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GearCity 1.18 Progress
#11
One of the major things to trip up most new users (and some long time players) is our "Overall Rating." The Overall Rating was designed to be an overall rating of the car in general. The perfect vehicle so to speak. This had no baring on how good of a specific vehicle type that model was. For instance, you might make a great minivan. But overall it's not that great of a vehicle.

The major issue with this was people were directly comparing the overall ratings instead of sub ratings for vehicle types. Using the Minivan for instance, you might have maxed out your performance rating thus giving you a higher overall rating than your competition. However minivan buyers don't care how well their vehicles perform. So while your competition might have a lesser overall rating. If it has higher ratings than you in specific areas such as cargo, it would actually outsell your minivan.

To resolve this issue I have implemented what I call "Type Rating" this rating is specific to your vehicle type and can be directly compared to other vehicles of the same type. It is specifically weighted to the new multi-rated system. Demographics, marketing, image, manufacturing quality and other data do not play a factor into this. It is purely off the merits of the vehicle. It also has no impact on sales, as the rating is generated from part of the consumer AI code it self.

So far I have included this rating in all lists. I'll go over and add it to the RnD GUI (along with some other new features) and have it influence magazine articles in the very near future. It should also be mentioned, we'll be adding a similar system to the components designers to help you design the best components.


We've had an influx of new faces here, as such there has been an influx of new bug reports. I'm going to take the next day or two to take care of as many of these as I can so they don't pile up. Then I'll get back to RnD fixes for 1.18. Currently the trac shows us at 9% complete. But there are a good number of tickets that will not take much more than a few minutes for me to do. So we're more around 15% Smile


-Specific Vehicle Type Rating.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#12
Started knocking out some of the bugs that have been recently submitted to me. I'm about halfway through. I'll do another day of purely submitted bug fixes before I go into my normal Sunday/Monday routine and back into 1.18 features.

-Fixed AI factory production over maximum line limits (Should also fix the same issue with Auto Production tool.)
-Added tax expenses to two fiscal expense reports
-Fixed total expenses in two fiscal reports that had tax payments off set from actual payment dates.
-Fixed bug in office "profits" label in upper left hand screen which did include interest generated from money in bank savings account.
-Fixed Save Body bug in which the Warning label prevented the user from changing the name.
-Added a "Disable Banking Fees" Advance Game switch.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#13
-Freed the report names so after you delete a report, you can reuse the name.
-Fixed bug in the end turn report system that didn't properly get the report information when you hit the next button.
-Fixed the bug in the vehicle demands report. If you had a vehicle that was being designed, the text would cut off from the rest of the report.
-Removed the add to end report button on reports that can not be added to the end turn reports.
-Fixed drag coefficient bug on models that have an open roof.

Received a mac mini today, set it all up, and got codeblocks running. I should have a port started sometime next week. Smile
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#14
-Fixed a bug in the branch reports that did not reset sales per city. Thus giving too high of a sales figure.
-Cleaned up a number of text issues. (Thanks Jose!)
-Fixed bug in reserve shipping distance inheritance. You can also now change the shipping distances of any vehicles in reserve.
-Fixed bug in contract reports system that displayed contracts that were no longer active.
-Fixed bug in the clone vehicle sliders system.

I've got a few Linux bugs to look into, as well as finishing up the all AI behavior files for our new system. That will be my weekend. Hopefully Monday evening I can get back to 1.18 specific features.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#15
-Fixed parts placement bug where if you rotated the camera to the other side of the design room, placed parts would be flipped.
-Fixed 2 possible crash points with decal flipping
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#16
*** MISSED A POST YESTERDAY ****
So yesterday I rewrote a little bit of OIS's mouse handling code, and got it working a little better on Linux.

However there are still issues with the window management code and the keyboard. Seems like it's an uphill battle. So this morning I started a preliminary attempt at porting the game to SDL2 on Linux only. (There are issues with SDL2 and windows which is why I did not want to do this in the first place. It means maintaining two majorly different versions of the same code.)

If it works, I should hopefully have issues caused by desktop environments and keyboard focus solved, however the Linux build will become more of a pain to update. Which means if we ever go back to a minor build release system (as we did between 1.14-1.17) the Linux client will not be kept up to date. But since we've switch back to major updates only system that shouldn't be a problem.

I'll keep you guys updated with the progress.
**************************************

Todays:

***************************************

So I spent most of today porting the Linux build to the SDL2 window manager. I got it rendering inside of an sdl2 window now. I have quite a bit more to do to this for it to be fully functional. But I can say with 90% certainty that 1.18 will be using SDL2 in Linux.

This extra work at fixing Linux issues means I have made no progress on the OSX port. Sorry.


Tonight I started working on the exponential sliders. Which means unit and design cost rise at a faster rate the closer you get to full and at a slower rate the closer you get to empty. This means expensive cars will become a lot more expensive and cheaper cars will not as much of a cost benefit to medium quality cars. I have finished the chassis. I still have engine, gearbox, and vehicles to do. I should have them done in the morning. I'll use this to jump into costs, add a few more sub-components and tweak a few that we have.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#17
All RnD sliders now effect unit costs and design costs exponentially. This means for instance, having a slider all the way full is 3 times more expensive than having it halfway. It also means that the cheapest stuff has dimensioning returns.

I still need to go through and tweak design and unit costs for 1.18.

-Design sliders exponential expenses
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#18
I've finished RnD cost balancing for now. It took me a couple of days to do it, but it involved quite a bit of testing, tweaking numbers, testing more, etc.

As mentioned before, sliders have become exponential to design and unit costs. I've also now balanced out these costs keeping them within historical ranges while using the same formula for the entire 120 years of (currently) active gameplay.

I've included a new "Hypercar" tax to the sliders. This is a large value multiplied by the sum of your sliders to the power of 4. (sliders^4) This adds additional rapidly increasing costs to "perfect" designs while not having much effect on designs less than 70% perfect. This means no more $15,000 perfect super cars in 1980. If you're going to make a McLaren, you'll now have McLaren unit costs of $300,000 in 1980s easily. Wink

Sometime later this build I believe I'll make a way for you to "adjust" the design budget at the cost of ratings and design time. This will allow you to run a budget supercar company for instance, but at a lower cost without killing your specs.


I've also fixed a bug allowing for vehicle costs to be lower than the costs of the components.

I'll now be moving to adding new sub-components, such as valved engines, tweaking existing components, and fixing cylinder-less sub-components such as wankles and electrics! Smile

AI files are 50% finished with the new behaviors.

Things should start moving a little faster, as balancing is very very very time consuming (I've made at least 1000 components the last 2 days ~,~Smile


-Balanced Designed Costs
-Balanced Unit Costs
-Hypercar Design/Unit Costs penalty
-Fixed lower vehicle costs than components bug.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#19
-RnD Windows automatically Tile
-RnD upper drop down panels now open over top of any other opened windows.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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#20
Our original plan was to combine fuel types with valvetrains. However when I started working on this stuff this morning, I noticed that the list could grow rather large if I include all the different variations of valvetrain systems. On top of this every ICE fuel can be used with most forms of valvetrains systems.

So instead I implemented valvetrain as its own sub component of the engine. Not only do we now have valvetrains, but different configurations there of. We have moved 2 stroke fuel type to valvetrains system thus allowing you to have 2-stroke diesel engines for instance. I believe with the redesign of the sub-component selection GUI that I have planned, we won't be adding in any additional complexity to the system while providing even more customization and difference to the game.

Valvetrains are limited to engine layout. Which means the soon to be reimplemented electric and wankles won't be effected.

Drivetrains have been rebalanced, FF, MF, RMR, RR, F4, M4, and R4 have all received a boost. Specially the 4 wheel drive variants and FMR. FR has been nerfed, and if you're weird enough to use RF, it remains the same.

I've also added in an engine smoothness/comfort rating to engines, layouts, cylinders, fuel, and valves. These will play into a vehicles luxury and comfort ratings due to vibration and noise factors.
I still have to create the GUI for the engine smoothness, as well as generate the ratings. I also have to add in the valvetrain effects to the ratings and add text to the about and anytime fuel type is mentioned, but this is a much simpler process than what I have done all day today.

I'll finish up the final bits to the smoothness and valvetrain code next. Should be done by tomorrow afternoon. Then I'll look at adjust/balancing fuel types and adding/balancing to the induction systems. Saturday-Monday will mostly be SDL2 implementation in Linux, although I will probably get a few hours in the late night to work on 1.18.

-Drivetrain stat balancing
-Engine Smoothness/Noise Rating
-Engine SubComponents Smoothness Ratings
-Valvetrains
  • Two Stroke
  • T Head
  • L Head
  • F Head
  • I Head
  • SOHC
  • DOHC
  • Poppet Valve (For Radials)
  • Sleeve Valve (For Radials)
  • None (For Wankles & Electrics)
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
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