Category Archives: Airport Madness: World Edition

Moving Forward With Our Games

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The past year has been a great deal of fun and work for me.  I’ve tried a number of different game ideas, and have learned a great deal about the game industry.  Aside from learning that I must stick to my current niche market that is air traffic control games, I’ve also realized that the market has moved to mobile.  Sure, there are many who still download and play games on their PC or Mac, and many who realize that ours are more suited to such devices, but getting our games into Google Play and the App Store was a wise move.

Um… this is highly  unlikely.

I’ve made five Airport Madness games so far, the sixth currently in production.  Airport Madness World Edition and Radar Chaos World Edition were originally intended to have three, possibly four versions.  However, at this time I am considering launching only a single version of these games, but offering some lifespan to them, by continually adding on.

I just released Radar Chaos World Edition, which contains five maps.  This month I will add a map.  Next month, one more.  And so on, until it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 maps.  Keeping it all together in one version will not only be cheaper for the customer, it will likely work out well for me, in terms of profit, because the games will hopefully continue to pick up steam and momentum, as a result of their longer lifespan.  I’ve been accused of my past games being “hit and runs”, where I release them, spend a month our two fixing bugs, then move on to the next endeavor.

My vision is to have two solid games on my site.  Radar Chaos World Edition and Airport Madness World Edition, both available on as many platforms as possible.  My other games will always be there, but won’t clutter the home page with noise.

My dream is to come up with a third air traffic control game.  I’ve given a great deal of thought to creating something 3D, that puts you directly inside the control tower with a swiveling chair and a 360 degree view of an airfield.  I’ve also been considering a “ground control” game, that focuses purely on the airfield itself, the taxiways, aprons, deice stations and gates.  I’m not convinced that either of these would necessarily be a fun game, but we’ll see.   I’ll put together a very rough prototype and let the testers decide what they think.

Look for Airport Madness: World Edition, coming this September!

Airport Madness for iPhone/iPod

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screen480x480(2)As of this morning, Airport Madness Time Machine and Airport Madness 4 are both available for iPhone, as well as all other iOS devices.  Until now, they were only available for iPad (and of course, PC, Mac, and Linux).

We were initially reluctant to publish these applications for such a small device, due to the difficulty in selecting our tiny little airplanes.  We have developed an effective workaround for this, and touchability is no longer an issue.  I still prefer to play these games on iPad, but they look stunning on iPhone.

I still plan to put these two games onto the Android platform.  I’m not procrastinating (Well, ok, I’m procrastinating…).  I am working on the Android version now.

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.