I've been wanting to make a post about Automation for some time now. I'm not on the development team. Other than suggestions and my "Supercharged" funding of the game, I haven't really contributed much to it. This is simply the story of the journey I've had the privilege and opportunity to ride along with during the development of this rare gem of a game.
This is an innovative indy game that I discovered about 2 years ago, around Build 162, and immediately bought into! The game is still under under massive development, but is already offering supporters a huge amount of content to play with.
The game is being developed with what is essentially two betas. One, a closed beta that select supporters are occasionally invited into (for better or worse, I'm not a part of this group) and the open beta, which releases the most polished content updates to anyone who has pre-purchased the game.
Open beta updates, (other than major bug fixes) are slow, but consistent, and usually pretty significant. When I first supported the game, we only had a rough engine builder available to us. We could build I4 engines (which is available in the free demo) and V8's. The talk of the forums at the time was the impending turbo update. After what seemed like forever, it was finally released! And I made my first Automation YouTube video:
Four months after the release of the turbo's the initial body designer tool was made available. This was our first opportunity to flesh out a body for the engines we had so lovingly designed! This was when I created what went on to be my most popular Automation video yet, Building the Kard K-400.
This is when I started my fictional car company on the Automation forums, Kard Motor Works (or KMW). The company can be found at the link below:
http://automationgame.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3257
I went on to design many more cars in the next few months, and published 4 more on YouTube, as well as some more engine designs. Then, approximately nine months from the release of build 1106, build 1323 was released. At this point, I cleared out my build thread, archived my old cars, and developed a new naming system for my model range. I was also able to go on to recreate one of my favorite cars ever, the BMW E30 325is! This car was recreated as accurately as possible with the tools available, and my skill at the time. I could do a better job now... and maybe sometime I will, but I'm still proud of this one. :)
I continued on to make many more cars, lots of them based on BMW design, and lots where I tried to develop my own design flair. About 4 months later, an update was released that added car design scenarios into the game, and I immediately started playing through all of them, and adding YouTube video's as I finished them. Also, the mid engined car platform became available! At first, it was a bit buggy, but after stabilization I was able to create some pretty neat mid engined vehicles, the pinnacle of which can be found below:
So, as you can see, it's been quite the journey! Build 162 was released in January, 2013, and now, as we are about to head into January 2015, the game has reached build 1418. Progress is moving along nicely. The business simulation module will be in place relatively soon, and for the next major update to the game, it will be released on Steam Early Access! This is one of the few early access games that I have no doubt will be finished. Though to be perfectly honest, I've already gotten my moneys worth out of it. Don't wait for it to be released on Steam when you can play it now though! The game is for sale on the official website, found below, and all pre-Steam supporters will get a Steam key after it's released there.
So check it out! There is no other game on the market that even remotely comes close to Automation. The last time a game like this was successfully created was in 1994 by Sierra, and was called Detroit. Although the game looks and feels ancient, I played it many times up until I discovered Automation. So glad to have found a worthy successor as the car company simulator!
http://www.automationgame.com/
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