There just needs to be a system in place, whether its through one-way doors, zoning etc., that doesn’t allow departing passengers into secure arrival areas, and doesn’t allow arriving passengers into secure departure areas (for reasons such as using a toilet or sitting on a bench). This reflects the vast majority of airports in the real world that us players would like to create in our own designs.
I think back to Roller Coaster Tycoon’s ‘no entry’ signage option and wonder whether something similar could be created. That successfully controlled the flow of people with a simple tick box.
I’d love for this to come with Alpha 35 as I’ve been very excited for the wealth of new content, and would be fitting for the Terminal update. Looking forward to the next development blog!
Have you fixed all the rating issues with the baggage yet?
To be honest though, I forgot about that contest because I get so many emails that I forgot that it was even a thing. Maybe we should also have a “focused” inbox in-game?
They might be needed to get passengers to go to baggage claim and passport control when arriving, so that they don’t go back into the waiting area and shops of the terminal from the gate. If the doors were open then it wouldn’t be realistic, as in most airports international arrivals lock in passengers and force them to go to passport control first before anything. My airport would have a walkway above the terminal for people arriving, and people need one way doors to block passengers from escaping and wandering off.
The way I see it is that most of the issues described here do not really relate to one-way doors per se
but instead of zone control. It’s more an issue of instructing passengers to walk within certain areas instead of blocking path requests with directional doors. Another issue here is that all examples discussed are perfect solutions, but as game developers we must also always think of the broken cases, when people build incorrectly and how the simulation engine will handle that in a sensible way while also instruction the player of the cause of the issue. It’s only us, the developers, who have insight into the code so it’s of course impossible for anyone outside so estimate the technical challenge of this feature but I’ll try to explain the core issue:
If a seat, toilet, or some other intractable item is placed in an area that is only accessible in one direction, which without a doubt is something that will happen if this feature were released to the public, a passenger has no sensible way of checking whether or not they can get back to their main point of interest (such as a check-in desk or boarding desk) which would cause them to deadlock and thus break the entire flight. This could be solved in two possible ways, none of which are feasible:
Verification using path finding, i.e. before a passenger would interact with a seat they would need to run an additional path request from that seat back to themselves. Since a one-way door could be placed anywhere, we would need to run this check every time a passenger would make any path request meaning that we’ll double the number of path requests in any game, which is simply not going to happen due to the extra performance load we put on the simulation engine. We need to be extremely careful with path requests and keep them to a minimum at all times, and this would be a luxury that we cannot afford.
An arrival zone and a departure zone. In ACEO we have two levels of zone depth, generic zoning which is either open (default) or secure. On top of that zone we layer a specific zone which is at this point either staff or international (only in Alpha 35). To make the above screen’s layout feasible, you would have to individually zone areas for arrival, departure and both which would not only be very tiresome and unintuitive but also, of course, add a lot of extra performance overhead.
Zones are a core part of the difficult work the path finding system needs to do and adding more layers will mean a very notable, additional performance cost.
With realistic international stands we could after your feedback make time to provide you with additional complex behavior, because the code would allow for a toggle that could switch it on and off. Path finding and zones however, are much, much, much more complex and something, for us to be able to maintain, that needs to be generic and the same for all. With the above technical challenges in mind versus the value the feature would bring, we cannot deem it feasible at this point. Things might change, adapt and improve before or during beta but that would be contingent on us or anyone else providing a good solution that is both intuitive and that works with the code base but so far we have not seen it. I hope this text sheds some light on what the challenge is.
This is a game in development under an early access flag, we make multiple changes during each sprint with both addition and removal of planner content as a result of how the current work progresses. Sometimes we discover that we can cram in additional content, sometime we discover that we need to move around or cancel features due to technical limitations.
Well, as I wrote above none of those solutions are unfortunately feasible and are thus not going to happen, either due to insane performance costs, unintuitive design or a combination of both.
I respect and appreciate the hard work it must take to create a game of this great standard, but if there isn’t going to be an ability to truly segregate departing and arriving passengers then am I even running an airport?
Thank you for your explanation, I know that if you don’t implement certain feature is not just because you don’t want, but because of the huge problem said feature could bring instead of solving anything. I also understand that you change a lot along the way, that last message was me being a little bit troll, I apologise for that.
Anyway, and I think that I speak for a lot of people here, passenger segregation is a deal breaker when playing the game. It put me away from the game because it was too chaotic (always talking from my perspective) with the passenger flow, and that was before the big birds, which I assume brought a lot extra headaches in that matter.
So, my question here is, is there any plans for the future to be able to separate arriving and departing passengers and have a nicer passenger flow?
How about the “gate exit” solution I suggested? Cause pax comming out of a gate necessarily pass through a checkpoint. This checkpoint only would be non-return and pax would only request a pathfinding after crossing the checkpoint.
This avoids double requests for path finding and also the zoning subdivision. Then it’s up to the player to build the arrivals corridor in a way the pax wont be able to access the departure area.
Add to the game the “2 story stand”, where pax enter and exit the jetbridge in 2 different floors. Then it’s up to the player to “isolate” the arrivals floor so pax won’t mix back again.
Issue solved without changing anything substantial in the game.
Maybe if that happens, you could just have an notification for an error that a passenger is stuck, and then the player would have to figure out to remove the door, and delay the flight. When one way doors would be unlocked, the game could also have a warning message that tells people about one-way doors and the possibility that passengers could get stuck, and a screenshot of what their suggested use is.
I think that if someone is mentally confused enough to put a one way door on a bathroom (assuming that their language is in Airport CEO) then maybe the game doesn’t need to take them into account? How does someone ever think that that makes sense!?
Is a good improvement, but this doesn’t solve the departing passengers in baggage claim area problem.
It is not possible to have the baggage claim area inside the secure zone so it would be a security exit after baggage claim? This can solve at least one problem.
I actually understand why such a though happens. We are always considering as “if I go and use one way doors” perspective but we don’t consider as “if (someone else who has 0 idea what he is doing) go and use one way doors” perspective.
A million $ question is: What would happen is player builds a one way door to bathroom entrance and there is no exit?
@Olof I have a suggestion for it. I call it “Flush the Problem”. Let’s say player made a bathroom with one way door and a PAX stuck in there. If pathfinding finds no way to exit the loop, he will “get flushed” out of game world.
His baggage will be deleted from game.
All his interactions will be deleted.
Number of passengers of that flight will be reduced by “1”.
And his body will vanish from bathroom. Like he never came in there, he never made check in, he never get out of public transport, he never be born in this artificial 2D world.
After all, it is player’s responsibility to find the problem of vanishing people.
The example of the one way door in a bathroom setting is not what the devs are the most concerned about as that is something that somebody can figure out for themselves. It’s more that if you want to build a bagage claim next to the arrival hall for example, use a one way door to let people get to that room, place seating and toilets in that room, that could cause PAX to actually choose for the seating in the room next door or use the toilets in that room, then these PAX are stuck. So not so obvious for the starting player or maybe even the average player to notice, but causes a lot of issues which the devs then should solve in code, better said the players demand that as they need to understand what is going on and how to solve it. As Olof already described a couple of times, they have thought this through very thoroughly and looked at all kind of different scenarios and have seen bug reports of past features that caused all kinds of unforeseen issues.
I think we can still have an open discussion around this apparently ‘hot topic’ and maybe can find a suitable solution that even could work for the devs, but we really have to stop stating that this is ‘a must have’, ‘a game blocker’, ‘makes the game unplayable’, etc. As the devs knows best what is and is not possible at the moment in the game based on code and what kind of ‘flood of bugs’ they can expect if they create a certain feature in this moment in time. Olof has been very kind to explain very clearly what their considerations are and have been so far and why they will not implement it now, but will keep it on their radar for a future release or during Beta.
As an example, even on one of the biggest airports in Europe called Schiphol the PAX flow is not separated by one way doors and the departure and arriving PAX are all walking on the same floor, so it’s definitely a must have in real life, so be creative and try to solve it with the tools we have at hand today
that tells people about one-way doors and the possibility that passengers could get stuck, and a screenshot of what their suggested use is.
enough to put a one way door on a bathroom (assuming that their language is in Airport CEO) then maybe the game doesn’t need to take them into account? How does someone ever think that that makes sense!?
