Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game News

Note: This patch, including its two hotfixes, is now on the main public branch of the game. Enjoy!

Today's patch is a bit smaller than what we'd like it to be for two reasons. Our lead programmer was knocked out by an "it's just a flesh wound" accident and spent a few days in hospital (now recovering), while our other programmer spent a full week on drastically cleaning up some of the structures of the car and engine project code, unifying them as much as possible in the process. The latter won't be visible to you, but will save us from lots of issues in future and make changes quicker. The former will just leave a big scar.

MGR_99's rendition of the Merano Verdini.

Despite that, we're continuing to fix and polish up the LCV3, and here is the changelist for today's patch released only to the openbeta branch of the game for now.

• Fixed BeamNG Exporter producing cars that can't be loaded in BeamNG
  
• Added new car body 70sBL20_35_2dr
  
• Added safety confirmation for deleting projects
  
• Fixed (probably) the issue of you not being able to select a project region in the LCV3
  
• Fixed issue of model/family data not being properly given to all trims/variants
  
• Fixed not being able to rename facelifts
  
• Fixed selection of demographics for trims from hub
  
• Fixed factory names not saving
  
• Fixed issue with 60sSUV_SWB being in the wrong car body family
  
• Removed descriptions being that of "Compression" everywhere
  

• Added Steel & Window Material as options or fixture paints.
  
• When a trim or variant needs updating / fixing, it now flashes the edit button
  
• Fixed the preset fixture modes not showing on the fixture paint UI
  
• Fixed issue with autosave not saving correctly in some situations
  
• Fixed cars from old version not being able to be imported anymore (openbeta issue)
  
• Fixed (for real now.. hopefully?) trims and variants renaming themselves
  
• Fixed issue with deleting and then creating a new facelift not updating data correctly
  
• Fixed facelift where not changing engine showing original engine engineering time
  

• Tweaked factory load management AI to more evenly split shift load
  
• Improved savegame naming and timestamps display
  
• Polished up some campaign UI (Model / Family project managers)
  

• Fixed campaign difficulty issue, competitor strength was reset to 50% on new game
  
• Fixed issue with brake quality slider effect on brake fade being broken
  
• Fixed high factory cost on upgrading / retooling factories after 2+ uses of factory
  
• Fixed engineering time table in car summary engineering times
  
• Fixed issue with how mods are processed, to make loading more reliable
  
• Fixed loans not being visibly added to your current money until month tick
  

• Fixed number plates looking black
  
• Fixed melting issues on 80s190 family
  
• Fixed 90s Flatnose people mover body causing game crashes
  
• Fixed ute tray holes from fixture stamping on 90spickup family
  
• Fixed up some lighting and redid some materials in the canal photoscenes
  
• Fixed material inconsistencies between raised and lowered car lifts in design room
  

More coming next week! :)
Cheers!

Note: B190304 is now also on the default public branch.

In today’s first patch for the Big LCV3 Update we are dropping some major changes, both visuals and gameplay related. Of course there are plenty of fixes too, including some to address launcher issues some players were having.

New lighting, reflections, and design room styling.

As you can see we have changed the car design room to be terribly 70s, which will be one of the several styles of design rooms the game will feature era dependently. More will follow soon-ish! :) The new lighting / reflections (thanks to titleguy1) and look of the cars should more than make up for that accurately depicted poor taste though. Now you can design beige shitboxes in their natural habitat!

• Fixed mistakes with grouping of engineering times in engineering table
  
• Fixed issue of extremely long safety engineering times
  

• Major lighting rework in car design room for much better paint reflections
  
• Design room now 11/10 on 70s styling scale (different eras coming)
  

• Now the game allows you to make engine projects without factory
  
• Widened track width of 100+ bodies to make engine bays wider, tyre width more realistic
  
• Made V engines a little less tall in general
  
• Made V engines quite a lot wider (across the V)
  
• Improved pearl paint settings and shine slider progression
  
• Rebalanced quality slider effect on ET, PU, Cost, widened viable range
  
• Changed finances graph to be operating income/expenditure graph
  
• Flipped ordering of variants in engine projects manager
  

• Added 60s muscle coupe / roadster body
  
• Fixed various car bodies with melty distorted bones bug
  
• Fixed lighting/shading issues on 90sFlatnose_Cargo
  
• Fixed smoothing on 90sFlatnose
  
• Fixed very short wheelbase on 10sSport
  
• Fixed a few bodies where chassis would stick out of rear in some cases.
  
• Fixed issue with the cap used at the ends of the bumper bars
  

• Fixed issues with launcher many players had (thanks Eddy BT!)
  
• Fixed issue with sandbox markets selecting multiple regions
  
• Fixed issue with changing a family without properly invalidating / refreshing its variants
  
• Fixed and added loan options
  
• Fixed issue with UI displaying previous instead of current choice in factory
  
• Fixed engine size widget being pinned to the top not bottom on family designer
  

You will not get the update automatically yet because we have not been able to properly test it yet (with your help!), hence why we at this point reintroduce an open beta branch you can opt into if you want to get improvements, fixes, and... new bugs... earlier!

In order to opt in to the branch simply right-click the game in your library, properties, betas, select the "open" branch from the betas drop down and wait for the game to update.

Enjoy!
Cheers

This big milestone update brings the first playable version of the Lite Campaign V3 (LC V3) to the public branch. It is still considered to be a work in progress and a lot of UI features that will make for a smoother experience are going to be implemented in various patches the coming weeks.

Experienced players definitely can start to dip their toes into the campaign now and we’re looking forward to the getting it a lot more polished up before moving on to implementing the LC V4 features: the proper sales / market algorithm, and engineers / staff, as well as much more market and financial info.

The new "Isle of Skye" photo scene.

• Facelifting existing car trims and engine variants
  
• Engineering & factory setup
  
• Modelled factories and factory add-ons
  
• Project finances forecasting tools
  

• Switched to updated game engine UE4.21.1
  
• Many more car bodies and fixtures to choose from
  
• Many more rear- and mid-engine compatible bodies
  
• Improved game mechanics and realism in car and engine designers
  
• Improved BeamNG Exporter
  
• Improved engine sounds
  
• Additional photo scenes
  
• Improved and fixed UI and UI feedback
  
• Tons of bugfixes and small improvements
  

If you have been playing and following the openbeta branch, you might want to check out the change list since last Friday’s release candidate build RC1. Have a look here.

Your old cars and engines from the previous public version will be compatible with this one and should automatically get converted. Due to the much needed game engine upgrade to UE4.21, old mods will no longer work and will have to be updated by their creators. Note that this implies that some mods you used might be missing when you load your older cars using mod bodies or fixtures.

The new "Sea of Information" photo scene.


With this big update we are merging all branches of the game to the default branch. That means the game will automatically update for everyone. This needs to be done to get rid of some of the install problems we’ve been having that were created by switching between the versions. Once the update is out we will create this branch structure:

default - The normal main public branch.
open - Opt-in branch to get patches and updates earlier, with more bugs on average.
kee_and_ue4_17 - Opt-in previous public version based on UE4.17.2 including the old Kee Engine based version of the game with the LC V2.


In the coming weeks we will continue to update the LC V3 with weekly patches until we’re at a point where mostly bigger changes are necessary to proceed in development. This will be the point where we start work on the LC V4 features.



Thank you for your continued support and patience with these updates.

Cheers!

With today's merging of the branches we bring to you a rather substantial patch that has many fixes since last Friday's release candidate 1 (RC1). For you who have played the open beta we'd like to thank you again for your support in finding and reporting issues, as well as your patience.

This is change log for RC2, which will be the public release version coming out today:

• Big rework/improvements to engine sounds
  
• Added Isle of Skye photoscene
  
• Added autosave (like sandbox) in campaign play in addition to manual and yearly saves
  
• Made car windows allow fixtures to be stamped
  
• Added 40s, 60s, 80s and 00s offroader bodies
  
• Added 00sHypercar bodies
  
• Added 90s Flatnose, 90s SUV
  
• Added 00s Van and 60s Van bodies
  

• Tweaked engine bay sizes to be a little bit higher and a tiny bit wider
  
• Campaign saves are now ordered by saved time & date
  
• Extended maximum loan repayment time to 10 years
  
• It is now possible to engineer an engine without a factory
  
• Added that factories can have new configs added through factory manager UI
  
• Added tooltips to hub demographic screen to explain what is shown on each demographic
  
• Simplified RON - AKI conversion to be AKI = RON - 5 for better playability
  
• Reenabled undo / redo button for fixtures when no fixture is selected
  
• Losses now show in red in the production calendar timeline
  
• Now displays alerts when engine projects are finished
  
• Tweaked cost progression of team funding and tooling optimization in engineering
  
• Pushrod engines now have a starting familiarity rating of 35%
  
• Editable text boxes now correctly show the text edit mouse cursor
  
• Unified country selection widget & added more information
  
• Added on-hover info for trims in grid-view project manager
  
• Added more info to the campaign end screen
  
• Added tooltips on Trims Produced By Factory in 3rd tab of factory setup
  
• Added tooltips on "Sales Price and Margin" in Production and Sales tab
  
• Disabled currently unused buttons in Production and Sales tab
  
• Improved visuals to indicate what you're working on when making a facelift
  
• Signing off nothing in mass-sign off now takes you back to the hub
  
• Added Familiarity display for engine family
  

• Fixed issues with trim paint in 00sVan body family
  
• Fixed 50s Saloon default tire diameter being really small
  
• Fixed 40sSedanLarge_Wagon from being offset from all its morphs
  
• Fixed issues with materials and weight/cargo calculations on 70sCoupe02
  
• Fixed some fixtures being blue / red and duplicated
  
• Fixed extra cam pulley spawning in cylinder 1
  
• Switched pause and play icons on top bar
  

• Fixed paint changing related crashes
  
• Fixed engine projects never setting older facelifts to superseded
  
• Fixed factories being editable when not selected
  
• Fixed forecast parameter buttons not having a selected state
  
• Fixed facelift renaming not working
  
• Fixed temporarily disabled engine factories never becoming active again
  
• Fixed the campaign hub demographic scores only using Gasmea's scoring
  
• Fixed being able to click world-map through car project UI
  
• Fixed clicking + or - in markets screen deselecting the region
  
• Fixed deleting items not updating grid in manager
  
• Fixed cloning trims & variants auto-collapsing everything in car/engine manager
  
• Fixed exhaust piping sometimes extending to another room
  
• Fixed old savegame issue with engine architecture
  
• Fixed "Select Countries to Compare" in markets screen
  
• Fixed car archetype scenarios not working
  
• Fixed switching the test track spawning more track list items
  
• Fixed deleting a trim or variant from factory production list not updating the UI
  
• Fixed gear ratios tooltip not updating when switching gearbox type
  
• Fixed seat count resetting when changing body variant
  
• Fixed missing data in engine factory widgets on engine factory manager screens
  
• Fixed factory UI to only show current and future state, never past states
  
• Fixed inconsistent time alignment between engine and car factories with their projects
  
• Fixed the family and variant bump forward a year when reloading / importing a model
  
• Fixed max shifts not being possible to change
  
• Fixed showing in engine engineering how many engines are being made
  
• Fixed being able to set the marketing level negative, breaking calculations
  
• Fixed crash when clicking the little disclaimer button in launcher
  
• Fixed car stock not updating once it is no longer being produced
  
• Fixed sign-off screen showing wrong number of produced cars for multiple-factory setups
  
• Fixed being able to edit a family after signing off the first facelift
  
• Fixed galvanized monocoque chassis not showing steel presses requirement
  
• Fixed car exporting from campaign projects manager
  
• Fixed production number of cars / engines not changing with engineering sliders
  
• Fixed bug in familiarity system gaining in wrong categories
  
• Fixed pausing and resuming of production
  
• Fixed facelifting making a duplicate of non-facelifted trims in the production calendar
  

• Fixed BeamNG Exporter hanging on Sourcing Lua Data
  

We're going continue to patch this big LCV3 update until it plays well enough to move on to implementing the LCV4 features.
Cheers!

We were planning to release on (this) Monday the public version of the big campaign update that has been in open beta for a while now. In order to make this as smooth as possible we've decided to delay the release by about a day and use that time to add some more quality of life features as well.

One of the photo scenes that will be added with the next patch.

The release was shifted to be on Wednesday morning our time, i.e. Tuesday evening for most of you, which means that if there are any issues popping up we can react to them quickly because we're all in office for another full work day after the release of the update.

We will merge all game branches so that everyone automatically is on the latest build. Then we are adding a separate stand-alone Kee Engine branch, a separate legacy UE4.17 branch, and a new opt-in open beta branch for those of you who want to get patches earlier while accepting more bugs in the process.

Cars and engines will be compatible with the new version, but mods might not have been updated and thus missing from your cars. All mods will have to be updated to UE4.21 to be compatible with the default version of the game.

That should be all for now, a big change log of what fixes / tweaks have been made since the recent RC1 build will be posted before the release.

Cheers!