Yes, read it all and have to agree with what you are saying in general. Many of the issues you mention are not solvable in a feasible way with the resources (money and manpower) we have at our disposal though. We have to carefully weigh every little feature and potential improvement and choose the biggest value per time and money from that list. The things you mention fall short because there are more important things to do in order to get the best experience out of the game with our resources. We do appreciate the feedback though!
Do you have any specific examples? That is not a very specific statement.
I almost entirely agree with your points, and most of them are just a case of what’s possible technically, or what’s possible for a small and fairly low budget team to pull off successfully.
Just to chip in with a few words as the artist here.
On point 1: Yep, I 100% agree that the deforming tools are not amazing, but it’s a hellish thing to create any kind of tools that actually allow you to reshape a car in a meaningful way, but without having to spend a lot of time practicing actual modeling skills, which is unreasonable to expect from a player. Our deforming stuff is a slightly hacky solution, but it at least allows anyone a decent amount of control over how some of the more major parts of a car look. We’re mostly aiming to fill the gaps in what the deforming can do by having as many base body shapes as we can. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we’ve got.
On Point 3: the Test Track was never actually going to make it as a feature for Automation 1.0. Even though we got a lot of folks (including ourselves) wanting it, it just seemed out of reach for a tiny team like us.
Then Der Bayer wrote some really good simulation code for us, and it seemed a shame not to waste it. So we figured we’d at least do a simple 2d representation to partially satisfy the people who really wanted to see laptimes and nerd out on the telemetry graphs etc.
Now that it’s a part of the game it’s ended up being the core of lots of what the forum community likes doing (race challenges etc.), so it’s here to stay for sure. It’s also turned out quite accidently, that the 2d representation has made it really easy for the community to make tracks, which is nice.
If we make a whole bunch of money and can bring on a decent sized team, the data that’s used to drive the 2d test track can equally be used to drive a full on 3d test track, and that’s something we’d certainly consider given enough resources.
Thanks for your well reasoned feedback, and I hope this answers some of your questions as to why we’ve made the choices we have.
Now this is a great way to explain why you think features should change in the game. I hope a lot of newcomers and those who’ve been here longer take an example on this.
Eventhough there is stuff in there that has been mentioned before, when explained like this, it actually makes sense instead of yelling we need V6s, Diesels and Superchargers!
ONTOPIC:
Very reasonable stuff you put down there (I’m not a developer of this game!). I totally agree with you on the ‘being in the dark’ for where the morphable areas are. This could probably be fixed by adding a white dot on places where these morphs are. I have an old picture on that (which is having way too many dots) on something I suggested before. Maybe the developers can add this during the ‘Fine-tuning’ stage of the games development for Steam?
As said, way too many dots, but you get the idea hopefully. It just needs to indicate where the morphable places are!
The amount of specifications, graphs, numbers and all other stuff you get makes this game unique. Not only can you create cars that handle slightly better than your competitors car or even accelerate faster etc., it also offers schools a chance to use this game to explain how engines work and such, as most calculations are 99% accurate, if not 100%. I think they pointed out the stats that really matter in a good way, and if you want to go on a nerdfrenzy on your car, you can try to get all the other numbers to suit what you think is best.
As for the part where you spoke about being able to reshape your car into a sportier model without having to redo all the fixtures, I totally agree. I put that down here on the forums in some post quite a while ago, but it is technically near to impossible to make everything work without getting really buggy. Another way to pretty much save your precious work, is to save front- and rearend designs into a custom save slot so you can simply reselect en put on those headlights, grills etc. with a certain position and measurement back onto the car. If you have this typical grill and badge for your company, or even headlights, you can then put it on whenever and make sure its exactly the same on all of your company cars.
What I would like to add to the discussion on morphing is a different perspective on the issue: more choice here is NOT better for the game. There are only few gameplay elements that are affected by the shape of the car, most of the morphs are completely cosmetic anyway already.
This is not furthering gameplay and more a distraction from the core game than it is helping it. Sure, people WANT it, but people also WANT race fuel, open-wheelers, driving your car, etc. From a design and flow standpoint, they would actually make the game worse because it becomes less focused on what it is good at.
Any hardcore player / min-maxer playing the campaign would only ever alter the morphs that do matter after some “fun tinkering” with shapes (size front, size rear, wheel-arches). I’m not suggesting that the current morphing is too much, but what I am saying is that there is a balance, and I think we’re very close to an optimal amount of possible customization to 1) not invest too much resources and time and 2) make possible a satisfying amount of tinkering.
I’m not pointing at MORE MORPHABLE areas, just a better indication of WHERE MORPHABLE AREAS ARE.
As for tinkering and editing after adding fixtures, it would be nice if we could, but definetly not main priority of course! it works now, but is just a lot of work to recreate everything for a sporty version of your car
Well actually, we’d be less asking for fixtures and all if we knew how it’s made !
Right now, I figure out an X,Y,Z axis for each fixture and these numbers stored as the fixture’s position.
If that’s so, I might have a hint on a solution.
The least we’d need is placement and size coordinates for each fixture. That way, we can get our way through the problem.
I don’t mind writing down every single thing as long as I can do the following :
Shape out a body,
Make basic model (writing fixture coordinates),
Take the body and shape it out as a sportier model,
Place the fixtures on the very same place as the other one as long as possible.
It’s long and boring, but at least it’s feasible.
Maybe we could also give the body morph positions as well.
I’m interested in the tycoon part, but I won’t lie : I’m mostly here for the opportunity to design my own cars and see how nice they’d be.
I think I made a similar topic some time ago. I might get it back if people wanna discuss it a bit more.
Back on topic : I agree with everything here, but I don’t think we should use dots.
Maybe we should make every morphable fixture lightened up, as if you were hovering over them, just not as visible.
These would lighten up only on this tab.
I don’t think we really need more morphable parts, it’s good already.
Having them all light up on that particular tab is not a good idea. I think these dots work, as this shows you where they are and as soon as you hover on those dots they light up. That show I would do it. I agree with the topicstarter that they are ‘hidden’ right now. Yes they are easily detectable when you hover over them but still.
On those coordinates, I agree that might be a good solution. You get something like in Forza when placing vinyls on your cars. That would be a great solution. Still, how would you make your grill, lights and other fixture have the same shape and rotation? You would need numbers on those too.
It would be too much numbers I guess. Sure designing your cars is fun and essential in this game. But how far would you want to go? If you want to go far in this, you might as well want the interior designer to be as broad as the engine and body designer and that is not going to happen before the Automation 1.0 release.
Nevertheless, I agree coordinates would help a little at least for now, so if possible, implement it for us
Not-so-bright red on every available spot as long as you’re on the body-morphing tab (disappears when on the fixtures tab)
Forza is exactly what I said as an example in my said topic.
For shape and rotation, I already said that : position coordinates and size factors.
That would make a lot of numbers yeah, that’s why it should be togglable.
Maybe we could make something like parallelograms or isosceles trapezoids modificators ? That would add many possibilities using current fixtures if possible.
You don’t have to make it, just say it’s feasible and I’ll mod the heck out of it !
Do you think the test track as it is now could be improved to be an actual motorsport simulation?.. Or would that require a completely new system?
It seems like the simulation is pretty good as it is, but is just lacking when it comes to the more dynamic aspects of the simulation(Tire wear, tire temp, brake fade, brake temp, fuel weight, etc) as well as the actual races an whatnot… The game seems to track things like brake fade already if only for the stats; I’m sure temperature could be calculated by a number of factors such as the pad material and type of disc. Tire wear and temp should be possible too… So it seems promising that an actual motorsport simulation could be done, atleast from where I’m sitting…
[quote=“Drake”]Do you think the test track as it is now could be improved to be an actual motorsport simulation?.. Or would that require a completely new system?
It seems like the simulation is pretty good as it is, but is just lacking when it comes to the more dynamic aspects of the simulation(Tire wear, tire temp, brake fade, brake temp, fuel weight, etc) as well as the actual races an whatnot… The game seems to track things like brake fade already if only for the stats; I’m sure temperature could be calculated by a number of factors such as the pad material and type of disc. Tire wear and temp should be possible too… So it seems promising that an actual motorsport simulation could be done, atleast from where I’m sitting…[/quote]
Der Bayer would be the man to answer that, but I’m pretty sure it’d work quite well for motorsport simulation, with some additional calculations added.
It’ll never do real time race simulation with the user controlling the car, but I can’t see any reason why it couldn’t in future be expanded to simulate AI racing.
Things like tyre wear and fuel consumption are not a big issue. The hardest part is modelling the “traffic” and the general AI. Not every lap should be the same and drivers should defend their position and so on. Maybe I can play around with that and try a few things out, but we’ll see. Don’t expect any useful results though.
With the current setup, that’d render a pretty large percentage of the car not-so-bright red. Though it still miiiight be workable.[/quote]
When I saw the older screens of the game, where on the morphable area there was a small white box I thought it was a good idea.
Maybe make the hovering box visible / not visible via a button on the UI of the morph tab will be an intresting way to point out the morhable zone… or also the different color areas, but with a toggle button to highlight/shut off them.
The highlighted pats sometimes collide a lot (the rear of the 90’s coupe), so different boxes maybe will be more immediate.
[quote=“Daffyflyer”] Der Bayer would be the man to answer that, but I’m pretty sure it’d work quite well for motorsport simulation, with some additional calculations added.
It’ll never do real time race simulation with the user controlling the car, but I can’t see any reason why it couldn’t in future be expanded to simulate AI racing.[/quote]
That sounds pretty promising
I don’t much care about the actual driving or racing myself, there are plenty of good racing sims out there already…
The team management though I really enjoy, and there are very few good games of this type out there… I don’t know about everyone else, but I would gladly pay for a DLC with this content.
Is there any? If so, I’d love to know about it.[/quote]
Well, the best one IMHO is Grand Prix World, but it is getting a bit old now. Its quite a deep management game that can be very difficult if you choose one of the lesser funded teams… My only real complaint is it doesn’t simulate the fact that some teams also manufacture engines… So you can end up with odd occurrences such as a Ferrari - Ford and a Mclaren - Ferrari after a season or two… There is a bit of a modding community as well, so there are some mods for other seasons.
There are no decent new management games of this type that I know of… There are few others, but they are older and hard to run on a modern computer. While DOS is easy to emulate, those early windows games are a real pain to get working. I heard that Grand Prix Manager 2 was also good, but I never could get it to run…
First thing you can do, is to close the info box (top left) by default, rather than open it by default. This already clears up a big part of the screen. Another option would be to make the info box a pop-up overlayed window, should the player click on “Info” or some icon. That would also allow the small arrow to be deleted forever from the left side there (you see for my picky bastard eyes, every little detail counts).
Second, the same applies to the limitations/specifications box (top right), maybe leave the arrow there for opening it and also the “visual” slider.
Third, the expanded menu at the bottom often gets me so confused and this is the place I spend most of the time wondering what the hell did I leave unselected… So to make it more compact and take up less of the screen, you could actually put it to the left of the screen and make it an expandable drop down menu, just turn the sliders sideways and make the whole menu scrollable with the mouse wheel. To prove the point here, the selection areas that you have for each component (ie the lists like “pushrod, overhead cam etc” for Head & valves is rarely “full”, so it’s the sliders that are using up most of menu height at the bottom and wasting screen area.
Little things, like the “Current Year” at the top of the screen could be an option somewhere inside the menu, rather than a separate element dominating at the top there.
This all allows for the semi-transparent bar showing component specs to move way low, right against the “step bar” at the bottom. And by the way, love the new step bar!!! Do not even sneeze on it !
Ok so I visualised all this in this image here (sorry for the lousy photoshopping, it’s just to illustrate this post. And I also apologize for the Exhaust Diameter which is 6.00’', I know… promise it will never happen again.)
EDIT: Reading over my post, I realized this is pretty much the design geek inside me complaining about a design they didn’t create themselves. So again, I want to be clear that I’m in no way trying to offend anyone, despite seemingly expressing myself in a rude way. If I didn’t respect all the work that you have done, and hadn’t fallen for the game, I wouldn’t be here posting suggestions from my free time, so I hope everything is still cool.
Kudos to you for backing up your writing with something not only tangible but also thoughtful. I can see why you would design it that way, it has advantages and disadvantages. As you have illustrated the advantages already, I would like to point to a potential negative with what you propose: no longer being able to see everything at a glance as information is less readily available. It would be much more time consuming to look over choices made and get the big picture when you load up an engine or car for example.
I do agree on many of the things you say though. A massive redesign won’t happen at this point, we are fairly happy with the UI as it is right now, apart from a general lack of polishing. The “info / description” area will change latest when we move to a new game engine, and the semi-transparent info area is completely changed to become proper tool-tips that give stats and can compare options head-to-head.
Thanks for sharing your ideas in the way you did!
Cheers!
Yes, you’re absolutely right about the disadvantages and there might be more. Can’t remember where but I think I’ve seen two UI sets in a PC game. Might be wrong, disregard that statement… but generally speaking, is that a hard thing to do? A kind of customizable UI?
Yes, it is pretty hard. Making a good UI is a lot of hard work, making two different good UIs is at least twice as much work, if not more as they both need to work with the same gameplay flow, so you can’t make gameplay changes to help make the UI make sense. I think that time would be much better spent perfecting one UI, rather than making multiple ones.
