We got some good work in this weekend, we should soon have a new video to show you transitioning between all engine configurations as we are in the final stages of importing assets into the Engine Designer.
This screenshot also shows some of our new UI designed by Bernardo and the new Engine Test room.
Click to get the larger version:
The interface looks great, I can’t wait to see the video 
the ui is looking great.looking forward to the new video.
keep up the great work guys.
Test room is looking great too.
All I have to say is that it looks very neat. The interface is nicely done and everything is in the right place. My only “nag” is that the right hand side buttons should be a tiny bit more big and visible because, afterall, they are important tabs.
Wow, looks great. Keep up the good work you guys!
Thanks for all the compliments! 
@Hohenstaufen - you may be right, but they are a quite a bit bigger when you are actually playing the game full size.
However, I think we should be able to make them a bit bigger, and that might make the interface work a little better, we shall see
The new UI looks very clear and nice.
Just one question: there is a slider in the part information section of the screen. What is it good for? To change the manufacture year???
Yep, it changes the manufacture year.
Because there wont be any research, or time passing or anything in the demo, you’ll just be able to choose what year you are building the engine in, which will effect how long it takes to make, the quality of the parts, and how much it costs etc.
In the finished game there will be something a bit similar, which will be how much effort you put into building it, more effort will take longer, and cost more, but make a higher quality engine
[quote=“Daffyflyer”]Yep, it changes the manufacture year.
Because there wont be any research, or time passing or anything in the demo, you’ll just be able to choose what year you are building the engine in, which will effect how long it takes to make, the quality of the parts, and how much it costs etc.
In the finished game there will be something a bit similar, which will be how much effort you put into building it, more effort will take longer, and cost more, but make a higher quality engine[/quote]
Will the year in the final game affect the stats of the engine? Or will it be based only on research?
Will there be any measures to prevent researching tech too far ahead of its time?
I didn’t like how in Detriot it was easy to max out the technicians and have 60’s tech in the 30’s.
In Motor-City all the parts were unlocked by the year so you couldn’t specialize in one area and be more advanced which wasen’t very good either.
Technologies will automatically unlock over time.
You can research ahead of this auto unlock, with a severe exponential curve.
So something 5 years in the future might take 25 tech points, but something 10 years i the future takes 100 tech point, and 15 years takes 225 tech points.
Engine manufacture works in a similar way.
You will have factories of different sizes based on your needs.
These factories have a tooling year, of when they were fitted out.
Say you tool a factory in 1965, you can produce an engine of 1950’s standards at worse, and max out your factory to 1980.
The Manufacture year represents what the average engine or tech at that time was. Some engines are ahead of their time, some an antiquated. We have based a concept that a normal Inline 4 takes about 20 man hours, as factories got better those man hours are more productive. If you are in the year 1980 and want to produce something similar to the 4AGE (which me and daffy reckons was about 5 years ahead of its time), it would cost you more like 30-40 man hours to produce that engine. 10 years in the future get towards 120 man hours.
So there is this sliding scale of costs, as you are trying to make a 1980’s quality engine with a factory tooled in 1965 it might take you 100’s of man hours per engine, instead of the 20 man hours it took make an engine of 1965 expectations. So it will be worth the expense to retool.
This allows us to have different scale of factories based on how people want to make their company, but also keep their factories up to date with current tech.
Wow. That all sounds perfect. 
Some questions about the factories though, will the factories only produce one engine at a time? or can you produce multiple engine designs out of one factory?
Will the tooling for engines mean that any engine type can be produced in any factory, or will tooling be specific for certain engine types or sizes?
Will there be any benifit to using similair parts across different engine lines? For example, Can I make a series of I4 and I6 engines that share similiar blocks, the same pistons and con rods and things like that to make it cheaper? (like the Nissan L Engine )
I hate to be a bother with all the questions… But I can’t help it 
Each factory size will have a number of production lines. Smaller factories may only have 1, larger factories will have more.
As you will design an engine around a manufacture year, its costs of production can vary factory to factory, based on when that factory was tooled. The exact mechanics of this have yet to be set in stone.
After you have designed an engine, and set it up in a production line, there will be a tooling time, where the factory is re tooling the machines to the new engine design.
Me and daffy have discussed this very topic at great length, we did at one point have planned that to build an engine, the factory would setup a whole set of production lines for conrods, pistons with all unique manufacture parameters. You would have to build a stock of these before you could build an engine.
Therefore you would be inclined to make engines of similar bores and strokes to share the piston/conrod production lines etc.
All of that became a nightmare to managed, the stocks, keeping track of changes becomes a compounded problem.
If you change the quality of a piston, tracking that through the different engines, to then the different cars they end up in. Updating the buyer demographics to manage it. It all became a nightmare to handle, not fun for me to program, and probably not fun for you guys to manage. That would of been a micro managing nightmare.
It is something that daffy and I will probably discuss again.
I really like all the different settings that can be played with, a big concern for me
Hi Indigo - you should come say Hi in the introductions thread too
Yep, lots of settings to play with, and there will be more in the full version, what with turbocharging and supercharging, plus all the different engine configurations besides I4s
[quote=“zeussy”]
Each factory size will have a number of production lines. Smaller factories may only have 1, larger factories will have more.
As you will design an engine around a manufacture year, its costs of production can vary factory to factory, based on when that factory was tooled. The exact mechanics of this have yet to be set in stone.
After you have designed an engine, and set it up in a production line, there will be a tooling time, where the factory is re tooling the machines to the new engine design.[/quote]
Sounds good.
[quote=“zeussy”]Me and daffy have discussed this very topic at great length, we did at one point have planned that to build an engine, the factory would setup a whole set of production lines for conrods, pistons with all unique manufacture parameters. You would have to build a stock of these before you could build an engine.
Therefore you would be inclined to make engines of similar bores and strokes to share the piston/conrod production lines etc.
All of that became a nightmare to managed, the stocks, keeping track of changes becomes a compounded problem.
If you change the quality of a piston, tracking that through the different engines, to then the different cars they end up in. Updating the buyer demographics to manage it. It all became a nightmare to handle, not fun for me to program, and probably not fun for you guys to manage. That would of been a micro managing nightmare.
It is something that daffy and I will probably discuss again.[/quote]
Yeah, having to manage the production of all the little parts would be too much micromangement.
I do have one idea for a simplified way of doing this. ( I dunno how well it would work, but ill throw it out there anyways.)
What you could do is have an option in the engine design screen where you take an existing design and modify it to create a series of engines.
There could be 3 levels of modification.
Level1: Simple mods like Intake and Exhaust.
Level2: intermediate mods like the top end and Aspiration as well as above.
Level3: Advanced mods to the Bottom end and everything above. (except for block size)
The lower level mods would have a larger % of time and/or cost saving, while doing more advanced mods would have a lesser benefit.
However it would be hard to code unless each level had a set % of savings regardless of how much actual modification would be done. It wouldn’t be as realistic, but thats the trouble with simplifying things… I dunno if it would be worth it.
I still think it would be a handy feature to be able to modify existing designs even if there is no benefit to cost though. I’m sure alot of players would find it easier to make a series of engines instead of building one from scratch everytime.
There should also be an option similar to above except to modify existing stocks of an engine where you send it back to a production line. The lower level mods wouldn’t take as long and cost less. Since players will undoubtedly run a surplus of parts like engines it would be useful to be able to modify them.
It would also be useful if a player wants to play as a tuning company and buy engines from competitors and tune them for your models.
I don’t think that should be too hard to code would it?
Also a Must have option is to be able to Export and Import part designs to .txt files(or similar). Especially with multiplayer where a player would probably have alot of premade designs since pausing is quite annoying for all the players.
import/export isnt just for tuning corps.
GM/Ford or the VW concern (of which the brand is just a part) use the same engine in different cars and for their different brands.
An audi 2L engine is the same as the VW/Skoda/Seat, they even come from the same factory.
We do have the concept of corporations and brands being different things.
So your company can have multiple brands under its umbrella.
When you first start the game, you will have 1 company and 1 brand.
[quote=“zeussy”]We do have the concept of corporations and brands being different things.
So your company can have multiple brands under its umbrella.
[/quote]
Sounds good. 
[quote=“Deus ex Machina”]import/export isnt just for tuning corps.
GM/Ford or the VW concern (of which the brand is just a part) use the same engine in different cars and for their different brands.
An audi 2L engine is the same as the VW/Skoda/Seat, they even come from the same factory.[/quote]
I think you misunderstood what I was suggesting.
It would be nice to export the specifications for parts like engines to a file that could then be imported in later games. This is especially useful for multiplayer where there would likely be no pausing and designing an engine from scratch would be time consuming. Or just to save good designs for future games