This big milestone update brings the first playable version of the Lite Campaign V3 (LC V3) to the public branch. It is still considered to be a work in progress and a lot of UI features that will make for a smoother experience are going to be implemented in various patches the coming weeks.

Experienced players definitely can start to dip their toes into the campaign now and we’re looking forward to the getting it a lot more polished up before moving on to implementing the LC V4 features: the proper sales / market algorithm, and engineers / staff, as well as much more market and financial info.


The new "Isle of Skye" photo scene.

• Facelifting existing car trims and engine variants
  
• Engineering & factory setup
  
• Modelled factories and factory add-ons
  
• Project finances forecasting tools

• Switched to updated game engine UE4.21.1
  
• Many more car bodies and fixtures to choose from
  
• Many more rear- and mid-engine compatible bodies
  
• Improved game mechanics and realism in car and engine designers
  
• Improved BeamNG Exporter
  
• Improved engine sounds
  
• Additional photo scenes
  
• Improved and fixed UI and UI feedback
  
• Tons of bugfixes and small improvements

If you have been playing and following the openbeta branch, you might want to check out the change list since last Friday’s release candidate build RC1. Have a look here.

Your old cars and engines from the previous public version will be compatible with this one and should automatically get converted. Due to the much needed game engine upgrade to UE4.21, old mods will no longer work and will have to be updated by their creators. Note that this implies that some mods you used might be missing when you load your older cars using mod bodies or fixtures.


The new "Sea of Information" photo scene.

With this big update we are merging all branches of the game to the default branch. That means the game will automatically update for everyone. This needs to be done to get rid of some of the install problems we’ve been having that were created by switching between the versions. Once the update is out we will create this branch structure:

default - The normal main public branch.
open - Opt-in branch to get patches and updates earlier, with more bugs on average.
kee_and_ue4_17 - Opt-in previous public version based on UE4.17.2 including the old Kee Engine based version of the game with the LC V2.

In the coming weeks we will continue to update the LC V3 with weekly patches until we’re at a point where mostly bigger changes are necessary to proceed in development. This will be the point where we start work on the LC V4 features.



Thank you for your continued support and patience with these updates.

Cheers!

With today's merging of the branches we bring to you a rather substantial patch that has many fixes since last Friday's release candidate 1 (RC1). For you who have played the open beta we'd like to thank you again for your support in finding and reporting issues, as well as your patience.

This is change log for RC2, which will be the public release version coming out today:

• Big rework/improvements to engine sounds
  
• Added Isle of Skye photoscene
  
• Added autosave (like sandbox) in campaign play in addition to manual and yearly saves
  
• Made car windows allow fixtures to be stamped
  
• Added 40s, 60s, 80s and 00s offroader bodies
  
• Added 00sHypercar bodies
  
• Added 90s Flatnose, 90s SUV
  
• Added 00s Van and 60s Van bodies

• Tweaked engine bay sizes to be a little bit higher and a tiny bit wider
  
• Campaign saves are now ordered by saved time & date
  
• Extended maximum loan repayment time to 10 years
  
• It is now possible to engineer an engine without a factory
  
• Added that factories can have new configs added through factory manager UI
  
• Added tooltips to hub demographic screen to explain what is shown on each demographic
  
• Simplified RON - AKI conversion to be AKI = RON - 5 for better playability
  
• Reenabled undo / redo button for fixtures when no fixture is selected
  
• Losses now show in red in the production calendar timeline
  
• Now displays alerts when engine projects are finished
  
• Tweaked cost progression of team funding and tooling optimization in engineering
  
• Pushrod engines now have a starting familiarity rating of 35%
  
• Editable text boxes now correctly show the text edit mouse cursor
  
• Unified country selection widget & added more information
  
• Added on-hover info for trims in grid-view project manager
  
• Added more info to the campaign end screen
  
• Added tooltips on Trims Produced By Factory in 3rd tab of factory setup
  
• Added tooltips on "Sales Price and Margin" in Production and Sales tab
  
• Disabled currently unused buttons in Production and Sales tab
  
• Improved visuals to indicate what you're working on when making a facelift
  
• Signing off nothing in mass-sign off now takes you back to the hub
  
• Added Familiarity display for engine family

• Fixed issues with trim paint in 00sVan body family
  
• Fixed 50s Saloon default tire diameter being really small
  
• Fixed 40sSedanLarge_Wagon from being offset from all its morphs
  
• Fixed issues with materials and weight/cargo calculations on 70sCoupe02
  
• Fixed some fixtures being blue / red and duplicated
  
• Fixed extra cam pulley spawning in cylinder 1
  
• Switched pause and play icons on top bar

• Fixed paint changing related crashes
  
• Fixed engine projects never setting older facelifts to superseded
  
• Fixed factories being editable when not selected
  
• Fixed forecast parameter buttons not having a selected state
  
• Fixed facelift renaming not working
  
• Fixed temporarily disabled engine factories never becoming active again
  
• Fixed the campaign hub demographic scores only using Gasmea's scoring
  
• Fixed being able to click world-map through car project UI
  
• Fixed clicking + or - in markets screen deselecting the region
  
• Fixed deleting items not updating grid in manager
  
• Fixed cloning trims & variants auto-collapsing everything in car/engine manager
  
• Fixed exhaust piping sometimes extending to another room
  
• Fixed old savegame issue with engine architecture
  
• Fixed "Select Countries to Compare" in markets screen
  
• Fixed car archetype scenarios not working
  
• Fixed switching the test track spawning more track list items
  
• Fixed deleting a trim or variant from factory production list not updating the UI
  
• Fixed gear ratios tooltip not updating when switching gearbox type
  
• Fixed seat count resetting when changing body variant
  
• Fixed missing data in engine factory widgets on engine factory manager screens
  
• Fixed factory UI to only show current and future state, never past states
  
• Fixed inconsistent time alignment between engine and car factories with their projects
  
• Fixed the family and variant bump forward a year when reloading / importing a model
  
• Fixed max shifts not being possible to change
  
• Fixed showing in engine engineering how many engines are being made
  
• Fixed being able to set the marketing level negative, breaking calculations
  
• Fixed crash when clicking the little disclaimer button in launcher
  
• Fixed car stock not updating once it is no longer being produced
  
• Fixed sign-off screen showing wrong number of produced cars for multiple-factory setups
  
• Fixed being able to edit a family after signing off the first facelift
  
• Fixed galvanized monocoque chassis not showing steel presses requirement
  
• Fixed car exporting from campaign projects manager
  
• Fixed production number of cars / engines not changing with engineering sliders
  
• Fixed bug in familiarity system gaining in wrong categories
  
• Fixed pausing and resuming of production
  
• Fixed facelifting making a duplicate of non-facelifted trims in the production calendar

• Fixed BeamNG Exporter hanging on Sourcing Lua Data

We're going continue to patch this big LCV3 update until it plays well enough to move on to implementing the LCV4 features.
Cheers!

We were planning to release on (this) Monday the public version of the big campaign update that has been in open beta for a while now. In order to make this as smooth as possible we've decided to delay the release by about a day and use that time to add some more quality of life features as well.


One of the photo scenes that will be added with the next patch.

The release was shifted to be on Wednesday morning our time, i.e. Tuesday evening for most of you, which means that if there are any issues popping up we can react to them quickly because we're all in office for another full work day after the release of the update.

We will merge all game branches so that everyone automatically is on the latest build. Then we are adding a separate stand-alone Kee Engine branch, a separate legacy UE4.17 branch, and a new opt-in open beta branch for those of you who want to get patches earlier while accepting more bugs in the process.

Cars and engines will be compatible with the new version, but mods might not have been updated and thus missing from your cars. All mods will have to be updated to UE4.21 to be compatible with the default version of the game.

That should be all for now, a big change log of what fixes / tweaks have been made since the recent RC1 build will be posted before the release.

Cheers!

We're getting close to merging all the game branches and releasing the big update to the public branch. While that was planned to happen in mid February, we are not of the opinion that the LCV3 plays nearly well enough just yet for us to move on into the next longer dev cycle. On the other hand we need to release it to the default public branch in order to get rid of a lot of the compatibility issues caused by having the two versions in parallel and switching versions.

Thus we shall release the update for everyone the coming Monday, but will continue to patch and upgrade the LCV3 until it is more solid and plays well even for non-experts at the game. So we will continue regular patching beyond that coming update.

In today's patch we see a release candidate. If this is not causing any new bigger issues or still has big issues that are campaign show-stoppers, we will release either this or a fixed version on Monday.

Here is the full changelog for today:

• Added back and enabled true fullscreen mode. Fix for certain AMD card problems?
  
• Added a 70s Coupe, 70s Coupe Convertible, and 90s SUV car bodies
  
• Implemented basic tax system based on your profits for the year and HQ region

• Fixed demographics not unlocking / always being available in the campaign
  
• Fixed demographics region size multipliers being arbitrarily applied
  
• Fixed car scores only being calculated for trims that are in stock, fix sales oscillations
  
• Fixed names resetting when cloning trims in campaign
  
• Fixed issue with deleting mirrored fixtures
  
• Fixed issue with UI not showing expand / contract after sorting cars in sandbox
  
• Fixed fuel availability display issue showing lowest available fuel
  
• Fixed "select all available countries" button functionality
  
• Fixed step size of competition slider on campaign setup screen
  
• Fixed lights becoming dim in BeamNG exports when using too many lights

Please continue to help us find any remaining issues by posting about them in the bug reporting thread.
Cheers!

More fixes before the weekend, and plenty of new dependencies and game mechanics too. Getting rid of some of the long-standing exploits is also a nice touch... Like super slow cars generating fuel instead of using it. I still want one!

• Fixed cars spawing in mid-air in BeamNG.drive

• Changed car/engine designers to expand on double click if they have trims/variants
  
• Added "Engine Architecture" tech / research to unlock materials and engine configs
  
• Added leaded fuel ban company alerts
  
• Added direct effect of top end quality slider on valve float, independent of tech pool
  
• Added direct effect of exhaust system quality slider on power output
  
• Added over- and under-automated factory penalty to build quality
  
• Added tooling time multiplier depending on tooling quality & automation sliders
  
• Added company headquarters location info to car project sales panel

• Fixed crash when trying to load fixture favourites of mods no longer installed
  
• Fixed soft top based trims not calculating
  
• Fixed factory tooling time being independent of factory size
  
• Fixed super slow cars sometimes generating fuel, dominating eco categories
  
• Fixed campaign end screen not popping up when completing campaign
  
• Fixed changing trim bodies removing all fixtures
  
• Fixed new tire speed cost multiplier not being implemented in sandbox
  
• Fixed brake quality making brakes heavier instead of lighter
  
• Fixed exploitability of quality slider when no driver assists were selected
  
• Fixed steel panels saying they only need a small factory (requires medium)
  
• Fixed rim paint category icons being 1 3 3 instead of 1 2 3

• Set up car bones to understand Blender left/right naming conventions
  
• Set up car bones to be able to have constraints in parent bone space
  
• Set up car bodies to (optionally) use morph targets as bones

Next week we will merge the openbeta branch with the default branch, which will get rid of all kinds of startup / corrupted data issues people are having. It also means all UE4.17.2 based mods will have to be updated to be usable.

Cheers!

Fixing more important campaign issues in today's patch, some which where making it such that some cars would never come out of engineering.

The new company alert system is also seeing some useful additions, along with a new game mechanic that now in more detail evaluates if your car is deemed fast enough for the intended market - depending on road quality. Good stuff!

• Added company alert for upcoming minimum safety regulations
  
• Implemented Top Speed based desirability penalties for different stats per region
  
• Added 70sCoupeLargeSize coupe and sedan

• Fixed changing model body after making a trim breaking all kinds of things
  
• Fixed issue that could cause cars to not sign off correctly, staying in engineering forever
  
• Fixed issue (potentially) with log file flooding with FMOD errors in rare cases
  
• Fixed issue where pressing ESC would kill the UI in sandbox
  
• Fixed countries being selectable even when greyed out in marketing hub
  
• Fixed (roughly) alignment of factory manager UI
  
• Fixed grille materials incorrectly displaying on some scoops

There will most likely be another patch on Friday as we're getting ready to merge the current open beta branch into the default branch - and with it get rid of all those "corrupt data", plugins, and database issues.

Cheers!

A quick update to address a critical campaign issue that caused timeline freezes due to a missing file. Along with that fix come a few updates as well, check out the changelog below:

• Implemented first basic message/news system (WIP)
  
• Added tire cost penalty for low (for their time) tire profiles
  
• Improved tire cost progression when going over 300 & 350 km/h
  
• Fixed critical campaign issue caused by missing file (time freezes)
  
• Fixed Longitudinal FWD being selectable when using front live axle

Hope that resolves the issue!
Cheers

In today's patch there is a bit of polish and optimization, but also some much needed attention to the BeamNG Exporter. Engine designer scenarios are back (and car designer scenarios to follow next week) as we are preparing to merge everything into the default branch of Automation.

We are still looking for some cars that break the exporter, BeamNG, or cause simulation issues in BeamNG. Now would be a great time to send us the .car files to such cases (support@camshaftsoftware.com) so that we can look into them further to fix some of the remaining exporter issues that have been following us around. One specific testcase we need is a car that is breaking in "exporting sounds" phase. If you have one of those lying around, please send it to us! :)

• Engine designer scenarios are now back, car scenarios will come back soon
  
• Big optimization for model designer performance
  
• Made top bar's time controls work on demographics and market UI
  
• Added rough difficulty presets for the lite campaign
  
• Added factory requirements tooltips to chassis, engine block, bottom end, interior
  
• Added warning to torsion beam rear suspension to show it can't be driven
  
• Removed back button in designers where it was not applicable
  
• Improved world map plaque text and its scaling, improved country selection info UI
  
• Fixed issue with car paint
  
• Fixed camera issue with world map view
  
• Fixed countries not being greyed out when you can't sell to them in marketing screen
  
• Fixed issue with engine not reloading properly in car after engine change

• Fixed several instances where exported cars would cause simulation instability
  
• Fixed issue with shift points for automatic transmissions
  
• Fixed issue where exported car's rear suspension would break
  
• Fixed issue with viscous diffs don't seem to do much locking at all

More improvements and fixes are coming next week!
Cheers

Just a small update today, more or less hotfixing the issues with the BeamNG exporter producing cars that "explode" or shake themselves to destruction or simulation instability.

• Fixed BeamNG Cars exploding, exhausts wobbling. Exhausts have been simplified.
  Now not breakable. The smoke chain of nodes has been simplified.
  
• Fixed issue where cloning a trim would invalidate other trims
  
• Fixed some logic around Drive Type / Engine Placement selection
  
• Fixed some logic (and silent erroring) around Brake Disc Options

There are more fixes and additions in the work for later this week, of course! :)
Cheers!

Lots of patches, and this one fixes another critical issue that was stopping the campaign from progressing at seemingly random times. Here's hoping we've now got all those types of bugs squashed.

We recently announced a Q&A as the last one was from almost five years ago, even though it held up nicely and is still relevant today. Here are 41 interesting questions answered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFN1q3Ydclo

• Fixed critical issue with the campaign stopping at seemingly random times
  
• Fixed things exploding when you delete an engine facelift
  
• Fixed the awareness change in the markets tab not working with more than one region
  
• Fixed brake piston count not being set to 1 when switching between drums and discs
  
• Fixed issue with the emission tooltip going in wrong direction for head/valvetrain choice
  
• Added a flat engineering time of 6 months to aerodynamics section before quality effects

If you find any new issues, please let us know!
Cheers