitely have a story to it, supported by an explosion of beautiful artwork. The artwork is our top priority in the development of this game, as it is essentially a walk through time, and therefore demanding of “eye candy”. Plus, AM5 will be much more “game” than earlier versions in it’s structural design. There will be nearly 100 levels, each with a duration of 3 to 15 minutes, depending on your ability. After a level is unlocked, it can be revisited at any time.

We are working hard to bring you something new and exciting. We are holding back some key details at this time. The full extent of the game’s theme is still a secret, as is the product’s final name (It won’t be called “Airport Madness 5”).

So, stay tuned! You will not want to miss this next version of Airport Madness.