Let me just say I appreciate the staff responding to my review. I was planning to just give up on the game, and probably will for the foreseeable future, but figured it couldn’t hurt to post the issues I’m having. Also, if it isn’t glaringly obvious, I’m new to this. Onto the meme.
The trouble started around the beginning of the month (July '18). I was playing the UE4 version (in fact, that was the only version I played, the Kee version didn’t work too well), and I forget the exact details of the situation, but something happened while the game was loading from one menu to another, and went unresponsive. Not unresponsive exactly, but the loading spinner thing was stuck spinning. I sat for maybe five minutes hoping for the program to ‘wake up’, then decided to alt-tab out and close the program via the Task Manager. t h a t w a s a b a d i d e a .
When I started the game up next, there wasn’t much technical trouble, but most of my actual data (cars and engines) was bust. Like, completely unusable. I couldn’t edit all but one model, and even that had been seemingly wiped of any data other than the model’s name. So, instead of looking for help here, I made an infinitely more measured and intellectual decision. I attempted to purge every file even related to the game from my hard drive, then reinstall (I use steam btw). t h a t w a s a b a d i d e a .
One uninstall and failed purge later, I could officially say Automation machine broke. It was not understandable. I did not have a nice day. In precise order, I uninstalled the game through steam, attempted to delete any Automation-related folders from my hard drive (which didn’t work, there was a folder which apparently didn’t have permission to be accessed, therefore it couldn’t be put in the recycle bin). This (most likely, I’m not a computer doctor and can’t confirm) caused an issue with file integrity (gee, I wonder why), and when I attempted to reinstall the game, steam couldn’t, citing a disk write error. Like, not an actual error box, I don’t have specifics, the entry on the download page in the library just said there was a disk write error.
Well, I tried verifying files, attempting a few reinstalls, verifying files again, etc. Nothing worked. After about a week, I got back to the case, and in my attempts to reinstall, I was not longer getting stuck at disk write errors in the download page. Instead, at the first pop-up box that displays the progress bar, the ‘allocating disk space’ and all that, I was getting a pop-up that was directing me to a steam support page about various troubleshooting methods for installation and update errors. Well, I tried a few things. I cleared my local download cache, and since I have an extra hard drive lying around, I created a second library and installed the game there. However, clearing the download cache didn’t do much, and attempting to install on a different hard drive only got me the same post-crash state of the game: all of my engines were gone, and my cars were essentially gone.
However, when I installed it on the second hard drive, I ran into some technical… issues.
Now, when I list these issues, know I didn’t get much actual play time post-exporter update. Tbh, after all of the grief of trying to get the game running, just to get a barely playable shamble of what I had known the game to be as well as having no progress as far as recovering my cars’ data was p upsetting. Also, I apologize if any of the below have already been solved. Again, I’ll play the ‘I’m new’ card. Anyway, the bugs.
Firstly, when I tried to create a new car and entered the engine designer (because all of my engines had been wiped) and selected any engine, the game crashed. It would just freeze upon selecting an engine type, and I would have to alt-tab out and wait for the window to close. I might add that upon these freezings, the game was truly unresponsive. This occurred twice. After that, I decided to preemptively design an engine in the hopes that would work. I didn’t try the boxer engine, but I went with my usual: the humble inline four. However, I think it was upon selecting the material the pistons and camshaft would be made of, the engine model itself disappeared. Like, the whole thing, as if I hadn’t chosen an engine type at all. However, when I selected the turbo-charger option, there auxiliary models for that did appear. The same happened when I changed the cam option; the front belts and timing cover would show up, but the block itself was nowhere to be found.
After I encountered this bug, I just gave up. I decided it wasn’t worth it. And the worst part is, before I closed the game with the task manager, it was running fine. I had no issues with anything. No bugs whatsoever. And I was SO hyped for the exporter update. I just hope I can get the friggin thing running smoothly again. If it helps, I use windows, and if tech specs need drawing up, I can get them, I’m just too lazy to find them and put them in this post.
Sorry again if I give any redundant bugs or glitches, and hopefully I can get some answers, or at least some closure. Thanks much.
Also, I get this is a novel in length. Sorry about that.
