Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 50: A Major Content Update

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 50: Major Content Update

The release of the latest open beta build for UE4 Automation (B180926) has left me feeling contented, to say the least. Not only have the devs finally managed to start implementng a bugfix which solves the problem of unusually small engine bays for some mid-engined car bodies, they have also ported over some of my favorite car bodies from the preceding Kee version, and created some new ones as well. Here are a few examples.

First up is the return of the 00s small coupe body. In the Kee version, it was initially available from 1995 onwards, but later on the unlock year was pushed back to 2000 - a change which has been undone for the latest UE4 build. Initially, users complained of excessive weight and overlapping chassis components, but it wasn't long before both of these bugs were fixed. I actually like this one a lot, despite the fact that it can only fit relatively narrow front tires without resorting to making the front fenders disproportionately wide.

This is the first car I made using the 00s small coupe body - an ideal choice for affordable sports car builds from the mid-90s all the way to the late 00s.

Another welcome (re)introduction is the wedge-shaped 70s coupe body, whose low, sloping nose lends itself well to the fitment of pop-up headlights, as shown below.

If straight lines and wedges are more your thing, then this new body might tickle your fancy.

In addition, the 60s sedan body is finally available in mid-sized form, joining the compact, full-sized and luxury car sizes present earlier.

Another body choice for a 60s pony car? Sweet!

And due to popular demand, the 90s compact car body (available as a three- or five-door hatchback, a four-door sedan, a two-door coupe or five-door wagon) has also been ported over from the Kee engine version.

Another familiar body from the Kee era returns.

These aren't the only bodies to make their debut with the release of this recent content update. The devs have also finally given us a 60s SUV/pickup truck body (to fill in a gaping hole in body styles for this era), a few 60s compact car bodies (including some which were present in the Kee engine version), a 70s van body (in three different sizes, no less), and an 80s small SUV body (also ported over from Kee), much to the relief of those who wanted them. Further bugfixes and additional content are forthcoming, so watch this space!

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 49: Size Matters

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 49: Size Matters

The recent Automation patch has added several new bodies to the game. However, some of these do not seem to work properly as yet. A more pressing concern is the lack of engine bay space for certain mid-engined cars. Here are a few examples to prove my point.

You can still squeeze big engines into each of these bodies after the latest patch - but are they big enough? The answer is an honest "maybe". They might be sufficient for some players, but certainly not all of them.

All of the bodies used for the creation of these vehicles appear to have their rear firewalls too far back. I thought about the cause of this potentially crippling bug for a while, but I soon came to the conclusion that somehow, someone had miscalculated the engine bay sizes for each of these bodies, among others. Even so, I was able to install sufficiently powerful engines in each of them (above, from top: a 3.0L twin-turbo V8, a 2.0L V6, a 5.8L V8, a 5.0L V12 and a 1.6L turbo I4) to prove once and for all that, despite still being limited in usefulness, these bodies are still viable choices for high-performance cars.

Nevertheless, I am as annoyed as you are that some of these bodies cannot accommodate very large engines, as was the case before the patch. This doesn't mean I will avoid using these particular bodies like the plague, but I have been forced to use them less often than previously. Until the next patch which resolves the engine bay size bug, I will mostly stick to whatever few mid-engined car bodies are unaffected (along with the more common and conventional front-engined bodies) when building out-and-out sports cars, supercars and hypercars in UE4 Automation. It should be noted that this bug has never appeared in the earlier Kee version at all, however. But in the meantime, I, like many other Automationeers, will have to be content with leading from the front more often than I should when it comes to engine placement.

Urgent Update: As of B180926, the 00s supercar body (which I used to build the car shown in the first photo above) is finally capable of accommodating a large longitudinally mounted engine. Here's a screenshot of the overview tab for a test build I recently made as proof.

What happens when developers listen to Automationeers' complaints, rewarding their patience in the process? Car builds like the one shown above, which were previously impossible, suddenly become quite common.

In addition, several new bodies have finally been made available for use in sandbox mode - but that is for another story.

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 15: STAR Power

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 15: STAR Power

Alongside CRASH Chronicles, I also created another project with the help of a Doll Maker game, in this case the Heroine Fan Art Creator. This latest one is called STAR Power, but it differs from my previous project in that it depicts ordinary people doing ordinary things... well, most of the time. STAR is an acronym for "Special Team Adventure Recon", and fittingly, its members embark on dangerous, yet exciting missions to far-flung parts of the globe. Currently, it consists of four members: Tiffany Ward, Katie Parker, Jessica Burton and Michelle Hawkins, whose favorite colors are purple, blue, red and yellow, respectively.

The main cast of STAR Power, from top: Tiffany Ward, Jessica Burton, Katie Parker and Michelle Hawkins.

Originally, STAR Power was intended to be in a separate fictional universe from CRASH Chronicles. However, I recently did a U-turn on this policy and decided to have both series use the same continuity. To that end, I chose to depict the STAR Power characters in the X-Girl Creator, which I had used for making the characters from CRASH Chronicles. They, conversely, will also be depicted in the Heroine Fan Art Creator. As a result, crossovers involving both teams will not only be more likely, but also more viable as well.

Now for the members themselves: Tiffany Ward is not only the team leader, but also the most senior member of the whole team, and generally applies reason and logic to her actions. In addition, she often tends to be more stoic than her teammates. Contrast this with the youngest team member, Jessica Burton, who is far more hot-blooded and emotional than the rest of the cast. In between these two extremes is Katie Parker, who strikes a balance between emotion and reason. As for Michelle, she's an idealist who can devise plans on the fly just as easily as her partners. Further information about them can be found on other posts about STAR Power in this blog.

Given that the "A" in STAR stands for adventure, it should come as no surprise that all four STAR agents are expected to be in peak physical and mental condition as often as possible. In addition, they are equally proficient in combat and puzzle-solving. However, they prefer to negotiate peaceful solutions to conflict whenever possible. Finally, they rarely request outside assistance unless they absolutely have to, and when they do, it will most often be in the form of a CRASH Team.

This concludes my brief rundown of STAR Power, my latest attempt at a story involving characters made using the Heroine Fan Art Creator. Further posts about it are forthcoming - so stay tuned!

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 48: The Ten Commandments of CSR Hosting

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 48: The Ten Commandments of CSR Hosting

CSR has been the longest-running and most prestigious recurring contest on the Automation forums, with 82 rounds already having been completed and an 83rd round now underway. There have been many ups and downs, but having followed the contest from the start of the very first round, nearly three years ago, I have noticed that there are 10 very important guidelines for hosts to follow. Each of them are shown below.

1. Choose an appropriate theme for the next round. Specifically, when launching a new CSR round, make sure that the theme you chose has a sufficiently compelling premise to draw in a large number of other users. Also, make sure to take into account the themes of the most recent rounds prior to the current one: if, for example, the last two rounds had a utility focus (as happened with CSR72/73 and again in CSR76/77), it might be best to and switch things up for the next round with a rule set that places less of an emphasis on utility.
2. Set realistic requirements for the round you are about to host. This involves determining a set of priorities (based on objective and subjective criteria) which would be most appropriate for the "customer" of the round, along with defining a suitable budget in terms of price, production units, and engineering time. Having an overly vague rule set can be detrimental to the entry rate of a round, as CSR64 showed. That round left many potential entrants confused about what to do due to the vague rule set, and ultimately, they ended up not submitting anything at all.
3. Respond to other users' feedback if you are unsure about certain parts of your rule set. If someone else requests that you revise your rule set, then think carefully about the consequences of implementing the revision, and even then, only do so if you consider it appropriate given the theme of the current round. For example, CSR83 (the latest round at the time of writing) was originally intended to launch with a budget of $8500, but after complaints from several other users who felt it was insufficient, the budget cap was increased slightly, to $9000.
4. Notify entrants of rule violations when appropriate, and always state the cause. Occasionally someone will submit something which does not meet the requirements of the current round for some reason. It is up to you to decide whether you would rather ignore these entries altogether during the review phase or ask the user to revise and re-submit their entry for the sake of compliance - assuming you have allowed the entrants to do so only in the event of a violation. Taking CSR74 as an example, I was faced with so many violations in my "inbox" that I reluctantly told the users that I would not accept their entries unless they fixed the fault which caused the violation - and they all did so before the deadline.
5. Ensure you can complete the round in a timely manner before hosting. It is generally agreed that a CSR round must be completed within 72 hours of the deadline for entries having passed. That 72-hour time frame should be reserved for writing, editing and publishing reviews for each of the entrants' submissions. Thus, if you feel that you cannot fulfill this obligation adequately, you should let someone else host the next round instead. Again using CSR74 as an example, I explicitly told the entrants that the reviews and results would all be completed and posted within 72 hours - and true to my word, I did just that.
6. Give each entrant's submission a succinct, fair and unbiased review. When reviewing cars which have been submitted to you, never forget to tell the truth about it. There is no place for misleading information in any phase of CSR, especially this one. And make sure the reviews are neither too long nor too short; you may be on a time crunch, but make sure to include all the important facts about each submission you received.
7. Plan out the review phase correctly. Often, this means starting out with a brief summary of each submission, before moving on to a shortlist consisting of several entries (between six and twelve should be sufficient in most cases). If necessary, make at least one more round of cuts, until you have determined the list of finalists for the current round.
8. Make the right choice regarding the winner of the current round. Choosing the car which best fits the imaginary client's requirements is mandatory for any CSR round, but it must always be the correct one 100% of the time. Otherwise, you could find yourself the subject of protests from disgruntled entrants.
9. Use a fair and balanced scoring system when judging submissions. In any CSR round, try not to give too much weighting to a particular stat when scoring entrants' submissions. This is especially glaring if the overly weighted stat has little relevance to the rules of the current round. CSR82 was a case in point. The host unintentionally (and unexpectedly) made service costs much more of a factor in the judging phase than would have been considered desirable, given the high-budget theme of that particular round. Hence, cars which cost less to service, even if they fell short in other criteria, ended up placing higher up the order than they should have, which is quite unrealistic to say the least.
10. Above all, enjoy your turn as the host, and have fun. What's the point at taking control of CSR for a week or so if you end up losing interest within a few days? You could end up taking so long to finish the reviews that the entrants would end up losing their patience. So make sure to approach the challenge of hosting CSR with a can-do attitude if you get the chance.

There are many other bits of advice which are useful, but these ten tips shown above are the most useful of all. As long as you heed them, you will not go far wrong when hosting a round of CSR. In the next post, I will examine what happens when a CSR round goes awry - and the results aren't very pleasant.

The Sword of Damocles: The Ultimate Interstellar Capital Ship

The Sword of Damocles: The Ultimate Interstellar Capital Ship

Ever since its introduction in Weird Worlds, the Starship Damocles has been one of the most sought-after capital ships in the entire Infinite Space series. Much of its appeal lies in its immense firepower and formidable shielding. However, its usefulness is slightly limited by the fact that it only appears as part of a quest, and cannot be used at all in the Combat Simulator. Even so, for overall effectiveness, there are few other ships that can match it.

The Damocles in all its glory - a majestic capital ship resembling a sword. Its standard loadout is shown above.

Supplementary material for Weird Worlds delves deeper into the origins of this vast vessel. Centuries before the events of the Infinite Space trilogy, the Damocles belonged to the legendary hero, Prince Arcturus, the son of Centurian queen, Eledra. It was highly automated and self-maintaining, with a crew of up to 50, but was relatively lightly armed for its size by contemporary standards (although by the time the events of Sea of Stars took place, its armament was much more formidable than what most other capital ships had). Its opulent living quarters, observation deck and banquet halls took up most of the forward hull, with the crew quarters, bridge, cargo hold, drive and thruster compartments being placed further aft.

The first thing you notice about the Damocles (after you've discovered it) is its sheer size. According to background material for Weird Worlds, it is 186 metres long and 66 metres wide, with a cargo hold capable of carrying 20 items (although this was nerfed to 16 items for Sea of Stars). This makes it easier to stockpile lots of items in your flotilla but hinders the ship's speed and maneuverability, even with a Reactionless Thruster fitted. However, such a large ship also has plenty of capacity for weapons and armor, which the ship is best known for.

Speaking of which, the Damocles is very heavily armored, even more so than Terran and Muktian destroyers. This attribute, when combined with the ship's standard-issue Temporal Flux Shield (the strongest shield in the game, and capable of withstanding supernova explosions to boot), makes it extremely difficult to destroy in combat. In addition, in Sea of Stars, it is one of the few ships in the game with at least five hardpoints for weapons (it had four in Weird Worlds).

Upgrading the Damocles with more advanced systems is not essential, but makes it even more lethal to its foes than it already is.

By default, the fore and aft turrets all carry Proton Blasters, which are unquestionably the best light weapons available to the player, and much more useful than the Proton Phasor Beams it carried in Weird Worlds. The two wing hardpoints, meanwhile, are used for mounting Cobalt Torpedo Tubes. These are generally considered to be the most accurate long-range weapons in the entire series, and are also quite powerful on their own - but are even more devastating when fired in pairs, as is the case with the Damocles. As a side note, the ram plating it had in Weird Worlds has been omitted from its Sea of Stars rendition, but this is no bad thing considering that ramming damage has also been nixed for this latest game.

In addition to its weapons, shields and armor, the Damocles is also renowned for its highly advanced propulsion systems. For superluminal (i.e. faster than light) travel, it relies on a Nebular Sled Drive, allowing it to reach 12 times the speed of light in a vacuum or in a nebula. When traveling at sublight speeds, it makes use of an Ion Impulse Thruster, which gives a boost to maximum speed during combat at the expense of maneuverability. However, as stated above, the Damocles' sheer bulk makes it somewhat sluggish in battle, even when fitted with highly advanced thrusters.

Even with a Quantum Corkscrew Thruster (as shown here) or the more exotic Reactionless Thruster, the Damocles is no match for smaller vessels in terms of speed or maneuverability. Then again, with so much armor and firepower, it doesn't need to be fast...

Mind you, it was even worse in Weird Worlds, where its standard drives and thrusters were Hydrogen Fusion Drives and Fusion Tube Thrusters, respectively. The former wouldn't work at all in a nebula (just like most other star drives) and the latter were much slower than the Ion Impulse Thrusters (but not as bad as more primitive thrusters), although maneuverability was not at all influenced by your choice of sublight thrusters back then. There is one upside to the Damocles' immense size: installing a more powerful FTL drive allows your flotilla to travel more quickly through deep space when not in combat.

The Damocles being used as intended: sniping Primordius with its dual Cobalt Torpedo Tubes, made easier in this case by the fitment of a cloaking device.

The Damocles is also equipped with an Anti-Graviton Shunt by default, a trait shared only with the Yellow Kawangi Dreadnought. This device renders an entire flotilla immune to the gravitational pull of a black hole and is indispensable when going into battle against Primordius, which actually orbits a black hole and as such cannot be reached without the device installed. However, this and the Temporal Flux Shield occupy two of the Damocles' five equipment slots. Since its starting loadout also includes a Hyperfoam Injector and a Mnemonic Sequencer, this leaves only one unused slot on board.

Using that slot for a Plasma Coil Cloaker, however, will increase the ship's combat effectiveness still further by allowing it to hide from enemy fire when things get tough - a worthwhile addition to any ship, but especially effective on the Damocles due to its immense firepower and lack of speed. Another recommended upgrade is to replace the standard targeting computer with a faster-acting, more accurate one, such as an Eidetic Matrix Bubble or even a Sardion Optimizer. It's even possible to fit a Multibot Repair Drone to the Damocles in order to repair battle damage more effectively. With at least one of these upgrades installed, the Damocles is a legitimate contender for the title of most powerful ship in the game, even more so than when fitted with its default equipment.

Using the Damocles in combat against ordinary foes is like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut - not entirely necessary, but guaranteed to yield the desired result.

In short, the Damocles, while not actually essential for defeating Primordius, is highly recommended not just for this particular quest, but also for general combat use. And if you manage to acquire it (not that it's necessary if you obtained another Anti-Graviton Shunt and fitted it to your other capital ships), you're pretty much set for the rest of the game, especially if you choose to upgrade it. Even so, it can still be destroyed if you're too careless with it, so make sure to use it wisely in combat, preferably by deploying other ships alongside it. At any rate, once you manage to get the most out of this ship, you will most likely be unstoppable - not even the best-equipped enemy fleets will be safe from you with the Damocles in your flotilla!