There are all sorts of “Tycoon” games out there that give players the ability to develop and manage their own creations ranging from theme parks to rail road companies. But, what about us car guys? How cool would it be to have a game that places you in charge of your own car manufacture? Including designing your own vehicles, to managing logistics, sales, and marketing. If that sounds like fun, then you’re in luck because the guys at Camshaft Software are working on such a game and it’s called Automation.

It’s currently under development, but we had to know more about it and thankfully they were kind enough to answer a handful of our questions regarding their forthcoming title. So, if there’s a little Enzo Ferrari in you, be sure to click through to read our entire interview with the development team.

AutoDebut: Tell us a little bit about your team, this is a huge project you’re embarking on so there must be some passionate auto enthusiast on-board.

Andrew: We are basically a 3 person team consisting of myself (Artist), Caswal (Programmer) and Jaye (Game Engine Programmer), we’ve also got a few other talented folks doing some contract work for other aspects like sound recording and user interface art.

I studied 3d Art at the same school where Caswal and Jaye were programming students, and whilst we had known each other for ages we hadn’t really collaborated on anything until Automation.

Me and Caswal are both car enthusiasts from way back, (I’ve got a rather angry 1st Gen MX5/Miata, and he’s just bought a Suzuki Cappuccino of all things!) but we’re both particularly interested in the technical and engineering side of cars.

We had played a lot of games like Railroad Tycoon and enjoyed the strategic sort of gameplay and also enjoyed tuning cars in Forza Motorsport. Basically how it came about was at one point when we had nothing good to play, I was lamenting the fact that there had never been a car company game. We both thought about this for a bit and realized, “Hey, we have the skills to do this, and if nobody else is going to do it, maybe we should!” and so we started work on Automation.

Caswal: What’s wrong with a Cappuccino? Anyway I have always had an interest in cars and motorbikes. My older brother was building various vehicles as I was growing up which always captured my interest. Although I drifted towards computers and programming I always kept an interest in the automotive world. I got a motorcycle as soon as I could afford to do so. It was an old Suzuki RG250, can’t put down a good 2-smoker.

AutoDebut: Can you describe Automation for those that may be unfamiliar with the project?

Andrew: Fundamentally it’s a company management game based around the car industry, it’ll have all the business mechanics associated with the car industry, so you’ll be managing your factories and research, building cars to suit different buyer wants, building the prestige of your brand and dealing with the unique tastes and regulations of different parts of the world.

Where we are spending particular focus is on the designing of cars, in the few games that have attempted this genre before, designing cars has been a very simple affair with little excitement to offer the car enthusiast. We, however, are letting you have a lot more control over the design process. You’ll be spending a lot of time juggling competing requirements, trade offs between power and emissions, safety and weight, and all that sort of thing.

When it comes down to it, Automation is quite a few things really. The phrase I like to use is that its a game for people who “Live and breathe cars”, the kind of people who played Forza or GT5 and wished they could modify cars in more depth, the people who chat with their mates about what cars they would make if they ran Ford or Lamborghini or whatever, its game that hasn’t really been done before and we hope we do the concept justice.

AutoDebut: What type of depth and features can we expect from the engine designer?

Andrew: The engine designer is probably the deepest aspect of the game, and its where a lot of key choices will be made.

You’ll start from the very basics of the engine, choosing a block configuration, bore and stroke dimensions. You’ll choose internal components, valvetrain type and number of valves. You’ll choose how aggressive your cam is, what fuel system you’ll use, and that’s just a quick overview!

From there you test the engine and you will be able to go back and make whatever revisions you like and keep testing it until it fits your requirements.

Whilst it’ll be fairly technical, it will offer ways to make things simple, you’ll be able to use prebuilt engine designs for example. Also every aspect of the design process has clear explanations of its effects and how it functions. In fact, quite a few of our testers have commented that they’ve learned a lot about cars from Automation, particularly the ability to see the parts that you choose in action

AutoDebut: But, it won’t be as easy as throwing the best parts on to produce the most power. Players will have to adhere to emissions, costs, and a list of other factors. Can you elaborate on that for us?

Andrew: Yes, if you were building a supercar it might be a case of building a money-no-object powerhouse of and engine, for most cars you’ll need to balance quite a few aspects.

The aspects that make for a powerful engine will also have downsides such as being less smooth, less economical and louder for example.

Caswal: It’ll be a lot about designing for what you need. If you want to produce an engine for a budget family car, you need to take into account that most people don’t want an engine that you have to thrash to get any usable power. They would prefer an engine with a flat even torque band, good economy, with low vibration and not much noise.

AutoDebut: When it comes to designing the chassis will users experience similar freedom comparative to professional software like Solidworks?

Caswal: Professional software solutions are professional for a reason, you need 100’s if not 1000’s of hours of experience to be a professional. We are always trying to strike a balance between power and usability and one is a trade off for the other. We want to give players enough power to build almost anything they want, and I think we are getting systems that should allow that.

Andrew: Its more or less a case of picking a base chassis size, and construction (for example a “Small Steel Monocoque”) and from there you’ll start choosing engine position, suspension type and all that sort of thing.

We’re also working on a body designer that will hopefully let you do a lot in terms of the visual style of your car designs.

AutoDebut: Once the car is complete will there be any sort of simulation to predict how well the car performs in different areas, for example quarter-mile times, 0-60 mph, handling, etc.?

Andrew: Absolutely, as well as the many “ratings” for different aspects of the car it’ll also have real world stats for many things such as 0-60, power and torque, fuel economy and more.

Caswal: There will be a simulation of some kind, to work out the various parameters for the car. Whether you can watch the car being tested around a say a track, we will have to wait and see if times permits us, it is definitely something we want to do, and have kept it in mind as we have worked on various systems.

AutoDebut: Mazda manufactures some of the best-selling sports cars in the world despite not having the fastest cars on the market. They’re the perfect testament that selling cars in this category is not all about horsepower. With that said, when determining who’s producing the best cars on the game, is that something that will be taken into consideration? More specifically, what are all of the factors that come into play when determining whether “car A” is better than “car B”, and how well each will sale?

Andrew: We’ve got a “buyer engine” that compares the needs and wants of buyers to your cars.

There will be different types of buyers, some might be mega rich and looking for a supercar, some might be looking for a budget family car, you would even get tradesmen looking for vans and pickups.

Depending on the demographics and preferences of the market you’re selling in, there will be different demands for different types of vehicle.

We’ll also be simulating the fact that when presented with a range of cars to choose from a few people will always choose the very worst option (You know how some people actually bought Yugos? Yeah..)

Caswal: Cars are described by a bunch of parameters currently 22. The values for these parameters ‘score’ the car against various car types, such as a hot hatch or an SUV. So for a sports car with handling, acceleration braking are important. A car will still score well as a sports car if it has good handling and braking but mundane acceleration, maybe not as well as a car with better acceleration. This all depends on the cost as the higher the cost the worse the score for that car. The scores are used to proportional distribute the buyers, so people will buy Yugos, just not that many of them if they have a choice not to.

AutoDebut: Thus far what has been the most difficult part in developing such a complex game?

Andrew: The fact that we’ve chosen a quite technical real life subject matter, and one with quite obsessive enthusiasts means we really need to keep the technical detail and accuracy there, but not make it too overwhelming to play.

It’s also quite challenging art wise to make everything modular, such that almost every engine component and care component can fit on anything, and believe me there are a LOT of different parts to choose from, all represented on the car in 3d.

Caswal: Publicizing the game, is by far the most time consuming aspect of development and therefore takes time away from working on the game itself. There is no point sinking all this effort into the game if no-one knows about it. One of the hardest challenges so far has been designing an easy to use, but powerful system for designing car bodies. We have been working on it for the last month or so, we think we have something pretty good now. I hope that people will be surprised, and surprise us with what they can do with it.

AutoDebut: What’s your ultimate goal?

Caswal: To work on Automation, and other projects full time. We currently still have day jobs and Automation takes up almost all of our spare time! Would be nice to be able to have playing with real cars as a hobby again.

Andrew: At the moment we’re just focused on getting Automation done.

If we’re successful enough though, we’ve got plenty of ideas for expansions to Automation, as well as lots of other games all with the same nerdy passion for engineering and mechanical things!

AutoDebut: We know the release date is still TBA, but do you have any thoughts as to what the price point might look like once the game is released?

Caswal: We’re targeting under $25USD and probably cheaper if you preorder.

AutoDebut: Thank you for your time. If you have any closing comments you’d like to make, the floor is yours.

We hope to make a great game for the car nut crowd, but our biggest battle is letting people know we exist, if you’ve got friends who might be interested, let them know about us.

We also would like to mention where you can find us:

automationgame.com

http://twitter.com/#!/AutomationGame

http://www.facebook.com/AutomationGame