Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 81: Regeneration

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 81: Regeneration

The recent announcement of the return of the Generations challenge for the latest UE4 release has me feeling excited. I didn't enter the original Generations tournament held two years ago, but last year brought another, completely unforeseen reason why I chose not to do so: an update to the 4.21 release of Automation changed so much about the game and its content that many cars made before the update now either behave very differently or have become unusable, rendering them unrepresentative of the latest build, and hence non-canonical. Moreover, a single car on its own is seldom representative of a manufacturer's entire lineup at any given time, with very few exceptions, and I welcome this change.

This brings us to a new, important rule put in place by the host for the relaunch of Generations: instead of smaller and/or specialist manufacturers, entrants must now submit a mainstream, full-line manufacturer to represent themselves in the tournament. With that in mind, there will now be five categories, compared to three in the original contest. They are as follows:

• Small cars: Mostly compacts and subcompacts, as well as economy cars and small coupes.
• Intermediate cars: Generally mid-sized family and executive cars, including station wagons.
• Large cars: Full-sized or larger family and executive cars.
• Light trucks: SUVs, pickup trucks and vans - basically anything with a utility focus.
• Performance cars: Includes pony and muscle cars, as well as sports cars and other high-performance models.

In addition, the first three of these categories may expand to include SUVs from 1993 onwards (at which point larger SUVs will be classified as light trucks), and there will be a reliability ranking for each round, with an overall winner in each category at the end of the game.

As of now, I am expressing strong interest in joining this rebooted contest with a completely new, lore-filled brand, made specifically for this competition - stay tuned for any further announcements.

Update (February 19, 2020): After due consideration, I have chosen to enter the rebooted Generations tournament with a completely new company created specifically for this purpose - the Hampton Motor Group. Based in Warwick, England, according to lore, it commenced car production in 1948, but didn't enter the American market until 1956, which is the year in which the first round of the new Generations will be set.