GearCity 1.18 Progress

[Eric.B]

The SDL window wrapper code is finished for linux builds. Everything is working much better as far as I can tell. The only bug I have noticed is the keyboard still does not work if you have hardware accelerated mouse enabled. I'll look to resolve this issue tomorrow.

After I do a test in Ubuntu, I may push this fix to Linux users as another hotpatch.


For 1.18, I've added three new induction systems into the game. (Twincharger, Hybrid Turbochargers, and Variable Geometry Turbochargers.) I've also split up normal turbochargers into two catagory, fuel focused and power focused. Furthermore I broke them down into 5 "stages" of different power/costs.

I then balanced induction systems out some more.

I've also added E85(Ethonal) to the fuel types. This fuel type was actually popular in the 1900s, although it did die out with US prohibition it has started to make a comeback in the 2000s. (Although low gas prices may end up killing it, much like in the 1900s)

Fuel stats have also been balanced out. In particular Diesel engines are no longer overpowered and are more inline with their specific use. (Smoothness rating does help out quite a bit in this case.)

I've got 2 or 3 new engine types and one more fuel type to add. I'll then fix cylinderless engines/fuels, and then move on to cleaning up some of the issues with the engine stats.

1.18 is showing 26% finished. So I may not hit my Mid-Feb date, but worst case scenario if I'm running too late, I'll make a 1.17.5 Beta build for those who want to try the new stuff!

-SDL window mode (LINUX)
-Fuel and Induction system balancing
-Three new induction types, Turbos broken down into 10 "levels."

[Eric.B]

I got a little extra work into today that I normally don't get to do on Mondays.
I was able to finish adding the missing engine layouts, an additional two cylinder types, three more fuel types, and reenable the sub components for electrics and wankle engines.

I also did more xml balancing to the layouts/cylinders.

I believe this covers all the serious requests for sub-components that I have gotten over the years. As such it's probably safe to say that the sub-components for chassis and engines are now locked and finished. (Of course it's not much work to add new ones, as long as they have cylinders. It's the balancing of the stats that were the real pain...)


I'm now moving on to fixing display information for Electric engines as they do not have "Displacement" I'll also have to hide the bore/stroke sliders for electric engines.

After that I start fixing the hardcoded stats produced by the engines. Then I'll probably move into the issues with the gearboxes, gearbox stats, car stats, then all the really new GUI goodies for RnD we have planned!

-6 Engine Types

• Radial
  
• Rotary
  
• X
  
• Steam
  
• Wankle
  
• Electric
  

-3 New Fuel Types (5 Generations of Electric power)

• E85 (Ethanol)
  
• Water (For Steam engines)
  
• Electric (5 Different versions)
  

- Two Additional Cylinder type (18, for W engines, 7 for Radials and Rotaries)

[Frankschtaldt]

[*]Water (For Steam engines)

Maybe "wood", "coal" and "gas" would be better fuel options for steam?

[Eric.B]

[*]Water (For Steam engines)

Maybe "wood", "coal" and "gas" would be better fuel options for steam?

Those would be fuel for the burner, I'm pretty sure the engine it self used water in most steam engines. Also the burner' fuel would probably be replaced with electric in later years.

[Tridon]

Steam engines, and if I read correctly in the suggestion forum, windows that don't stack by default
Along with some of the other stuff you've done so far, this update sounds freakin' great!

Gieb update nao, lel!

[Eric.B]

I spent the entire day on Bore and Stroke and everything that uses it.
I've removed the displacement slider from altering any specs or ratings directly. In doing so I replaced its usage with direct use of the bore and stroke values.

This allowed me to create more realistic results and now bore and stroke are handled properly. Remember, there is no replacement for displacement. And a bigger bore will give you more! ^,~

Anyhoo, these changes effect Bore/Stroke (obviously), torque, rpm's, horsepower, length, and width.

So why was this even an issue? Well back in the old days of GearCity (versions 0.3 - 1.03 ish) we did not have bore and stroke directly in the game. Everything used the displacement sliders. This was a very simplistic system and the users at the time wanted a little more depth, so we gave it to them. Sadly the game had been balanced for the displacement sliders and not the bore/stroke. My implementation of their effects were subpar due to the pairing with the displacement sliders.


I also fixed an issue design/manufacturing requirement's stars. Red stars now mean a higher requirement.

Anyhoo, I still have a few more things to "fix" in the engine specs/ratings. I should be able to finish it up tomorrow and move on to the gearbox stuff. After that I move to all car stats, and then redoing the RnD's GUI! (I'm excited about that one!)

-Modification to Bore/Stroke system
-Inversed design/manufacturing requirement stars

[Frankschtaldt]

Curious question, how many decimal places is the game going to let us go down to when entering bore and stroke?

[Eric.B]

Curious question, how many decimal places is the game going to let us go down to when entering bore and stroke?

I haven't touched anything for decimal points, it still works off whole mm numbers.

[Frankschtaldt]

Curious question, how many decimal places is the game going to let us go down to when entering bore and stroke?

I haven't touched anything for decimal points, it still works off whole mm numbers.

Is it too late to allow one or two?
An overwhelming majority of rl engines have at lease one measurement with at least one decimal place and I think a lot of people are going to want to try and copy them.
Probably not a huge deal if you can't. It would just be nice.

[Eric.B]

Curious question, how many decimal places is the game going to let us go down to when entering bore and stroke?

I haven't touched anything for decimal points, it still works off whole mm numbers.

Is it too late to allow one or two?
An overwhelming majority of rl engines have at lease one measurement with at least one decimal place and I think a lot of people are going to want to try and copy them.
Probably not a huge deal if you can't. It would just be nice.

It may be possible at a later date, however dealing with floats can be a bit of a pain in the rear. So I would prefer to get them as integers. But as always, if there is enough demand for it, it can change.

[Eric.B]

I've finished up the tweaks needed for the engine specs and ratings. I'll now move on to new gearbox stuff, gearbox specs, and then to car specs...

So what did we do to the engines?
More adjustments to Bore and Stroke.
Minor Length and Width adjustments based on cylinder count, layouts, and bore.
Induction system now plays a much greater role in fuel consumption.
Engine Power rating and Engine Fuel rating now directly use Brake Torque and Brake Fuel Consumption (Torque and Fuel Mileage) to generate their ratings. On top of this, the fuel rating no longer decreases over time since good gas mileage is good gas mileage regardless of year.
And finally a few little minor adjustments to the Engine Reliability ratings


-Engine Power and Engine Fuel ratings now use specs
-Stopped Engine Fuel ratings decrease
-Boost Induction systems fuel economy.

[Frankschtaldt]

Curious question, how many decimal places is the game going to let us go down to when entering bore and stroke?

I haven't touched anything for decimal points, it still works off whole mm numbers.

Is it too late to allow one or two?
An overwhelming majority of rl engines have at lease one measurement with at least one decimal place and I think a lot of people are going to want to try and copy them.
Probably not a huge deal if you can't. It would just be nice.

It may be possible at a later date, however dealing with floats can be a bit of a pain in the rear. So I would prefer to get them as integers. But as always, if there is enough demand for it, it can change.

Could you treat them as an integer by having two fields, one where you enter you whole numbers and another where you enter you x/10 or x/100 value? Or is that even worse?

[Frankschtaldt]

I just realized how major a maths fail that was. Please ignore me lol

[Eric.B]

That would of been even worse. As I said, I can go back and do decimals at a later date. Lets try this set up first however before we over complicate it.

[Eric.B]

Gearbox types have been reimplemented to allow for more than just manuals and automatics. These new types have not been worked into the game yet, however we now have 5 additional variables that play into the characteristics of the gearbox based on what type of gearbox you design.

I've also removed "Geared For." (This took me most of the day... So much code intertwined *shudder*) This will be replaced by three or four additional sliders which should give you more control over your gearing and ratings. The Gear Ratio slider will also be replaced by these new sliders.

I've also reorganized the check boxes for additional gearbox features. They are more readable now. I've included a "Reverse" check box which will be default checked. This will remove the ambiguity behind the number of "Gears" as I had previously used reverse gear as one of the gears listed. Now when you choose a gear, it will only be for forward gears.


In other news, I spent some time on the SDL port. I believe I may have fixed the hardware mouse keyboard issue in Linux assuming I can get the SDL window to notify the game what state it's in. Hopefully I can finish and clean it up by Monday night. I can then port it over to 1.18 code base, and we might get a nice lovely 1.17.5 build for everyone's valentine's day. (No guarantees on this date however.)

-Removed Gearfor
-Reverse gear checkbox.

[Eric.B]

Oh, I also forgot to point out, Serhiy finished all the last remaining car models in the game. They have not been included in the game yet, however 1.18 should have the bare minimum amount of vehicles we'll launch with. Round of applause for him.

Okay, Okay, calm down.

He'll now be working on filling up our accessories lists.

[Eric.B]

Sunday I spent the entire day focused on the SDL2 port for Linux users. I was unable to fix the hardware keyboard issues. However, the software mouse/keyboard system is working better and we now have SDL windowing which plays nicer with popular window managers. Therefor I will disable the hardware mouse option for Linux users until I get more free time to deal with X11 eccentricities. Anymore effort put that way is harming progress on 1.18.

Monday, I did a little more work cleaning up the SDL port, In the afternoon I got a my CI20, so I didn't play with GC.

Monday night and this morning I removed the Gear Ratio slider and replaced it with a "Low End Gearing" and a "High End Gearing" sliders. The low end slider will allow you to gear the lower gears for either torque or fuel economy. The high end gearing will allow you change the ratios of the upper gears for either torque or top speed.

I've also started working on "Maximum Torque Input." This system will give a gearbox a maximum amount of torque from the engine it can use. If you exceed it, you'll receive penalties in both output torque and dependability. This should limit people gaming the game by using only one super awesome or crappy transmission for all their vehicles. I should hopefully finish this by tonight or tomorrow morning worst case.


-Removed Gear Ratio Slider
-Added Low End and High End Gear Ratio sliders

[Eric.B]

Yesterday I finished the gearbox side of "Maximum Input Torque." I've also balanced out the ratings/stats and implemented a new rating for Gearbox Comfort (mainly focused on smoothness and ease of use.) I've also thrown in four new transmission types: Non-synchronous, Semi-Automatic, DCT, and CVT.

This morning I began fixing and balancing the vehicle stats, specs, and ratings. First thing on the list was issues with aerodynamic drag. I found that the frontal surface area was off. Fixed that. Also found some errors in my trigonometry (I got B's in that class in highschool. :\ ) I fixed those issues. Little more tweaking was done, and now calculations are much much more accurate.

I've also implemented the a way to see ratings while designing the vehicle body. There is now a button under the light controls called "Ratings" which will calculate the ratings and bring up the ratings window. So no more going back and forth.


I'll probably switch to fixing a crashing bug in the assisted designer which has popped up with the recent changes to the components system. Since I'll be designing a ton of vehicles the next two or three days, fixing the assistant first will save me time in the long run.


-Gearbox Maximum Torque Input
-Gearbox Comfort/Smoothness Rating
-Four New Transmission Types
-Improved Aerodynamic Drag calculations
-Vehicle Specs window in body designer.

[Eric.B]

Continued work on the vehicle specs.
Weight and cargo space have received some tweaks.

The fuel mileage code has drastically been rewritten. It now features a more realistic rolling resistance formula and aerodynamic drag formula. Using this information we are able to calculate the fuel consumption utilizing our brake specific fuel mileage and engine work load needed to accelerate and maintain speed. The results are much more accurate. For example putting too small of an engine in a vehicle will actually result in worse gas mileage.


Top speed has gotten a minor adjustment.

Acceleration has also received a major rewrite. Bringing it more inline with realistic numbers.

I've got 2 or 3 more specs to "fix" then I hop into ratings. With any luck, I'll have it all finished and tested by Tuesday. Then I can move into the new GUI features.

[Eric.B]

Finished the AI Behaviors for the new vehicle type system.
Finished rewriting vehicle ratings and specs system.

Tomorrow I will port the Linux SDL code to the current 1.18 code base. I'll then balance check the car specs/ratings in the evening.

Now that I have a full AI file for the new car type system I'll tweak the AI some, fix up the Assisted/AI designer results a little more, and then move into the new GUI system for RnD. With any luck I should have 1.17.5 "Testing Branch" by the end of next week.