Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Aug 2003
- Posts
- 20,160
- Location
- Woburn Sand Dunes
Build your own automotive empire!
Steam early access unlocks today: http://store.steampowered.com/app/293760/
About This Game
Automation allows the player to become an armchair CEO - to build their own car company from the ground up. Create and run anything from a boutique supercar manufacturer to a mass-market multinational mogul. With powerful tools like the Engine Designer, the player can create cars and their engines in mind-boggling detail.
The grand campaign starts in the year 1946 and runs until 2020, with the main goal being to build a successful, renowned car company from scratch. All types of car manufacturers can be led to success if managed properly; building the right image over the years is key. The player’s tasks are to design engines and cars, to manage factories, production, Research and Development, as well as advertising campaigns. In game, time advances at the pace the player chooses and pauses automatically for events and occurrences.
Automation is comprised of three major game components - the Engine Designer, the Car Designer and the Company Manager. These components are naturally strung together by the game’s goals, made to be user-friendly and intuitive to use. A multitude of tutorial missions, videos, and descriptive texts help car novices become experts. Almost infinite options give the player all the creative freedom to create unique cars with vastly different engines.
Key Features:
- Extremely Deep, Technical, Creative – Experience unheard-of creative freedom in a highly technical, realistic gameplay experience revolving around building a car company from scratch. Go ahead and build your dream-car company!
- Dynamic World Markets – Master realistically modeled dynamic markets, distribution, and demand. Try to cater to the needs of over 40 different target groups and their needs, or find your safe-haven niche in a cutthroat economic environment.
- Flexible Car Designer – Design the cars you would have in your garage. Choose from diverse chassis types and materials, engine placements and drivetrain setups, gearboxes, suspensions, brakes, tyres, and finish off you design with fully customisable body types, looks and styles.
- Highly Detailed Engine Designer – Delve into endless possibilities combining different 4-stroke petrol engine configurations, internals, head types, forced induction systems, fuel systems, headers and mufflers. All based on different 4-stroke petrol engine configurations: Inline 3, 4, 5, 6, V6, 8, 10, 12, 16, Boxer 4, 6.
- Dynamic Engine Sounds - Turn up the volume and blast out the awesome fully adaptive, unique engine sounds that directly reflect your design choices.
Grand Campaign, Scenarios, Sandbox – Aim to dominate the world markets with your superior design skills in the grand campaign, play a quick scenario challenge, or just tinker away in sandbox mode to create the most insane engines ever.
- Complex, yet Easy to Learn – While the game is highly technical, it is made easy to learn by means of well-illustrated in-game tutorial videos, detailed descriptive texts, as well as a multitude of tutorial scenarios.
- Network Play – Play cooperatively with your friends or take your intuition for the perfect car design and challenge up to 7 human competitors in epic, multi-session network games.
- Community – Join one of the most awesome and helpful communities out there, share stories about your exploits, talk to like-minded people, discuss your IRL car projects and engage in community challenges.
Please Note: The first Early Access launch does not include any tycoon or campaign gameplay yet!
WHAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO SAY:
Why Early Access?
“We held back on launching Automation into Early Access until the game has a solid, fleshed-out core which the main tycoon part of the game will be based on. We also wanted to make sure we can offer enough content and polish to warrant presenting and selling the game to a larger audience.
Previously we offered an early access version of the game via our website, but this sales platform and distribution channel has been outgrown by the steadily increasing interest in the game, becoming complicated to manage for a small team like ours.
Finally launching the game on Steam Early Access makes possible to speed up development with any additional income, allowing for quicker content addition (car bodies, engines, etc.) than otherwise possible. It also allows us to get additional manpower to the team to tackle the huge job of game balancing and AI programming.
Last but not least, with the major milestones of completing the car designer and engine designer under our belt, the implementation of multiplayer features means using the Steam API for network communications, saving us a lot of double work associated with developing our own networking code first.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Developing the tycoon part of the game and adding all content promised will take anywhere between one to two years. This may seem like a lot, but a complex game like Automation takes a small team a long time to make to the standard we do.
We're not known for being good with estimates, but always deliver and are good at avoiding feature creep. Our development process focuses on milestone builds that introduce new features every ~3-4 months and are both beta-tested and reasonably polished-up. Any major problems with these milestones are addressed quickly in hotfixes before we move on to the next milestone.
Quick Facts About Development:
- Fully independent developer
- Small 3-person team
- 3 years of full-time development so far
- First public demo released April 2012
- Funded by preorders, 14000 sales before Steam Early Access
- Modular development approach: 3 main parts, 2 are feature complete
- Major updates every ~3-4 months
- Focus on transparency, community contact and open discussion
- Frequent YouTube & Facebook development updates
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“In Early Access our efforts go towards the development of the tycoon and management part of the game. Once the campaign mode is fully playable, more content is added (engine types, car bodies, scenarios, multiplayer modes) and the game is polished up and balanced before it being considered complete.
The next three major milestones are:
1) Buyer Demographics & Designer Multiplayer Modes
2) Factory & Production Management
3) Brand Image, Marketing & Research
Please Note: Each of these will take up to ~3-4 months to complete!”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
The current Early Access version of the game has the following, fully functional and playable, yet content incomplete features:
- Car Designer
- Engine Designer
- Car/Engine Sandbox Mode
- 60+ Scenarios and Tutorials
- 35+ Base Car Bodies
- Tons of in-game videos and descriptions
- 10+ hours of content
Please Note: The first Steam Early Access launch version of the game does NOT include any tycoon/campaign gameplay or multiplayer features yet!”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Yes, by buying into Early Access you save around 15% and get the warm feeling you are helping a niche independent game dev.”
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We already do, we have a great active forum community, and we have an amazing core testing team recruited from the testers. If this really is the game you always dreamed of, you can help us make it.”
If you've ever played and enjoyed games like Detriot, or tinkering around with car and engine designs sounds like fun, then go help the developers and buy in to early access when the game unlocks, not 100% on the price but it should be £20 which is the same as the non-steam version on their website
http://store.steampowered.com/app/293760/
http://automationgame.com/?
Steam early access unlocks today: http://store.steampowered.com/app/293760/
About This Game
Automation allows the player to become an armchair CEO - to build their own car company from the ground up. Create and run anything from a boutique supercar manufacturer to a mass-market multinational mogul. With powerful tools like the Engine Designer, the player can create cars and their engines in mind-boggling detail.
The grand campaign starts in the year 1946 and runs until 2020, with the main goal being to build a successful, renowned car company from scratch. All types of car manufacturers can be led to success if managed properly; building the right image over the years is key. The player’s tasks are to design engines and cars, to manage factories, production, Research and Development, as well as advertising campaigns. In game, time advances at the pace the player chooses and pauses automatically for events and occurrences.
Automation is comprised of three major game components - the Engine Designer, the Car Designer and the Company Manager. These components are naturally strung together by the game’s goals, made to be user-friendly and intuitive to use. A multitude of tutorial missions, videos, and descriptive texts help car novices become experts. Almost infinite options give the player all the creative freedom to create unique cars with vastly different engines.
Key Features:
- Extremely Deep, Technical, Creative – Experience unheard-of creative freedom in a highly technical, realistic gameplay experience revolving around building a car company from scratch. Go ahead and build your dream-car company!
- Dynamic World Markets – Master realistically modeled dynamic markets, distribution, and demand. Try to cater to the needs of over 40 different target groups and their needs, or find your safe-haven niche in a cutthroat economic environment.
- Flexible Car Designer – Design the cars you would have in your garage. Choose from diverse chassis types and materials, engine placements and drivetrain setups, gearboxes, suspensions, brakes, tyres, and finish off you design with fully customisable body types, looks and styles.
- Highly Detailed Engine Designer – Delve into endless possibilities combining different 4-stroke petrol engine configurations, internals, head types, forced induction systems, fuel systems, headers and mufflers. All based on different 4-stroke petrol engine configurations: Inline 3, 4, 5, 6, V6, 8, 10, 12, 16, Boxer 4, 6.
- Dynamic Engine Sounds - Turn up the volume and blast out the awesome fully adaptive, unique engine sounds that directly reflect your design choices.
Grand Campaign, Scenarios, Sandbox – Aim to dominate the world markets with your superior design skills in the grand campaign, play a quick scenario challenge, or just tinker away in sandbox mode to create the most insane engines ever.
- Complex, yet Easy to Learn – While the game is highly technical, it is made easy to learn by means of well-illustrated in-game tutorial videos, detailed descriptive texts, as well as a multitude of tutorial scenarios.
- Network Play – Play cooperatively with your friends or take your intuition for the perfect car design and challenge up to 7 human competitors in epic, multi-session network games.
- Community – Join one of the most awesome and helpful communities out there, share stories about your exploits, talk to like-minded people, discuss your IRL car projects and engage in community challenges.
Please Note: The first Early Access launch does not include any tycoon or campaign gameplay yet!
WHAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO SAY:
Why Early Access?
“We held back on launching Automation into Early Access until the game has a solid, fleshed-out core which the main tycoon part of the game will be based on. We also wanted to make sure we can offer enough content and polish to warrant presenting and selling the game to a larger audience.
Previously we offered an early access version of the game via our website, but this sales platform and distribution channel has been outgrown by the steadily increasing interest in the game, becoming complicated to manage for a small team like ours.
Finally launching the game on Steam Early Access makes possible to speed up development with any additional income, allowing for quicker content addition (car bodies, engines, etc.) than otherwise possible. It also allows us to get additional manpower to the team to tackle the huge job of game balancing and AI programming.
Last but not least, with the major milestones of completing the car designer and engine designer under our belt, the implementation of multiplayer features means using the Steam API for network communications, saving us a lot of double work associated with developing our own networking code first.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Developing the tycoon part of the game and adding all content promised will take anywhere between one to two years. This may seem like a lot, but a complex game like Automation takes a small team a long time to make to the standard we do.
We're not known for being good with estimates, but always deliver and are good at avoiding feature creep. Our development process focuses on milestone builds that introduce new features every ~3-4 months and are both beta-tested and reasonably polished-up. Any major problems with these milestones are addressed quickly in hotfixes before we move on to the next milestone.
Quick Facts About Development:
- Fully independent developer
- Small 3-person team
- 3 years of full-time development so far
- First public demo released April 2012
- Funded by preorders, 14000 sales before Steam Early Access
- Modular development approach: 3 main parts, 2 are feature complete
- Major updates every ~3-4 months
- Focus on transparency, community contact and open discussion
- Frequent YouTube & Facebook development updates
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“In Early Access our efforts go towards the development of the tycoon and management part of the game. Once the campaign mode is fully playable, more content is added (engine types, car bodies, scenarios, multiplayer modes) and the game is polished up and balanced before it being considered complete.
The next three major milestones are:
1) Buyer Demographics & Designer Multiplayer Modes
2) Factory & Production Management
3) Brand Image, Marketing & Research
Please Note: Each of these will take up to ~3-4 months to complete!”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
The current Early Access version of the game has the following, fully functional and playable, yet content incomplete features:
- Car Designer
- Engine Designer
- Car/Engine Sandbox Mode
- 60+ Scenarios and Tutorials
- 35+ Base Car Bodies
- Tons of in-game videos and descriptions
- 10+ hours of content
Please Note: The first Steam Early Access launch version of the game does NOT include any tycoon/campaign gameplay or multiplayer features yet!”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Yes, by buying into Early Access you save around 15% and get the warm feeling you are helping a niche independent game dev.”
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We already do, we have a great active forum community, and we have an amazing core testing team recruited from the testers. If this really is the game you always dreamed of, you can help us make it.”
If you've ever played and enjoyed games like Detriot, or tinkering around with car and engine designs sounds like fun, then go help the developers and buy in to early access when the game unlocks, not 100% on the price but it should be £20 which is the same as the non-steam version on their website
http://store.steampowered.com/app/293760/
http://automationgame.com/?
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