Hello fellow airliner directors! Today marks a milestone on our schedule as we're just 50 days from our early access release on Steam!

You may have noticed we did not have an update the previous month. This is because development has been going a bit slower than I hoped for, but fear not! Potential delays are included in the schedule, which means we're still on track for our release on the 24th of May on Steam.

Final Touches for the Seatmaps

Our main focus the past month has been put on finishing the seatmap editor, you can see the seatmap in action in the video below:

As you can see the functionality is largely the same is in TAPv2 but with some added complexity for the seat rows in the nose and tail as well as the staircases. (and oh was that complex to implement and make sure all calculations are correct all the time!)

As you can see there is still some empty space on the right side of the window. Here we will show you the effects your changes have on the weight and range of the airliner, as well as the cost of the new seats.

New Airliner Images

Our artist has been busy updating all airliner images, and they are now made it to the game.

We do have a question for all of you:

The white background is horribly out of place compared to the art style you see in the rest of the game. Which of the following solutions to counter this do you prefer? (note that these are not final and need better integration)

Solution 1) add clouds to the background. The clouds here are drawn in the style of the loading screen, though they don't really fit the ingame art style either. That means we will need a different cloud image.

A positive point for this solution is that it allows future development for adding liveries to the airliners, a highly requested feature.

Solution 2) present the airliner as a blueprint. Note that this is a very quick mock up to convey the idea. The final solution will probably show a white raster in the background to better represent a the idea of a blueprint and fit the game art style better.

A positive point for this solution is that it can properly convey scale. Currently I do feel the size of an A320 and an A330 seem oddly similar in those screens.

If people really want to, this style can show liveries too but it may fit the style less.

Let us know what you think!

New Debugging Tools

This is probably a bit boring to you, but we have developed some better debugging tools. The old debugger showed all info aimed at all developers in one big list. (as is default) Now we can each individually tailor what exact info we want or do not want to see, as well as receive some more in depth reports of what is happening. In short this means development will both go a slight bit faster while being less prone to not noticing small hidden bugs.

Patreon Update

We will upload a new version of the game later today with the customizable seatmaps shown above. Everyone who was a patron in March will get access to this version as well.

As promised our Patrons who paid €15 or more will receive permanent access to our game this month. We now have an exact date for when this will start: April 23rd. This version will finally have the basic full play cycle: buy an airliner -> open new routes and make money -> buy new airliners to expand your network.

In the meantime our patrons supporting us this month will receive 1 or 2 more updates via itch before that date.

Stay Tuned!

The current latest version (V0.1.1.5; April) is available here: TAP NG DEV 0115 (note that this is not a fully functional game yet; the payment is considered a donation to contribute to our Feature Queue)

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See you soon!

The Devteam