Engine naming in sandbox

How should engines be named in sandbox mode, do ya’ll put anything specific?

Mine will look something like this…

Engine Family name: 5.0

Engine Variant name: V8

I do that and end up making new engines for every new car which is something that I feel I shouldnt be doing.

Also, say I make a new car for lets say 1998. If I clone that car and raise the year to 2001, if I go to update the engine, it’ll update the engine for the '98 version as well which is what I DONT want…so that makes me create a whole new engine. Is there a way around that?..What am I doing wrong?

Whenever you choose an engine for your car, you have 3 buttons you can press: Existing Engine, Clone Variant, and New Project. If you press “Existing Engine” then pick and work on one of the engines you already had, you are going to be updating it for all the cars it’s in. You need to press “Clone Variant”. This creates a new engine variant in the same family, and you can modify it as you wish - and because the variant is only in your current car, it doesn’t change any of the engine’s other versions.

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Such are the wisdoms of engineering…
If you create a new engine every time you heavily spamming the game with a large quantity of megabytes, about which developers clearly warning you, and if you overload the game, it creates risks of incorrect and too many error outputs in your session, which in turn increases the amount of work for developers to fix errors, and as a result, developers will never welcome you to participate in game testing and not give you special award badges.

Im going to try this. I know that every time i try to clone the variant it always changes other engines as well.

Interesting. My game does crash a lot🤔.

Oh! That happens anytime you try to change anything in the Engine Family tab. Like cylinder count, family displacement, block material etc

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:laughing:

No, not really. Engines are super lightweight data-wise. And having dozens of them does not break the game (IDK about hundreds though). AND testing sorta IS about breaking the game, finding ways to do that is precisely the point. I work as a tester (no, not for Automation) so I know sth about that.

@DuceTheTruth100 As for just naming, I think there once was a similar thread :thinking: Aha, found it: Best company/model/trim/engine naming/labelling system (ideas)
There is my post about that too. In short - I prefer to use some systems, more or less elaborate, as I like them, but for some testing, experimental, temporary or uncertain engines I just use desriptive names (well, descriptive to me).

Oh, and as for cloning - choose the “trim + variant” option, not “trim only”, and you’ll have a separate variant for the update.

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Thanks for the feedback and posing the link to that thread!!

I know it’s highly specific to how I do things, but engines that were made for one brand or another always start with the company name, followed by displacement, cylinder count and arrangement, and any defining qualities of the engine. Variants get labeled with a simple to understand, but complicated-looking “model code” so I know what it is.

So, for example, the Engine Family might be “Bricksley 427ci V8” and the Variant might then be “Full-Bore - 4Bx2 - NA - 4.4kR - 270” or “R400 - 2Bx1 - NA - 5kR - 180” which then translate out (in order) to the first engine being the full 427ci with two 4-Barrel carburetors, no forced induction, a redline at 4400 RPM, and making at or slightly above 270 horsepower, and the second engine being Reduced to 400ci, with one 2-barrel carburetor, no forced induction, a redline at 5000 RPM, and making at or above 180 horsepower.

Another example might be “Ishu 1.2L I5 TwinCam” with a variant of “Adjustivalve T+L - DynamicBoost + VariaTurbo - DirectFire - 9.5k Red - 225HP” The word-soup in the variant tells me that this engine has VVT and VVL, that it uses Boost Control and a Variable Geometry Turbo, it’s Direct Injection with a 9,500 RPM redline, and makes 225 horsepower, out of a 1.2 liter DOHC I5.

If I’m doing a challenge, the Family is usually set up to follow the challenge rules, while the Variant then sandwiches what would be the normal Family name in alongside the Variant description.

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