Hello. The final thing I did before pushing the project to github and making all the builds was to just merrily delete a few old data files that weren't being used anymore. Well, it turns out one of those files was a bit less unused than I thought, and it's absence completely broke the package delivery system. I have now fixed this (thanks to everyone who reported it), so if you downloaded the game already and are having issues with the packages, please try downloading it again! Sorry about that. I feel very silly :)

11:31 Programming in a nutshell: "I'm gonna spend the next few hours working on that" One week later "I ended up rewriting the whole system from scratch"

A suggestion if you ever come back to this game: you could make Auroras over the poles at nighttime, I think that would look great in such a beautiful game!

Honestly the game is so good you could maybe talk to some airlines that serve long haul flights with IFEs onboard so they can maybe add it into their game selection, since it has something to do with world travel!

I've never seen such complex ideas visualized and displayed with such high level of clarity, simplicity, and finesse. The details in your presentation, such as animating small objects to tell a story, is brilliant and engaging.

Me: “Why is he touching the stars, they look great!” Also me two seconds later: “That’s gorgeous, the old stars were garbage, I’m so glad you updated them they’re beautiful”

Two changes you got to make to increase the fun factor: 1 - The balloons got to pop. It just feels so unsatisfying without it. 2 - The speedometer needs to show the speed in km/s. I want to see that I'm flying at mach 1000

The animated map you made to fix Antarctica is the most intuitive demonstration of the distortion of that kind of flat map! Honestly, that should be tool used in grade school classrooms when teaching geography and cartography.

I have just barely enough knowledge about what you're doing to know that this is absolutely incredible. I am stunned at your level of ability with this program, you make it look effortless.

Every time I see a new video from this series I think: “he will not make the graphics more realistic” Sebastian: adds accurate coloring index to the stars

“I hope you don’t mind getting sidetracked for a moment here” Sebastion, honey, getting sidetracked for a moment is exactly why I watch your videos

I'm not a Geography teacher, I teach English. But because you added the 15 min timer to the game this became an excellent activity for students to do in Geography class. They can learn and compare scores with each other. I will recommend it to my colleagues definitely!

Point system with added bonus for low altitude delivery and a penalty for crashing (maybe losing a multiplier). Adding splashing animation for dipping a wing in the ocean would look sick

A small tip: I think the trail coming from the tips of the wings should change intensity based on your speed. So at the minimum speed they disappear, and are the strongest at the maximum speed

"I've become slightly sidetracked recently with a little experiment I wanted to try." - Sebastian Lague (21:34) No, Sebastian, that's just your channel's motto. Please, never change it. 🤣

As an added educational benefit, you could have a random "fun fact" about a country pop up near the bottom of the screen when you're flying over each place. Maybe it would be annoying if it happened every time you crossed borders, so it could be set on a timer or only show up when you stay over a country for a certain length of time (10-15 seconds, perhaps). Could be a unique way to teach students interesting tidbits about each country as they're exploring.

wow, random youtube recommendation and I ended up watching all three episodes! This is an incredibly beautiful game. A few years ago x-box gave me a game called 'grow up' where you are a robot gliding around on an alien planet. it's low polygon resolution gave it a distinct artistic quality but most importantly, I found it to be extremely relaxing. this game is giving me the same vibes, but in HD. I don't know if this is still interesting to you but I studied some geology in college. If I had to guess the eye of the Sahara is a anticline that eroded down. The rock layers formed a sort of bubble when *what is now called* Africa (Gondwana) collided with north America (Laurentia) about 300 million years ago. over time the top layers eroded in a circular pattern. I guess it would be like biting into an onion, each of the layers would appear as concentric rings going outward away from the center of your bite. the Appalachians are covered in stuff like this, but I've never seen a perfect circle like that.

Absolutely needs boats! Imagine sailing the big blue sea in this world.

Every video notification I get from you is basically the equivalent of Bethesda dropping an AAA out of the blue

As a flag enthusiast, my favorite has to be the flag of the Seychelles, I just love the colors radiating out from the corner.

The game is absolutely beautiful. I am 13 and know very little about smaller cities in other countries, if you ever come back to the game could you possibly make something that tells you where the delivery is in maybe an easy mode? But the only problem I've had with the game so far is that my cat keeps walking in front of my monitor every time I play.

Great game! I think the balloons should play an animation when they are collected. They could collapse for example :)

Hear me out… The city mapping is for the bonus round called “local delivery” where for each package (or random bonus package) you chose the country correctly, you will get a local address, and you dive down to a lower altitude to try to deliver that package as accurately as possible. This way you can preload the cities, and not need to constantly render as well.

This is definetely the best game dev tutorial channel I've seen so far. I'm learning so much with you. I'll be eternally thankful, and I mean it. I'll support your amazing job at patreon right now.

Your first video in this series was the first video i found of yours and now 6 hours later im still watching and every video has me in tears reminding me of all the amazing reasons why when i was 6 and played halo CE and stepped off of the escape pod... i was awe struck and in tears as i immedeatly knew with certanty what it is that i love to do and what my goal and reason in life is... to make compelling virtual works that i want to get lost in and explore. Youve reignited that lost spark in me in a way i havent felt in a decade since collage, and its the most wonderful feeling immaginable. Thank you for everything you have been making. You have truely given me exactly what i have needed to rediscover my real true passion and love in life. Thats more valuable to me than anything else. Thank you so much.

your content is so wonderful to watch. cant wait to see what project you tackle next!

One trick for the skywriting mission would be to display the idealized letters the customer wanted in a translucent outline and score the actual skywriting by the amount they drew inside the lines minus the amount they drew outside the lines. Maintaining the correct altitude range might also figure into the scoring - but with your super-simply airplane flight dynamics, that would be unnecessary.

Adding scoring comparison tables will entice the players to play and learn more. Also some places to go to refuel or repair the planes . And some different planes and skins and money system to upgrade them. You get the money with missions and spend on skins and fuel upgrades etc etc May be adding the country flags or some minimal optional info of the regions visited will add more knoledge to the users. Cheers. Nice skills and creation. Congrats.

Your voice is like a soothing hug; I've been really sick for a few days and this video has made me feel so calm. Keep being amazing!

I love sebastian’s voice, he always sounds like he smiles while he talks. It’s so calming. I watched a bunch of his old videos and I felt like falling asleep, in a good way lol. edit: ok wow I didn't know there was so much controversy behind this guy's voice

17:26 “What this game is currently missing the most is hot air balloons.” *our-house-chore-superhero-needs-a-cape flashback intensifies

This is just so incredibly amazing to watch. I wish I had the same abilities to code. Everything you do is just so pleasing. The voiceover, animations, explanations etc.

thanks for sharing your progress on the project and good luck with future projects.

Alternatively you could fly through a cloud as you lower in elevation, and when you emerge below it the world is a different scale (Paris!). This would provide a fluid transition to the new city-scale game mode.

it's beautiful, sebastian! I love the quality of this, the choice of music and choice of the amount of detail and the gameplay ideas, everything!

I am honestly amazed by your work

Legendary Seb at it again. 😌

This is mad amounts of fun to play. It is, however, revealing significant gaps in my geographical knowledge... missed my first city by 5700km...

thank you so much for this series. i started watching a few days ago and just finally found the time to watch this third vid. you're really cool and these videos and this game is really calming. the soundtrack is amazing as well. i don't code, the best i can do is Scratch, but i really like watching technology videos, coding included, and thank you so much for sharing the amazing experience of doing something you enjoy. you made this week mean a lot to me as im having a tough year and i hope you will stay safe and all the best in future endeavours. love from singapore.

How relaxing is your voice! Lovely and clear and wonderful work. Thank you.

This is incredible!

I love how happy he sounds in all of his videos, it makes everything so relaxing and easier to follow.

Amazing. You make it sound so simple with your calm voice!! Thanks for sharing!

I LOVE YOU FOR YOUR WORK AND ALLOWING ALL SOFTWARES TO PLAY

My suggestion is the following: Add small city attractions, like a small Christ the Redeemer over Rio de Janeiro, a small Eiffel Tower over Paris or a small Taj Mahal over Agra for example.

For the competitive mode; How about a timer that increases based on the precision of deliveries you make? Like, a perfect delivery adds on another 30 seconds, an average gives you 10 and so on. The timer could also get harder and harder to fill up over time, making it so that after a while only the best use of your knowledge, path making and boost mechanic can keep the run alive. There could even be a global leaderboard based on stuff like time or score, and achievements such as dropping a package in every country. Something else i think would be a really nice touch is a selection of planes you could buy for the money you earn delivering packages. I think it’d be a really cool way of giving you a feeling of progression in the game, and just generally neat (i like planes) :)

What a great result! Thanks for sharing your experience.

Where to start... Very very very cool! I have banged my head at a lot of your challanges and quite often gave up and went with a quick fix (though it was usually for an artistic job, nothing real-time). The style, content and really cool code solutions made me watch it all!

It's so fun just seeing everything coming together, and the simple jokes used here always keeps me hooked on the video. Another fun part is showing that bugs exist, and not being afraid to hide them is really a great touch, it's always hilarious seeing when things do not work properly, it can create some weird and hilarious results! Thanks for another video!

the videos always end way too soon

I love your game. I already loved just looking at the world in google maps but exageration of the map in the game and the controls give it a new perspective that I really enjoyed. Thank you!

Following the evolution of this project has reinvigorated enthusiasm in my own. Love your deviations when your curiosity takes over, and the humour!

Maybe instead of doing whole cities you could do a landmark in 3D for a few major cities in every county. Like the giant Jesus statue for Rio or the White house for Washington DC or the Eiffel Tower for Paris or a giant Volcano for Fuji. I think you get my drift, hopefully. That would help mark some key cities and add what I think would be really sweet visual additions!

Here's a suggestion: You could make the balloons do a popping animation when you fly through them Also: It would be nice if you could rotate the cardinal directions when in the overhead view, or if north was always up

I just had an amazing idea. Running this game in Endless mode on my second monitor as a screen saver of sorts for something beautiful to look at. You are teaching me so much and I just came across your channel a few hours ago. I'm amazed more and more everyday by how valuable it is finding creators such as yourself, especially for people like me that are just naturally curious about anything and everything. You are super talented, smart, and the time and effort that goes into each video you upload is absolutely mind boggling to me. Your such a gem, I know I don't speak for just myself when I say thank you. From the bottom of my heart for all that you do, we appreciate every bit of your work and we want nothing more than for you to succeed and continue doing what you do best. My dad past away last week... And in order to kind of.. cope? Deal with? Survive? Distract myself? I've been on UKposts alot more than usual. And your soothing voice along with the pleasant background music you have has been very therapeutic for me. For now I will be running your game on endless mode with a spotify playlist going because I find what you've created here very relaxing. So again, I thank you, I just want you to know (at least for me) how much value projects like this can have to certain people. In particular for me for example, you have relieved so much anxiety by just this little game. I won't make this comment a novel though, just wanted to thank you for making this process a little easier for me. ❤️

This is so cool, it made me wanna continue a project i started long back, Seeing you is truly inspiring

I just saw the notification and I was like "He's back!" Honestly I love your videos, thanks for making them!

Dude that's awesome! Great way to learn geography, too. Some ideas: - Start out as a bird (carrier pigeon?) in the city -- maybe London, Moscow, NYC... whatever you find interesting. - Upgrade to balloon: faster, can now deliver to neighboring cities. - Upgrade to airplane: still faster, can now deliver to neighboring countries. - Upgrade to jet: still faster, can deliver globally. - Upgrade to rocket/spaceship: Interplanetary/interstellar delivery. Could add a fuel mechanic -- the faster you fly, the more fuel you burn

This is really awesome, thanks for sharing the process too, inspiring stuff

I literally have no idea how you have done anything in this video an dim absolutely fascinated. Thanks.

When he talks he always sounds like he's smiling and it makes me feel comfortable.

Hey, I think it'd be really cool if lower or higher speed was actually dictated by your flight height! So to speed up, you fly higher, giving you more view as well, and to slow down you fly lower, which also helps you to aim your packages. I think this would also remove the need for a speed HUD element, since your height is a visual indicator, but there's boost to consider, of course

I am fascinated by your work. You amaze me with every project and give me the inspiration to try and do this stuff on my own. I am a game developer for three years now and I have been itching to do awesome things for my game as you do. Thanks for the great content and keep up the good work!

0:10 The Nepal looks soo beautiful. I really impressed by your work.

Sebastian voice's sounds like he's smiling all the time doing those videos! And all your videos made me smile all the time as well! So thanks for that!

I'm loving this series! Oh, would be interesting if during a night flight, going through the sea (where there is zero light pollution), the stars would shine brighter. Maybe, combined with constellations and all...

Well, I've actually just stumbled across this randomly. But man, I'm honestly impressed by the way you did this. I mean, the thought you put into this, the way you've explained things, how you've found simple solutions for annoying things. All that In such a calm way! Well done sir, well done.

I've just played the game. I LOVE it! So cool, relaxing and fun to play.

You should make the speed loosely related to altitude, so the higher you are, the faster you can go. And slowing down allows you to get lower and be more accurate with your air drops.

“Imagine a plane at the center of the sphere, uh not that kind of plane” I did not expect that and god damn was it golden

Game progress is impressive, loving your work, and even more your presentation. The more I play the game, the more I want to slow down and view the scenery, and sometimes stop and carefully inspect spots of interest, whilst still being able to manipulate time, sun angles, etc. Making the plane smaller and slower would be my preference, as it seems scale speed is some considerable percentage of the speed of light at its slowest. You've managed to make the scene so beautiful, I wanna slow down and, 'smell the roses' - runs fine on my 8 yr old basic Wintel machine, thanks again.

I absolutely adore this game. Just finished obsessing over the geography quizzes in Sporcle and this is a fun way to implement and expand on that knowledge. Absolutely amazing. If I were going to change something I would make the map always be oriented north but that is no biggy. I love playing this game. It's almost like meditating to be honest.

*One idea you could implement is that for major “target” cities, there is some kind of portal you can enter that ‘zooms in’ into the city scape view you’ve made. Sort of like a personalized city challenge. Different cities could have different requests, too, which is where the skywriting and such would come into play.*

I love the map and the stars and the sunset and how relaxing the whole thing is. If I were to suggest improving one thing, just one thing, is to make the balloons pop instead of fading. Not realistic perhaps, but something with confetti and some satisfying sound to let you know that you "got it". It doesn't feel like it happened when you fly through one.

One year since the release of this video and its still amazing

That was very pleasant to watch. I'm gonna try out the game now, thanks for creating something so beautiful and making it open-source

I thought the game was cool before but the aesthetic updates make it look really great! Some potentially cool features for this platform: - A survival mode where you collect balloons to refill a meter or something - Pickups/powerups/collectibles - Customizations to the plane - A plague inc. style news/event system with different things happening around the world

Hi Sebastian, Maybe you could try adding a game mode where it shows only the flags instead of the country name, and you would have to find the right place from the flag

I don't know how relaxing playing this would be, but your videos are always relaxing themselves

Brilliant! I have no clue about programming and game development but I truly enjoyed this video and learned a lot! Thank you for your efforts!

You change your entire rendering method and it's fine. I change a variable name and lose my entire project. Fantastic work as always.

I like thy sky-writing idea a lot! You can implement it as a bonus mission - lets say you are tasked to communicate with astronauts on the ISS, f.e. their loved-ones want to send them a brief message in their language. This way you can both use writing legible from top-down position and various languages.

Can't even begin to understand how much work and thought was put into the game. I'm trying to slowly understand the whole video by pausing and googling the terms you mention. I know how much effort it takes to build a project and have absolute respect for people who make such amazing projects

Fantastic work. I've been following this series with great pleasure, and the game is super cute and quite educational. GREAT JOB! Looking forward to following the development of this and/or whatever other cool (and slightly crazy) ideas you come up with!

Brilliant! Humble suggestions: 1. If you want to combine cities and the globe, players could fly down toward a city (through a cloud transition) and fly up again to return to the globe. 2. Rather than ramming hot-air balloons, use the stranger-than-fiction Fulton Skyhook. 3. Add other things to the sky like little RC planes, 🎈party balloons, hang gliders/parapenting, individual birds like albatross and boid flocks. If you hit one you slow down, the opposite of boosting. 4. Add satellites in a shell above the player, probably only visible at the curve of the earth.

Awesome game! I bet an aurora effect around the poles would look awesome if it could be pulled off

Omg, your work is so impressive!

You are one of the geniuses of youtube. And besides your intellect, I'm envious of your soothing voice

here are some suggestions i have: Gameplay: 1- a height meter; idk how practical this is but since the plane can go up and down i thought it might be helpful for players to have a height meter next to the speed meter. 2- a hint system (or easy mode); this game look like it could do well with little kids, and it would be very beneficial for them as well. the hint system (or easy mode) works by adding a point on the compass that will lead you to the drop-off location, or by text, such as saying "it's a country that boarders Germany" or "it's a country in western Europe" etc.. 3- country mode; this might be a pretty big side project and may take months to finish. as you showed the paris example we could have a large scale map where we could fly over a specific country and drop off packages on cities rather than countries. but this should be on certain countries only, such as USA, Canada, France, Germany etc; since the world map data could be very limited to this matter. visuals: 1- auroras 2- an occasional space shuttle leaving earth 3- shooting stars 4- world famous landmarks such as, Eiffel tower, pyramids of Giza, burj Khalifa, statue of liberty, Christ the Redeemer, Taj mahal etc... that stick out of the terrain. they shouldn't stick out too much, but should at least be visible. idk how this could effect night view tho since a landmark could overlap the lights.

16:20 You're not only thinking the different star colors give them a nice feeling of depth! Due to the slight difference in index of refraction for red and blue light the eye actually has to focus slightly in front or behind the screen in order to get the best focus of a single dot, depending on the color. The effect is minimal, but noticeable if you pay attention to it, especially in a red-blue, high contrast image.

been playing it for a few weeks now, a great expirience!!! its a very fun way to take a 15 min break from my day.

Great series of videos on this game development I really enjoyed watching it. I think you should add Collision to the Hot-Air balloons and a sound effects of your plane slowing down and speeding up with time-stretch, or even adding slow motion cam on dropping the package with auto zoomed in camera. but overall great developing skills and you are really knowledgeable when it comes to come up with ideas and troubleshooting I really dig this kind of work!

I almost dont want to watch this yet because once I do its over. These videos are the most cozy calming enjoyable videos on the web. Please make more cute little games like this.

The "local" mode could be made accessed by flying into the said city on the world map. For example, for big, "accessible" cities you could add points on the map indicating that you could zoom in on them.

Thanks for this little gem @SebastianLague, downloaded in May 2022 and still one of my fav pastime. Runs flawlessly on my M1 Mac and it seven upports a Xbox controller. Better than most games on Apple Arcade, no doubt! Keep up the great job!

This is fantastic! Great work!

Really interesting, it's looking very refined now! Well done Sebastian.

The game looks amazing! Some feedback though, when you collect a hot air balloon rather than having it fade away I feel there should be a satisfying sound and particle effect for the balloon disappearing. One idea would be to have a disappearing cloud effect where it poofs into a cloud. Or another where the plane pokes a hole in the balloon and you see it shrink and fall

I love your videos about this (passion) project. It was funny, witty and dang interesting with all the lines of code.

Bro this gave me, idek what to call it, flashbacks, déjà vu, ptsd, from when I had to make a video game for my computer science class, not anywhere as intricate as your blender project. Which first of props, it’s been 6 years since I made that simple parkour game with a goofy skybox and sick camera animations, thank for the nostalgia. You have gained a subscriber :)