This is the first patch of the new year as we're back in office and polishing up the Lite Campaign V3. Some pretty big fixes in today's update. As a reminder of what the timeline is for this big update with the LCV3, have a look at this:
View a full-size version of the development timeline here.
First we are focusing on fixing game breaking issues and bugs, as well as adding important parts of UI to make the campaign more playable. From there we'll continue to fix bugs and polish it up, adding a LOT of much needed UI feedback to the player, as well as straight up missing UI and UI functionality.
B190109 Changelog
Updated game engine to UE4.21.1, might fix some stability issues
Fixed engine facelifts stopping cars from being produced
Fixed issue with states not being reset between different campaigns
Fixed issue where you'd go bankrupt in a new game right after going bankrupt before
Fixed various issues with and formatting of the R&D calendar tech categories
Fixed the paint to reset to default red when clicking a drivetrain option
Fixed engine families getting broken after deleting a facelift
Fixes to familiarity, wasn't working properly for many items/ categories
Fixed more gear ratios having positive effect on reliability
Fixed and added stats to R&D panel, research costs, lab costs, average tech
Fixed slider control on manual engine testing
Fixed issue with campaign setup screen sliders and difficulty multiplier
Made engine facelifting a lot more robust, with more feedback about what is going on
Added "cars per month" stat to engineering tab trim items
Made trim & engine grid items single-click to enter
Moved the Marketing & Dealerships button next to the market overview in hub
Made it impossible to take out any loans when at credit rating F
Added more accurate warnings for underpowered cars
YES, IT NOW SAYS COUNTRIES, NOT COUNTIRES!!1 :P
There will be another one or two patches before January 18th which is our target date for bringing back an updated sandbox and exporter to this version of the game. Please continue to post issues you find and we'll address them as best we can along the way.
Cheers!
LCV3 Opt-In Beta Second Patch (B181228)
Holiday plans for the team changed a bit and thus instead of making a second patch come on January 4th, we were busy the last few days to get a good few fixes implemented. That means we won’t be around the first week of January though instead. :) Many of you who tried out the LC V3 will be happy about this changelog.
B181228 Fixes & Improvements
Added engineering familiarity, added familiarity stats to engineering overview tab
Fixed campaign breaking in 1989 (was caused by a broken competitor car)
Fixed engine factories never finish building when built from company hub
Fixed turbos not working at all, not adding power
Fixed broken general region size progression
Fixed major bug in demographics sizes and their progression
Fixed plot costs dependence on region and current economic strength
Fixed engineering times of interior and safety options being way too high
Fixed production unit counts of traction assists
Increased difference between drive type engineering times FWD/RWD/AWD
Rebalanced power-to-weight dependency in drivability and sportiness
Happy New Year!
Lite Campaign V3 Opt-In Beta & Development Timeline
First Patch B181222
Fixed "Corrupt Data" startup issue
Fixed issue where engine didn't calculate at all
Activated manual save function (disk icon in top right)
Hooked up tutorial video on campaign startup notice
Unless some crazy issue pops up, this will be it with patches until January 4th as noted in the timeline below. Cheers!
Original Release Notes
We just released the first, somewhat playable version of the Lite Campaign V3 (LC V3). Most features planned for the LC V3 have been implemented, but despite working on it flat out for the last few months, there is still a lot left to do before we consider it done and good enough for a full public release of this update. To put it into perspective, at the point of writing this there are 238 yet unsolved items on the ToDo list for just the LC V3. The new version contains only the first beta version of the LC V3 and neither the sandbox mode, nor the exporter - both are coming back to this new UE4.21.0 based version of the game along with fixes and improvements in mid January.
Little Dev Update about today’s release:
https://youtu.be/RSulwrrFWg4
LC V3 Update Features
A first rough version of the LC V3, including engineering, factories, marketing, selling your cars, etc.
Facelifting existing car trims and engine variants
Reusing old engines, sharing engines between different models
More car bodies, body fixes, and new variants
Many more rear- and mid-engine compatible bodies
More fixtures of various types
Modelled factories & add-ons
Improved game mechanics and realism in car and engine designers
Various car and engine designer bugfixes
Improved and fixed UI, and UI feedback
Game Engine Switch from 4.17.2 to 4.21.0
The engine switch from Unreal Engine 4.17.2 to 4.21.0 was necessary due to the so-called “garbage collection bug” that was plaguing a lot of our players with seemingly random crashes. While we cannot confirm the issue is gone as we never were able to properly recreate the issue on any of our machines in the office, we can say that the part of the code the crashes stemmed from no longer even exists after a major rewrite by Epic. So here is hoping for the best! Among other benefits of the new engine version, a big one for us is that the build time for the game is down from 90 to 20 minutes, making “let’s just try that real quick” tests more feasible.
The engine switch means that mods won’t be working in this opt-in version until they have been updated by their creators to be based on UE4.21., we’ll add the updated mod tools once we launch the normal open beta phase in mid January.
Playing the LC V3
Due to how rough and unpolished it still is, we give you access to this version not via the main branch of the game but via opting into the lcv3_test branch via the Properties - Betas selection (right-click the game in your Steam Library). We do not recommend to the average player to try this version yet because of how difficult it is to navigate with so much of the much needed UI feedback still missing. If, on the other hand, you are a curious and hardened Automation player with a good grasp of the game mechanics, give it a go and see if you can figure it out with our little video tutorial. Having played the LC V2 in the old game engine certainly will prove helpful as well.
Note: The first opt-in beta version of the LC V3 has not been properly tested nor balanced. There will be plenty of bugs and most likely it will play strangely due to issues with the overall balance and issues with the AI generated competitor cars.
Here is a tutorial video on how to try out (and play) the LC V3 in its current state. Note: currently the link to the video in game doesn't work yet.
https://youtu.be/xUbrFhQFcVU
Development Timeline for the LC V3
View a full-size version of the development timeline here.
Release is on December 21st. The goal is to have a rough but “playable-if-you-know-how-to” version with rudimentary UI implementation and all kinds of rough edges. If necessary, we are going to get a patch out on the December 22nd to address any major game breaking issues that pop up.
We’ll be out of office over the Christmas holidays until January 2nd. On January 4th we’ll get the first patch out for this big update based on your feedback and our highest priority ToDo list items. After that you can expect one big patch each week as we are adding or polishing up UI, fixing bugs, as well as balance the campaign. On January 18th we are going to add back in the Sandbox and the new BeamNG Exporter version with some new features and fixes.
We’ll continue updating that version with 1-2 patches each week until it is ready to be put onto the main branch in its proper release version in Mid February. Thereafter we’ll patch it as necessary and start working on implementing the LC V4 features in a new (shorter) development cycle. The LC V4 will come with (among other things) the new proper sales model and engineers / staff.
Beyond LC V3
We are delighted to have reached a point in the development of the campaign where the fundamentals are in and smaller features, polish, and fixes can be added rather quickly. We too prefer more frequent updates to the game, but unfortunately that was just not possible in the past few months due to the game-breaking nature of the new features and the game engine switch.
From here the campaign will take shape at a good pace and we are much looking forward to finishing LC V3, getting to V4, V5 and then the grand campaign, the forced induction revamp with superchargers and non-80s turbo tech, and ultimately epic multiplayer company battles.
This was quite the year for Automation. Especially the BeamNG exporter update proved very successful and has given us the additional financial backing to see this all the way to the end as planned and promised. Big thanks to the awesome BeamNG devs too, of course, they have been great to work with!
Thank you all for your continued support and for coming along on this long journey.
Merry Christmas!
Lite Campaign V3 Release Date, New Mechanics
We're getting close to a fully playable Lite Campaign V3 and plan on giving you a sneak peek by releasing a first version as an opt-in open beta before Christmas. That version will have all the main features planned for the LC V3, but not the polish that we would want from a proper release version. Also, to not mess with your saves and limit the scope of potential issues, that opt-in version will only have the LC V3 - no sandbox or exporter (YET!).
The currently unpolished hub screen for the LC V3.
There will also be a bunch of new gameplay mechanics coming with the new version. Have a look at our latest Little Dev Update for more information and some examples:
https://youtu.be/cmt06slw-x8
Our target date for the first rough release of the LC V3 is the 21. December 2018. We'll keep you in the loop with dev updates as this date approaches.
If you missed some of the previous Little Dev Updates talking about various features in the LC V3, have a look here:
While we are busy working on implementing the campaign mode into the UE4 version of Automation, we release this content update in order to help bridge the long gap between the last public release and the upcoming big update with the Lite Campaign V3 (LC V3). This is easy enough for us to do because art / content, like cars and fixtures, pretty much are separate from the programming part of developing the game.
Our new trailer for the car & engine designer. https://youtu.be/0Qt1HFr7gns
Our artists have been working away on getting more cars done for the LC V3 and focused mostly on filling car-type gaps throughout the year range. That means there are a lot new utility vehicles especially, but also plenty of new “more standard” cars of various sizes. 75 cars in total are added with this update, and more are to come with the LC V3 as currently 5 people are working on getting more cars done for the game. A big thanks to the awesome modders who provided their fixtures and car bodies to be implemented as vanilla content in the game!
Due to how difficult it is to implement technical fixes into the content only update, we only have three small fixes for issues, but they are good ones! Of course there are heaps of fixes to car bodies and their morphs in this update.
Some of the cars that have been added don’t have all their morphs yet, but should be functional and usable in general. So if you discover cars that seem to allow very few changes, most likely that will change.
B180925 & B180926 Fixes
Fixed many car body issues you pointed out since B180922
Fixed several issues with fixtures
Fixed issue with thumbnails not loading correctly
Fixed issue with mid-engine longitudinal engine bay space
Fixed weight problems of several car bodies
B180922 Fixes
Fixed tons of car bodies and their morphs
Fixed general early era brake performance
Fixed issue where game errors for top speeds over 500 km/h
Fixed exporter issue with ceramic brakes
B180922 Content
75 new car bodies and variants spread across all eras
Tons of new headlights and taillights
Some new wings, grilles, rims, mirrors, misc fixtures, and exhausts
Enjoy!
Little Dev Update: 14. September 2018
We're slowly but steadily putting together the Lite Campaign V3, and in today's LDU we're showing you two of the many improvements coming to the lite campaign compared to the LC V2: automatic production and sales management that you can tune, which means far less boring micro management, and the new engineering system that will be a lot more realistic than the previous one.
https://youtu.be/eaedFRcJXBU
The small content update we have mentioned previously will make its way into Automation at the end of next week!
https://youtu.be/jx6sR6ysEKk
We'll keep you in the loop of what's going on in development in the coming weeks as the campaign gets closer to release. Next week we will likely be able to show you some in game footage of new campaign mechanics.
Cheers!
Little Dev Update: 23. August 2018
Currently we're working hard on the implementation of the Lite Campaign V3. At this time it is still in a very rough state but some of the important foundation is there and works.
It took a while to get it into a state that works outside of the office because we're also updating the game engine from 4.17.2 to 4.20.1, but here is a look at some of the in game functionality of the new features, instead of just talking about UI drafts:
https://youtu.be/7fMrm7_V8GE
There will be a general content update patch in the coming weeks (in 2-3 weeks) to help bridge the gap to the Lite Campaign V3. A lot of new cars and fixtures will make it to the game for (and before) the LCV3 update.
From here the Little Dev Updates will be possible on a more regular basis again.
Cheers!
Exporter Update Patch 2 (B180727)
In this second major patch for the Exporter Update there are plenty more fixes to all kinds of issues you have been pointing out and reporting on. Thank you for that! We've also implemented some quality of life features along with them.
Here you have the full changelog for B180727:
B180727 Features / Improvements
Implemented a simple database backup system, if corrupt, it loads the backup
Added camera rotation speed multiplier to settings menu
Added the "Save for Sharing" button at the end of the car designer
Added optional accessibility camera controls widget for car and engine designers
Added trim clone prompts to trim grid items
Improved car importing process to notify you of body and fixture issues
In car scenarios engine limits will now be checked independent of car items
B180727 Fixes
Fixed issue with fixture lock / unlock buttons being greyed out
Fixed level of detail issue where some engine materials switched at certain distance
Fixed roll angle warnings, now 8+ degrees is a Note, 10+ degrees a Warning
Fixed issue where changing a graphic setting reset the FPS cap
Fixed piston emission grades, they were backwards in the tooltip
Fixed steering assist weight being backwards in the tooltip
Fixed issue with fuel economy calculations for slow cars
Fixed issue where the engine runs backwards when power output hits 0 in engine test
Fixed missing chassis corrosion stats
Fixed engine graphics not showing up on low graphics settings when making a car
Fixed engineering time not increasing when upping Top End Quality
Fixed placement of brake graph info inlay
Fixed tire speed cost multiplier not going in discrete steps, shows in Top Speed tooltip
Fixed issue with switching from carburettor to injection systems
Fixed various smaller description text issues
Fixed issue with camera rotation speed changing with framerate
Fixed engine family vs. variant visibility options not being linked
Fixed car model vs. trim visibility options not being linked
Fixed cloned trims resetting their year to 2012
B180727 Exporter Fixes
Fixed issues with solid axle suspension geometry
Fixed (potentially) issue with materials and colors switching black to white, and similar
Fixed (potentially) issue with stalling automatics in BeamNG
Fixed hanging starter motor sound issue in BeamNG
From here on we are now focusing on the next big update, finishing the implementation of the Lite Campaign V3 into the UE4 version of Automation. Although, there might be another patch with fixes if required, it certainly would be a less impressive list of fixes.
We're also thinking of releasing a conent patch with more car bodies and fixtures half way to the next big update. We'll keep you in the loop as per usual.
Cheers!
Exporter Update Patch 1 (B180720)
The first patch for the Exporter Update comes with a lot of fixes both in Automation and the BeamNG exporter functionality. BeamNG.drive will also have an update out today to go along with this.
An Automation car on the Automation Test Track map in BeamNG.
For those of you who have technical issues exporting your cars, make sure you have tried the things mentioned in the Exporter Troubleshooting FAQ
Here is the list of changes:
B180720 Automation Additions
Added dialog and options for cloning of a trim
Implemented new part comparison tooltip style
Added active aero effect into sportiness brake fade test
Added tire speed rating and price info to Top Speed slider
Made body variant view the default view in the model body selector
Made engine visibility option now open by default
Removed the confusing 'Paint' option from the top row of materials
B180720 Automation Fixes
Fixed issue with engine sounds disappearing when idle RPM was low
Fixed twin turbo not being selectable for boxers
Fixed (potentially) Windowed Mode not working properly
Fixed material not updating after backing out of the paint designer
Fixed disabling fixture bar when no fixture is selected, fixes undo function
Fixed (potentially) fixtures disappearing in rare cases after going into photoscene
Fixed model year not being able to be changed when only the engine block is selected
Fixed engine hold / revert functionality, and fixed bugs with it
Fixed rear engined cars will not show correct front suspension when set to leaf/coil
Fixed V-belts spawning on boxers before valves were selected
Fixed high body roll warnings coming up for too low angles
Fixed various bugs in part comparisons
Fixed game icon not showing up in taskbar
B180720 Exporter Fixes
Turbo Data output accuracy improved. Still not perfect though.
Simplified exported engine meshes and materials, increasing performance in Beam
Fixed bug with tire stiffness calculation as function of tire width
Fixed suspension stiffness issue (suspension was way too stiff in Beam)
Softenend damper rates outputted, stiffened ARB
Increased suspension travel by about 15%
Added more human friendly warning/error messages
Made changes to exhaust sounds
Fixed issue with paint shininess exporting
Fixed rear brake pad material not being set
Fixed reading BeamNG.drive's startup.ini for passing of relative paths
Fixed engine torque reaction nodes not being set
Braking Cooling Slider now ties into BeamNG brake venting coefficient
Changed the folder created in vehicles to not just be the car trim name
Added a driver cam to "00ssupercarlarge"
B180720 Launcher Changes
Launcher changed to have "Legacy" text over the Kee version graphic.
Legacy text added to buttons
Game Logs button added to launcher for easy access to log files to help with support tickets
Old Kee buttons now hidden behind an enable button
Ability to launch Kee version via Steam launcher options removed
B180720 Misc
Added some extra logging to try and find the culprit for a crash we cannot replicate
Thank you for continuing to report issues!
Enjoy :)
Drive Your Automation Cars In BeamNG.drive
Here it is! In collaboration with the BeamNG devs we bring you the joint Exporter Update. It allows you to export your Automation cars to test drive them in BeamNG.drive.
https://youtu.be/fhMbIG4DvZM
The exporter is simple to use: design your car and engine in Automation, tune them to your liking, hit the export button, start up BeamNG.drive and your new car is right there in the vehicle list. It still is a little wonky in places, and will improve with future versions - but exporter works and is a blast to tinker with!
Automation Test Track in BeamNG.drive
The Automation Test Track was added as a big new level in BeamNG.drive for you to explore and compare track times! Apart from the main track there is an in-field rally circuit and country roads handling track, a tarmac hillclimb with snowy roads, a gravel rally stage up a massive dam and a lot more, all set in beautiful fictional Central Otago (New Zealand).
https://youtu.be/h7cEsxtRmCQ
Collaboration Cross-Promotion Discount
As part of kicking off this collaboration between Automation and BeamNG, players owning either of the two titles will receive a 20% discount coupon on Steam for the respective other game shortly after the joint release. New buyers of the game within the period the coupons are valid will also receive a coupon for the respective other game! All coupons expire exactly 3 weeks after the update release.
Boxers, Inline 5s, and V16 Engines
With this update we added the remaining promised engines to the game: Boxer 4, Boxer 6, and Inline 5 engines. Also, after almost a year of V16 exclusivity for our pre-Steam early premium supporters, the “support the devs” V16 upgrade of Automation is available for purchase now. Check out the V16 FAQ for all the info and background story.
https://youtu.be/hlN2dAT49S0
Other Features
Since the release of the Car Designer Revamp update we have done a lot more bugfixing and polishing of the UI. Also, we have added a few new tutorial scenarios in which you design engines in the context of a car to cater to certain demographics, as well as four basic open car scenarios.
Campaign Status
During all the development of the exporter we have not stopped working on the campaign on the side. Obviously, this “little” surprise has slowed down the process a bit, but the campaign update is not too far off. As per usual we’ll make sure to keep you updated with Little Dev Update videos.
