Happy New Year! Its been a great one with lots of exciting updates to most of our games. Lots of new Trains, 3D Cabs & new Scenes for Train Sim. New Airplanes and Scenes for Flight Sim new games; Paint The World, Bus Sim and Flip That Property and much more.
2016 should be even better with even more new games and exciting updates!
Antonov An-22 Now Available in Flight Sim for Android. This brings the total airplanes in Flight Sim to 14. I am still aiming for a minimum of 20 airplanes in the short term, and I am adding about 1 per month. As always Flight Sim does not have any in-app purchasing and all the airplanes are available for free.
iOS update coming soon.
Everyone onboard, Train Sim has been updated once again. This time I added a new Southern England inspired route. Old Churches, Ruined Castles, Windmills, Victorian Architecture, we have got them all. Now available for Android, iOS & Windows Store coming soon.
This is still early but I wanted to share with you my progress on making a new scene for Train Sim that is Britain/Europe themed. Expect to see lots of old buildings, wind mills, castles and bridges. I think I am making good progress but its a long track so it will be weeks before I am ready for release. I want to make sure there are lots of interesting things to see and that performance is good on all devices. Stay Tuned!
Flip That Property allows you to become a Realestate Tycoon. Buy Properties & sell them at a profit as the market prices fluctuate. Get rich in a House Flipping Career mode, or just see how far you get go in a never ending simulation mode.
Flip that Property is a perfect mix of action & simulation game play that will leave you wanting more. House Flipping has never been this much fun!
Flight Sim 2.1.5 for Android was updated today. This new version features a Gulfstream G100 Twin Engine Business Jet. This is the 12th free airplane in Flight Sim making it the most affordable Flight Simulator on Google Play (free with no in app purchases).
Train Sim 3.4.5 for Android is now live. This new update features a new Chicago “L” CTA 5000 subway train with a realistic 3D driver cabin as well as a passenger 3D interior.
Also in this update are much requested
longer trains. I managed to increase each train by at least 1 additional coach 
(without killing performance) and in some cases by 2-4 to match the exact historical configuration. Opposite Trains also received a length increase. Also in this update the Dash 9 Interior cabin has been significantly improved, eliminating one of the weaker 3D cabins in Train Sim. I am currently working on releasing this update for iOS and Windows Store/Phone.
It has been a while since I updated Train Sim so I wanted to write a post about what I have been working on. The main theme for the next update will be longer trains. This means I will try to increase the number of cars for as many trains as possible.
The reason the trains were originally kept short was to make sure Train Sim performs well on slower devices. The idea behind this tactic is that if the train is shorter the number of cars the GPU/CPU had to draw and move each frame would be reduced.
However longer trains is the feature that is the most requested by users (other then indian trains) so I decided to address this issue. I am hoping that over the last year the number of slow/low memory devices have declined and the newer phones on the market will be able to handle these longer trains. In order to make sure this is true I will probably only update the most popular trains, such as the Pendolino, Amtrak, TGV etc. However if this update proves correct I will also increase car numbers for other trains as well.
Stay tuned for more news.
Although I have been making games for over 2 years now, I always depend on purchasing my 3D assets from marketplaces such as the Unity Asset Store and Turbo Squid. For custom work I contract 3d artists to create high quality modes for me.
However there are times when I wished I could either design a simple model for a scene or modify the existing model that was created incorrectly. For example what if I wanted to open the train doors but they were not seperate from the main train body? Should I waste my graphic artists time for such a simple job?
So I finally broke down, and focused on learning some 3D Modelling. First I spent a day researching my options for 3D Modelling Software. I had 3 main criteria:
I knew that the best free option was Blender. However from my previous tries I knew that Blender was so very hard to learn. After trying some alternatives I decided on Maya LT, a version of May that is designed for Indie Developers, which means it has less features and is cheaper then full Maya.
Maya LT is retails for $795 which is not very accessible for a beginning Indie Developer. However someone like myself who is way more interested in a tool that is powerful yet easy to learn it was a good choice. Alternatively you can “rent” the software for as cheap as $20 per month on a 3 year term. (There is also a free 3 year education version you can get as well as a free trial version if you just want to learn).
Many tutorial videos later I was able to complete my first model, which was a textured Grain Silo. I now feel competent enough to make simple models and modify existing ones. For example the next version of Train Sim will feature a model of Metrovagonmash 81-760 which was modified by me to allow the doors to open on a single side. Not a big deal for a professional 3D Modeller but saves me from hiring someone externaly for such a simple job.
Although Maya LT often gets slack for not being full featured, I really enjoyed that it only has the features I need. This makes the user interface much easier to learn, and does not overwhelm you. Another good feature is that being an Autodesk product it natively handles the fbx file format with no external plugins needed. So far I found the Maya LT to be powerful enough for my needs and very easy to learn. I am looking forward to making many cool 3D models for my games.
Kids Fire Truck receives an update on Android.
In this new update I added a new Airport Themed Scene, the ability to jump over obstacles as well as a new picture menu.
Since Kids Fire Truck is picking up in popularity I will have to port it to other platforms, starting with iOS soon.