So I Lied…
I have not spent the last 4 months (just) re-writing the turnaround code. I started doing that, got bored, and decided to add new aircraft types. Then I rewrote the turnaround code. I’ve pretty much forgotten what this update was supposed to be about. Adding new planes was hard.
To be clear, these are not mere re-skins. All of the relevant data is changed to reflect a new aircraft type just like if the plane was added to vanilla.
Current type list
Some of these contain sub-types
- A318
- A319neo
- A320neo
- A321new
- 737-700
- 737MAX7
- 737MAX8
- 727-200
- 757-300
- Challenger 650
- CRJ900
- CRJ1000
- E290
- E295
- Q100/200
How I feel every time a *new* plane lands in my test save
My Baby
I’ve worked on the visuals for the 727 featured in this post for over 3 months now. She’s my first project at this level of detail. I’m very happy with the finished product and also know that I could easily spend another 4 months cleaning up after my own inexperience.
There will be a change log below and in the main post. I anticipate that folks will be eager to try out the new aircraft types. Two very important things to know:
- You must subscribe to and enable ACEO Tweaks Aircraft Pack to actually load any new types
- Until airline mods implement them, the new types will only spawn via the debug menu (F-10). It will take time for new types to be integrated into a large number of mods.
Another good-to-know: The debug menu spawns “test flights” with incomplete information compared to a “real” commercial flight. If you’re not used to this it may seem like some elements are bugged. Feel free to report visual bugs encountered with the pack, but know that a given type won’t be truly polished until an airline mod is trying to release aircraft with it.
A huge shoutout to @dawed : he’s been the long-time curator of the community MDKs, and has already put a lot of work into co-curating the aircraft pack and the MDKs associated with the new types.
Other Important Changes in 2.3:
- Airlines have definable properties in the airline.json file now. These are documented here.
- Turnaround service success detection has been reworked. Services are considered successful unless otherwise specified. This means I have to play whack-a-mole to make sure I trigger a “failure” in every fail condition for every service. This isn’t ideal, but at least means that when I don’t to catch something the flight still leaves.
- Custom turnaround times are more uniform (from the airlines) and more tied to aircraft size than before. Player input is also taken and saved differently. Should be more stable and feel a little crisper.
- At least one cause of the “I subscribed to a bunch of workshop mods and now some of them don’t load correctly” bug has been identified and corrected.
- Version number now contains the actual build number. This makes sure versions are unique and sequential. Mostly helpful in the pre-release stage.
Changelog
- Added system for importing fully-new aircrafts.
- Added data structure for new aircraft including placeholders for future functionality.
- (New aircraft are available via separate workshop mod)
- Added an as-of-yet unused system for dynamically rescaling aircraft.
- Vanilla aircraft are not all to a uniform scale; this system can correct this
- Added data structure for airline behavior modifications.
- Functionality extends the existing airline.json file
- Tag airlines as cargo-only
- Tag airlines to operate only in home country(s)
- Assign multiple home countries
- Assign forbidden countries
- Assign a differnt fleet of aircraft based on tweaks install status (usefull for newly added aircraft)
- (InDevelopment: assign HUB IATA codes and max ranges from hubs, other hub rules)
- Added data structure to save/load some additional data per each commercial flight.
- Save/load utility is credit to humoresque
- Replaced the flight types system with a more robust system.
- (in the future may be user/modder-definable in json)
- Reworked turnaround service progress tracking to take advantage of the ability to save and load data.
- Hopefully fixed some bugs with stuck turnarounds and emergency flight turnarounds
- Aircraft on small stands should not request services that are unavailable to them
- Reworked turnaround time user-interaction and airline interaction.
- Implements a new aircraft size rule set that will see increasing use in future
- Consisitent 5-minute jumps on mouse scroll
- Minimum separation setting is respected
- Subscribing to more than 50 workshop mods no longer causes mods beyond the 50 oldest to fail to load.
- Patch to ensure cargo aircraft remain on stand now applies only to cargo aircraft.
- Depreciated some old settings.
- Re-factored and reorganized much of the code base.
Manual Download Beta Version 2.3.0.157
One Last Thing
I am currently living off savings, looking for a job as an engineer. I am unemployed, and have been for longer than expected. This project means a lot to me. If it means something to you, this moment is one in which I would be especially grateful for a little support. Buy me a coffee?