Arrival Radar
I think the Pico-8 is great. Other fantasy consoles are also great, but the Pico-8 has a special place in my heart. It’s the complete package: console, development environment, resource editing tools, community, etc. The Pico-8 really captures the spirit of the tools I learned programming on1 Game Maker 4.3–5.3, which was far different from the overcommercialised thing Game Maker is today., in a way few other things do.
I wish I had more time to play around with it. I did however take a couple of nights a little while back to create a game I’ve always wanted to have: a minimalistic atc simulator.
You can play Arrival Radar here!
Arrival Radar
Your objective is to land planes as quickly as possible while maintaining separation between them, and you do this by assigning them routes that take them to the final approach. That’s all you can do, in contrast to other atc simulators which let you vector planes directly, assign altitudes and speeds, etc. This constraint makes for some challenge, because planes arrive randomly and tend to end up violating separation minima unless you assign routes cleverly and actively.
In order to prevent conflicts, you’ll have to be deft at re-assigning routes and asking planes to join their routes at specific waypoints. To help you in your mission, the planes do slow down a little if there is other traffic ahead of them, and there are speed restrictions on waypoints closer to the airport to make higher density possible where the routes come together.
It’s fun and addicting! Click the link above to read more about the game and how to play.