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Here are some of the things I've been working on lately: https://streamable.com/ozeg5 https://streamable.com/eaopq
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Sep 13, 2018 03:43
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Ha those are great! - The Rebel is one of your contest entries?
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Sep 14, 2018 18:14
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VostokProgram posted:wow, thanks so much! do you mind describing what you did in more detail, and why? especially the chassis stuff, i really dont get how most of that works Yeah, absolutely, now that I have some time to sit down and actually do some stuff: So the first thing I did was change your crankshaft, connecting rods and pistons; as much as it's nice to have all those whizz-bang expensive parts, they were really overkill for the engine. If you look off to the right-hand side of the screen, it tells you how high you can rev your engine before the parts start to punish your reliability; with all those parts, your engine was capable of revving to almost 10,000 RPM without penalty, yet it redlined at 7800, so I then selected the parts so that everything would still remain safe, but only just. The net result was a mix of cast and forged parts; also, I dropped the quality slider to 0, which saved quite a few production units (the number with the anvil icon) and engineering time (the number with the gear icon) at the expense of a bit more weight. In the top end tab, your cam settings were already very good, so I didn't make many changes there, just dropped the quality slider a bit (from +5 to +2), because the top end quality slider is by far the most expensive slider of all the engine components. In the turbocharger tab, I went and gave it the standard Automation tune (at least until the forced induction revamp comes), which is to set the AR ratio to 1.4, then give the turbocharger a large compressor impeller, and a small turbine, increasing/decreasing each to reach the desired power level. I dropped the turbocharger quality to 0, because unless you're doing something where you need to extract every last horsepower, it just adds cost needlessly. In the fueling tab, I pretty much left everything alone, because the settings more or less worked for what you were trying to do. About the only advice I can give here is that I try to tune the engine on as little fuel as possible, often starting out at 15:1 air/fuel ratio, and making it more rich only as a last resort. That's just my way of doing things; it means I usually get very nice fuel economy, but at the expense of a bit of engine response. In the exhaust tab, I was able save weight and cost by setting a smaller exhaust diameter to your car, which also had the effect of improving your fuel economy and engine power slightly. I also changed one of the mufflers to straight-through, which made the car a little louder and breathe a bit better (two good things for a sports car). As for the chassis, I gave the car a front lip in the fixtures, which allowed me to change the front downforce, plus I gave it slightly wider fenders front and rear, partly for wider tires, but also because it looks badass. In your drivetrain tab, I shortened the gearing just a little bit, while making the ratios a little closer, making sure to set the top speed right at the power peak in top gear, while making sure the car didn't have to shift past second gear to reach 100 kilometres per hour (which gives a nice big boost to your stats). I got rid of the viscous limited-slip differential, which kind of sucks for this application, and replaced it with a geared one, which sacrifices a bit of driveability and comfort for much better performance. Finally, a tweak to power distribution and we were finished here. I went to 18" wheels, with 245-section tires for two reasons; first, Automation kills your service costs if you run staggered tires (different sizes front and rear), plus 18" wheels give more prestige, even if it cost a bit of performance. I set the offsets to be as wide as they could be, while maintaining a rather believable tire tuck under the fenders; this isn't necessary, it just keeps my aesthetic sense from going nuts hahaha. I made most of the gains in the chassis in the braking tab; your brakes were massively overkill for the car, so I toned them down a bit, while making the front rotors a little larger. I tuned the brake force to be just over the tire grip line, and by about equal amounts by tweaking brake rotor size and brake bias (how much force is applied front to rear). The result was most of the cost and weight savings in the chassis overall. I gained a bit of brake fade, but also had the car stopping better too. In terms of aero, the front lip allowed me to balance the downforce more or less based on weight distribution, which really helped the car's high-speed handling over your setup; plus, getting rid of the brake cooling (which wasn't necessary after all) helped boost the car's top speed a bit. For driver aids, I took some of those cost and weight savings and put them into variable output hydraulic steering, which is a nice stat boost. Finally, in your suspension, I stiffened up the rear springs, softened the dampers just a little bit, and lowered the ride height just a bit, which lowered the car's roll centre and allowed me to run slightly softer sway bars. Wow, that turned into a loving wall of text! mekilljoydammit posted:I get why most games don't treat AWD systems like that though. "OK, now write an algorithm describing torque bias as a function of various variables" is nontrivial for a bunch of people IRL. Automation isn't smart enough to do that by and large, but BeamNG absolutely is, if you don't mind digging into the jbeam files for your cars. There is a lot you can do in there. extreme_accordion posted:Ha those are great! - The Rebel is one of your contest entries? It is, this one has just been given a 2015 model year trim, had its interior stripped out completely, then given a modern automatic transmission and a pair of turbochargers to push it over the thousand-horsepower mark. Right now I'm digging into the jbeam file to try and edit the torque converter so that it stalls at around 3500 RPM, so it launches just before the fury kicks in, rather than just stalling at 1400 where there is nothing.
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Sep 15, 2018 03:31
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Here comes a dev update! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmFilFM4MV0
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Oct 16, 2018 05:55
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Alright, after too many delays, the rallycross challenge has gone live! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3872355
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Oct 24, 2018 03:20
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Somehow in all the pandemonium of launching the rallycross challenge, I missed this dev update from a couple weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sPhVACUYwQ Talking about dealer networks, advertising and whatnot in the upcoming Light Campaign mode.
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Nov 10, 2018 18:50
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How accurate is automation's thermal model? I'm getting a lot more torque out of my 413 Max Wedge than it's supposed to have (over 500 Nm when the engine's dialed to 420 BHP). I'm using dual 4-barrel carbs with racing intakes to fake the ram-air system. I've increased the head quality up to +3 and haven't touched any of the other quality sliders. The engine performance is almost accurate to the historical engine, it's just that it's a lot better than it's supposed to be based on the manufacturer's data. Might be down to either fuel quality, headers or what method chrysler used to test and rate engines (they changed it somewhere around 1971). Probably down to how Automation does thermo since it always assumes ideal conditions. Also there is no reason at all to use an aluminium head in this engine apart from either marketing or weight saving. The only parts that are under noticeable stress are rods, and that's well within the "don't care" values. The original designers made a lot of good choices when making this engine. If you needed to rebuild civilization or found a second Earth you'd probably want to copy it and use it for everything.
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Nov 11, 2018 13:47
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How Disgusting posted:How accurate is automation's thermal model? It's not. Doing accurate modeling of ... quite frankly a lot of things is way beyond the scope of something you can buy on Steam for $50 or whatever. I don't know what's under the hood on how Automation does its engine modeling but I know how real, experimentally verified, engine simulations work, and there just plain aren't enough inputs in Automation where it will accurately represent an arbitrary engine. They have probably messed with it such that it looks about right for certain configurations but it 100% is not accurate enough to, for example, model the differences between a 429 Boss and a 429 with wedge heads.
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Nov 11, 2018 16:03
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Another thing I noticed is a hell of a lot of rounding errors. There's a lot of situations where you can abuse the fact the game doesn't use full 64 bit floats and give yourself extra power or torque out of thin air. Also when testing and tuning a finished car on the track, a lot of things give different and/or opposite results depending on whether they're set to an odd or an even number. So if you're tuning say engine airflow even numbers will improve your track time and odd numbers will make it worse. I mean the "game" is great for what it is, no one's ever going to use it instead of professional software but it's great for roughly mythbusting or prototyping something and ending up with a basic range of values.
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Nov 11, 2018 17:05
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I look at it, it's fun, in many ways the way things affect each other are like reality, and it's about tinkering with cars and engines. It doesn't have to be perfectly representative, it's a game.
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Nov 11, 2018 17:18
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I missed a dev update last month, so here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7_VAFUuqA And I only clued into it because there was another dev update just released! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmt06slw-x8 The updated Lite Campaign mode should be released to the public (in an early version, mind you) before Christmas! E: I've also updated the OP with some images from the UE4 versions of Automation...finally... MrChips fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Dec 4, 2018 |
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Dec 4, 2018 05:01
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Light Campaign V3 is out. Haven't had a chance to dig into it yet, but it looks like great fun. I'm glad they took the time with the engine update to really invest in the future of the campaign's fundamental design, the business side is starting to look actually interesting.
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Dec 21, 2018 16:09
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Yep, the Light Campaign V3 is out in an opt-in beta right now, and it's looking real good in a lot of ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSulwrrFWg4  Word of warning: the LCv3 beta is very much that, and at the moment does not allow mods, Sandbox Mode, Photo Mode or the BeamNG exporter; if you do decide to use it, make sure you back up your sandbox.db file before you start it, found at Docs\My Games\Automation just to be safe. If you'd rather not risk it, this branch should be made public on or about the 18th of January.In the meantime, here is a tutorial video from the devs for those diving in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUbrFhQFcVU
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Dec 22, 2018 04:02
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The Automation devs have released a fairly large Q&A video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFN1q3Ydclo
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Feb 2, 2019 00:51
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Bit behind the times here, but Automation was updated to the latest version of the Unreal Engine, which has solved a lot of the weird little issues that were going on in the UE4 version. It's also made the game a LOT prettier too; here are some examples!    
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Mar 8, 2019 03:15
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How do I know how what a car's wet performance will be?
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Mar 27, 2019 02:00
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Danny Glands posted:How do I know how what a car's wet performance will be? How do you mean? New Dev Update, talking about the changes being made in the light campaign mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlFM40PYN8s
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Mar 28, 2019 02:06
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Like, when I designed the Shark for that one car show on the Automation forums, the review was that it handled poorly on wet roads.
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Mar 28, 2019 06:11
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A lot of different factors can affect whether or not a car will handle well in the rain, or not; it's pretty much impossible to pin it down to one thing unfortunately. And beyond that, the Automation -> BeamNG export process is full of a lot of (often not very good) assumptions. E: tell you what, send me your car if you can, and I will take it around in Beam if you like; I'm far from the fastest driver in it, but I can at least provide you with some feedback. MrChips fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Mar 29, 2019 |
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Mar 29, 2019 02:13
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Finally, a new dev update! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbqRr5589rQ Talking about the upcoming patch, with some stability fixes, performance enhancements and the new paint system.
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May 15, 2019 00:59
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New Paint system is confusing at first, but so much more powerful.
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May 17, 2019 03:36
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New dev update, talking about the changes coming to the UI, cleaning it up massively (thank god), along with photoscene changes... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mPCa5IbAY4
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Jun 13, 2019 04:04
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New dev update, talking about the updated UI and the upcoming beta version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75clZqftsDE On an unrelated note, I'm running an auction challenge on the Automation forums right now...I've done a couple of them before and they were popular, but this one's ballooned into the largest single challenge ever run in Automation to my knowledge. Anyway, it's here if you want to follow along: http://discourse.automationgame.com...till-open/30139
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Jul 11, 2019 02:54
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I should pay more attention to you on the official forums, I totally would have thrown a few cars at that for sale.
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Jul 12, 2019 02:58
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Another dev update, detailing the latest public release, now with animatics in photo mode! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DczrJODQEzA Now that this cursed auction is over, I can turn my attention to some challenges that might be a bit more in line with what we've done so far.
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Aug 10, 2019 19:14
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Since the last update, the devs have been quietly working away on campaign stuff. They also dropped these images on discord in the last few days:  Oh and also the comedy option:  It's going to be a while before the forced induction update is ready, but the fact they're working on assets already is encouraging!
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Sep 25, 2019 01:24
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This may mean entirely new concepts for my next ARXL car - part of me is now imagining a twin turbo I4.
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Sep 25, 2019 01:54
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One thing I hope they do in a further update is paint patterns - like racing stripes and such.
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Sep 27, 2019 23:23
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Danny Glands posted:One thing I hope they do in a further update is paint patterns - like racing stripes and such. The way bodies and paint groups are made, that would be really difficult to implement as such. Fortunately, there have been an abundance of mods made in the last few months that make racing liveries relatively easy to design and implement with the system we do have. Beyond that, there's still always the trick of using the existing paint groups as different colours, and hiding things as necessary with grilles, bumper bars, etc. E: These are from the most recently completed round of the Automation Gamer Challenge on the Automation forums:    None of these are mine, but yeah...you can do some pretty incredible things with the existing system and a little creativity! MrChips fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 18:20
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Missed posting this somehow, but another dev update, detailing the changes coming in the next version of the light campaign, mostly to make UI flows a lot more intuitive than they are now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiSpfDKHJ7k
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Oct 5, 2019 19:51
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Thank god, the UI on this game has always been lackluster on its best days.
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Oct 5, 2019 19:58
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I've missed a couple of dev update videos! First one is from the end of October, talking about a bunch of the changes that have been made in the UI, especially for the campaign mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci7DPAJU4uE Second video is from a couple of days ago, talking more about the upcoming patch, which will bring us the latest version of the light campaign mode, as well as general polish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGRG7SdsPg0 On a non-game development note, I am working on the second season of ARXL but I've had some pretty major personal upheaval in my life the last month or so; I'm hoping to get it going sometime next month, but make no guarantees.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:12
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I suppose this means I need to reinstall and start working on designs since I can't reuse the last season's car. Hope the personal upheavals are just of the 'busy' not 'negative' sort
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Nov 16, 2019 23:29
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I bought this game the other day! I've done a bunch of the engine challenges that act as a kind of tutorial and it seems good fun. Is the campaign actually worth playing or not really? The warning about a lack of polish and balance seemed pretty dire. If not I'm happy to make a few cars and drive them in BeamNG. Maybe an XJ220-alike...
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Dec 3, 2019 14:13
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tbh I haven't touched the campaign since Lite V1
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Dec 3, 2019 15:41
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I made my first car! It's a 1995 supercar, hefty at 1500kg but a turbocharged 4.6L V8 packing a peak 517hp will propel it to 62mph in 3.6s and all the way up to 179mph. 18.3mpg is better than I expected and a cost of $67,900 is really quite the steal. I've driven a slightly older variant in BeamNG and it's fun, the back really likes to step out under braking and given its weight, that's a problem at speed. I'll do further tweaking tomorrow and maybe look at one of the competitions on the forum.    And an earlier version being driven hard in BeamNG:  This is basically the game I've wanted since I was 10.
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Dec 5, 2019 00:31
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A new dev update - discussing the development roadmap into the future! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43QkxYvcBX8
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Jan 9, 2020 03:38
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If any of you own Automation but not the OST, please note that the composer of the soundtrack has said that from now until the end of Feburary, all of the net proceeds from the purchase of the Automation OST will be donated 50/50 to Wildfire Victoria and the Victorian Country Fire Authority. More information found here: https://www.michael-trott.com/words/2020/1/10/klyanjman6a4ed7v1shntz0qztd07p
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Jan 12, 2020 23:44
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I have a question for other Automation players : Do any of you think the campaign has gone in a good direction over the past couple years? I personally get the distinct feeling that the only person who enjoys any of the changes to the game to increase the focus on optimizing sliders in engineering is Killrob. I've long been at the point where every single time I want to play the game, I fire it up, design a car, get to the pointless mass of sliders that is engineering and just say gently caress it and quit. It's a shame because I really enjoyed the campaign back in the Kee engine days when that part was broken, the automation slider was just an inverse difficulty slider, and the campaign wasn't primarily about optimizing to some idiotic bullshit that no one other than Killrob has memorized. The changes to the rest of the game have been so positive, including many other aspects of the campaign, but to me engineering just completely ruins it and eliminates my interest to play or my desire to recommend the game to anyone else beyond a toy for beamng export.
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Jan 25, 2020 00:00
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Well, as another Automation player... I have no idea; never tried the campaign, too busy optimizing sliders.
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Jan 25, 2020 00:33
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