Thread: Airline Management Simulation Game

Hey everyone,

I work for a well known United States based Commercial Airline (which will remain unnamed for legal reasons). In my free time at home, some friends and I have been working on creating an Airline Management Simulation Game. How it works is: a user starts a virtual airline company and competes with other users in a real-to-life simulation of the airline industry. The user has to work to keep their company from going bankrupt by competing in markets, managing markets, utilizing planes, and balancing their company's budgets.

The nature of the virtual industry is determined by historical data from the airline industry, and due to data restrictions, the virtual industry is limited to just the United States (including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Alaska). Several complex models have been created to mirror the real world as much as possible; such as: demand models, passenger behavior models, fuel-burn models, cost models, and a bunch of others.

The simulation will be embedded in a website. Each user will have access to their company via a username and password login. Being more of a simulation than a game, and being against other humans, we are expecting to have it set up in a way where time (in the simulation) is incremented once a day (in the real world). Each simulated time period is equal to one month in the game, so 1 day (real world) = 1 month (simulated world). That way users will have enough time to manage their companies before time advances. And, for the foreseeable future, it will be free to play.

It is important to note that within the first year of the simulation, it does not meet real-world behavior because the simulated world is void of competition and thus monopolistic power is very significant. However as the game progresses and competition begins to build, the game begins to react similar to real life.

Hopefully within the next month we will have a test version of the game working on our website. What I'm looking for is a couple volunteers who would be interested in helping us test the simulated environment (not offering pay, we don't have any funds to offer). Volunteers should be aware that the simulation may restart several times during testing to make changes and additions to the program. We have a offline version of the game where people can compete against computer players (who are extremely good). If someone volunteering to help us out would like a copy of the offline version (with setup instructions and whatnot) to play around with while we finish with the online version, I will be happy to send a copy. The interface and dynamics of playing are slightly different than what the online version will look like, but it can be helpful to give you an idea of how managing the airline works.

Respond to the post if you think you would be interested in giving it a try.

Heh, I work for the FAA (okay I'm a contractor for a contractor for the FAA, I do prototypes for air traffic flow management software), so we're sort-of work buddies (or enemies, depending on how you look at it). Neat!

How much of a time commitment are you looking for? A couple minutes a day? A few hours a day? I'd be willing to play around, assuming there's not much of a time commitment.

FAA, huh? You might be able to help us out with some of the pricing things that we are unsure of. We've been involved in the scheduling, forecasting, planning, routing, ect. parts of the industry, but there are large aspects of revenue management that we are doing guess-work for. For example, we are unsure of how airports charge us for gate/terminal use (and just general airport expenses). At the moment, we just have it on a flat monthly rate, regardless of how often you fly to an airport. And we are unsure for what different plane lease costs are (we have purchasing costs and whatnot, but the lease costs are avoiding us).

It depends on how you want to manage your airline. One of my friends likes to invest an hour or two each turn (which I find a ridiculous amount of time), but most who have played with it don't use more than an hour or half hour each turn. It takes some time to analyze what is happening in the virtual industry, but if you knew what you were doing, you couple probably make all your changes in a couple minutes. You probably have an idea of where the favorable places to fly between are, so that will save a bunch of time for you.

Initially, I'm just wanting to test the stress on simulation from a bunch of different calculations and to ensure continuity in data between users. Personally, I don't expect to spend much more time than a couple minutes each turn during our testing since we will probably have to restart the simulations a few times if there are massive flaws in the simulation's calculations, and I'd hate to invest a bunch of time just to restart...

Time investment will come down to how easy-to-use I can make the interface to be. We have gone a long way from our original design and now it can take all of like 10 minutes to open up a hub, set up a bunch of routes to like 12 destinations, and allocate planes for the routes. I will obviously be completely open to any interface adjustments that can make things easier to use and require less time investments.

Well, I don't know anything about the business side of things, and really, I only know a little about what my job focuses on- and that's doing reroutes of planes in flight. As long as I make pretty GUIs, everybody stays happy :p

That being said, I could probably spare a few minutes each day to play around. Do you have any screenshots you could post, or a website people could check out? That might help people get interested.

This sounds great. I would be really interested to check it out.

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

Do you have any screenshots you could post, or a website people could check out? That might help people get interested.

Well here is the website we are using if you feel like watching it get built: http://airlinemanagegame.zxq.net

I'm periodically updating and uploading the program. It is still the bare-bone basics with no real functionality at the moment. Once we get it working, we will add a login screen and that sort of crap. I'm also investigating on whether or not I can create a php function or something that will run the simulation process (will be a program separate from this one probably, but takes in the input from this one) at a particular time every day so I don't have to do that. You may get some error messages occasionally, I'm still trying to get the permissions worked out to write an error log, so for the time being I'm just using JOptionPanes...

Just an update on my progress...

I have the basic GUI designed (I think). There are still some things that need to be adjusted, but most of it is there.

I am now working on figuring out how to get a timed simulation working. Then I'll work on a login/logout screen and stuff, and a description of how to run the program. Then I should be ready for testing.

So I'm expecting in the next week or two I should be ready to try some tests and see what happens.

Another update.

I am ready to start testing.
Here is the homepage(currently being worked on): Untitled Document
On the homepage are two links, the first being to the game (http://airlinemanagegame.zxq.net/AirlineGameApplet.htm) and the second being to a tutorial (Airline Company Simulation Game Tutorial).

I have talked to several people currently in the airline industry (analysts and whatnot for a couple different airlines), and a few may be interesting in trying it out. So we may have a fairly decent showing.

To create an account, load the game and you have the option to create a new account on the half-assed log-in screen. Just fill out the 3 textboxes and press the new account button. Make sure you have a good internet connection because I'm still playing around with extending the server time when loading data and you make get a timeout error. Your account will not be completely made until you save for the first time.

I'm not sure when I'll run the first simulation. I plan on giving it a few days for people to create accounts and get used to the interface before I throw everyone into the thick of it. I'll probably put a notice on the homepage or game page regarding when the first simulation (and all proceeding simulations) will run. But, even though I don't plan on running the simulation just yet, you can spend some time creating your network and establishing your company for when I do run the simulation.

I just tried to create a new account, but as I was filling out the form, the applet crashed- the dialog went away, the applet went black, and it seems that Java exited. I can't get a stack trace for you, as the whole thing comes down, including the console. This happens every time I refresh the page.

Seemed to work for me. My two critiques are a) The layouts in all the "manage" panels have components overlapping each other - in some cases components are on top of each other (on a mac in firefox) b) the save changes took quite a while with the gui freeze - if it has to take this long, notify the user with a progress bar rather than locking up the GUI

The applet crashed while creating an account? That's really weird, it shouldn't even be doing anything after that form pops up... I can see it crashing before the form pops up, but not after.

I can't seem to reproduce the problem either.

There is one thing I can think of. Using your knowledge of java, maybe you can tell me if this could be the culprit. The form that pops up is an extension of JDialog because I need to stop the program from running while the user chooses their company. Since this is a JApplet, I couldn't just get the Frame needed to make the JDialog modal. So I found something online that told me how to get the Frame of a JApplet, but it seems... messy... Inside the JApplet, I make the call:

JOptionPane.getFrameForComponent(this)

I found doing this had some sorta weird effects on some of my JOptionPanes in the program, such as them disappearing but still existing.

This is the only thing I can think of as a possible reason. What do you think?

To make it even weirder, someone make an account...

EDIT: And, to make it even weirder still, that account shows up in-game, but doesn't seem to show up in the datafiles that the program reads when it loads in the company data...

Hmmmm, weird. I just tried adding that line to an applet I have, and when using eclipse it returned the Applet Viewer. I wonder what it returns when it's running in the browser.

And if I acted fast enough, I might be able to fill out the form before it disappears. So maybe that's how somebody is registering an account.

I always thought that was going to cause a problem...

I may just turn that into a card layout or something so that it is internal instead of external, then just trigger the rest of the interface to load after a button is pressed and the credentials are accepted.

Yeah, using a CardLayout sounds like a much cleaner approach. People panic when they see dialogs like that. Keep everything contained within the game window, that's my advice.

There we go, tell me if that's better. I still need to figure out how to center it on the applet, but the functionality should be there.

@Copeg:
Overlapping GUI (just saw your post earlier)? Can you post a screenshot?

Okay I can create an account now (actually, if I try to log in using that same information it says account not found and I have to create a new account again).

Honestly, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't have time to read through the tutorials (and unless somebody is really into this stuff, I'm not sure many people will want to devour all that text).

But when I try to change something (I think I added some cities to my Airport Operations, I get the following stack trace:


java.net.ProtocolException: cannot write to a URLConnection if doOutput=false - call setDoOutput(true)
at sun.net.http://www.protocol.http.HttpURLConn...Stream(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.http://www.protocol.ftp.FtpURLConnec...Stream(Unknown Source)
at AirlineGameApplet.writeSerializedCompanies(Airline GameApplet.java:358)
at AirlineGameApplet$1.actionPerformed(AirlineGameApp let.java:135)
at javax.swing.AbstractButton.fireActionPerformed(Unk nown Source)
at javax.swing.AbstractButton$Handler.actionPerformed (Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.fireActionPerformed (Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.setPressed(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicButtonListener.mouseRe leased(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent( Unknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(U nknown Source)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Unkno wn Source)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.access$000(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.security.AccessControlContext$1.doIntersectio nPrivilege(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessControlContext$1.doIntersectio nPrivilege(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.security.AccessControlContext$1.doIntersectio nPrivilege(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilter s(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(U nknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarch y(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)

Ok, a few questions.

1. How did you get the Stack Trace? That will help me so fricken much.
2. Did you get this error while adding a city, or while saving?
3. Did you press Save Changes after creating your account? The account doesnt get saved until you press that button.

I'm going to add a little To-Do list to at least guide users with what they are supposed to do. The Tutorial is really helpful to learn all the ways to make managing easier, but you are right, there should be an easier way to get an idea of what you should be doing. Also, I'm going to put in some threading and a progress bar for the saving.

Originally Posted by aussiemcgr

Ok, a few questions.
1. How did you get the Stack Trace? That will help me so fricken much.

I looked at the Java console. On Windows XP, when an applet is running, an icon showing the Java coffee cup displays in the taskbar. Right click it, and you get the option to show the console. Stack traces and other interesting things will show up there.

Actually, sometimes I find it useful to always have the Java console pop up automatically when applets run. You can enable this by going to Control Panel > Java > Advanced > Java console and enabling Show console.

Originally Posted by aussiemcgr

Ok, a few questions.2. Did you get this error while adding a city, or while saving?
3. Did you press Save Changes after creating your account? The account doesnt get saved until you press that button.

Yeah, it was upon clicking the Save Changes button.

And I'm an HTML newbie, but a really simple way to center an applet is to surround it (or the whole page) with <center> tags

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

I looked at the Java console. On Windows XP, when an applet is running, an icon showing the Java coffee cup displays in the taskbar. Right click it, and you get the option to show the console. Stack traces and other interesting things will show up there.

Actually, sometimes I find it useful to always have the Java console pop up automatically when applets run. You can enable this by going to Control Panel > Java > Advanced > Java console and enabling Show console.

I run Win7, but it is essentially the same thing. Thanks a thousand times, this will save me sooooooooo much trouble.

Yeah, it was upon clicking the Save Changes button.

Ok, I'm going to have to look into that then. I don't see why it should throw that error for you, but not for me...

And I'm an HTML newbie, but a really simple way to center an applet is to surround it (or the whole page) with <center> tags

I do have it centered...

Originally Posted by aussiemcgr

I do have it centered...

Oi, sorry, that was me misunderstanding you when you said, "I still need to figure out how to center it on the applet, but the functionality should be there."

There are a few ways to go about centering components within the applet. I'd consult the Layout tutorials ask questions if you have any problems with that part.

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

Oi, sorry, that was me misunderstanding you when you said, "I still need to figure out how to center it on the applet, but the functionality should be there."

There are a few ways to go about centering components within the applet. I'd consult the Layout tutorials ask questions if you have any problems with that part.

Well its a little different. It would be the centering of a JPanel on a CardLayout. I'm sure I can find something if I did a google search, but I've been too busy...

Originally Posted by aussiemcgr

Well its a little different. It would be the centering of a JPanel on a CardLayout. I'm sure I can find something if I did a google search, but I've been too busy...

Actually it's easier than you're thinking. A CardLayout simply determines which JPanel is displayed when; it does not determine the actual layout of the JPanel being displayed. It's just a matter of picking a layout that lets you center the components.

Ok, so I've finally gotten around to making some changes to the program.

The following changes:
1) Added To-Do List as a general list of things that need to be done.
2) Added a progress bar.
3) Threaded FTP saving operation so the GUI doesn't lock up.
4) Auto-Saving new accounts once they are created.

Now, I feel the biggest problem right now (other than the time-out thing, which I'm trying to figure out) is the Manage Routes window. I can see how this window can be very confusing to users. Any ideas on how to clean it up, while still keeping all its features?
I'm also unsure how I can provide more guidance to the user for them to figure out what they should be doing (other than the lengthy tutorial). Any suggestions here is greatly appreciated as well.