Game at Launch, What is in? What is Out? - Updated 08/2014

General Chat Developer Questions
201

[quote=“netnut”]There’s no misundertanding on my part, I don’t think. But maybe I didn’t translate my point very well, so I’ll elaborate.

If I understand your situation right, it is as follows:

  1. Money is pretty tight. Understandable.
  2. You have a car building editor that is relatively close to completion.
    and
  3. You’ll still need to develop a “game” to wrap around that nice editor of yours.

Now if all those points are true, then consider this:

  1. While I’m sure you have business niche fans, and probably plenty of them, I also do have a feeling that (at the risk of maybe sounding a bit arrogant) your fanbase right now is mostly just into cars in general, and engines, and tuning. I mean after all, you’ve got an engine building demo up right now on the front page, not business stuff.
  2. People that are into cars, engines, and mechanical tuning, are probably also into the competitive aspect of what tuning is all about, or going faster than the other guy. Aka racing their creations.

Now, keeping those two points in mind, let’s look at your situation again. You need money, yes, and you need buzz. For that, you ideally need to finish a wrapper game around your great editor, ASAP. Get it from being a cute little single player tech demo, to being something that people want all their friends to buy.

With me so far? Okay, I know that developing a simple drag strip racing mode with either simplified controls (throttle+gearshifter only with no steering) OR even no controls whatsoever, takes probably what… maybe 1/10th the effort of creating a fully fledged business simulation game? If that? After all you’d basically just be punching your dyno results into a few more variables, and visualizing it in a track view.

So my thought is basically that if you went that route, then you would find yourself better fueled to take on the rest of your game, the business side, which frankly sounds like a massive challenge for such a small team. So no, it’s not because I just want a drag game and not a business simulation. I mean hell, I even loved Capitalism 2, and I don’t think it can get any more business simmy than that.

Anyway, I just wanted to communicate this out to you. It doesn’t mean I’m going to whine and moan about it. I mean, you’ve had my support already either way. :stuck_out_tongue:[/quote]

Although I do think it would be nice to see how well the car does in a race, even if it was just an AI seeing what it’s lap time is on one track, I must disagree with you on removing the tycoon portion. The two parts I look forward to the most would be the body design and tycoon portion of the game. The issue with just having the game thrown on the drag strip is, if you’ve seen some of the engine posts, we’ve figured out how to design those. It’s actually extremely easy to just build a super motor, and the drag portion would be extremely boring. I get bored with the beta all the time purely because I have no competition and especially no objective. The tycoon portion would generate more to do then just build a super car and race it, there will be competitive companies that you must try to out build, different needs and wants by consumers changing how you have to design the vehicle, and progressive development in how your company runs. The tycoon is, too me, the most core portion of the game. Without the tycoon portion, the game would just be what this beta is and a drag strip which I would be very disappointed that I purchased it.

I think that even you must admit that you’ve already built a crazy, insane engine that would be fantastic for a drag, everyone on here has, but having to put more thought and effort in to what you’re building would really make me play this game constantly.

202

No you misunderstand. I’m not suggesting they remove the Tycoon portion. That path has already been promised to customers.

What I’m suggesting is making a relatively easy-to-develop racing mode, to help fuel the much more complex Tycoon mode, and I’m making the argument that such a path would appeal to most (almost all?) existing customers.

Basically, I just think there are more people out there that would want to build and race, than business and build. And considering how little effort is required to do a simplified drag racing mode, it just seems like a shame not to explore that route too.

203

I think the main issue with it really is that whilst it would be a somewhat entertaining game mode it’d still take many months to get to a really nice, playable and polished standard, and in that time we could make a fair bit of progress on the tycoon portion instead.

As it is, even the car designer by itself is producing enough sales to get by, and I think the car designer will only improve that :slight_smile:

204

And those people are already catered to by loads of other games. By going that route we would be in direct competition with various AAA racing games and people would demand the same level of graphical fidelity.

A dragstrip simulator would bring extremely one-dimensional gameplay… like eecer points out, this has been done on the forums already and would have really simplistic gameplay - it’s a one-time fun thing. Also it would attract the wrong people to the game considering where we want and need to take this game. If you then add a tycoon part to it, people would be screaming “why aren’t you making a track racing game out of it instead!?”. No thanks, that would be pretty horrible, and the extent to which that happens already is just about bearable.

Also, we’re doing pretty well money-wise for being an indie, we’re getting around and sales are steadily increasing. We don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck, which confirms to us that we are on the right path.

205

I’m not sure what “loads” of AAA games you are referring to. Maybe the upcoming “The Crew”? It’s the closest I can think of, but it doesn’t really qualify, being as arcadey as it is. And Street Legal simply can’t compete with the depth you have going on.

And you say that, but I’m not convinced that you wouldn’t be earning considerably more if you had a race mode. :stuck_out_tongue: But ultimately, it’s obviously your game, and your decisions.

I am however glad that you seem so confident in being able to do the business aspect of the game properly. I guess I’ve just seen too many small teams take too many big bites that they couldn’t handle, and it has made me a bit pessimistic.

206

We’re pretty experienced at taking off big bites, and these days have a pretty good idea of what kind of work is involved with various things. When we started we used to dreadfully underestimate the time and complexity of developing features, but after doing this project for quite a few years now, I think we have at least some idea of what’s doable and what’s not :slight_smile:

207

Completely agree that it would change the market that you would be competing in, theres absolutely no way that adding a racing portion of the game would have people focus more on this than GT or Forza. The portion of this game that I think we all love is the idea of building and designing the vehicles we love and running a company around that. I much rather have the game simulate the development of Ford and how the company was made then have it simulate how Ford built its race cars.

208

Nah man. These are completely different markets. With or without any sort of “racing” or “straight line performance visualizations” as I’d rather call it. :stuck_out_tongue:

If they were one and the same, then games like Street Legal (which was always a pretty sub-par game, quality wise) never would have gained its cult following, because really, the driving mechanics in it were pretty terrible, to say the least, and the graphics too.

209

Just updated this post with stuff that will be in the upcoming update. The OP is very much incomplete though, I noticed. Needs to be revamped at some point too!

210

Does the feature list include alu space frame and direct mechanical fuel injection for early supercar goodness in the style of the 300SL?

(I realize direct injection that early in the campaign will have to be something you dedicate serious resources to develop)

211

dude, seriously? you had to bump a TWO YEAR OLD thread? you could have just asked in the FAQ or PM’d a mod.

212

Oops, doing this on the phone and this was the top thread in a relevant section and killrobs post above mine says aug 14 which i interpreted as a date not a year so i thought it was active :joy:

Still though it is very much a question related to a thread about planned featres at launch, so why start a new one when this is stickied. And if i PMed the question other people who might be interested in the answer will miss out

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213

I probably need to give this thread another good update :slight_smile:
The engine designer is (apart from the contents of the forced induction revamp) content complete. We won’t add more fuel systems to it for now, at least nothing is planned.

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214

A cool, yea if its content complete this sticky is a bit misleading. (Not that I have a problem with the amount of content you have, its certainly enough to make an interesting campaign mode)

Can we expect aluminium space frame as a high end low volume in earlier cars (sort of like early days of carbon fiber)

Then as tech advances I guess you can let that take the role of the new audi alu chassis which I have heard called space frame to. (So as long as the description is not of a tubular space frame it should be fine)

That sort of development represented by a catch all term matches what you did with alu body panels compared to what you had earlier.

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