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We've received a number of requests from people asking, "Can you let me know when Airport Madness 3 is out?", or "Please email me when the next version of the air traffic control simulation becomes available.". So we have started a newsletter, something we should have done a year ago. It won't be spammy, just a friendly email letting you know anytime we have something new out, be it a new game, or bug fix for an existing application.

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Everybody Loves PayPal

Recently we have made several changes to our website. Repeat-visitors may have noticed that the graphics have been updated, but under the hood there have been even greater changes. PayPal has always been a decent eCommerce solution. They are very safe, affordable and reliable.

However, we have never liked having our customers whisked away to some far off mysterious payment page. So about a month ago we decided to change eCommerce services. With all due respect to PayPal, we didn't want our customers feeling like they were buying a pair of used ski bindings on eBay. We wanted something that appeared more professional. Something that would integrate directly into our website, and give customers that secure feeling, "Hey, this seems like a legitimate website to buy from".

The results were a disaster. Overnight our sales dropped drastically. Was this a post-Christmas slump, or a problem with our new service? We gave it a fair trial of two weeks before making the switch back to PayPal. All is normal again.

With all of the online fraud we have to deal with today, buyers are reluctant to trust small, obscure websites. So unless you are somebody big like amazon.com, you should use an eCommerce solution that is seriously brand-name, like PayPal.

Coffee with Radar

This may be a little off-topic from my air traffic control simulations, but a comedy break is always a good thing. This is a brilliant Rick Moranis moment from the movie, "Space Balls". There is nothing like a good cup of coffee while watching radar!

Realism in Air Traffic Control Simulations

One thing that I have come to realize after building more than five air traffic control simulations: You cannot simulate the real thing on a 19" screen. There, I said it. My air traffic control simulation weighs in at an impressive 997x738 pixels, which is as large as I can make it while still serving the lowest common denominator. 20% of my customers are still running on a screen resolution of 1024x768, which makes it a tight fit. Any larger, and you wind up with the dreaded scroll bars.

It amazes me how developers of similar ATC simulations insist on giving you a 'radar scope', which in my opinion wastes valuable screen real estate. I wouldn't dare waste screen space on a pretty radar dashboard with all of the switches and dials for brightness and contrast, not to mention the old-fashioned round radar scope. I'm pretty sure that's only in the movies. I highly doubt John Cusack would be expected to push tin on a screen the size and shape of a small pizza.

A typical computer screen is simply not big enough to display an 80 mile-wide sector. With such an enormous range, you can't vector airplanes. The details are too darn small. Since I can't change your monitor into a 35-inch monstrosity, my simulation zooms you in on the action with its' relatively small sector. It is only 40 nautical miles from edge-to-edge. Things happen pretty fast in a small sector like this one, and there is very little wiggle room when you get backed into a corner.

One more brag point before I finish: This simulation obeys the laws of air density. You must understand that in the real world (and in this simulation) a pilot's airspeed under-reads at higher altitudes. So if a you assign a pilot at 10,000 feet a speed of 210 knots, you will observe a groundspeed of about 250 knots. At sea level, there is no error. It's a simple concept, but it does require some getting used to. In my opinion, it's not a realistic simulation without this principle.

Air Traffic Control Radar Simulation

I have received a number of emails lately, regarding my air traffic control radar simulation. Some of these emails are from real-world air traffic controllers who would like to see even more advanced features, such as auto-overs and amended missed approaches. Others are from buyers who are struggling just to get a handle on the simulation. One thing that I have tried to be upfront about is that this is not a game. It's a sim. There is no 'score', there is no dramatic music and there are no 'levels'. This air traffic control simulation was designed to be as real as possible, right down to the pilot voices that you hear.

I am encouraging users to first try my radar game, called Air Traffic Controller. Air Traffic Controller is basically a light version of the sim, and just about anyone should be able to grasp the concepts pretty quickly. This sim is a natural next-step, and that is why I am selling both of these apps together as a combo.

I have put together a 20-minute video demonstration of the ATC simulator in action. It was originally intended to be a tutorial video, but with all of the action and pilot voices, the video became rather busy once I laid my voice down over top of it all. So the video is simply 20 minutes of me clicking away at my keyboard, doing my best to bring heavies down safely at Orange Island International, a fictitious airport located 50 nautical miles south of Maui, Hawaii. The adjacent control sectors are appropriately named after obscure Hawaiian locations, such as Miko sector to the south, and Kapaa sector to the east.

Be sure to maximize this video for best resolution!

You may have wondered about the tiny price tag of $5.95. This application offers just one sector. We plan to offer a 'full version' of this application next year, with 4 different sectors and a variety of additional features, and should sell for about $30.

Airport Madness 3

I have been busy coding my next contraption, Airport Madness 3, which is well underway. I sincerely hope to launch Airport Madness 3 by April, but I am hesitant to promise an exact release date. It then becomes a promise that I am either forced to achieve, or likely to miss.

This next version of the Airport Madness series will hopefully be a huge leap in the right direction. I have listened carefully to everyone's suggestions, and shall try to implement most of them. The big feature that AM3 brings to the table is airborne conflicts. In AM2 you had to watch the runways very carefully. Now you must also learn to watch the sky for conflicts.

When it comes to my Air Traffic Control games, I have more than one audience. Most of my customers and followers are not pilots or air traffic controllers, and do not demand anything too heavy from me. Give us more levels. Fine. Give us pilot voices. Fine. However, there is a smaller group of followers who are die-hards. I don't know who they are, or what they do for a living. Quite possibly they are real controllers, or perhaps just very smart individuals, but they really want me to hike things up a notch or two. Like, give us real-world wake turbulence separation requirements. Give us runway cross-overs. How about an ASDE surface detection display and low-visibility operations? Yikes.

Much of this is do-able. However, it must be kept fun. If I make things too realistic, I'm going to scare off those who play my games to fill their coffee break, and don't have time to complete 6 months of ATC training in order to play Airport Madness 3.

Christmas Game: Santa's Landing

Back in September I came up with an idea for a Christmas game that involved driving Santa's sleigh and reindeer through the snowy Christmas Eve skies. At the time it seemed too early to be thinking about Christmas already, but games do require time to assemble.

It is now November 28 and in my opinion, rather late to be launching. Free games like mine only thrive if they can virally spread themselves across the internet to the many thousands of game portals. This takes time, and likely won't happen by December 25. I guess there's always next year.

This idea originated from my desire to do something with "inverse kinematics", the motion of connected objects and how they affect one another, something I learned from a super book by Keith Peters called, "Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move". I initially wanted to try this with a train game, which I still hope to do. The connection of the reindeer to each other and ultimately Santa's sleigh offered a perfect opportunity to apply these phyics to something real. Well, sort of real.

I am always surprised at the amount of code that goes into these projects, and the number of bugs I wind up having to hunt down and fix. What originally looked like a simple weekend project became literally thousands of lines of code. Add in the quest for decent music and graphics, and you wind up with a two-month ordeal.

I don't really know how to rate this game. It likely resides somewhere between "kinda fun" and "pretty damn stupid". I hope that you like it. Your job is to be Santa, riding his sleigh through the snowy skies of Christmas Eve. Control is very, very basic. The up key takes you up, and the down key takes you down. The control point being the lead reindeer, with the rest of the pack obediently following in chain. You must land on as many roofs as you can, while ensuring that the reindeer get plenty of food.

In my world, reindeer eat candy canes. It seemed to me like the most appropriate reindeer food for a Christmas game. After all, how much fun would a Christmas game be if the reindeer were stuck eating lichens and vascular plants? Candy canes rain down from the sky and you must gobble them up often enough to prevent reindeer starvation, which could cost you a life if you are not careful. Each successive level offers something new, such as terrain, obstacles, heavier snow, more rapid energy depletion, and smaller roofs.

Like most of my games, this one has ties to aviation. It was originally to be somewhat like a flight simulator, requiring speed control and a smooth round-out to touchdown. Unfortunately my crack beta team hated it, and so I removed the realistic properties of flight and made it a simple "point it at the roof and land". I sincerely hope you approve of this game, and as usual, feedback is always greatly appreciated.

PLAY IT NOW