Category Archives: Airport Madness 6

Airport Madness 6

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We never actually referred to Airport Madness: Time Machine as being number 5, but I’m keeping count.  Like any software that offers several versions, it’s important to come up with a naming strategy.  After all, who’s going to buy Airport Madness 19 ?  For that matter, Airport Madness 6 ?  The next three versions will be named Airport Madness: World Edition.

I haven’t decided which airports to build.  I could simply copy Radar Chaos: World Edition’s list of five airports, for sake of consistency.  But I won’t, because I don’t believe that these airports would necessarily be fun Madness airports.   I like Las Vegas McCarran.  The runway/taxiway layout looks like fun, in terms of conflict points and overall confusion.  Plus, it’s Vegas, Baby!

I’ve been making games for nearly six years now, and one thing I’ve learned about success in game development is, you’ve got to be lucky.  How is it that Airport Madness became as successful as it did, yet my other games fared so poorly in comparison?  I read all of my emails, and I take all ideas and suggestions very seriously.  I try to give people exactly what they want, when dreaming up my next big game.  Seems like Airport Madness is what people are after, so I shall stick to that.  Hopefully I don’t exhaust the concept!

am_timeline

I’m working on “the look” of Airport Madness: World Edition right now.  Up until now, each new version of Airport Madness looks more “realistic” than the previous.  The very first Airport Madness had flat colors and very simple detail.  It was just a simple 640×480 Flash game.  Madness 3 offered earth textures.  Madness 5 had every detail, right down to the duck pond located behind the unfinished hangar construction.  I’ve read emails from people saying, “You should totally use Google Earth for your maps“.   Besides the cost of acquiring Google Earth imagery, I don’t believe this would make for fun game play.  Each increase in detail reduces a player’s ability to identify airplanes.  The game loses it’s contrast, between airplanes and earth.  Airport Madness: World Edition art will take a necessary step backward, in an effort to improve game play.  I think you’ll like it.

am6_art_demo_640x640

Release date?  August 29, 2014.  Stay tuned!

AM6 Ideas

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The creative juices are definitely flowing for Airport Madness 6.  It will be called, Airport Madness: World Edition.  Is it too soon to talk about?  You aren’t going to see it until May 2014.  You may be wondering if we ever plan to stop making new versions of Airport Madness.  The answer?  Never…. mwahahaha!

am6

Don’t study this too long – it’s not a real-world airfield. AM6 will likely have simpler, more contrasty graphics.

In AM5, we decided to simplify, pulling out stuff that we felt would not be missed, in exchange for more levels – which was a great deal of work. In AM6, we will be adding in lots of bells and whistles.  Yes, AM6 will have “more cowbell”, as they say.  Did I mention that it’s going to be based on real-world airports? 🙂

Radar will go back in.  In fact, there will be an option to play the entire game from the radar interface.  Perhaps you tire of the landscape, and want to think purely about the aircraft themselves.  Or perhaps you feel that having a large range of scope will give you an edge.  We intend to borrow some of the code from Radar Chaos to drive the interface.

Voices – there will be at least 6 different voices.  AM3 and AM4 lacked variety in this department.

Let there be night – we do intend to offer “night” versions for each of the six fields we offer.  However, the bad weather feature is still up for debate.  In AM4, I heard a lot of “this looks terrible”, and “frame rates are really bad during bad weather”, and “I can’t see the planes during bad weather”, and “Hey, how do I turn off that annoying weather feature?”.

Oh, and my favorite:  “Can I have your game for free?”.  Oh, brother.  Just grab it off Pirate Bay already!  Having said that, I sincerely appreciate everyone who has ever sent us their hard-earned money.  It is YOU that keeps me doing what I do – banging away at my keyboard until a new game pops out.

The cool thing that AM6 will bring to the series is (finally) the ability to assign departure runways.  Yes, it’s going to be a free-for-all.  Go right ahead and create unresolvable nose-to-nose conflicts on the taxiways.  I promise to add a “Return To Start Point” button.

Challenges – I think rather than playing one airfield for eternity, we will instead add two items to the top of the page.  One is a stopwatch and the other is an airplane counter.  Move 100 planes as fast as you can.  The faster you move them, the faster they come.  We will probably toss in some Facebook functionality, so you can show off to your friends.

With Radar Chaos: Hawaii Edition, we did a great deal of research into real-world procedures and routes.  AM6 won’t do that.  In San Francisco, there will be simultaneous runway ops like they do in real life, but not necessarily using the preferred runways and routes.  So you can go right ahead and drive your Airbus 380s over downtown.  It’s your airport.

What does everyone think of Las Vegas for an airfield?  I’m considering the following list of fields:

  • Heathrow
  • San Francisco
  • Las Vegas
  • Los Angeles
  • JFK
  • O’Hare

The cement is still very wet, so now is the time to get your thoughts in.  Believe it or not, I really do read all of my emails from you.  Sometimes, I’m not good at responding.  There are only so many hours in the day and, well, it cuts into my TV time.

AMTM Ratings and Reviews

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162-100Airport Madness: Time Machine has just passed the 3.5 star rating on kongregate.com, one of the leading free flash game portals on the web.  Gotta savor the small victories in life!

Is 3.5 stars any good?  Kongregate says “4.0” is the magic number.  Once you break 4.0, you are something truly special.  A 3.5 is good enough to get you featured in their Top Games section (although I didn’t see mine there – sad face).  Hopefully achieving this benchmark will get the free version of this game found by portal owners.  Fingers crossed as usual, for a viral flash game.

We launched AMTM for iPad last week, and so far it’s done well.  5 star average (although that’s from only 4 votes 🙂 ). The free version will be in the app store some time next week, hopefully.

I have high hopes for this game, as I do for all of my releases.  And believe it or not, the creative juices are already flowing for our next version – Airport Madness: World Edition.  Start pelting me with your favorite real-world airport suggestions, please.