GearCity 1.18 Progress

[Eric.B]

My Linux version (Debian Sid running [testing] version of the game) is a bit goofy.

Non hardware mouse you see the hardware mouse plus a game pointer. Playable but the hardware mouse warping all about is a bit goofy.

Hardware mouse works perfectly. I like it better than in Windows where the game steals the cursor.

No keyboard. None.

Are you playing 1.17.5?

Or are you using 1.17?

You want to be using 1.17.5, which is in "None" branch for Linux users.

[foreverska]

I guess I was using 1.17 since I was in testing branch. Switched over to none branch and keyboard and software mouse is fixed. Although I like the hardware mouse a lot better so I'll continue to use that. I'll play it some tonight in Linux (I had been playing in windows) and see if anything else is out of place.

[Eric.B]

-Boosted Fuel Ratings
-Fixed "Ratings" button overlap in Body Designer
-Tweaked length/widths effect on maximum bore/stroke for an engine.

Hotpatch pushed to Windows Testing build and the default Linux build.

Frankschtaldt if you want to look at the numbers again, I'd greatly appreciate it. Also put the results in a new thread if there is anything wrong.

[Frankschtaldt]

Copy and past for continuity sake:
"Moving length/width still effects torque significantly Sad
Ooops, no it doesn't. It just screws with your bore and stroke numbers still Sad Sad Sad


Also, there's something weird going on with the volume calcs. The same bore and strokes keeps returning different displacements with different length and witch slider locations.
WTF? How did I end up in here???? I was in the release update post I swear to god!"


Also, lengths and width are still effecting things they shouldn't. Specifically, RPM. If I build two engines with the same settings and the same bore and stroke but different size sliders, the bigger one revs much harder.

[Eric.B]

Copy and past for continuity sake:

"Moving length/width still effects torque significantly Sad
Ooops, no it doesn't. It just screws with your bore and stroke numbers still Sad Sad Sad

Read the announcements attached with the updates in steam.
It is a known issue.

Also, there's something weird going on with the volume calcs. The same bore and strokes keeps returning different displacements with different length and witch slider locations.
WTF? How did I end up in here???? I was in the release update post I swear to god!"

That small amount in the picture looks like rounding errors, you wanted decimal points, they're just not in the GUI yet.

Also, lengths and width are still effecting things they shouldn't. Specifically, RPM. If I build two engines with the same settings and the same bore and stroke but different size sliders, the bigger one revs much harder.

Noted, I'll see if I can fix it tonight.



The main problem is figuring out a way to still be able to do massive engines needed for things like tanks. 1.17 had values tied in specifically to engine width/length. So I have a little more work to do in this area.

[Eric.B]

Yet another hot fix to the Testing branch for Windows users and Default branch for Linux users.

No announcement on this one as it's mainly a fix to the bore/stroke, width/length sliders in the engine designer that I tried to address in the last hotfix.

This one is a bit better, although there are still 1 or 2 flaws with it. Those will be resolved with direct bore/stroke input values.

Anyhoo, did some play testing with it, didn't notice anything wrong, if you find anything, lemme know!

[Frankschtaldt]

Things are looking pretty good now. The size sliders don't seem to have any effect on anything other than the engines size, weight and it's cost.
There is some funky behaviour when you try to adjust the bore or stroke sliders after moving the size sliders but it's not a big problem.

Having two decimal places for bore and stroke is also pretty sweet. Thanks

Now we just need a way to enter in the exact mm measurement we want for B&S.
Guessing that'll be part of the UI work you're doing next though.

[Eric.B]

Things are looking pretty good now. The size sliders don't seem to have any effect on anything other than the engines size, weight and it's cost.

It increases maximum/minimum bore/stroke. Thus allowing you to make massive engines for big contracts.

[Frankschtaldt]

Things are looking pretty good now. The size sliders don't seem to have any effect on anything other than the engines size, weight and it's cost.

It increases maximum/minimum bore/stroke. Thus allowing you to make massive engines for big contracts.

Yeah, that too. I have an idea for that, I don't think size sliders need to effect B&S at all and I think it'll be a lot neater if they don't. I'll post a suggestion thread when I get home.

[Eric.B]

Things are looking pretty good now. The size sliders don't seem to have any effect on anything other than the engines size, weight and it's cost.

It increases maximum/minimum bore/stroke. Thus allowing you to make massive engines for big contracts.

Yeah, that too. I have an idea for that, I don't think size sliders need to effect B&S at all and I think it'll be a lot neater if they don't. I'll post a suggestion thread when I get home.

I doubt any more concept changes are coming to the engine designer.
I don't see why width/length would not effect the maximum and minimum bore size. I mean the bigger the block the larger the cylinder bores can theoretically be.

In any event, if i remove that, then width/length will have no role in engine designer. On top of that, you will lose the ability to make larger displacement engines. Which means I would have to scrap all non-consumer vehicle contracts. Width/Length have to do something, and whatever they do they have to provide the ability to make more powerful engines. Increasing the possible bore and stroke amounts based on width/length of the engine makes both sense and fixes the problem.

[Frankschtaldt]

I disagree with all of the above (except maybe the being too late bit, that's your call).

Just wait till you've read my suggestion.

[Eric.B]

Yet another hotpatch released to default Linux branch and Testing Windows branch.
This is another small patch, no announcements, I've made adjustments to the width/length values, as well as some minor tweaks to stroke effect on RPMs (thus refixing something I broke in a previous hotpatch.)

I also made sure advance windows are closed anytime you open another design window.

This will be the last hotpatch for 1.17.5, as I start working on the new GUI system and some changes that will break save games in the morning.

Enjoy.

[Eric.B]

Yesterday and this morning was spent mostly working on Consumer AI tweaks and improvements.

Vehicle Image rating was moved from a real time generated value to a saved value in the DB. This will make it easier for me to improve the trim/year code. I've also boosted vehicle's image in the consumer AI. Vehicle image slowly grows until it hits a pivot point (depending on how old, poorly made, and poorly designed it is) at which time it will decrease. Improving your over all image and winning awards will increase the rate at which you gain vehicle image. Recalls damage vehicle image greatly. When I redesign the trim/model year code, you'll be able to inherit this image rating better than how it is now. There is currently no way to view this rating in game.

Markup and Age penalties have been reduced.

Improvements to the Factory Quality/Quantity code were made. Vehicle's Quality ratings now only increase or decrease based on the manufacturing quality/quantity slider. Quality rating has been given a large boost in the consumer AI code.

Dealership boost on population numbers have been increased. I may experiment with this feature in the future, instead of giving you access to the city population + dealership population, I may give players only access to X number of the city population based on how many dealerships they have. However this will be pooled with the competition's dealerships meaning less direct competition, increased lower sales numbers, decreased higher sales numbers. We'll see.

Hypercars (anything over 5 time per capita) have received a bunch of changes. Vehicle types of wealth index 6 and higher now receive a boost in sales in this range. Luxury and Performance ratings now play a more important role for vehicles over 5x per capita, these values are multiplied by the wealth index and car type rating. (So Super cars benefit more from performance than luxury, Limos benefit more from luxury than Luxury cars.)

With these changes, I was able to run a profitable Supercar company selling 20 vehicles a turn at $250,000 in 6 locations. Some more tweaks to this system will come later on.


AI sales has been nerfed slightly due to fixing some branch slider code that was different from player code.

Buyer Rating formula (what the consumer AI uses to compare vehicles) has been reformatted and rewritten slightly. Vehicle Ratings are now a bit more important. This should improve the "Car Type Rating" sales results, although remember, there is a lot more that plays into sales than vehicle ratings and price. A few other things were removed and some things were reorganized. I plan on improving more of this code at a later date in 1.18.


Anyhoo, I just started working on the new GUI for the advanced component selection stuff. I'll try to make it as cellphone-generation trendy as I can without stupefying the game play.

(Also started working on the Mac port as well.)

-Vehicle Image rewrite
-Markup and Age penalties reduced
-Factory Quality/Quantity slider improves or reduces Vehicle Quality Rating.
-Remove Vehicle Quality ratings from ratings degrader.
-Increased Dealerships effects on buyer populations.
-Improved hyper-expensive vehicle sales code
-Increased luxury and performance effect on sales of hyper-expensive vehicles
-Fixed Branch effect on AI sales numbers
-Increased Ratings effect on Consumer Buyer Rating
-Increased Quality Rating's effect on Consumer Buyer Rating

[Eric.B]

Spent the last 36 hours working on the redesigned Advanced Components selection GUI. Here is a sneak peak: http://gearcity.info/images/AdvanceDesig...ection.png
Hopefully people find this "Easier" to use. (Not including the extra data, it's actually more work to use. But people are scared of text for some reason ~,~)

I'm about 20% finished with the Engine Advance Components selection GUI.

I also officially hate what Apple has done to the OSX dev land. Symlinking GCC to Clang is stupid. Just thought I'd let you people know.

[Frankschtaldt]

Ooooh, pretty!
And so much information! Looks great!

[Tridon]

Ooooh, pretty!
And so much information! Looks great!

Hell yeah, this looks really good! 1.18 keeps looking better and better.

[Eric.B]

I haven't been in a talkative mood lately, but that doesn't mean progress hasn't been made.

I've finished the new gui for the advance engine design wizard, gearbox is about half way done. I should be able to finish that tonight and vehicle's tomorrow. Then I'll start working on the new features and GUI for the slider windows/stats/etc system.

Mac port is about 20% finished.
Yesterday and today I spent mostly taking care of bugs. Here's what I did:
-Fixed buffer overrun when producing more than 2^32-1 worth of a single model at a single factory.
-Fixed Linux delete game
-Fixed Linux duplicated load game list
-Fixed possible division by zero in stats degrade
-Fixed smoothness issue with smoothness ratings.
-Fixed issue with AI engine sizes causing vehicles to be design without an engine thus causing insane stats.
-Fixed a bug in the licensing system that caused some new stats not to transfer.

[Eric.B]

Finished the new GUI for the Advanced Wizard Designers, I also tweaked the component selection GUI when designing a vehicle. Some more data will be added to that in the future.

I've started working on the redesign of the Advanced Sliders GUI. This is mainly to give me more room to add new features and more data for you while you design stuff. I hope to finish this off by Sunday so I can start working on all the other features we've got left to do in 1.18.

-Redesigned Advanced Component Selection Windows.
-Visible Subcomponent Ratings
-Pros/Cons list for subcomponents
-Recommended Vehicles for Subcomponent.

[Eric.B]

Redesign of the Advance Chassis designer is roughly 75% complete. We've moved the bottom buttons to the left hand side. Removed the "About" text box. This will be replaced by tooltips. We've removed the specs box and moved that information into the bottom box along with the star ratings. This box now takes up the entire width of the screen. smaller screens will have a horizontal scroll, 1080p and larger will not have to scroll...

Two additional features have been implemented. The first being "Does engine fit." While designing a chassis, you can check to see if a selected engine fits. You simply click the button under "Does engine fit?" Then select the engine. The GUI will tell you if it fits in width and length. If it does not fit it will tell you by how much.

The other feature I'm currently working on and fine tuning. It's named "Test Chassis in Vehicle." This feature gives you a drop down box to select vehicle type. Then two buttons to select an engine and gearbox. If you do not select and engine or a gearbox, a generic one will be made for you.

You'll then click a giant button which will produce a generic vehicle using the assisted sliders, selected components, and the current chassis you are designing. The results of this vehicle is displayed, showing you specs and ratings. What I'm working on now is having this window give you advice on the design, such as "This engine is too weak for the vehicle, fuel mileage and performance is harmed as a result."

I should note these are ROUGH ESTIMATIONS. I'm going to have to put that in big bold text because I'm sure some people will get mad that their finished vehicle is not the same as the test results. But hopefully that'll fix some of the issues people have with wrapping their heads around some of the hierarchical effects of the sliders down the line.

Once I finish this last bit of details on the "Test Chassis In Vehicle" code, I'll put in the Question Mark boxes to the sliders windows, add in some big button selections, I'll take a screenie, and then do the same for Engines and Gearboxes.

[Eric.B]

So I know I've been a little lax on posting progress. It's quite hard to make updates on every tiny minor change to the UI. But as a whole, quite a bit has been done though to the GUI in the RnD department. It's a slow, tedious, and quite an annoying process. I did have to take a day off from it. But any event most major changes have been done. There are still a tiny bit of changes here and there to make.

In any event this new set up also brings in and completes the most important features in 1.18. Displaying Specific Type ratings. Giving advice as to why your car is crap, and giving much more information to the user.

I believe I'm at the roughly 60% mark. And I have quite a few minor tickets left. Nothing as big or time consuming as what I spent the last 2 weeks on.

Anyhoo here are some screenies,
Advanced Chassis Designer: http://gearcity.info/images/ChassisDesigner.png
Advanced Vehicle Designer (Still some minor tweaking to do here): http://gearcity.info/images/VehicleDesigner.png