Airport Madness 2 on Facebook

After circulating various game portals throughout the internet for the past four months, Airport Madness 2 has finally hit Facebook. It is my intention to make the game a more social experience, beginning with the ability to challenge Facebook friends and compare your high scores. A game is always more fun when you can do it with your friends.

In fact, I believe the Airport Madness concept is begging for "multiplayer", and Facebook is the perfect platform. It would be a tremendous undertaking to promise something like multiplayer for Airport Madness 3, due in early 2010, but it is definitely worth it for me to look at. Please, keep sending me your ideas.

In an effort to circulate Airport Madness, I have developed a kind of Facebook Fan Club. Since you are reading this, I hope that you will join by clicking the Facebook link below.

Airport Madness 2 on Facebook

I hope to see you all on Facebook soon!

Airport Madness 3

I am making initial plans for an Airport Madness 3. I do not offer a release date, but I am thinking somewhere around January 2010 (give or take 3 months). My goal is to make Airport Madness 3 similar in concept to the first 2 games, but a vast improvement. The free version will be the usual teaser, but the full version will be a full-screen game creating much more involvement with the airborne aircraft (i.e. assigning turns, holds, different runways).

At the moment, Airport Madness 3 will contain the following improvements over AM1 and AM2:

• Pilot/Controller voice
  
• A complexity setting (beginner, normal, advanced)
• Real-world rules of runway operation
• A much larger screen for the "full version".
  
• All-new airport layout
  
• Improved graphics
• Emergencies
• Airport vehicles, cars, boats, birds.
  
• Assignable runways
• Different types and speeds
• Special operations, such as training aircraft and balloons.

If you have any suggestions please email me.

Airport Madness 2 - Build 1.8

I am accepting suggestions for Build 1.8 of Airport Madness 2. The intent is to fix any bugs that may exist, and make minor changes that improve game play. If you have observed any glitches in the program, please email me. The issues that I intend to tackle include:

• Aircraft landing lights occasionally do not illuminate;
• Control panels occasionally double-up and overlap; and,
  
• Aircraft occasionally do not hold short of their departure runway.
  

Aside from fixing the minor glitches, I do not plan to add anything further to Airport Madness 2. If you have any suggested additions for the game, I will keep them in mind for Airport Madness 3 which will release at a future date.

Sky Madness Released

Sky Madness is now available, with both free and full versions to suit everyone's budget. I believe Airport Madness fans will really enjoy this. The screenshot is from the full version. Yes, the full version has tornadoes.

The full version also has bad weather, numerous objects that need to be avoided, plus a continuous-play feature, similar to that seen in Airport Madness 2. For just $6.99 it's a bargain.

I sincerely hope you enjoy my latest creation, Sky Madness. As always, I appreciate feedback, so don't hesitate to shoot me an email.

Sky Madness Update

Delays, delays. I had been secretly aiming for an early release of Sky Madness, but unfortunately I've eaten through my time cushion. My expected release date is now August 1.

I am currently working with a small beta testing team to iron out the bugs, in an effort to avoid posting a whole bunch of follow-up builds. I have found a great musician for the soundtrack, and am in the process of inserting the music, making sure to add a mute button this time.

This is going to be a terrific game. I hope that you will love it and decide to support my efforts by purchasing the full version.

Big Fat iPhone?

Some of you may have tried my latest flash game, Bathroom Simulator. Although the game is not a new concept, and certainly not my invention, I enjoyed creating my own version of how I thought the game should be, with my own graphics, sounds and personal rules of bathroom etiquette. Before releasing it as a free flash game, I actually developed the game as an iPhone application using xCode.

Unfortunately, I ran into a major issue when it came time to submit the game to iTunes Connect, the agency used to collect applications from developers like me. My digital certificate was either invalid, or appeared invalid. Digital what? That was my reaction, after investing 20 hours in the project, only to hit a barricade at the very end of the process.

Well, I was not alone. I googled the issue and found others who had a similar experience. Many of whom I spoke with had managed to resolve the issue, but not me. Being new to xCode and iPhone programming, this was extremely frustrating. Now I was investing even more hours trying to resolve an issue that still exists somewhere deep in the guts of my app.

At that very time, Airport Madness 2 was gaining traction. I became busy with adding features, answering emails and squashing bugs, and decided that AM2 was more worthy of my attention than the iPhone app. So I shelved it. One month later, somebody else beat me to it, and their iPhone application became the #1 freebie for over a week. Ouch.

The experience kind of turned me off of iPhone programming, and so I decided to go ahead and launch Bathroom Simulator anyway, as a free online flash game. It's done OK. Since then I've totally embraced Flash, Flex and all things Actionscript. My next game, Sky Madness comes out in a week, not as a continuation of Airport Madness, but more as a close relative of it. I also have two other flash games that I am working on, and have also promised everybody that there will be updated builds for Airport Madness 1 and Airport Madness 2 by the end of August.

I am planning to port these games over to the iPhone in the near future. As I code up these flash games, my Macbook sits lonely on a shelf in my den, beckoning me to flip the lid and fire up xCode. Even my Actionscript hero Keith Peters, who has taught me just about everything I know of Flash through his wonderful books, has moved on to iPhone development. Although I intend to make many more Flash games, it makes sense to put these games on more than one platform, if possible. Maybe I'll develop them for the Android as well.

Upcoming Game: Sky Madness

Airport Madness takes to the skies in my upcoming new game, Sky Madness. I know that I promised a screenshot over a week ago, but what can I say? There is always so much to do. The release date for this game is July 25, 2009. Have a look:



This game obeys my new law, "less realism, more fun". To be a successful game, the fun factor definitely has to be there. Aside from a small die-hard group of ATC simmers out there, the masses just aren't looking for uber-realistic ATC games, so I am trying to come up with ways to simplify and intensify the game experience here.

The idea is to climb or descend all aircraft to their correct flight level without hitting any mountains, blimps, birds, restricted airspace or other aircraft. From my initial beta testing, I can tell you that it is definitely not as easy as it looks. I had intended to have this game ready by now, but had to abandon an original control interface concept that involved UP and DOWN buttons. All that mouse-clicking really sucked away the fun, so I've gone with a click-and-drag concept to reassign flight levels to aircraft.

There will be a free version and a full one. The full version will offer more levels, a continuous-play option, no ads, and will sell for just $4.95. The code is still wet (so to speak) so if you have any suggestions, please email me. I really hope to make another successful game from this 2D sky concept.