Air Lane

Community Forums/Showcase/Air Lane

zambani(Posted 2011) [#1]
Hi everyone. Here is our latest game Air Lane. It’s a casual Air Traffic Controller sim much like Flight Control or Air Control.
Air Lane however is different in many ways. Besides landing aircraft, there are other things such as migrating birds or Head of state visits that you must also deal with. The cool thing about the Head of State visit is that the national anthem is played along with the flag when that aircraft comes in.
Here are some screenshot of the current state of the game.


Last edited 2011


MCP(Posted 2011) [#2]
This looks very promising. I love the graphical style.
Just one small critism though... in the middle screen shot the fields look distorted like they're being viewed through a fisheye lense with an airport plonked on top. The tractor lanes through the crops should all be the same width (because of the tractor) but are not because of the distortion mentioned above.

All in all though. It looks very good :)


zambani(Posted 2011) [#3]
@MCP Thanks and good point.This happend because I started with a square and warped the fields into shape. I'll see how I can fix that.

Thanks again.


InvisibleKid(Posted 2011) [#4]
very cool.

for quite awhile i thought about attempting to make a more updated/upbeat version/veriation of an old c64 game i use to love playing as a kid Kennedy Approach

but i could never decide on a graphical style or exactly how i wanted to create the gameplay. once my computer crashed and i lost a lot of the most recent versions of things i was working on i haven't been able to build up the passion to get fully back into programming.

even though i may eventually try to bring my idea to frutation one day, i'll deffinately be keeping an eye on this with interest..


zambani(Posted 2011) [#5]
First ever video of Air Lane beta is now available on the tube
http://youtu.be/GHnclS3EMqM

Some work still needs to be done with the filght path but we're almost there.


Kittomer(Posted 2011) [#6]
Hah, that looks like it would be fun to play in work breaks.


MCP(Posted 2011) [#7]
Great control system. I don't think I've seen anything else quite like it. It'll be interesting to see how it plays on Android.
Good work so far :)


zambani(Posted 2011) [#8]
@MCP It's ok on small phones like the Samsung Intercept but it really shines on phones with screens ~800x480 like the Droid X.

I may have to include options to disable the "Speed Beads" because it's hard to touch the correct one on smaller phones.


zambani(Posted 2011) [#9]
Air Lane beta demo is now available for Windows and Mac.
Keep in mind this is not the final product(but close).

Have fun
Air Lane - Windows
Air Lane - Mac

Last edited 2011


Taron(Posted 2011) [#10]
surprisingly interesting to play, actually. I mean, I find it surprising, but it really is fun and gives a good idea for why this is a heart-attack nurturing occupation. And you sound design makes it even more dangerous. I would recommend adding some friendly background noises to it. Whether it is gentle chatter in the background or other instruments or wind or weather...this sort of stuff.

Great, though, congrats and lots of success to you!


mkg(Posted 2011) [#11]
Impressive looking game! Must try the demo when I'm not on this ancient laptop. Is this Max? What tools have you used?


zambani(Posted 2011) [#12]
@Taron
Thanks-I'm thinking about adding wind sound to the background. Because I'm also deploying on mobile, I'm trying to keep the file size as small as possible.

@mkg
The Windows and Mac version is written in Blitzmax using BLide and the Android version is in Java using Eclipse..


Taron(Posted 2011) [#13]
You know...uhm...you could add a simply tiny realtime synth into it, which could take over a great deal of the sounds, if not all of them. That way you'd have a minimal file size. I've just written one in blitzmax and am in the process of making a sequencer and instrument creation gui. I already have a pattern editor and load/save hooked up and jingles of some complexity can have as little as 1.5kb, haha. You get highest quality 44.1khz audio, which would otherwise take up many Mb instead. Not sure how it is with threads on a mobile device (lol), but once the playback routine is in a thread it's completely out of the way. some sounds wouldn't use up any performance eitherway, but a full on tune with "unlimited" polyphony can find its limits eventually, haha. On my machine it started to choke at 153 sounds at the same time.

Anyway...just a thought.