This is the first impression I get from automation. It’s the startup banner as I see it when the game is started and updated
Looks horrible and stays there for long. The green bar starts to fill from the left to right over and over again. I have no hint when the startup will be finished.
The background looks as if it is too small for the frame, title is cropped, there are empty spaces left and right of the text.
To sum it up: it does not look trustworthy. It looks like it was carelessly clued together in a hurry. Does this look shows how the developers work? When I see this, I expect bugs. I don’t expect a program that looks like this runs decently, stable or reliable.
Dear developers: If I’m wrong, do yourself a favour and take the GUI more serious. It’s your business card.
You sir need to do yourself a favour and maybe read some of the faq and the rest of the forum before stating something so petty and in poor form that it makes you look like a troll.
The devs of Automation are the real deal they actually listen to your questions and are constantly making this game better for us. If all of your impression is based of the startup screen and not actually playing the game you must be impressed with some really shitty games that try to make you pay for something else every 5 mins. Well done.
Sure, valid criticism to some degree. On the other hand you’re basing your impressions of an unfinished game on the outdated demo with an even more outdated launcher. As a tiny studio we do not have the time / resources to keep this up to date during normal development, hence it is in the state it is in.
Probably we should just remove the demo completely until we’ve all that updated and had the time to check if it all works properly, because you are right: it does give a bad impression of the game. We rather have people watch YouTube videos of people playing it than being frustrated over a shitty demo version to get a first impression.
I read “After along open beta phase” as “the game is out of beta”. Now you say it’s still unfinished… yes, it looks like.
I hope you got me right: I’m trying to help.
It’s a psychological thing: you eat with your eyes first. And you don’t need to have a fancy shiny expensive mock-up for it, I estimate one hour development would make the thing look better so it won’t chase away potential customers. I would not buy a game because of some videos on youtube. I thank you for the demo.
My company once outsourced a java-migration to a foreign provider. They made mock-ups where no item was aligned with another, it all looked shaky and scrappy. Nobody of us felt confident with their programming skills. A few months later when the real screens came it was clear that our first impression was right: they were not able to deliver in the required quality. From that experience I can tell how important it is to give a good impression.
I just wanted to give this advice, I didn’t want to start a big discussion about it.
@Darkshine5: If you’re not a fanboi, then I’m not a troll.
You are correct about what you are saying.
Just an honest question to you as someone who works in the general field (or has some overlap to it), which would you see as the best solution?
(Current State) Have a shoddy demo which is worse than the actual product, scaring many people off but pleasing those who buy it anyway despite the demo’s flaws.
Have no demo at all and focus all effort into the core product itself. Have people rely on Let’s Plays, articles, etc. to get their impressions.
Have a proper demo and have all existing customers wait 2-3 months longer for the final product, and having higher development costs for it.
Of course you can’t give an accurate answer as you don’t know out financials, demographics, team structure and size, etc. but I put that out there also for others to see “it’s actually not that easy”.
Cheers!
You are right.
My favourite is 3. But I’m not the only prospect.
The best way is probably a mix of all.
Scaring off all but those who’ll buy it anyway?? Sounds silly…
You’re also right about my limited knowledge of the production circumstances. I don’t even know in which country it is developed (labour law). That’s why I only said something about the result and how it might influence on your income.
I like the way your communicating and show that you see the issue. You gain some trust back.
It’s never that easy.
Also, I see that you want to have a correct opinion without knowing the best possible answer, but
Does not really work with options of “Bad Demo” / “No Demo” / “Proper Demo”. Unless ofcourse you meant “Having a proper demo, but not releasing it at all, releasing a bad demo instead”.
At least you’re a polite troll.
Scaring off all but those who’ll buy it anyway?? Sounds silly…
Nah, it’s not silly, maybe you misread: I said many, not “all”. You scare off many who are undecided, but those who like it so much they can see beyond the flaws of the demo buy it anyway and then are positively surprised that the production quality of the non-demo is much higher. That is not silly, it is having a high threshold in place for buying an unfinished product.
It’s probably not that useful to bandy about the word “troll” in such a loose manner. It trivialises the word, not that this hasn’t happened already.
Disregarding speculation on motives, I didn’t realise the demo looked like that! Most of us longtime players tend to assume that prospective buyers like us would be interested in the premise and because it’s a niche area would overlook shoddy presentation as long as the game played well since it’s also a unique game.
But much like a certain presidential debate, first impressions are most helpful for swinging the uncommitted punters. In this case it’s the people who don’t yet know they really want to build cars and run factories. I don’t know how large that demographic is and it’s probably very difficult to quantify. But maximising the potential for that Market would be where a polished demo would be most relevant.
I’m just here to show you the little grain of sand that is my opinion.
I think the automation team should probably not touch the demo until we get the new engine update.
Then they can decide if they update the demo or not.
i agree with this, and Killrob’s plan of temporarily getting rid of the demo. i mean, i’m sure many players will understand that the Demo is largely outdated and had to be temporarily removed due to no longer representing the game in it’s current state. though personally, i’d say just let Killrob do a poll on it, then again, as @strop said, most of us have no clue what the Demo even looks like now, which would lead to some heavily biased votes.
Writing huge red disclaimers all over the demo and it’s splash screen saying something to the effect of “This is a simple and outdated tech demo, and does not reflect the quality of the finished product” might be a good idea… and I assume won’t take too long to do?
I would consider it common sense that a demo of a game that’s in Early Access is just a rudimentary tech demo… but as this thread shows; that isn’t the case.
I’d pass a vote for eliminating the current demo until we get the UE4 update. It should represent the game as it moves forward, something other games I’ve demoed and then bought also struggled with. (Kerbal Space Program’s old beta was… awful. I bought it because I saw so many cool things being done on YouTube videos.)
Sure, it means taking more time, but… the Demo is a prospective customer’s first glance at your game. It’s why I’m saying, kill the current Demo, because it represents the game from an eternity ago, wait until the UE4 update (which will make things look better anyway), and decide on what features should be available for the Demo.
Is it possible to release a “lite” version through Steam itself instead of keeping the standalone platform alive and having so many issues with it? You could just lock Automation’s best features (eg free choice of bodies, turbocharging, all race parts etc) and make the game really frustrating to play so that people become desperate not to play it again so that they eventually buy the full thing
The demo locked you to 4 cylinder naturally-aspirated only as your engine type. Eventually frustrated me into buying the real thing because I wanted to build with V8’s.
I dont really see good reason to make new demo when UE 4 is so close. My first contact with game was when i watched few LDU’s. Tried demo and bought full game, tho im sad to this day that i didnt get turbo version. :<
