Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 74: Veracity in Velocity

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 74: Veracity in Velocity

One of the many cars I downloaded from the Community Redesign Centre thread on the Automation forums was a small, light mid-engined coupe called the Lavish Velocity. It looked nice enough on the outside, but I found the mechanicals to be in need of some improvement. There were also a few styling details that needed to be fixed. So here is an overview of the Lavish Velocity after it underwent its makeover.

For the exterior, the most noticeable difference was the replacement of the awkwardly shaped single side intake with two smaller intakes of unequal size. Up front, the air intakes were made functional, while the rear end gained larger air vents. In addition to this, a new set of 5-spoke wheels was fitted, while the pearlescent orange paint job made way for a more elegant deep metallic green. Even so, it remained fairly recognizable as a Lavish Velocity. On the inside, however, the changes were much more significant - and welcome.

Front three-quarter view of the tuned Lavish Velocity showing revised styling, including reprofiled front and side air intakes.

As originally built, the Velocity was powered by a rough-running V6, one that seemed at odds with the car's main selling point as a junior supercar. In its place, a flat-crank V8 was substituted. With 475 horsepower from 4.4 liters of displacement, it was a vast improvement on the original engine. To harness all this extra thrust, the gearing, suspension, aerodynamics and brakes were all tweaked to create a much more complete package.

Rear three-quarter view of the tuned Lavish Velocity showing larger rear vents.

With a top speed of nearly 200 miles per hour and a 0-60 mph time of just under 4 seconds, the Velocity lived up to its name more than ever, and backed it up with more street-friendly, but still razor-sharp, handling and braking.

Disclaimer: As with all of my revisions of other Automationeers' cars, some credit goes to the original creators of the vehicles that I revised - please respect their rights.

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 30: Wedding Dress Maker

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 30: Wedding Dress Maker

Just when I thought I had discovered everything that Azalea's Dolls had to offer, I came across yet another one of their games: the Wedding Dress Maker. This one gives you a chance to recreate your favorite wedding dress - but the possibilities are clearly not limited to those alone. You can also create a costume for a fairy tale princess, or a dress for a red carpet at an award ceremony, among other things. Here are a few examples. 

Some examples of designs made in the Wedding Dress Maker on AzaleasDolls.com - and they're not just for weddings.

You start out by choosing your doll's skin tone, facial features, hair style and color, before selecting the background color for her dress, as well as her shoe type (if any). From there you can select one of many combinations of skirt and bodice shapes and colors. Afterwards, you have the option of adding embellishments in the form of sleeves, shoulders, belts, veils, hair accessories, gloves and jewelry, followed by an assortment of miscellaneous accessories which you can drag and drop to add to the picture of your doll. Last but not least, you have a choice of background colors and patterns, and can even play with a few filters (either saturated, desaturated, or monochrome) for special effects.

That pretty much sums up the Wedding Dress Maker - it's short, but provides enough customization options to keep you interested enough for you to come back to it when you feel like it.

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 73: Supernatural Beings

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 73: Supernatural Beings

A recent visit of the Community Redesign Centre thread revealed a few cars from other users that I realized could do with a visual and/or mechanical makeover. Among them was the Di Inferi Ozen Coupe, a two-seat grand tourer that thought it was an actual supercar. So I set about turning it into one - or at least, that was the theory. The result turned out to be much better than I expected - and here's why.

Above and top: The Di Inferi Ozen in its original form.

My first job was to fix the Ozen's minimalist aesthetic. For starters, the proportions of some of its frontal features seemed off, to say the least. Specifically, the main grille, side intakes and headlights were all too deep, giving the car an exaggerated and somewhat cartoonish face. So I made them slimmer, as well as adding a lower grille between the side intakes. I also added a hood bulge between the engine bay cooling vents.

The revamped nose of the Ozen, with a smaller grille making it look less like a caricature of a sports car.

Along the flanks, I swapped the stock mirrors for larger items and flipped the brake cooling vents upside down, while also adding a set of side indicators. At the rear, I moved the rear window line further forward to replace the original car's hunchbacked look with something more reminiscent of a jet fighter's canopy. In addition, I reshaped the rear fascia to accommodate a pair of rear fog lights, replaced the exterior color with a brighter solid blue, and changed the wheel design to a dual five-spoke arrangement.

The side profile of the redesigned Ozen, with a shorter glasshouse and flipped side vents.

Under the skin, the changes were even more significant. The original engine was a twin-turbocharged V8 with a conventional cross-plane crankshaft, but in a nod to the purist ethos I was pursuing, it was converted to a naturally-aspirated flat-plane unit delivering 540 horsepower - still sufficient given that the Ozen would end up lighter than it once was. Moreover, the stock dual-clutch transmission made way for a six-speed manual gearbox with a shorter final drive ratio.

Power is nothing without control, however, so I gave the Ozen a set of wider tires (by 5 mm at each corner) and retuned the brakes by resizing the rotors at the front and rear, while also changing the brake bias to suit the new setup. To complement this, I made some aerodynamic adjustments that would work in conjunction with the suspension tune I had planned for the Ozen. Speaking of which, I decided to go for fixed-rate steel springs in place of the original car's active setup, and tuned it to provide more responsive handling.

Given that the Ozen was meant to be a premium sports car, I deemed it necessary to install safety and infotainment systems commensurate with its positioning in the market place. To that end, I upgraded the safety suite to a more advanced setup and swapped the stock infotainment for a true premium system. No further trim changes were required, however - a testament to the Ozen being originally built on a sound set of underpinnings.

All these changes made the Ozen more of a purist's machine than before. As such, I called my version the Supernatural, in reference to its naturally aspirated engine. It was certainly slower than the original version, but it had a much more old-school, analog feel in comparison - something rarely found in modern performance cars.

This is the view you'll see of the Ozen Supernatural as it overtakes you on the road - but not for long.

This was quite a fun project for me to undertake, helped in part by the car not having a very large number of fixtures for me to work with. In truth, I have already carried out similar turbo-to-atmospheric conversions on a few other cars, either of my own design or sourced from other users, but this was my most satisfying one to date.

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 29: CRASH Chronicles Part 4 - Striker and Support Classes

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 29: CRASH Chronicles Part 4 - Striker and Support Classes

Within the relaunched CRASH Chronicles storyline, agents are classified according to how their abilities perform. In this post I will take a look at two of these classes: Striker and Support. These were the first two classes I created for CRASH Chronicles, but they were not the last. There will also be other classes as well, and those will eventually be described in later posts.

Above: CRASH Agents Ellie Watts (left) and Claire Hayes (right) in their training outfits. The former is a Striker, whose attacks tend to have a long range; the latter is a Support, whose abilities are focused on assisting teammates.

We'll start with the Striker class, which is geared mainly towards long-range combat. These agents are most commonly employed in a sniping role, keeping a watchful eye on their targets before unleashing their attacks on them. Strikers are generally fast-moving and highly agile, which decreases their likelihood of detection. Their only major weakness is their sub-par durability, although this can be negated if the Striker stays on the move and makes good use of cover. Ellie Watts is a classic example: she can launch powerful bursts of lightning across long distances and is light on her feet, but can easily be taken out with a few hard hits.

Support class Agents, on the other hand, have abilities that benefit the team they're on by assisting their teammates or hindering their enemies. Claire Hayes, for example, is capable of establishing a psionic link with other people within a certain range, allowing her to predict their actions, thoughts and movements more easily. In combat, it improves the accuracy of her allies' attacks; however, away from battle, it makes it easier for her to negotiate a peaceful resolution if there is a potential conflict - a useful trait given that CRASH considers direct combat to be a measure of last resort.

Thus ends my discussion of the first two character classes featured in CRASH Chronicles. Stay tuned for more class descriptions in future posts.