Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 214: Taking Back The Wheel
With the Al-Rilma update for Automation still in its open alpha phase (albeit with even more content than before), and the current stable release still as highly viable as ever, I decided to revisit my CEL Challenge Remix Spinner Wheel set, adding two new wheels and revising the others. The first new wheel, Color, determines the exterior color that will be used for the randomly generated build, and has 10 choices (Red, Orange/Brown, Yellow/Gold, Green, Blue, Purple/Pink, White, Silver/Gray, Black, and Any). The second new wheel, Year, denotes the last digit of the car model, car trim, engine family, and engine variant years of the build. Other changes involved replacing some redundant options on the Class, Era, and Location wheels with an "Any" space (just like the Paint Color and Year wheels had), which allowed the user to select from any option on those wheels.
Once I had finalized the changes, I decided to generate a random build combination using it, as an example of what it could do. The resulting configuration was as follows:
Above, from top: The first randomly generated combination from the revised and updated CEL Challenge Remix spinner wheel set. No modifiers could be used, but the car had to be American and from the 1990s - on top of that, in addition to having a black exterior color, it would have a model year of 1998 (since the Year spinner, which determines the last digit for the build's model, trim, family, and variant years, landed on 8), and with the Class wheel landing on Luxury, I would have to fit a luxury or hand-made interior, in addition to spinning the Class wheel once more.
After making a second spin of the Class wheel (as the rules stated), here's what it spat out:
Above: With the Class wheel landing on Sports Car after the mandatory respin, the build would be set as follows: a black 1998 American luxury sports car, with no positive or negative modifiers.
I later made a test build with the parameters I was given, and it turned out quite well, despite (or due to) the lack of modifiers. It should be noted that given that the Automation calendar begins in 1946 and ends in 2020, any build derived from any combination with an Era result of 2020s and a Year value greater than 0 must have its model/trim/family/variant year set to 2020; for the same reason, any builds resulting from any combination whose Era is the 1940s and Year value is 5 or lower must have their model/trim/family/variant years set to 1946.
In short, the latest revision to the CEL Challenge Remix makes it far more relevant than it once was, and in addition to expanding and revising the CEL Challenge Remix wheel set, I also created yet another wheel set - one based on another game I own. You'll find out more about that one in my next post.
Update (6 August 2025, 10:10 am, UTC +7): I forgot to mention this earlier, but the US and Canada options on the Location wheel have now been merged into a single option (US/Canada), since despite these markets having significant differences from each other, I still consider them similar enough to treat them as a single region for the purposes of the CEL Challenge Remix. This merging of two options on the Location wheel also left some room for an "Any" option there. On that note, if the Class, Era, Location, Paint Color, and Year wheels somehow all landed on Any, you would have free rein to develop anything you want, from any year in any era, for any location, in any color.