Gas Station Simulator News

The day's over. The bright, warm orange sun is slowly descending to hide itself behind the horizon. You see a ray of light sneak itself into the room as you check out the last customer for the time being, and throw your gaze out the window to watch the spectacle. And a spectacle it is, for sure.



When out in the desert, sky-watching happens to be one of the few things that give someone some relief and Gas Station Simulator aims not to disappoint. Using a dynamic, physics-based system to generate and control the sky, we can safely say that the lightwork in the game is as realistic as it can be, perhaps even more real than reality itself.
The sun creeps from east to west, replaced by the moon during night time. Each celestial body, including the major stars in the night sky, casts its light that falls towards the desert floor.
Clouds, dynamic and layered, cast shadows underneath the terrain they roll over, with darkness intensifying that much more for but a few seconds. Day turns to night, night turns to day, and the clouds roll along with the passage of time. If not for the plethora of customers, it's easy to find yourself mesmerized by the beauty of Gas Station Simulator's sky.



Wait, customers?
Were you anywhere else in the world, closing the establishment come nightfall seems a reasonable thing to do. But you're in a mid-western desert, and the rules work a little bit different here. For starters, 'closing hours' are a myth. As day turns to night, customers... don't stop coming. Maybe the traffic lessens, but there's many travelers out there playing it sensible and saving the long rides for night time, where the desert heat isn't liable to cook them alive in the confines of their vehicles. Tired, night riders will buy energy drinks or something to snack on, a different priority assortment than a tourist bus full of nuns.



But cherish your quiet moments. There's much going on in Gas Station Simulator, day-in and night-out. If you can spare but a while, sit down, enjoy the soft banjo tune and marvel at Hellen's slow and warm descent. That's what Joe suggests, at least.

When starting the development of a new game, you usually start with prioritizing the first features to prototype. Back when we began working on Gas Station Simulator, we did that as well, but ended up starting with a rather unexpected choice.
You’d think renovation, building upgrades, the plethora of customer interactions or the tasks at hand like filling up tanks or checking vehicles would be the choices to start with. And you would be right, except many of them rely on something very basic: how the customers arrive and how they get to where they want before you get to the tasks or interactions.

This means we had to tackle the vehicle AI first to see if we can get it as detailed as we wanted it to be, because how many other features would play out is going to rely on what the vehicle AI will be able to handle. The thing about vehicles and their behavior is, that like characters, you spot any imperfection and odd behavior immediately, because we are all so used to seeing vehicles in every situation every single day.

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We didn’t just want a customer to arrive at the gas station by moving their vehicle from A to B. We wanted them to do it naturally, meaning decrease speed when turning, slowing down when it gets more crowded or narrow, navigate obstacles like other customers parking badly etc. We also needed the AI to handle all the changing conditions that arise from the upgrades you will make to your gas station, like adding parking spaces and new parking lots.

Then there is the matter of a complex decision tree. The customer wants to fill his tank and get a snack, so he wants to get to a gas pump closest to the entrance and thus shop area. Or a customer who wants to fill up his tank arrives, but all the gas pumps are currently occupied. Not to mention the many events that will occasionally activate like a tour bus arriving and thus presenting a whole new challenge for you to manage and the AI to handle.

As we are now in the process of completing the last phase of the vehicle AI we are more than happy with what we achieved. It is more akin to something you’d expect from a city simulation game with traffic decisions, dynamic obstacle handling, lane changes, traffic lights support and shortcut handling. While a gas station seems nothing like a city, from a game logic and the AI’s point of view it actually is exactly like a city, just a lot smaller. The requirements in terms of fictionality however are the same.

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When running a gas station “in the middle of nowhere” things are not always black and white. There are many shades of gray in between and you are unlikely to avoid them while playing the game.

It is thus advised to look into security when hiring people to help you run your gas station. Reliable employees that are also security conscious can be a big advantage when you become a target of fraudulent customers or really shady characters.

Gas Station Simulator has multiple pools of somewhat random events triggered by a series of influencing factors such as revenue, expansion level, customer traffic or time of day.
These event are things like customers trying to steal something from the shelfs in the shop area, people trying to drive off without paying for fuel or some shady characters deciding it’s a good idea to attempt a robbery.
Not to mention really shady characters telling you what pity it would be if something would happen to your large glass windows or educating you on the dangers of dealing with fuel…

Negative events isn’t where it ends. There are also pools of potentially positive events with deals clearly on the shady side. Let’s look at one example that’s representative of various similar events on the supply side of running your gas station. In order to sell fuel to your customers, you obviously have to buy large quantities of fuels and store them in underground depots of your gas station.

You usually buy from known providers and representatives of large fuel delivery companies. But every now and then you might be approached by some shady character offering you a fuel delivery at a significantly lower price, sometimes even half of what you’d normally had to pay.

Certainly a tempting proposition, no question about it. But it comes with some risks. You might not get your delivery or not get it on time. Or the quality might be lower. It can happen, but it doesn’t need to. Actually, you can risk it a few times and discover that some shady characters are more reliable than others. Once you figure out which ones, you can consider seriously cutting your costs making these kind of deals part of your supply chain.

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Gas Station Simulator comes with a large array of customization options for your gas station to allow you to truly personalize it. It all starts with giving it a name. That name carries over to all sorts of things beyond the gas station’s name shield such as advertisement. It also changes style according to how you modernize your gas station and what overall looks you choose.

The most important thing when it comes to customizing the looks of your gas station however is the color scheme. It’s applied to most elements, various furniture items and even appliances you put up and obviously all expansions and buildings. It also carries over to all styles you can choose for your gas station when you modernize it.

Those are the large ticket items, but the customization doesn’t stop there. There is a ton of smaller things you can use to add a more personal touch to your business such as posters, painting, lighting or the type of shelfs or stands you use. You can also pick between different styles for the overall interior decoration, not to mention the different choices for the outside areas around your gas station.
There is a lot to customize. You don’t have to, you can go with a preset template, but if your feel like it, know there is plenty to choose from. Doing so will give you slight bonuses over choosing the template approach and will also boost any advertising you do.

The idea behind the service center is to expand the gas station with a small service/garage building.
Since the gas station is basically in the middle of nowhere, customers who run into trouble with their car on their journey will find your gas station to be the only place for urgent repairs in the area. We are talking smaller fixes here, like a small garage would do in real life.

Another aspect of this addition to your gas station is the ability ot expand it by a towing service. While you won’t drive yourself and tow cars that broke down on the road, you’ll be able to hire someone to run this part of your business for you. It will generate additional revenue on its own, but also provide even more customers for repairs.

The service center will require you to keep an inventory of common spare parts in order to be able to make the repairs. This means that if you decide to go that route, you not only have to invest into the building and its equipment, but also keep a significant investment to maintain the spare parts inventory. The profits that the service center is able to generate can be substantial and allow you to finanse further expansion.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149620/Gas_Station_Simulator/