I am popping these design documents out faster then i can populate them. Bare with me.

Game Mechanics

This is, very simply, an awesome idea. I had such a game for my Tandy 1000. :)

The first thing to do, in my opinion, would to be to create airplanes, along with their stats, and use those to determine what constitutes a crash.

— hartnell - 11 March 2009

I like what you are saying! Mostly because i am not sure how it fits with what i have in my head, which of course is great because that means we're developing the idea :D

What exactly do you mean by stats? What occurred to me when you mentioned stats was how high they can fly (fly around or over the mountains), and how fast they fly, and how much fuel they have left when they enter your airport's air space (i.e. how fast you have to get them to the ground before they run out).

How do you see this game being played?

I am in the process of using my "artistic skills" to make some concept art and story board a few minutes/seconds of game play.

— u9 - 15 March 2009

That's exactly what I meant by stats. So we have :

• Max Height
• Max Speed
• Fuel

My additions :

• Size or, Crash Space, which is a 3D area that indicates whether two planes actually run into each other.

GamePlay

I originally imagined it being played like my old Tandy 1000 game, it looked like a vector display where airplanes were represented like this :

* [x531] - h:1000ft, sp:350mph, dir:s/w

To control the planes, you'd type in the name of the plane and the change to make :

Input : x531 h to 1500ft

From the recent concept art, it looks like a click fest. :) Kind of a one-unit at a time RTS.

— hartnell - 15 March 2009

That actually sounds like a cool game. The game is not a click fest, but rather organizing the paths of the planes by drawing it with the mouse or stylus.

— u9 - 15 March 2009

Setting the Altitude

As the game is intended for stylus as well as mouse, a problem comes from laying out the path and setting the planes altitude. Possible solutions to this:

Click and draw from the plane to lay out its new path. This works both with a stylus and left mouse button.

To set the altitude of the path, here are some suggestions:

• (stylus) Double tap on a piece of the path just laid out and drag up/down to set the altitude of that segment of the path.
  • instead of double tap, a button qualifier can be used for altitude adjustment. (although typically mode based input is considered bad)
• (mouse) right click on a piece of path or use the scroll wheel to set the altitude of a segment of the path.

— u9 15 Mar 2009

Features and surprises:

hartnell: […] even fighter jets and just to throw em off, a 1 in 1000 games ufo that acutally wants to land
Planes crash on runway and player has to manage everything while runway being cleaned

u9: Santaclaus comes by… don't crash into him

hartnell: he primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic

pilot voices: "Er, traffic control, we can see right up the butthole of the plane flying in front of us… what's going on?" … "Oh my GOD we just missed an aircraft to our starboard. What are you doing down there?"

clouds and reduced visibility

jar the player every now and then with emergency ALARMS and other surprises

There are three types of air traffic: private, military, and commerical

shawn_hartnell: so… one set up would be to move the military plane out of even sight range of the other planes. you know, super secret. comrade

shawn_hartnell: voice "ATC, we have a plane about to buy the farm. We got mis-siles pointed right at 'er. You gunna tell it to back off?"

u9: maybe a 9/11 scenario where you have to dispatch military planes to intercept incoming bogies?

restricted airspace (same purpose as mountains)

u9: flocks of birds as a hazard to avoid. Bad thunderstorms, tornadoes

u9: visibility can decrease depending on weather / time of day, and the radar could just be an overlay somehow. Does not see behind mountains. At night you just see the blinks on top of the planes and at the tips of the wings.

hartnell: Some planes ignore you and therefore are a hazard to others

shawn_hartnell: update the positions of the planes in a circle pattern classic of radars

u9: Here is an interesting idea. The more money you make, you could improve your airport. Buy more radars, radars get damaged in weather storms, build runways as the airport grows..

hartnell: fuel meter on the planes as lifebar

Planes sometimes get into emergency situations, sick passenger, failed engines, low fuel, etc. and need to land immediately

failed engines at random, and as a result of crashing into birds. Need to glide to runway and land. Player cannot adjust altitude for plane as it will slowly decrease automatically. Only thing to do is guide to runway.

hartnell: Manufacturer as part of aircraft stats to attach with failure rates of different parts. Also keep country as part of stats, i.e. some countries bring more sick passengers then others.

u9: Hijacked planes… but how to get that into the mechanics… hartnell: Just make sure you tie up the players attention somehow.

u9: private traffic could be uncontrollable, rouges. hartnell: some of them could use a same type of plane as smaller commercial so the player has to pay attention to distingusih them or otherwise click click click what what's wrong?

if i didn't manage to write it down: military top-secret-keep-all-commercial-traffic-at-distance assignments.

Level progression

Techniques to learn as you progress:

• a holding pattern while waiting for timeslot on the runway, set planes to go in circle.
• avoiding mountains by watching keeping an eye on the altitude lines on the map
• using the radar in bad weather to guide the planes
• Managing the hangar space and mixing take-off with landings to optimize runway use
• etc..