7.0 Update Preview

[Free2Play]

Hi!

About a year ago we’ve thought for a while about Airport City’s future. What could be a major new step for it going forward? What could we do to both please most of our current players and hopefully attract lots of new ones? Of all things, which one should we focus on?

It took a few months of pre-production to figure this one out. First art assets for this update went into production in May, 2018. By late August we had the game design documentation mostly done and some of the art, so our engineers started working on the update in September. It certainly took longer than expected for a variety of reasons: we never did such a big update before, it’s built atop existing game (and we supposedly will not break it for everyone with update’s release), and we did a major alteration of art assets midway through, because the whole thing didn’t look good enough when we’ve started to put it together piece by piece.

Anyway, we’re finally getting close to completing it. Right now we’re targeting late June or early July for a beta release, and August for a release for all players. Below are the in-game screenshots from the latest 7.0 test version with only UI being hidden.

Update 7.0 Highlights

• There’re now three areas in Airport City: the city on top, the airport in the middle, and tech area on the bottom. The city part remains the same: a sandbox to build a city of your dreams the way you like. Key airport buildings have moved to airport area and are now pre-built or there's a free space reserved for them at certain places so the airport operations can run pretty much like they are run in real airports. Tech area houses the rest of airport buildings, power plants, and other infrastucture buildings like oil refineries and flight catering facilities;
• All planes are now 3D planes, some of them got a major redesign;
• All new Terminals, Control Towers, and Runways, although some of them got to keep their designs;
• Planes will now use a bit of pathfinding to determine who comes and who waits in line, and it’s done in accordance with general rules of aircraft traffic in real airports; no hassle, though, after you start a flight your air traffic controllers will take care of everything for you, so there’s no chance of plane crash (Airport City is a casual simulator, and we want to keep it that way).

Gameplay Changes

• You can build Boarding Bridges to speed up loading of passengers for big planes;
• Terminals can now be expanded with Terminal Sections that speed up the servicing of planes by ground vehicles that are stationed within;
• Terminals can be further expanded with Parking Lots to increase maximum amount of passengers;
• We now have ground vehicles to service planes! If there’s no Terminal Section next to a Stand, those vehicles come from a Service Vehicle Park which takes some time;
• Hangars are no more (except the Reserve Hangars), all planes, both your planes and guest planes, now use the same Stands on the ‘first come, first served’ basis;
• Control Tower is now responsible for a max number of active planes (i.e. planes in use);
• Rebalance of the XP progression through levels: it will be more smooth in the mid game; the total amount of XP needed to reach level 80 remains the same;
• Rebalance of the reputation XP with new reputation levels; the amount of free gifts you can send daily will depend on your reputation; the max amount will be more than 20;
• 100 per item type limit will be enforced for everyone, as I’ve told you previously;
  
• One level of Runway per plane type, so there’re more levels of runways;
  
• By default, you need to tap a plane to refuel it, to load passengers, and to start a flight (three taps overall), like it was in the first years of Airport City; however, you can automate it by building a (cheap) Ground Control building, so you just tap a plane once to start a flight — like it works on live version now.

Other Changes

• UI Updates: main UI, neighbor visiting UI, neighbor visiting loading screen, and possibly some more;
• Updated terrain in all areas;
• Some nice looking tech: Terminals and Control Towers now reflect the clouds passing above, and planes have shader effects;
• Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones;
• One new level of Terminal and two new levels of Control Tower;
• The number of Runways is now maxed at two (a tech limitation), so if you have more than that, there’ll be an in-game compensation in coins for the runways you lose after the update; your two highest level runways are to stay;
• Special event planes will move from hangars to inventory until we update those events to be compatible with 7.0.

Of course, we’ll try to make the transition from 6.x to 7.0 as smooth as possible. You keep your fleet and all your airport buildings at their current levels whatever they are at the moment of update.

And... That's all for now! There’ll be detailed guides about everything coming later from @Ur-quan on our official Facebook page, but right now most team members are very busy with bringing this update to you, and the rest do some smaller ones with special events.

Cheers,
Ivan.

 

[Dave]

Ignoring the elephant in the room!

Thank you Free2Play , this looks like an amazing update and can see from the screenshots that an awful lot of work has gone into it! Well done to you and the team

 

[ArGi1981]

Sounds like you didn't exaggerate any of your v7-teasers.... Looking forward to the new version!

I'm sure this new version will be great for new(er) players, but I'm a bit worried how the transfer from the old version to the new will go. Looks like there's a lot of new (essential) buildings and some lost old buildings, but I trust you tested this part specifically extensively

 

[ItsRalphy]

Hi!

About a year ago we’ve thought for a while about Airport City’s future. What could be a major new step for it going forward? What could we do to both please most of our current players and hopefully attract lots of new ones? Of all things, which one should we focus on?

It took a few months of pre-production to figure this one out. First art assets for this update went into production in May, 2018. By late August we had the game design documentation mostly done and some of the art, so our engineers started working on the update in September. It certainly took longer than expected for a variety of reasons: we never did such a big update before, it’s built atop existing game (and we supposedly will not break it for everyone with update’s release), and we did a major alteration of art assets midway through, because the whole thing didn’t look good enough when we’ve started to put it together piece by piece.

Anyway, we’re finally getting close to completing it. Right now we’re targeting late June or early July for a beta release, and August for a release for all players. Below are the in-game screenshots from the latest 7.0 test version with only UI being hidden.

View attachment 20184

Update 7.0 Highlights

• There’re now three areas in Airport City: the city on top, the airport in the middle, and tech area on the bottom. The city part remains the same: a sandbox to build a city of your dreams the way you like. Key airport buildings have moved to airport area and are now pre-built or there's a free space reserved for them at certain places so the airport operations can run pretty much like they are run in real airports. Tech area houses the rest of airport buildings, power plants, and other infrastucture buildings like oil refineries and flight catering facilities;
• All planes are now 3D planes, some of them got a major redesign;
• All new Terminals, Control Towers, and Runways, although some of them got to keep their designs;
• Planes will now use a bit of pathfinding to determine who comes and who waits in line, and it’s done in accordance with general rules of aircraft traffic in real airports; no hassle, though, after you start a flight your air traffic controllers will take care of everything for you, so there’s no chance of plane crash (Airport City is a casual simulator, and we want to keep it that way).

Gameplay Changes

• You can build Boarding Bridges to speed up loading of passengers for big planes;
• Terminals can now be expanded with Terminal Sections that speed up the servicing of planes by ground vehicles that are stationed within;
• Terminals can be further expanded with Parking Lots to increase maximum amount of passengers;
• We now have ground vehicles to service planes! If there’s no Terminal Section next to a Stand, those vehicles come from a Service Vehicle Park which takes some time;
• Hangars are no more (except the Reserve Hangars), all planes, both your planes and guest planes, now use the same Stands on the ‘first come, first served’ basis;
• Control Tower is now responsible for a max number of active planes (i.e. planes in use);
• Rebalance of the XP progression through levels: it will be more smooth in the mid game; the total amount of XP needed to reach level 80 remains the same;
• Rebalance of the reputation XP with new reputation levels; the amount of free gifts you can send daily will depend on your reputation; the max amount will be more than 20;
• 100 per item type limit will be enforced for everyone, as I’ve told you previously;
  
• One level of Runway per plane type, so there’re more levels of runways;
  
• By default, you need to tap a plane to refuel it, to load passengers, and to start a flight (three taps overall), like it was in the first years of Airport City; however, you can automate it by building a (cheap) Ground Control building, so you just tap a plane once to start a flight — like it works on live version now.

Other Changes

• UI Updates: main UI, neighbor visiting UI, neighbor visiting loading screen, and possibly some more;
• Updated terrain in all areas;
• Some nice looking tech: Terminals and Control Towers now reflect the clouds passing above, and planes have shader effects;
• Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones;
• One new level of Terminal and two new levels of Control Tower;
• The number of Runways is now maxed at two (a tech limitation), so if you have more than that, there’ll be an in-game compensation in coins for the runways you lose after the update; your two highest level runways are to stay;
• Special event planes will move from hangars to inventory until we update those events to be compatible with 7.0.

View attachment 20185

Of course, we’ll try to make the transition from 6.x to 7.0 as smooth as possible. You keep your fleet and all your airport buildings at their current levels whatever they are at the moment of update.

And... That's all for now! There’ll be detailed guides about everything coming later from @Ur-quan on our official Facebook page, but right now most team members are very busy with bringing this update to you, and the rest do some smaller ones with special events.

Cheers,
Ivan.

Oh WOW - can't wait to see it in reality - looks amazing, and so many updates to bring it more like real life, fantastic.

 

[Kevin Mc]

100 limit - madness. Rest looks great but will probably become irrelevant to many who will feel so let down after years of spending and building.

 

[Dafsade]

Hi!

About a year ago we’ve thought for a while about Airport City’s future. What could be a major new step for it going forward? What could we do to both please most of our current players and hopefully attract lots of new ones? Of all things, which one should we focus on?

It took a few months of pre-production to figure this one out. First art assets for this update went into production in May, 2018. By late August we had the game design documentation mostly done and some of the art, so our engineers started working on the update in September. It certainly took longer than expected for a variety of reasons: we never did such a big update before, it’s built atop existing game (and we supposedly will not break it for everyone with update’s release), and we did a major alteration of art assets midway through, because the whole thing didn’t look good enough when we’ve started to put it together piece by piece.

Anyway, we’re finally getting close to completing it. Right now we’re targeting late June or early July for a beta release, and August for a release for all players. Below are the in-game screenshots from the latest 7.0 test version with only UI being hidden.

View attachment 20184

Update 7.0 Highlights

• There’re now three areas in Airport City: the city on top, the airport in the middle, and tech area on the bottom. The city part remains the same: a sandbox to build a city of your dreams the way you like. Key airport buildings have moved to airport area and are now pre-built or there's a free space reserved for them at certain places so the airport operations can run pretty much like they are run in real airports. Tech area houses the rest of airport buildings, power plants, and other infrastucture buildings like oil refineries and flight catering facilities;
• All planes are now 3D planes, some of them got a major redesign;
• All new Terminals, Control Towers, and Runways, although some of them got to keep their designs;
• Planes will now use a bit of pathfinding to determine who comes and who waits in line, and it’s done in accordance with general rules of aircraft traffic in real airports; no hassle, though, after you start a flight your air traffic controllers will take care of everything for you, so there’s no chance of plane crash (Airport City is a casual simulator, and we want to keep it that way).

Gameplay Changes

• You can build Boarding Bridges to speed up loading of passengers for big planes;
• Terminals can now be expanded with Terminal Sections that speed up the servicing of planes by ground vehicles that are stationed within;
• Terminals can be further expanded with Parking Lots to increase maximum amount of passengers;
• We now have ground vehicles to service planes! If there’s no Terminal Section next to a Stand, those vehicles come from a Service Vehicle Park which takes some time;
• Hangars are no more (except the Reserve Hangars), all planes, both your planes and guest planes, now use the same Stands on the ‘first come, first served’ basis;
• Control Tower is now responsible for a max number of active planes (i.e. planes in use);
• Rebalance of the XP progression through levels: it will be more smooth in the mid game; the total amount of XP needed to reach level 80 remains the same;
• Rebalance of the reputation XP with new reputation levels; the amount of free gifts you can send daily will depend on your reputation; the max amount will be more than 20;
• 100 per item type limit will be enforced for everyone, as I’ve told you previously;
  
• One level of Runway per plane type, so there’re more levels of runways;
  
• By default, you need to tap a plane to refuel it, to load passengers, and to start a flight (three taps overall), like it was in the first years of Airport City; however, you can automate it by building a (cheap) Ground Control building, so you just tap a plane once to start a flight — like it works on live version now.

Other Changes

• UI Updates: main UI, neighbor visiting UI, neighbor visiting loading screen, and possibly some more;
• Updated terrain in all areas;
• Some nice looking tech: Terminals and Control Towers now reflect the clouds passing above, and planes have shader effects;
• Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones;
• One new level of Terminal and two new levels of Control Tower;
• The number of Runways is now maxed at two (a tech limitation), so if you have more than that, there’ll be an in-game compensation in coins for the runways you lose after the update; your two highest level runways are to stay;
• Special event planes will move from hangars to inventory until we update those events to be compatible with 7.0.

View attachment 20185

Of course, we’ll try to make the transition from 6.x to 7.0 as smooth as possible. You keep your fleet and all your airport buildings at their current levels whatever they are at the moment of update.

And... That's all for now! There’ll be detailed guides about everything coming later from @Ur-quan on our official Facebook page, but right now most team members are very busy with bringing this update to you, and the rest do some smaller ones with special events.

Cheers,
Ivan.

Lot of work, so, well done ! but i am scared... I feel it will be an other game instead of an improved game !
It would have been, maybe, better if all players at level 80 were reset !

The good point is that it will (maybe) have a lot of new bugs, and we will be able to take benefit of them ah ah ! !

 

[Jim G]

Hi!

About a year ago we’ve thought for a while about Airport City’s future. What could be a major new step for it going forward? What could we do to both please most of our current players and hopefully attract lots of new ones? Of all things, which one should we focus on?

It took a few months of pre-production to figure this one out. First art assets for this update went into production in May, 2018. By late August we had the game design documentation mostly done and some of the art, so our engineers started working on the update in September. It certainly took longer than expected for a variety of reasons: we never did such a big update before, it’s built atop existing game (and we supposedly will not break it for everyone with update’s release), and we did a major alteration of art assets midway through, because the whole thing didn’t look good enough when we’ve started to put it together piece by piece.

Anyway, we’re finally getting close to completing it. Right now we’re targeting late June or early July for a beta release, and August for a release for all players. Below are the in-game screenshots from the latest 7.0 test version with only UI being hidden.

View attachment 20184

Update 7.0 Highlights

• There’re now three areas in Airport City: the city on top, the airport in the middle, and tech area on the bottom. The city part remains the same: a sandbox to build a city of your dreams the way you like. Key airport buildings have moved to airport area and are now pre-built or there's a free space reserved for them at certain places so the airport operations can run pretty much like they are run in real airports. Tech area houses the rest of airport buildings, power plants, and other infrastucture buildings like oil refineries and flight catering facilities;
• All planes are now 3D planes, some of them got a major redesign;
• All new Terminals, Control Towers, and Runways, although some of them got to keep their designs;
• Planes will now use a bit of pathfinding to determine who comes and who waits in line, and it’s done in accordance with general rules of aircraft traffic in real airports; no hassle, though, after you start a flight your air traffic controllers will take care of everything for you, so there’s no chance of plane crash (Airport City is a casual simulator, and we want to keep it that way).

Gameplay Changes

• You can build Boarding Bridges to speed up loading of passengers for big planes;
• Terminals can now be expanded with Terminal Sections that speed up the servicing of planes by ground vehicles that are stationed within;
• Terminals can be further expanded with Parking Lots to increase maximum amount of passengers;
• We now have ground vehicles to service planes! If there’s no Terminal Section next to a Stand, those vehicles come from a Service Vehicle Park which takes some time;
• Hangars are no more (except the Reserve Hangars), all planes, both your planes and guest planes, now use the same Stands on the ‘first come, first served’ basis;
• Control Tower is now responsible for a max number of active planes (i.e. planes in use);
• Rebalance of the XP progression through levels: it will be more smooth in the mid game; the total amount of XP needed to reach level 80 remains the same;
• Rebalance of the reputation XP with new reputation levels; the amount of free gifts you can send daily will depend on your reputation; the max amount will be more than 20;
• 100 per item type limit will be enforced for everyone, as I’ve told you previously;
  
• One level of Runway per plane type, so there’re more levels of runways;
  
• By default, you need to tap a plane to refuel it, to load passengers, and to start a flight (three taps overall), like it was in the first years of Airport City; however, you can automate it by building a (cheap) Ground Control building, so you just tap a plane once to start a flight — like it works on live version now.

Other Changes

• UI Updates: main UI, neighbor visiting UI, neighbor visiting loading screen, and possibly some more;
• Updated terrain in all areas;
• Some nice looking tech: Terminals and Control Towers now reflect the clouds passing above, and planes have shader effects;
• Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones;
• One new level of Terminal and two new levels of Control Tower;
• The number of Runways is now maxed at two (a tech limitation), so if you have more than that, there’ll be an in-game compensation in coins for the runways you lose after the update; your two highest level runways are to stay;
• Special event planes will move from hangars to inventory until we update those events to be compatible with 7.0.

View attachment 20185

Of course, we’ll try to make the transition from 6.x to 7.0 as smooth as possible. You keep your fleet and all your airport buildings at their current levels whatever they are at the moment of update.

And... That's all for now! There’ll be detailed guides about everything coming later from @Ur-quan on our official Facebook page, but right now most team members are very busy with bringing this update to you, and the rest do some smaller ones with special events.

Cheers,
Ivan.

Am not sure how to feel about the update. At some point I feel very excited and proud about the new features but the 100 limit kinds of ruins it for me.
Anyway, we' ll see how it goes

 

[Jim G]

Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones

Does this mean we will have new destinations?

 

[Free2Play]

Does this mean we will have new destinations?

Destinations being re-imagined are the next major thing after we're done with 7.0, but that thing is still many months away.

 

[RicoB92]

Honestly, I think it looks great! But that 100 limit? No, not happy about it. I think 1.000 should have been much better for everyone. But well, need to accept it, or quit the game. That depends on the gameplay of this update.

 

[Liam Dobczinski]

Hi!

About a year ago we’ve thought for a while about Airport City’s future. What could be a major new step for it going forward? What could we do to both please most of our current players and hopefully attract lots of new ones? Of all things, which one should we focus on?

It took a few months of pre-production to figure this one out. First art assets for this update went into production in May, 2018. By late August we had the game design documentation mostly done and some of the art, so our engineers started working on the update in September. It certainly took longer than expected for a variety of reasons: we never did such a big update before, it’s built atop existing game (and we supposedly will not break it for everyone with update’s release), and we did a major alteration of art assets midway through, because the whole thing didn’t look good enough when we’ve started to put it together piece by piece.

Anyway, we’re finally getting close to completing it. Right now we’re targeting late June or early July for a beta release, and August for a release for all players. Below are the in-game screenshots from the latest 7.0 test version with only UI being hidden.

View attachment 20184

Update 7.0 Highlights

• There’re now three areas in Airport City: the city on top, the airport in the middle, and tech area on the bottom. The city part remains the same: a sandbox to build a city of your dreams the way you like. Key airport buildings have moved to airport area and are now pre-built or there's a free space reserved for them at certain places so the airport operations can run pretty much like they are run in real airports. Tech area houses the rest of airport buildings, power plants, and other infrastucture buildings like oil refineries and flight catering facilities;
• All planes are now 3D planes, some of them got a major redesign;
• All new Terminals, Control Towers, and Runways, although some of them got to keep their designs;
• Planes will now use a bit of pathfinding to determine who comes and who waits in line, and it’s done in accordance with general rules of aircraft traffic in real airports; no hassle, though, after you start a flight your air traffic controllers will take care of everything for you, so there’s no chance of plane crash (Airport City is a casual simulator, and we want to keep it that way).

Gameplay Changes

• You can build Boarding Bridges to speed up loading of passengers for big planes;
• Terminals can now be expanded with Terminal Sections that speed up the servicing of planes by ground vehicles that are stationed within;
• Terminals can be further expanded with Parking Lots to increase maximum amount of passengers;
• We now have ground vehicles to service planes! If there’s no Terminal Section next to a Stand, those vehicles come from a Service Vehicle Park which takes some time;
• Hangars are no more (except the Reserve Hangars), all planes, both your planes and guest planes, now use the same Stands on the ‘first come, first served’ basis;
• Control Tower is now responsible for a max number of active planes (i.e. planes in use);
• Rebalance of the XP progression through levels: it will be more smooth in the mid game; the total amount of XP needed to reach level 80 remains the same;
• Rebalance of the reputation XP with new reputation levels; the amount of free gifts you can send daily will depend on your reputation; the max amount will be more than 20;
• 100 per item type limit will be enforced for everyone, as I’ve told you previously;
  
• One level of Runway per plane type, so there’re more levels of runways;
  
• By default, you need to tap a plane to refuel it, to load passengers, and to start a flight (three taps overall), like it was in the first years of Airport City; however, you can automate it by building a (cheap) Ground Control building, so you just tap a plane once to start a flight — like it works on live version now.

Other Changes

• UI Updates: main UI, neighbor visiting UI, neighbor visiting loading screen, and possibly some more;
• Updated terrain in all areas;
• Some nice looking tech: Terminals and Control Towers now reflect the clouds passing above, and planes have shader effects;
• Some of the older planes got new names in line with newer ones;
• One new level of Terminal and two new levels of Control Tower;
• The number of Runways is now maxed at two (a tech limitation), so if you have more than that, there’ll be an in-game compensation in coins for the runways you lose after the update; your two highest level runways are to stay;
• Special event planes will move from hangars to inventory until we update those events to be compatible with 7.0.

View attachment 20185

Of course, we’ll try to make the transition from 6.x to 7.0 as smooth as possible. You keep your fleet and all your airport buildings at their current levels whatever they are at the moment of update.

And... That's all for now! There’ll be detailed guides about everything coming later from @Ur-quan on our official Facebook page, but right now most team members are very busy with bringing this update to you, and the rest do some smaller ones with special events.

Cheers,
Ivan.

They will force us to update?
Or we can still play with old version?

 

[Jay J]

Wow. Breathtaking.
Looking forward to the release of this update. Except the 100 limit.
Thank you for this preview, Ivan.

 

[Airport city cheat]

@ free to play, please don’t forget about Detroit, Bologna, Coventry & Milan

 

[Gemini]

Nice,

Seems very awesome...

I wonder how the city and the tech part will look like after...
just hope the building to automate the two last tap to launch planes will not be too expansive (hope no green to activate it).

how will you handle the airport lands square parts during migration ?
as no more hangars or runways on it, there will be plenty of available room if you don't reduce the owned land here. Or will you have bigger tech buildings... hum

 

[Free2Play]

They will force us to update?
Or we can still play with old version?

As any game with many online features we can only support the latest version both for compatibility and security reasons.

 

[zoutron]

Yeah, I'm interested in how land migration will work too.

 

[Free2Play]

Nice,

Seems very awesome...

I wonder how the city and the tech part will look like after...
just hope the building to automate the two last tap to launch planes will not be too expansive (hope no green to activate it).

how will you handle the airport lands square parts during migration ?
as no more hangars or runways on it, there will be plenty of available room if you don't reduce the owned land here. Or will you have bigger tech buildings... hum

We're not reducing the owned land in the tech area, so yeah, there will be plenty of available room after the terminal, runways, and hangars/stands are moved.

 

[Free2Play]

Lot of work, so, well done ! but i am scared... I feel it will be an other game instead of an improved game !
It would have been, maybe, better if all players at level 80 were reset !

The good point is that it will (maybe) have a lot of new bugs, and we will be able to take benefit of them ah ah ! !

Great idea! Let's reset all level 80 players that aren't happy about the inventory limit! Maybe then it will be something they like.

I'm kidding, of course. Nobody's going to reset anyone, making that kind of profile migration was one of the hardest parts, but it works fine now. And there'll be a beta release to fix the remaining issues.

After all, if someone wants to start from scratch, there're lots of ways of doing it, all players here with 'support' accounts can second that.

 

[andy8758]

This update looks less like an update and more like a new version I.e. Airport City 2020

I like the idea of the revision, and it will undoubtedly be a different game to play. I believe this forum could be a very different group of players by the end of this year. Not sure how many of us will survive the changes.

 

[RicoB92]

This update looks less like an update and more like a new version I.e. Airport City 2020

I like the idea of the revision, and it will undoubtedly be a different game to play. I believe this forum could be a very different group of players by the end of this year. Not sure how many of us will survive the changes.

I’m sure much will leave. To speak for my own, I will surely keep playing this game, I love to do it on office when it’s very busy and I need something to do when it’s working too much in my head. But if possible, I will not pay any €€ anymore with this limit.