Automation Engine Designer Demo Feedback Thread

[Equiox]

Haven't noticed any kind of feedback topic for the Demo besides bug reporting? So here, I made one.

Firstly, I love the demo. Runs smooth at around 400 FPS with everything maxed. Menu layout is extremely minimalistic and a complete pleasure to use. Click, click and im in a scenario or the sandbox, very efficient!
User interface in-game is also very very easy to use, all buttons work and are easily identifiable as to what they do, sliders are easy to use and pinpoint accurate and labeling is clear and readable. My only downside is the tabs on the far right, the glow effect on the text makes the font a little unclear, much prefer the style used in the tutorial videos done by Killrob!

Graphics look superb, again crisp and clear, textures look very good! Cant spot any modelling errors either. Animations when testing engines are smooth and certainly pack some detail!
Sounds are brilliant, can easily tell by ear which engine is running a 2 litre race setup and which is a 1.3 econobox! Backfires really add to the effect of creating a firebreating monster engine.

My only major negative so far (Sorry, has to be one!) is the windows. I like to run my games at fullscreen, which of course you've included an option for. The game however, as I guess you've designed, then runs the scenarios or the sandbox in a window inside the game. This makes it all a little small for me on a 1920x1080 monitor and I also find still seeing the menu in the background a large disturbance and often leaves me forcing myself to focus on the window the designer is in. I feel a little mislead since the tutorial videos seem to run the scenarios in a fullscreen environment? I dont know if this is a planned feature just not included in this demo but if not, personally I'd like to see it changed as I feel it spoils the enjoyment of the game.

Overall, an absolutely cracking demo release and I hope any future updates and additions continue to make this very niche game an absolutely amazing one!

EDIT: Noticed a few views now, please give your opinions too guys! Surely it will help development, or just praise the gods who gave us this demo!

[Daffyflyer]

Stickied (Global)

[Daffyflyer]

To quote my post from another thread:

Yep, trust me, my view as a naive artist is that resizing would be easy to do, but getting a user interface like that to scale correctly to different sizes is an absolute horror show and would add loads of extra development time.

We went for the window size we did as its the largest we can fit in a 1280 x 720 window, which we figured was a sensible minimum resolution for a game these days.


If you've got a huge resolution (Hell, I'm playing it in 5760 x 1080) then you'll be able to have loads of windows spread around, the engine designer, the finances screen, the car manager, etc. That'll be useful for managing mutliple aspects of your company easily.


Yes, its not perfect, but we're a 4 man team and I think we've done fairly well for what we are.

With the tutorial videos, they're done at 1280 x 720, so they do fill most of the screen at that res.

[LoSboccacc]

there is something that's not clear to me..

when the designer shows a challenge, you don't pass it at the exact value: if it say more than 85.0kw, you'llneed 85.1kw

I wonder if the same apply to hp.. I didn't try this out, but, if you have a challenge for 115hp and you pass at 116, then there is a difference in what is considered passed between hp and kw

[Killrob]

@LoSboccacc
There is a hard threshold plus rounding (after the check against the threshold). If you choose different units it's the same but with a conversion factor in it. So playing in [bhp] won' be "easier" than playing in [kW].
You can pass with 85.0 kW, but I think (not 100% sure) that you also can fail with a displayed 85.0 kW: if you got 84.997 kW you failed but it is rounded to 85.0 kW, if you got 85.003 kW then you pass and it shows 85.0 kW. There is no difference in different units.

[Highharti]

I'm impressed by the level of detail. I thought it would be easy to find the best engine for a given purpose, but as it turns out, it isn't.

I think the engine designer will be a very important part of the game. I can already see the difficult descisions you'll have to make as a car company manager.
Things like: Oh, these test runs are bloody expensive and I can only afford 6 a year... should I improve my old engine, or should I build a brand new one, with the new technology we've got now. That'll be very costly, cause I'll have to run a lot of tests. Maybe I should do nothing at all, just keep the old engine and wait for variable valve timing...
And what if I put all my money in a new powerful engine, and the next thing that happens is an oil crisis?

That's all very promising. Could become the first seriously good manager game since F1 Manager Professionell by Software 2000 (which is the most underrated game ever made, imo). Just make sure that you put as much effort in the economy model as you put in the engine designer! This is absolutely essential!

[csgill75]

Other than the couple issues i mentioned already in a couple other Threads, I am very impressed on how well you can accurately recreate (with some tweaking of course) real world engines. me and a friend of mine that also has the program have already created Honda R20's GM Iron Dukes, Ecotec 2 liters and using actual spec's (bore, stroke, materials used, compression, etc) we get really close to what actual world performance really is. We get the same HP, and come within 100-200 rpm and 1-2 ft. lbs. of the real motor.

we have about 20 motors so far and they pretty much perform exactly as what you would expect the real life engines do

if i would want anything, it would be for a little more sensitivity in a few of the sliders to get EXACT numbers, coming within 1 ft. lb. of torque and 100 rpm of the real motor just bugs us sometimes. although i think we may just be OCD on this issue too

[AutoHappiness]

Just, wow. It's a blast to play and build a few engines. *cough*never managed to get pass tutorial missions*cough*
The ability to name the engine is awesome, I have an engine named Elysium(oddly/obviously/smartly)
I still can't wait for the Car Designer, though.

[kelemenlajos]

I playd with the engine designer about 2-3 hours. The tutorial is great, i didn't watched all te movies, but if there are on the level of the first 3-5 then it's a solid work!
I played trough the tutorial missions, and i sticked with the first easy one for about an hour to get it gold

So for now, it's great, keep on the good work and keep the quality

[Crystal92]

I've been playing the demo for 2 days now and there are a couple of things I'd like to give my opinion on.

You can change the technology year for every section of the engine designer.. is that supposed to be like that? Maybe it's just me but to me it doesn't make much sense to have bottom end parts from 1940 and exhaust parts from 2020 in the same engine. I always use the same technology level for all parts so everytime I have to go through all tabs and change the technology year 5 times.

The sounds of the engines could be a little less artificial in my opinion. I know it's hard to make them sound realistic and adapt to the changes you make to the engine but right now all the engines sound more or less the same and the artificial pitching up when revving sounds unnatural.

The info bar above the parts section which gives you information about weight, man hours and cost etc. is a bit hard to read for me sometimes because it's a thin white font against a mostly white background (floor or wall). Maybe it could be made more easily readable by putting some semi-transparent dark overlay beneath the text.

In the engine manager I'm missing a sort function. Would be handy to be able to sort it by displacement, power, economy etc.

And as discussed earlier, the window of the engine designer is a bit small for my taste as well.

But I don't want to only point out negative things. I really love how accurate the engine simulation is. When I saw the videos of the tutorials I was thinking "hopefully it will be accurate and not some arbitrary unrealistic engine figures". I'm glad this really is a simulation and not some unreal arcade stuff like 99% of the games on the market. It is really amazing how close you get to real world figures by using actual engine specs and tweaking a little bit here and there. I just can't wait for the I6 engines and turbochargers.

[Daffyflyer]

Tech Year - The reason for having it individual per part is for example you might want to put a modern EFI system on an old V8 but not moderize the whole thing (as you can't afford it) - I do think however a way of setting all tech years at once may be a good idea also.


Sound- Really? This is the one area I'm almost totally happy with myself. I don't know how many other racing/car games you've played, but I reckon we sound as good or better than about 90% of them, and the ones that DO sound better are things like Forza that have a million dollar plus sound budget and loads of supercars on hand to record.
We did try recording real cars, but A: we couldn't get good enough quality, even with a pro sound recordist B: we would never be able to find the range of cars we need (where could we find 2 x indentical v12s, one with an open exhaust). Currently we've got something fairly real sounding that changes dynamically with cylinder config, intake, exhaust and cam profile, and I can't think of any ways it really could be made better than it is.


Infobar text - I'm not 100% happy with that font either, we'll have a think about that one.

Sort Function in Engine Manager - Absolutely agreed!

Engine Designer Window - Agreed, but unfixable.

[bragametro]

First of all you have made an amazing engine simulator!!!
I have tried for the last days to recreate the Renault engine range for the Europe market in the 80`s/90`s and I am getting there...

And what about an automatic advance in ignition timming complementary to the fixed one?
It could be done like VVL valve timming with a minimum and a maximum value...

Regards
Bragametro.

[Daffyflyer]

That's pretty much what the ignition timing slider is, it represents how agressively you want your engineers to try and tune the ignition timing in general

[oppositelock]

Just a couple thoughts:

I've noticed that engine weights and dimensions are independent from displacement. I understand the idea behind having the three different block sizes, but if seems odd to have a 1.2 liter that's the same size and weight as a 2.3 liter (using the medium block). I'm not sure how easy it would be make these figures fully dynamic, but it's something you may want to consider for the sake of realism. Otherwise, in the full version I think people will lean excessively towards larger engines since there's no packaging or weight disadvantage for doing so within the same block family.

I've also noticed that the costs for some engine components seem a little off. For example, on one of my engines a tubular header only costs $5 more than a cast manifold. On the same engine forged H-beam con rods are only $12 more than el cheapo cast rods, which also seems ridiculously low. As a result all my newer econobox engines have headers and forged internals just because there's no convincing reason to use the more realistic "cheap" stuff.

Regarding the intakes, going from a standard to a performance unit increases annual service costs on one engine from $1069 to $1307. I'm having a hard time figuring out why this should be, considering it's just a high flow filter in a nicer box.

On exhaust manifolds, it would be really cool to see length/diameter/resonance/4-2-1 vs 4-1/etc. taken into account. In my testing current options just seem to raise or lower the whole torque curve rather than move the powerband up or down the RPM range. Also, most new cars have close-coupled precats for emissions purposes, so this should also be an option.

And finally, one very minor complaint about mufflers: The baffled muffler looks (at least to me) like a straight-through muffler and vice versa.

Ok, I'm done. Really guys, awesome work, I'm having tons of fun here.

[Daffyflyer]

As we don't really liniarly scale engine size (its horribly hard to do) we haven't done weight that way either.


The costs are a bit out of whack and will be subject to tweaking at some point.


The exhaust manifolds both give some extra power across the whole rev range (better flow) and give peaks of resonance at various RPM as calculated from the length of the primaries.

The mufflers are based off pictures I could find of each type