Tracks, Driving, Racing

[kithylin]

I'm new and just found out about Automation Tycoon today, and I'm stoked and would love to spend hours playing with the engines. But I'm wondering if that is ultimately the final plan for the game?

I realize it's early access at the moment so I have questions about the future.

Will we be able to drive the cars we create on a track in this game some day? Will there be some sort of races we could drive some cars in competition if we wanted?

I would like to know these things before buying the game early. Because if these features are not going to be there later, then I'll just wait and buy it on release in the future instead.

[Der Bayer]

Quote from here:

Being able to drive your cars:
If we ever do this, we want to do it properly, and build a top quality simulator. This is hard and expensive to do, so will only happen if we are very successful.

It's a tycoon game, not a racing game.

And: please use the search function.

[kithylin]

Quote from here:

Being able to drive your cars:
If we ever do this, we want to do it properly, and build a top quality simulator. This is hard and expensive to do, so will only happen if we are very successful.

It's a tycoon game, not a racing game.

And: please use the search function.

EDIT: Dag NAbbit! It's in a post at the top of this forum section. Now I feel stupid.. sorry for not looking.

So, no driving of the cars? What I see in youtube videos.. the test tracks and the design and the engines is essentially it forever?

[Der Bayer]

It's a strategy/tycoon game. You build and sell cars and try to make profit and expand your empire.

[lerxst]

Quote from here:

Being able to drive your cars:
If we ever do this, we want to do it properly, and build a top quality simulator. This is hard and expensive to do, so will only happen if we are very successful.

It's a tycoon game, not a racing game.

And: please use the search function.

EDIT: Dag NAbbit! It's in a post at the top of this forum section. Now I feel stupid.. sorry for not looking.

So, no driving of the cars? What I see in youtube videos.. the test tracks and the design and the engines is essentially it forever?

Yeah, I was kind of surprised by this after fooling around with the demo for a couple days now; I thought that must be part of the full version, but no. It's kind of like going to a concert and watching the crew set the stage, the assistants tune the instruments and the audio crew do a sound check, then leaving without ever seeing the musicians take the stage. Why have a 3d car model, a detailed car and engine builder and engine tester without ever letting us experience the whole thing in one package?

I mean, I'm sure people would even settle for just a round track, no opponents and no damage model just to test the physics of their cars and see how they handle first-hand. Let the management part o the sim come after we can relate to what it is we're even trying to manage!

[Der Bayer]

Because it's not that easy. The physics behind it have been trimmed to make model testing as short as possible and would probably feel horrible to drive. It would take a totally new approach to make a proper driving simulation.

[Daffyflyer]

It's just not what the game is about I'm sorry, in the same way Railroad Tycoon isn't about driving trains.

We'd totally love to have a driving simulator included, but unless we had a big budget and a big team to throw at it, it'd just be a really crappy quality race sim that in no way lived up to the realism of the rest of the game. Not to mention how much longer it'd take on an already slow to develop game.

We will see what happens after release, If we make a whole pile of money then we'd definitely look further into building a driving sim. Or even a racing game where you need to design your own cars to the regulations of various classes, that'd be a thing of beauty.

[strop]

If we make a whole pile of money then we'd definitely look further into building a driving sim. Or even a racing game where you need to design your own cars to the regulations of various classes, that'd be a thing of beauty.

If you guys are the team to do that, then I would happily throw much more money your way!

[FordManFromHell]

Yeah, I was kind of surprised by this after fooling around with the demo for a couple days now; I thought that must be part of the full version, but no. It's kind of like going to a concert and watching the crew set the stage, the assistants tune the instruments and the audio crew do a sound check, then leaving without ever seeing the musicians take the stage. Why have a 3d car model, a detailed car and engine builder and engine tester without ever letting us experience the whole thing in one package?

I mean, I'm sure people would even settle for just a round track, no opponents and no damage model just to test the physics of their cars and see how they handle first-hand. Let the management part o the sim come after we can relate to what it is we're even trying to manage!

While I occasionally do enjoy racing sims, I do tend to put MUCH more hours on strategy games, tycoon games and such. So therefore I can safely say, and this is just my opinion, that the actual meat in this game will be the ability to create your own car company and sell your cars. Driving your own cars would be nice addition, at least for like couple of hours. If there would not have been any plans for any kind of tycoon system for the game to begin with, I would not have purchased it.

Why have a 3d car model, a detailed car and engine builder and engine tester without ever letting us experience the whole thing in one package?

Its funny, because I would be baffled if somebody would go trough all that hard work of creating detailed car creation system, and then stating that "no creating your own car company, you just drive these cars around the circuit"

[applepi66]

Somebody made a utility to port the engine designs to BeamNG.Drive, which apparently works pretty well.

I'm sure there'll be some third-party program down the road that will port the data (power curve, car model, suspension configuration) to an already-existing racing game. I wouldn't expect it until Automation at least shows up on Steam (fully running, not just greenlit).

[lerxst]

Somebody made a utility to port the engine designs to BeamNG.Drive, which apparently works pretty well.

I'm sure there'll be some third-party program down the road that will port the data (power curve, car model, suspension configuration) to an already-existing racing game. I wouldn't expect it until Automation at least shows up on Steam (fully running, not just greenlit).

Funny, I just had the brainstorm today that BeamNG would be the perfect engine to implement a "test drive" feature for this game. If I recall (it's been a year since I even started it up) the vehicle data is stored in text files, so it shouldn't be an impossible translation to make.

Just seems if you make a game that has a 3d model and lets you tweak every millimeter of every engine piece, you should be able to see it in action, rather than just see red or green numbers on a screen. If you were making a sim-management focused game, then it should be more like the GameBiz series and just let you point and click your selections, then fine-tune all the minute details.

Implement this and I'm sold. Without this, I'll just go play Transport Tycoon, or Detroit if I wanted a purely business sim.

[Daffyflyer]

Just seems if you make a game that has a 3d model and lets you tweak every millimeter of every engine piece, you should be able to see it in action, rather than just see red or green numbers on a screen. If you were making a sim-management focused game, then it should be more like the GameBiz series and just let you point and click your selections, then fine-tune all the minute details.

Implement this and I'm sold. Without this, I'll just go play Transport Tycoon, or Detroit if I wanted a purely business sim.

I really don't think you realize the complexity of what you're asking for here.

I totally agree that it'd be a damned awesome thing, and I'd love to have it, but it'd add literally years of development time and hundreds of thousands of dollars we don't have.

We do want to fiddle with making a car exporter to something like Asetto Corsa or rFactor though at some point.

If you're not interested in a business sim about building cars, then I'd suggest Automation is not the game for you. Hopefully one day we'll be able to build on the car building things we've already done to make a great driving game, but that day has not come.