Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game (In developement)

pingwing said:
Did anyone ever play the 1993 classic Detroit??

Sounds like they are going to make something a bit like that! :D
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Was just thinkin of that game when i saw the title of this thread. Think i had it on amiga tho dont remember playing it a lot as it was a bit of a long learning curve if i remember.
 
Managed to get it pre-ordered, and there seems to be a lot more on its way. Here is a good read for those interested.

Car studio only seems to save one car model though, even when you use revisions. Still, I have v8's to keep me occupied. 850hp & 1050lb-ft at the moment, and it still lasts over 65000km!
 
Sorry for the thread revival, but I'm looking to get this for christmas and have a couple of questions (and I cant be bothered to sign up to the automation forums right now so figured i'd ask here).

1. Will there be any way of getting the V16 engines in the full game if i buy the $25 package? (and how much will it cost to get the V16s)
2. What does turbocharger rank in the forums actually do? are there any special developer sections I can access or is it just a badge?
 
So tempted to pick this up after playing the demo but just not enough there to justify it yet
 
The devs have released a few videos recently about the upcoming update that will fill out the car designer a bit more that are well worth watching, made all the better with Killrob's amazing commentary

Interiors and bigger cars

In depth car stat analysis:

and for some of the older videos about the suspension, brakes, tyres, fuel economy and aerodynamics here is the automation channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AutomationGame/videos?flow=grid&view=0


ps. if anyone is wondering, i went for the turbocharged editon, but for those who havent it looks like that once the game is on steam you might be able to get the V16s as DLC, but that is by no means confirmed yet
 
Really getting into this now that test tracks are in

Wasted hours trying to come up with v8 rwd hot hatches
 
So when you design your car, do you have to set its price and market it etc? Does it get compared to competitor's cars?

How does the game decide if your car is/will sell well or not?
 
Crimefighter said:
So when you design your car, do you have to set its price and market it etc? Does it get compared to competitor's cars?

How does the game decide if your car is/will sell well or not?
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The tycoon part of the game hasn't been made yet, but I assume you will be setting the price that you sell the car for.


In various forum threads and videos the devs have described how your cars will sell:

First, you need to know that a car has 5 main stats which are tameness, sportiness, comfort, safety and prestige. These are calculated by looking at a huge amount of stats for the car. If you want more detail about how the stats work and are calculated, have a look at these videos (but you dont need to watch them to understand what i will say next)

In depth stat analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD7SgNn_Wt8
(Every statistic used in the calculations is explained in this video)

Four car stat examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MrtQwB1RWg
(there are two videos linked in the annotations of this one which have more in depth looks at the four cars in this video)

As for how the cars will sell, Automation has split the world map into countries (not every country has been included, some have been combined but there are still a very good number of countries. much better than the flash game pandemic II for example). Each of these countries will have preferences for how high they would like each of the five main stats to be, and they will also have preferences for a few other secondary stats, such as fuel economy, power, 0-60 time, etc. These preferences will be used to determine how well your car sells in each country that you sell to. I don't know how they are dealing with cars outside of the norm (for example, supercars are not the norm, but they still get sold) but I'm sure the devs have something figured out.

As well as the cars stats, there will be a reputation system for your company or for the platform of the car (I cant remember which, possibly both). I can't remember how they said that you would gain or lose reputation, but basically a good reputation will make people more likely to buy the car than they would have otherwise, and a bad reputation will make them less likely to buy your car even if it is good. Presumably if you have made a whole bunch of cars that explode in 500 yards you will get a bad reputation and no one will want to buy your cars, even if your next car turns out to be amazing.
 
Big update released today. Main change is the redesigned ui and workflow but lots of other changes too, and more content.

This is the last major update before it's released on steam, so exciting times!

Update B1414 is now live!
24 August, 2014 | Andrew Lamb

This one has been a little more slow and complex to develop than expected, but after a long 3 months (4 really, but one was taken up with our first holiday in 4 years!) B1414 is now live for everyone.

This update brings more complete car design aspects, along with car designer scenarios and a much improved user interface. There are also quite a few more new car bodies to base your designs from.

What’s next?

The next few months will be dedicated to some fairly unexciting but very important work, ready for release on Steam. We’ll be making major improvements aimed at making Automation more polished, easier to learn, and all around more professional looking.

More improvements to UI and the process of model designing will make it much more logical and simple to design a big range of models based on one particular car. Pop-ups/Tooltips will be added for many thing, and tutorial videos will be done/redone covering every techincal part of the game.

We’ll also be aiming to add a bunch of improved multiplayer modes, including Lap Time and Rally Stage Time challenge modes, with the ability to set your scores over the a few days, so you don’t need to all be online together to compete.

This update will be the first one to release on Steam, which is an exciting milestone, and will hopefully bring in more sales allowing us to bring further people on to work on car body art and other new content, And after this update is out of the way, it’s finally time to start work on the Tycoon aspect of things!

Change Log for B1414

Car Designer Features & Changes
Added Mid Engine Cars
Suspension Easy Mode
Added Quality Sliders and dependencies for all car designer tabs
Adjustable Rim Offsets
Added Multilink Suspension
Added the first automatic gearboxes
Reliability and Environmental Resistance stats
Passenger Space and Cargo Space stats
Production Units, Costs and Service Costs stats
Offroad and Utility stats
Rebalanced Sportiness, Tameness, Comfort, Prestige and Safety calculations
9 Car Designer Scenarios
Rebalanced material properties
Many new part year dependencies
Limited Cars to a Maximum of 2 wings, and 2 lips
Added tire profile year limitation
Base safety will stop progressing 10 years after a body first unlocks
Bodies sorted by Year. Newest at the top
Revised the “Bottoming Out” calculations to be less harsh
Wings/Lips no longer punch holes in the body shell

Car Designer Fixes
Fixed the crash caused by using MPH + dragging the top speed slider to top for high-revving engines (finally!)
Fixed the Yaw Rate graph cut off when using mph as a unit for speed
Fixed Certain cars not being able to complete a lap
Fixed the proper gear delay being used on the test track

Fixed Front Longitudinal AWD engine placement issues
Fixed the sensitivity of resizing various fixtures, making it more responsive
Fixed “steamroller” bug where wheels would become comically wide

New Car Bodies
Large 60s Coupé
2 Large 70?s Coupés
Large 90?s Coupé
Large 60s Sedan
Large 00?s Sedan
Small 80s Supercar
Small 10s Supercar
Large 10s Supercar

UI & Sound
Completely reworked UI and UI flow
Car Design Wizard for the whole car design process
All new UI sounds
Ambient sounds
Added test track sounds
New Car & Engine Manager
Temporary changed the Platform/Model game mechanic
Many more stats on the three different testing pages
Updated graphs
Updated test track UI
Manual start for car testing on testing page

Engine Designer Fixes / Rebalances
Reduced power gain when riching up fuel mixture
Octane rating in VVL systems uses the lower cam setting
Added bypass valve year limitation
Fixed the “your engine was created in a previous version” message bug
Fixed bore and stroke having two decimals too few using imperial units
Fixed a bug where loading a VVL engine set the wrong lower cam setting
Fixed an engine loading bug that caused the block config lua error

General Things
Changed “MTBF” to “Reliability” for less confusion
New scenario scoring system implemented for car designer scenarios
Fixed various aerodynamics calculations and exploits
Changed all “Man Hours” to “Production Units”
Added Console can be accessed by pressing tilde (~). Commands are help(), HideBuildings(), ShowBuildings().
Changed to saving screenshots as PNG. If you turn off FXAA, and use the HideBuildings() command, you can take pictures of engines/cars on a transparent back-drop.
Useful for taking screenshots of Engines and Cars with no backdrops.
Fixed the tutorial video sound cutting off after a minute
Thumbnails are now deleted when you delete the model / engine it belongs to
Many more little fixes…

What's happens next:

 
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Steam early access launch tomorrow, update from the devs:

We're all getting ready for our Steam launch tomorrow, the game & store page is sent off to Valve for approval (we hope they are quick) and things are coming together nicely, although another week or so of course would not have hurt. wink emoticon
I've prepared a nice and long overdue version of the popular "Building a Car From Start to Finish" video showing what awaits you in the Early Access version of Automation.


It's looking very good indeed now. They're attention to detail is simply fantastic and for such a small team of people they are really doing a great job. Looking forward to the early access release and for work on the tycoon part of the game to start:)
 
Think I'll give this a miss until the actual tycoon part is released, but crikey - didn't expect the car building to be that detailed.
 
Yeah, the devs really have got it spot on with the detail of the car builder. not so detailed that its boring, but more than detailed enough to have a huge amount of depth.

James, it might be worth updating the OP because automation really has come a long way in the couple of years since this thread started, and with the steam release i suspect it will get a bit more popular


For anyone who is interested, from what I understand the stage of development after the steam update is done and any remaining bugs have been squashed is the tycoon mode.

After the tycoon mode is sorted two major things will be happening. First there will be a switch over to a new game engine, most likely UE4, which will let them make the graphics far nicer and probably improve performance as well. While that is going on a lot of content will be added, like more car bodies and more engine types. Also on the list of things to do (but I cant remember when) is to overhaul the forced induction systems
 
I came here to post about it being on steam, but have been well beaten.

Really enjoy this game and the latest update has added so much extra into the mix. Certainly worth it for any car fan. :)
 
For anyone interested or who was following this a couple of years back, it has now been moved over to UE4.

The version running on the old engine which is still playable has a "Lite Tycoon" mode functioning too.

Content now seems to be added fairly frequently & we now have Inline 3's, Inline 4's & Inline 6's, V6's (60 + 90deg), V8's (Cross & Flat Plane) V10's, V12's & V16's to play with.

An interesting game for a car fan when it's done I think.

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