Automation Engine Designer Demo Feedback Thread

[Primus]

My friend told me about this game last night and I was way too excited to hear that news. Downloaded the Demo and its just simply amazing and very fun to play around with even with the limitations of only being able to build inline 4 engines. I had to instantly pre-order.
The program runs smoothly
The menus and options are easy to use
pure fun.

[PugsleyAdams]

Only "solution" so far is to only run it on one core.

Uh... yeah that's probably going to make it run like a massive pile of dung..

Supriseingly it runs perfectly fine. Don't even notice the difference and no shut downs since.

[cassito]

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

I like this thing into the Demo

[Johny_Sonner]

The engine disigner is great but i accedently clicked on never show the tutorial anymore an now is my question: how do i het the tutorial back

[Killrob]

@Johny_Sonner: There is a button "Help for this Section" on every tab of the engine designer... there are all the vids

[matros]

Just once again about taking screenshots: if you click "Take a photo" button, you get just a pic of your engine, which, as it seems to me, doesn`t have much sense since all engines looks quite similar with those cherry-red valve covers I mean, I can`t imagine a situation when I would like to share with somebody just image of my engine, without its stats.
And if you want to take a full screenshot, you`ve got to use third party software, which not always works as you desire (for example, on two my double-screen computers under Win7 I can`t take a screenshot via Printscreen Key).
Maybe it would be handy to have another button (or "Take photo" replaced) — "Take full screenshot", to make a complete picture of what you currently see on screen, with all those sliders and numbers?

Oh, and even better idea: a button "Make graphical specs", which would make you a picture of your engine with all the technical data beneath it: valve timings, camshaft profiles and so on, and power and torque curves? Ain`t it too complicated?

[Daffyflyer]

Yes, that is a good plan indeed and we've been considering that.

[avengingtn]

Well... To be honest I'm a bit disappointed with the Engine Designer.

It runs like shit on my computer for some reason but that's not a concern for me (I'm experiencing driver issues right now).

What I dislike is the units used, the amount of rounding, and the frustration involved in building the engine.

lb/hph? Really? Is this 1920? PPM(emissions) and MPG/GpH(economy) are much more familiar. I have no idea what the fuck MREV is though, just replace it with hours or something? lol

100 Fuel Mixture? 100 cam profile? 100 ignition timing? Shouldn't it be measured in a ratio and degrees?

"more than 13.1 lb/hph" I'm at 13.1 lb/hph and it works. Go out a few more decimal places to eliminate the awkwardness.

My biggest problem is the frustration though. 3 hours and constant fiddling to make a .1 lb/hph difference while maintaining the power output. lol This shouldn't change persay.. but a few more tips would be very much appreciated.




To be honest, I'm just bitching because I had a bad day at work. I love the game, hahah.

[avengingtn]

Some more thoughts. Once the game is completed, why not export it to Steam and maybe include a few achievements? (I noticed it was encoded in Lua.. not to mention the graphics look surprisingly similar to that of Half Life 2. hahah)

[ryandude2448]

Well... To be honest I'm a bit disappointed with the Engine Designer.

It runs like shit on my computer for some reason but that's not a concern for me (I'm experiencing driver issues right now).

What I dislike is the units used, the amount of rounding, and the frustration involved in building the engine.

lb/hph? Really? Is this 1920? PPM(emissions) and MPG/GpH(economy) are much more familiar. I have no idea what the fuck MREV is though, just replace it with hours or something? lol

100 Fuel Mixture? 100 cam profile? 100 ignition timing? Shouldn't it be measured in a ratio and degrees?

"more than 13.1 lb/hph" I'm at 13.1 lb/hph and it works. Go out a few more decimal places to eliminate the awkwardness.

My biggest problem is the frustration though. 3 hours and constant fiddling to make a .1 lb/hph difference while maintaining the power output. lol This shouldn't change persay.. but a few more tips would be very much appreciated.




To be honest, I'm just bitching because I had a bad day at work. I love the game, hahah.

You can change the units under the "options" when you start the game. And, you can;t measure MPG because that would require a body because of weight. MREV is i think engine revs...times 1 million? IDK.
You probably know this now but trying to help

[Killrob]

@avengingtn:
Yes, the rounding is still quite a bit too much - which is a known bug and will of course be changed. Most other things you mention are common misconceptions.

How many miles does the engine move while on the test stand? Zero... so having a MPG rating is as meaningless as it gets. The only thing measurable on the engine stand is engine efficiency, and g/kWh or lb/hph is the inverse of this efficiency: how much fuel is used to generate one hph or kWh.

For the MREVs... it's "Million Revolutions", and again a common misconception: If you run the engine at full load near the rev limiter it won't survive for long, but if you run at 2k RPM it might last basically forever. It might not be the perfect unit to use, but it is the most correct and intuitive we can come up with.

For Steam: yes, it will be on steam at some point, and having a few achievements to go with it never hurts

[avengingtn]

That actually makes a lot of sense.....

I feel stupid now....

*buys another Forced Induction preorder out of shame*

[Zephyroth]

@avengingtn:
For the MREVs... it's "Million Revolutions", and again a common misconception: If you run the engine at full load near the rev limiter it won't survive for long, but if you run at 2k RPM it might last basically forever. It might not be the perfect unit to use, but it is the most correct and intuitive we can come up with.

For passenger cars, the most common unit is "Miles" or "Kilometer". The average lifetime of a passenger car is 250.000km or 150.000mi.

It's clear, for an engine designer, the MRevs is the desired unit. With the gear ratios you get the desired MRevs.

MRevs is easy, but it doesn't fit reality. Take my Civic (a diesel with low RPM) and my Integra (a gasoline engine with high RPM). For cruising at 90mph the Civic did around 2700rpm, the Integra instead did 5200rpm. If you design both engines to the same MRevs, the Integra engine will not last very long. In fact, the Integra engine has to withstand roughly twice the MRev's than the Civic engine for the same car lifetime of around 150.000mi (and it did, I sold the Integra with 150.000mi, still running fine).

Greetz,
Zeph

[Killrob]

Somehow this is even more confusing, Zephyroth.

First, even if you correct the obvious flaw in your statement "With the gear ratios you get the desired MRevs." (Change MRevs to km/miles), it is still incomplete, you need to know the effective wheel diameter too, of course.

In the example after your "MRevs is easy, but it doesn't fit reality." statement, there is nothing that really explains why that would be the case? Both engines can have much different MTTF values from the start, giving the same mileage in the end.

An engine with neither gearbox nor car around it will, in general, not have a flat MTTF [MRevs] score either. Running at 9k RPM will probably give a lower score than running at 3k RPM. Also, engine load should matter in some way. I could imagine a unit based on [MRevs * Load] which may give a slightly more realistic result with the drawback of much added (useless?) complexity.

We are rather content with MRevs until we hear something better.
/Robert

[Zephyroth]

You are right, we need the complete drivetrain (engine, gearbox, differential, wheel diameter) to calculate from MRev's to mileage of the whole car. I agree with you, that MRev's is the right dimension for designing an engine. But most people want a car, not an engine. Every thing is referred to mileage (warranty, inspection intervals, lifetime etc.).

I hope you agree, that finally it would be the best, when we see the calculated mileage of the car (after fitting it together). A car is finally that, what is buildt in automation. Not only the engine (even if it is the most interesting task, the engine is the soul of a car).

Of course everyone drives a car in a different way, but even then you have to stick to speed limits, which are very similar all over the world. With these speed limits we can set up a "gear usage profile" (which gear is used how many percent of time). Out of this we can calculate an average gear ratio, which is finally used (with the wheel diameter) to calculate the predicted mileage.

For example, I would use a five speed gearbox with this weighting:

1. 5% (just for getting the car moving)
2. 5% (mainly for acceleration)
3. 20% (cruising in the city)
4. 20% (cruising in the city/country side)
5. 50% (cruising on the highway)

Of course that is just a suggestion, the weighting could be changed for the desired target country (USA is slower than Germany). That's a task of balancing.

Maybe the gamers tend to use a "long" gearbox, because this gives a high lifetime, but next they will recognize, that the long box doesn't fit to the engine characteristics. For example bad acceleration, or the maximum speed can't be reached. Everything not so easy , but that's what makes Automation interesting.

That's just an overview of my idea of converting MRev's to mileage. If you want me to, I will write a complete document with examples.

Greetz,
Zeph