Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game News

We're offering the biggest discount we've ever offered on Automation - 25% off our regular price! To celebrate this sale, we've got a couple of community events going on!



A wild and asymmetric concept from the 1970s, courtesy of SuperCrabe.

Since this sale is themed towards not just cars, but airplanes and trains too, that got us thinking - a concept car design challenge might be fun! The challenge is simple - design a concept car from the 50s, 60s and 70s, take photographs or video of your car from Automation's Photo Mode, then post your best shots/video in the Jet Age Concept Design Challenge channel on our Discord server! Pretty much anything goes; if you want to do a wild, rocket/jet inspired car like was common in America in the 1950s, that's perfect! Do you fancy the Italian wedgecar concepts of the 60s and 70s? Yep, that's acceptable too! Anything that looks the part will be accepted!

Additionally, post pictures of your entries on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, tag us in your post, and we'll share our favourites with our followers!

The only rules we have are, please refrain from using any real-world branding in your cars, or anywhere in your photos please, and ONE ENTRY PER PERSON ONLY. Entries for the Jet Age Concept Car Design Challenge will be open until October 13th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time; we will be judging them throughout the rest of October, and will host the final judging session toward the end of the month. Winners will receive an Automation prize pack!



Winning is a great feeling; the drivers of FrederikLenius' Trans-Am car can confirm!

Help us get the word out about our sale this week! Follow us and share our sale reels... found here:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C__fyiGypY2/?igsh=a2x6MXBvenk2bXg5

and here:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZMh8pHkyH/

... on your Instagram and TikTok accounts, and you will be entered to win a daily draw for an Automation prize pack! Every day until September 23rd, one winner from Instagram and one winner from Tiktok will be chosen, no purchase necessary!

[h3]RULES[/h3]

• One entry each per Instagram and TikTok account only.
  
• Due to local laws or current postal restrictions, unfortunately residents of Brazil, Russia and Belarus are ineligible for prizes.

The Steam Planes, Trains and Automobiles Fest is upon us, and we're celebrating this with the biggest discount we've ever offered on Automation; from now until September 23rd at 10 AM Pacific Time, Automation is 25% off our regular price!

If you've ever doodled your dream car in your school notebooks, or wondered if you have what it takes to build an automotive manufacturing empire, Automation can help you live out those dreams. With our one-of-a-kind car design tools and challenging Lite Campaign Mode, your design and engineering choices can make the difference between being an industry legend, or merely a footnote in automotive history!

We also have an incredibly active, vibrant and welcoming community, where players can share their creations and participate in community-run challenges, ranging from the simple to the wildly elaborate. You can come join us on our Discord and experience our community for yourself, and follow us on YouTube, Instagram, X / Twitter, TikTok and now on Threads for the latest Automation news, information and community happenings.

Stop by our Steam store page today, because this deal will only be on until the 23rd of September at 10 AM Pacific Time!

We hope see you all soon!

Banner cars courtesy of (L-R) ellie, Mythrin, Mat, Gravity, blokko and Oreology. Many thanks!

Hello again!

First of all, on behalf of the entire Automation dev team, we'd like to offer you all an apology for the previous patch - we had some BeamNG exporter updates that got into the patch, that should never have been there in the first place. They were inadequately tested, and they caused quite a number of issues. We thank you all for being diligent in reporting these issue to us, and also for all of your patience while you awaited the fix!

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

• Fixed lights in BeamNG being fixed to a cardinal direction.
  
• Fixed fixtures and body panels flexing and wobbling when exported; note that this is a very complex issue to solve and there may still be edge cases where it still occurs - please report them to us if you find any!
  
• Fixed light fixtures having too many nodes and causing instability pauses/crashes in BeamNG
  

As always, please let us know if you find any other issues with this patch!

Work continues at a solid pace on the upcoming Al-Rilma Update, you will be happy to know! That said, we have not been ignoring the bug reports coming in for the current Ellisbury Update public build, which is why we are here today! This quick news post is going to be a bit different to what we usually talk about; it's not every day that we go into detail about some of the bugs we've faced, and how we've fixed them!

A fancy, futuristic SUV by ChilPollins.

[h2]No Sound in Automation/"Sourcing Lua data" in exporter bug[/h2]
These two bugs were, despite appearances, directly related to one another. The sound plugin we use for Automation - FMOD - would, with certain hardware/software configurations, not be able to access the hardware audio controller in affected computers. This would result in either Automation playing no sound or music at all, or hanging up in the export process at the "Sourcing Lua data" stage; this was when the exporter would try to generate the engine sounds for exported cars, and if Automation was shut out from the audio controller? It would crash/hardlock the exporter.

We've solved this by updating our FMOD version, and it should solve virtually all of those issues we've encountered of this nature, and we thank all of those who were waiting for a fix for their patience in this matter!

[h2]"No Engine" bug[/h2]
This one was a tricky one - players would create a new car or a cloned trim of a car, then attempt to add a new engine or variant, only to find that the Engine Designer had skipped ahead a step, and would enter an endless loop of Lua errors popping up. Exiting the Car or Engine Designer and re-loading the affected car would fix the problem, taking you back to the proper step, but it has been a constant annoyance since this update dropped! It was made doubly tricky to solve because there was no single reliable trigger for this bug; any time someone had it, the next time you loaded their save database, it was gone.

To solve this bug, we've basically added a check in the loading process of a car and engine, so that it properly loads the engines, and doesn't try to load data that just isn't there (or isn't supposed to be there) in the save database. We're quite confident that this bug has now been solved, and we are eagerly awaiting your feedback on this!

This modern supercar/trackday car by Ivan & kookie has a very reptilian feel!

[h2]New Bodies[/h2]
Since it's still going to be a while before the Al-Rilma Update is ready for the public, we also figured we'd add some new bodies to this patch, just to give everyone something to tide them over until then!

[h2]Cloud Saves[/h2]
As you already may have noticed, we have activated Steam Cloud saves for Automation. That means you always have the latest version of your data with you when you switch to play from your account on another computer and then also when you get back to your main system. Just make sure to carefully choose which version to synchronize with the cloud as you don't want your main data to be overwritten with an older or one-off database. You can change your Steam Cloud settings for Automation in the game properties accessed via a right-click on the game in your Steam Library.


That about wraps up this quick patch, we will be keeping an eye on any issues that come up with this patch; please let us know in the discussion forums or on our Discord so we can address them. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Instagram, X / Twitter, TikTok and now on Threads for up-to-date news and community happenings - the Al-Rilma Update gets closer every week, and we will have more news of it in the near future!

Cheers!

Banner image by Oreology

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]New Bodies[/h3]

• Added 09_eu "Offender" off-roader body family
  
• Added replacement 70_us "Predator" body family
  
• Added usa_00 "Evade" body family

[h3]General Fixes[/h3]

• Updated FMOD plugin to fix various sound issues in Automation
  
• Adjusted the ray-tracing presets to reduce the overall radius of ambient occlusion.
  
• Rebaked thumbnails for all grm_mercy body families and variants

[h3]BeamNG.drive Exporter Fixes[/h3]

• Many body jbeam generation fixes and bugfixes
  
• Improved towbar behaviour
  
• Set "Export to ZIP" as the default behaviour
  
• Fixed On-Demand AWD having a torque split slider
  
• Added minimum lock slider for On-Demand AWD
  
• Added missing 2WD mode for On-Demand AWD
  
• Disabled 2WD mode for Advanced AWD by default (can be re-enabled in the parts menu)
  
• Changed naming of various drivetrain parts
  
• Adjusted tuning for clutch limited-slip differentials
  
• Returned steering wheel lock to a fixed value of 450 degrees

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With the first part of the Supercharger Update now done and dusted, we are hard at work on the second part; the Al-Rilma Update! This is the update that everyone has been eagerly awaiting for many years, adding superchargers to Automation! But that's not all we've got planned for you...

The Al-Rilma Update, summarising all of the main points we're hitting.

Before we get going, a bit of a disclaimer; all of the in-game art and content we are showing in this post is work-in-progress, and does not necessarily reflect what the final product will look like!



After a long wait, they're almost here!

Yes, finally! We are adding superchargers to Automation. It's been a long time coming, but now they're now just around the corner. All engine configurations will have access to superchargers in three different forms; centrifugal, roots and screw-type superchargers. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages, which will make for some very interesting design choices!



Very big turbochargers with a small inline-3 engine attached to them.

As mentioned in the roadmap for the Supercharger Update, we promised Automation players that we would be adding sequential turbochargers, as well as twincharging (turbochargers combined with superchargers) as part of the Al-Rilma Update. But, due to a happy set of circumstances - namely, the fact that they are feasible for us to model at the same time - we will also be adding two different styles of compound turbocharging!

What is compound turbocharging, you ask? That's where you have two turbochargers acting on one another - in sequential compound turbochargers, you have one turbo spooling to not only build boost, but also help another, larger turbocharger spool up faster, and in pure compound turbocharging, you have one turbocharger directly feeding its output into a second turbocharger, to add even more boost! These setups will be perfect for those wild, ultra-high-performance builds.



We're working to make engine volumetric and combustion efficiencies realistic.

With the re-worked engine simulation from LCV4.2 and the Ellisbury Update, we felt - as well as the community - that something didn't quite feel correct. That something happened to be how engines behaved at part throttle settings. With the Al-Rilma Update, we are creating a much more detailed and accurate simulation of engine volumetric efficiency - basically, how efficient is the engine at moving air through it - and revisit combustion efficiency along with it. This now produces more believable engine behavior and results!



Multiplayer will be returning to Automation!

Multiplayer will be returning after a long absence! For those of us who weren't here during the late Kee Engine days of 2014 and 2015, Automation used to have a scenario-based multiplayer mode, where players would compete in time-limited scenarios to see who could build the most suitable car/engine for the randomly generated challenge put before you. It's a very fast-paced and hectic experience, but it's immensely fun and it will make you a better Automation player in a hurry! Both engine-only and full car scenarios will be available for that.

Multiplayer scenarios are balanced around the competitor car database and thus automatically rebalances itself when game balance changes. Normal curated singleplayer scenarios will return to the game as soon as it no longer is as heavily in flux as it is now, which will be with the third Supercharger Update - Terso. The much needed return of a whole series of proper tutorial scenarios is scheduled for then too.


[h3]New simulation, the Standalone Track Editor and a new track![/h3]

An image of the new standalone track editor, still under construction.

The first phase of our test track revamp in the Ellisbury Update saw new visuals and a heavily-revised UI, but the old simulation calculations remained. While they are functional, they are not particularly realistic. In this upcoming phase of the test track revision, we will be putting in an entirely new set of calculations to more accurately model how a car goes around a track. Along with that we are making a powerful and very user friendly standalone track editor for Automation, so that you can create your own tracks quickly and easily; anyone who has done track modding in the past knows just how cumbersome the old custom track system was!

Also coming in the Al-Rilma Update is the new Narnilla track. This is a very old-school, European-style racing circuit, with lots of elevation changes, narrow rights of way and pavement of (occasionally) dubious quality. It's also the track where we did our art test some months ago, where you the community chose the art style that you liked the best. Here's a snip of the winning entry:

George made the winning art test entry and now is working on the full track.

Eventually, we will be re-doing all of our track art in this style, both for the tracks we currently have, as well as the new tracks we have planned that will be coming out as part of future updates.


[h3]New Design Rooms, Factory Environments & More![/h3]

We will be adding three new design rooms for you to use and enjoy, and for Campaign players, we will be adding new environments for your factories to be part of; no longer will your factory be just in an empty field of green grass, with nothing else surrounding it, they will be part of a more "lived-in" feeling world now. Have a look for yourselves:

New 40s design room.

New factory environments.

3D-scanning some carburetor models, and the (untouched) results from which we will be giving the existing carburetor models a much-needed clean-up!

[hr][/hr]

That about covers the Al-Rilma Update as it is right now, we encourage you to watch the Dev Update video above, and let us know in the comments here what you think. Also, be sure to follow Automation on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for fun and informative content every day!

Cheers!