After a short delay to squash a bunch of bugs found in closed testing, we are finally ready to share the first look at the hotly-anticipated Ellisbury Update with everyone!


A delightful vintage racer, by Lorraine

As the Ellisbury Update is entering into the open beta phase, this will be an opt-in event. You can opt in to the Ellisbury Update open beta with the following steps:

1. Right-click on Automation in your Steam library, and go to Properties.
   
2. Go to the Betas tab.
   
3. From the Beta Participation dropdown, choose openbeta - Ellisbury Update Open Beta

Allow Automation to update, then launch the game!

Compatibility Note: All Sandbox Mode cars made in LCV4.2 will be compatible with the Ellisbury Update, but some minor adjustments to engines and transmissions specifically will be needed for them to perform at their full potential with the new update. All Steam Workshop mod content from LCV4.2 is fully compatible with the Ellisbury Update.


The stylish lightbar of BarthoNavarro's futuristic compact wagon looks on.

• Added companies to Sandbox mode, and implemented techpool for Sandbox mode
  
• New body variants: 469 new or updated and improved car bodies in 8 families
  
• Complete overhaul of transmissions, including (optional) full player control over gear ratios
  
• Complete overhaul of differential behaviour
  
• New, more flexible all-wheel drive system choices and re-worked behaviour
  
• Added CVTs and sequential gearboxes
  
• Complete overhaul of fuel economy calculations for real-world-like fuel consumption testing
  
• Added toe adjustment for suspension tuning
  
• All-new test track screen, with the ability to follow your car around the track
  
• Added the Ellisbury track, with Tri-Oval, Grand Prix, GT and Junior track layouts

The new Ellisbury track.

• Complete revamp of engine block and bottom end, including up-boring and new interactions
  
• Engine power density mechanic added
  
• Engine emissions calculations completely overhauled, reflecting real-world test cycles
  
• Added several graph options to help players visualise engine emissions and efficiency performance
  
• Improved accuracy of catalytic converter behaviour, added pre-cats options
  
• Complete overhaul of engine dyno, new gauges, more info and full control of load and RPM
  
• Lots of new and improved engine artwork

The new engine dyno at work, showing all of the new information and emissions stats.

• With fully user-configurable and moddable layouts to create your own car posters

• Added Sankey charts to allow players to see competitors and visualise sales and market flows
  
• More dynamic AI companies now use techpool and production quality properly
  
• Countries now have techpool offsets to better reflect local conditions
  
• Reliability is now an important factor in desirability calculations

This rally-inspired hot hatchback by Azka looks ready for anything!

• Added new camera display widget to control custom camera locations for exported cars
  
• Fixed decal discolouration and LOD issues in exported cars
  
• Many fixes and updates to materials in exported cars - carbon fibre is now fixed too
  
• Improved exporter’s ability to handle anything edited with the Advanced Trim Tool
  
• Implemented electric centre differentials
  
• Rebalanced tire parameters
  
• Added "Fixed Fixtures" export parameter. Breakable fixtures immune to breaking but can collide
  
• Implemented drivetrain friction
  
• Active dampers and sway bars now export
  
• Body weight will now be adjusted for added light and fixture weight (to a point)

LS Swapped Rx-7 brings us this ten-star car build!


The immediate task at hand for us is to take the vast amount of questions, comments and inevitable bug reports generated in the open beta phase. We'll provide regular patches working towards the full public release. After an inevitably busy first one or two weeks, our team will start to partially shift some focus toward the second milestone of the Supercharger Update, the Al-Rilma Update. More news on that in the not-too-distant future!

Cheers!


Catch us again later, much like Oreology's custom street racer!

It's been a while coming, but the beta test for the upcoming Ellisbury Update is just around the corner.

We've been hard at work developing new emissions testing and fuel economy drive cycles, based on real-world tests, a complete revamp of our drivetrain systems, and much more... all of which we touch on in our latest Dev Update video, which weighs in at a pretty hefty 53 minutes long!



Real-world fuel economy drive cycles are complicated; this is the US EPA's city drive cycle.


We keep the complexity of the real-world test, but make it easy to understand.

With the full fuel map we added back in LCV4.2, this has given us the ability to use more realistic fuel economy calculations for your Automation cars. More importantly, we can now actually calculate your car's true emissions values too, just like a real car's values would be measured, instead of the (almost completely) meaningless value we had been using for tailpipe emissions until now.

A lot of research and work have gone into the emissions calculations, and it will have some pretty profound implications on gameplay, especially in Campaign Mode. Getting something like a really highly-tuned supercar engine to pass emissions, for example - especially taking into account the prodigious emissions those engines produce when they are cold - is going to be quite an achievement!



Our engine dyno now more closely matches a real one, in appearance and behaviour!

With the Ellisbury Update, we are also completely re-doing the engine dyno tab. With the new fuel economy and emissions calculations, we can now give real feedback on engine performance at any RPM and throttle setting, which will be of immense value for tuning your engine. You will get instant feedback on your engine's performance, airflow and fuel flow values, emissions concentrations, and more, all with more control from the player.



The sales model has been opened up for all to see.

Campaign Mode players will be getting a powerful new visualisation tool, to view exactly what is going on within a particular sales demographic; the Sankey chart. With this chart, you will be able to see exactly how many cars your competitors are selling in whatever combination of markets you wish to inspect, and what's more, you will be able to see how strongly your competitor's entries in that demographic are, even going as far as to see what their car's stats are. After all, real-world car companies don't operate in an information vacuum, why should you?



A whole new way to share your creations.

We have often asked ourselves, "how can we help our players showcase their creations better and more effectively?" That has resulted in many new tools over the years, and the new Poster Tool is the latest. Nearly totally user-customizable and moddable on top, with the ability to design and upload many of your own custom elements, the Poster Tool allows you to create a tidy, informative and attractive posters to showcase your cars, complete with statistics.




In the Ellisbury Update, we are revamping our Test Track tool, to allow for a much more interactive and immersive experience as your cars go around the track. Gone is the old red sprite, in with a new sprite, based on a top-down shot of your car as it is. Additionally, the new test track screen is a lot tidier and easier to read, and helps bring you in closer to the action, as your car makes its way around the track.



Though it won't be in the Ellisbury Update, we are comfortable showing you all the new Track Editor tool we are making! With this new tool, creating a new test track for Automation will take only a matter of minutes to create the spline, as opposed to the old method of painstakingly coding in LUA, or with a fussy and frustrating visual tool. Simply draw the optimal line spline around the track, then add the track mask, and you've got yourself a new track! You'll also note from the screenshot here, that there's a full weather simulation built into the track editor, so each track will have even more character and personality than before.

And finally...



If you want to make some money making 2D track art for us, let us know!

With all of these new tools to make new tracks, we are putting out a call to anyone with appropriate skills and who is interested in making a lasting mark on Automation, to participate in our Art Test!

The ideal candidate should be creative and will take great care with the finer details of their work, is able to plan and manage their time effectively and is a strong communicator, fluent in English. Experience with Adobe Photoshop is a must, and experience with Illustrator will be beneficial. If this sounds like you, you can download the Art Test package here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vkmhukrd_Wly8L47WDUIc5ulxfNC28It/view?usp=share_link

Good luck to all of those interested!


The beginning of the openbeta test of the Ellisbury Update is in 2-3 weeks. We are tentatively looking at 4-6 weeks duration for that, and we will be making an announcement when the open beta phase starts, so stay tuned!

That should be all for now,
Cheers!

Greetings, motorists!

We are very happy to announce that we are partnering up with our friends at BeamNG.drive to run a BeamNG modding contest, in celebration of the amazing partnership they have just announced with Gambler 500!

Through this partnership, we aim to blur the boundaries between virtual and real-life creativity, and we’re inviting you all along for the ride. The BeamNG.drive team, together with the Modding for Dummies community and ourselves, are bringing you the Gambler 500 Modding Contest, so everyone can show us what they’ve got!

We challenge you to unleash your imagination and bring the spirit of Gambler 500 to BeamNG! Make a map, vehicles, props, Automation vehicles or even missions in the theme of the Gamber 500 - now is the time to strut your stuff.


Submissions are open from now until 30 June 2023. The following categories are accepted:

• Vehicles / props, vehicle / prop modifications with accompanying configs
  
• Automation creations
  
• Maps
  
• Gameplay (missions, scenarios)

• Entries must be submitted through the BeamNG mod repository
  
• Each entry must be original and represent the theme of the contest
  
• The quality of the mod and the repo page should be as good as possible
  
• The published mod should be shared in the dedicated forum thread
  
• You cannot continue an older project for this challenge

The winners will be determined by a jury comprising the BeamNG dev team, the Automation team, and the MFD team. We will announce the winners on 17. July 2023, and they will receive the following rewards:

1st place - $300, an exclusive BeamNG x Gambler 500 poster, 3x game keys package
2nd place - $200, an exclusive BeamNG x Gambler 500 poster, 2x game keys package
3rd place - $100, an exclusive BeamNG x Gambler 500 poster, 1x game keys package

Each game keys package consists of one key for BeamNG, one for Automation, plus one for the Automation DLCs. We will also be running a dedicated category for Automation exports, where the best entry in the Automation category will receive:

Best From Automation: $100, an exclusive BeamNG x Gambler 500 poster, 3x game keys package

For more information, please refer to the official BeamNG post here, or you can join the Official Automation Discord here.

We can’t wait to see your submissions and wish everyone the best of luck!

With the last, massive milestone update having been out for a good while now, today we want to share with you the roadmap for the ongoing Supercharger Update development cycle. With the series of updates contained therein, we are bringing the core of the game to feature completion - including lots of things the community has been asking for since the early days of Automation!


As you all witnessed during the way-too-long LCV4.2 development cycle, it would seem appropriate to break up a milestone like this into three smaller, more manageable updates. That is exactly what we're doing for the Supercharger Update, which would be enormous all put together. That way, we will deliver new content and features more frequently, without the long wait until the end of what will likely be a year-long (likely more) development cycle.



We've also given each of the three updates within this cycle a special name; these are the names of some of the cities in the Automation Light Campaign world, and each has some significance to the content of each of the updates.

Keep in mind that anything we talk about and show here very much is WORK IN PROGRESS and may or may not be fully indicative of the final content as it will appear in Automation!

Let's get into it!

---

A summary of all the main points included in this first update of the larger cycle.

In the Ellisbury Update, much of the content we're adding is the logical extension of everything we've added in the LCV4.2 update. It is taking full advantage of all the new systems we created to make engine design a more interesting and nuanced proposition. One aspect of that are the new engine block construction methods and re-thinking how all of the moving parts within the engine - crankshaft, conrods and pistons - interact with one another in terms of reliability and performance.


Up-boring and all kinds of new bottom end options.

Also, we are completely reworking the drivetrain options, with the addition of CVTs, proper racing sequential gearboxes, and the ability to manually set gear ratios if you prefer to do so. Drivetrain types and differentials will be getting a rework too, with a complete rethink of how Automation handles all-wheel drive to better reflect the wide variety of different systems in use in the real world!


The new gearing setup and gearbox options. Still missing here: several new AWD systems.

And finally, the test track system is going to be completely redesigned, from the ground up, with the track becoming a zoomable entity no longer relying on a 1280x720 image as its background, but a massive 8192x8192 texture with tons of detail. That means you will be able to closely follow your car around the track.

Additionally, we will be adding another official track to the game; the very versatile Ellisbury Tri-Oval! With a tri-oval itself and three very different road courses available, this track will test your creations to their limits, and beyond.


A first look at the new and yet unfinsihed Ellisbury Tri-Oval.

---

This is the big one that everyone has been waiting for. In the Al Rilma update, we will be bringing in not just superchargers of several different kinds, but also sequential turbochargers and likely twincharging too. As many of you might remember, sequential turbos got postponed in the LCV4.2 update, since that update took so long to deploy, and also because deploying them with superchargers and twincharging makes a lot more sense from a development perspective. But, as promised in all the way back in 2011, here they come!

As if that's not enough for one update, we are bringing back a popular feature from the pre-Unreal Engine days; the scenario-based multiplayer challenges! How does that work, you wonder? Everyone in a multiplayer game will be given the same randomized scenario to design an engine or car for, that must meet certain criteria. Players will have a limited amount of time to complete their entries, which are scored based on how well they perform compared to the requirements. These player scores are always visible in a leaderboard for you to climb in these fast-paced and very competitive challenges!

If you love cringe and want to see how far the game has come, we have some proper ancient video for you from 2013 where this kind of multiplayer existed in the early Kee Engine version of the game. Enjoy... or not. xD

---

The third and final major update of the Supercharger Update will bring much more multiplayer functionality; more on that to come in the following months, but we can say that we have some incredibly exciting plans for this. Additionally, full scenario gameplay will return, as will a comprehensive suite of tutorials for Automation - something that new players always ask for!

Finally, this third update will also see us fully integrate Steam Community Items, including Steam Trading Cards and Achievements into Automation! We have some fun ideas for this, which we will share with you all when the time is right :)


That is a brief overview of what the Supercharger Update is going to look like; what do you think? Let us know in the comments! We encourage you to watch the Little Dev Update at the top, and to follow us on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for the very latest information. We love to hear from you!

Cheers!

In this patch we are addressing a few important issues found in the big 4.2 update.
Here is the change log for this patch:

• Fixed engine not visually getting added to car on first selection of drivetrain
  
• Fixed the character " in trim names causing car exports to not work
  
• Fixed rebuilt lighting of 10's design room
  
• Fixed factory screen staff employment times displaying incorrectly
  
• Fixed factory production not being limited by staffing correctly
  
• Fixed contract factory behavior for low volume engine production
  
• Fixed pie chart and bar chart not matching campaign expenses screen
  
• Fixed specific Lua error in campaign causing game to break
  
• Fixed error when pausing trims from a previous facelift
  
• Tweaked engine-production-matching graph behavior

• Rebalanced suspension tuning
  
• Expanded race suspension customization

At this point we're all back in office and mostly working on new features for the next big 4.3 milestone - more on that in a coming news post.
Cheers!

With this patch we're addressing a fair few of campaign, exporter, and general issues before signing out for until early January. Overall the launch has gone really quite smoothly and we're very pleased with that. Thanks to all who have been posting about issues all the way through the exceedingly long open alpha / beta phase!


Santa getting his 2022 sleigh 1 trim 1 delivered to him, illustrated by sharcc.

• Fixed having to pay taxes for loan income
  
• Fixed company valuation being off after designing first car
  
• Fixed having to pay for existing starting factories
  
• Fixed new factory build times being incorrectly calculated and issue with factory tooltip
  
• Fixed required-to-operate factory staff not pushing factory construction time earlier
  
• Fixed pushrod rear suspension not showing in the parts list
  
• Fixed UI showing engine factory as needing staff without any factory change
  
• Fixed Lua error when switching fuel octane to one that isn't available in campaign
  
• Fixed FMOD log spam, now only logging a specific error once
  
• Fixed situation getting NaN forecast results which even reloading didn't fix
  
• Fixed UI alignment issue when there are 3 production flags
  
• Fixed inline fuel system intakes not hiding when fuel system is set to hidden
  
• Fixed lua error in specific situation regarding PUs of the selected intake
  
• Updated various outdated campaign texts
  
• Allowing double clicking on model / family in list view to edit project

• Implemented BeamNG 0.27 electric motor parameters
  
• Improved locking torque converter behavior
  
• Added more preconfigured paint colors
  
• Updated digital screens to make use of the new ignition system
  
• Fixed crash caused by long descriptions (long descriptions will be trimmed)
  
• Fixed "engine is off" warning at idle RPM
  
• Potentially fixed cars getting oil starvation on spawn
  
• Disabled self-ignition on engines due to inconsistent behavior
  
• Made frontal area adjustable in the tuning menu
  
• Tweaked engine inertia
  
• Adjusted steps of various tuning menu sliders
  
• Increased spring stiffness
  
• Increased damper stiffness
  
• Decreased sway bar stiffness

This has been another big as well as challenging year for Automation's development. There are tons of cool things to share with you regarding the next milestone versions, but we'll wait with that till after a bit of a break from it all. We all hope you're enjoying the game and the whole dev team wishes you happy holidays.

Cheers!

A few more quick fixes to address commonly encountered issues!

• Fixed situation where incomplete unusable factories would to show up in factory manager
  
• Fixed bug in cam curve calculations leading to numeric instability
  
• Fixed "do you want to facelift" prompt to only come up once
  
• Fixed issue with trim production tooltip interaction with month ticks
  
• Fixed marketing screen's lower UI resizing when it shouldn't
  
• Fixed issue where trims would have 0% desirability ratios
  
• Fixed trims sometimes losing their drive type info resulting in a Lua error

More to come! :)
Cheers

With the second hotfix we tracked down what was causing the launching issues some of you experienced and fixed them. The game would not fall back to DX11 as required by your GPU.

Also, if you have run into the issue of way too many customers preordering your cars, creating years of wait time, yeah... that is now fixed and working as intended: low-prestige cars will not generate long wait lists, while high-prestige cars certainly can.

• Fixed game not using correct fallback to DX11 when required
  
• Fixed some DLSS settings from not saving correctly
  
• Fixed lua error occurring with very narrow tyres
  
• Fixed minimum seat row body filter not working
  
• Fixed delivery delays not affecting car desirability, giving "infinite" preorders
  
• Fixed crash on markets screen, when selecting desirability on a new campaign start
  
• Disabling UI Blur setting now drastically improves main menu performance

We're keeping an eye on all your reports of issues, of course! More fixes coming this and next week before we wrap up for the year.

Cheers!

In this first quick hotfix we're addressing some of the most common crashes that were sent through the error reporting tool.

• Fixed crash that could happen fetching best company score
  
• Fixed crash in specific market calculations
  
• Fixed lua error on importing some 4.1 cars

Of course there is a lot more to come in terms of fixes as important issues will be addressed asap.
Cheers!

The winner of the Face of the Update Challenge, courtesy of Xepy.
After nearly 18 months in development, we are thrilled to share the LCV4.2 Update for Automation! It's been a challenging development process for this new milestone version, but the result is pretty special!

What's changed? A more accurate question would be, "what hasn't changed?", because this is the most comprehensive update we've ever made to Automation; nothing went untouched! Let's start at the top, shall we?

---

Many turbochargers gives many horsepowers.

The entire Engine Designer has been redesigned, and a lot of the stuff going on under the hood is completely new. A totally new engine simulation model, that accurately models temperatures and airflows within the engine has been constructed, allowing for dramatically improved simulation accuracy, and a much broader window of performance for your engines. This is especially true for turbocharged engines, as we have completely re-worked how the turbos themselves work, making them much more accurate in all aspects, but low-end performance especially. For the first time, we now do a full simulation of the engine at all throttle settings; this is all made possible by moving most of the calculations to C++ from LUA, which has had a dramatic performance improvement.


Naturally-aspirated engine quad-view graphs.


Turbocharged tri-view graphs.

New graphs greatly aid in engine tuning, which is far more important now that you have control over the size of your fuel system (for carbureted engines), intake manifolds and exhaust headers. This permits an unprecedented level of tuning to engine outputs, and allows players to target the application of their engines much more easily and accurately. Using the fuel and ignition timing maps can help you tune for the best possible power for high-performance builds, or getting the engine's efficiency exactly right with your gearing for optimal efficiency. More information on how to tune your engines can be found in these two tutorial videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twe1Vo1C17k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8brk07BixA

As you saw above, we've added a bunch of new turbocharger configurations in LCV4.2, including single and twin-turbos for nearly all engine configurations, as well as quad turbos for V12 and V16 engines. Many new fuel types have been added and accurately modelled as well, including ethanol blends, methanol, compressed gas fuels and nitromethane, among others.

---

The bold new world map for Campaign mode, new in LCV4.2.

The big new feature in this update is Version 4.2 of the Campaign Mode. In prior iterations of Campaign Mode, players would be "flying blind" when they were building their entries into various markets; there was no easy way to predict how successful your new car is going to be. With LCV4.2, that changes, as we have added extensive forecasting tools now, to help players make informed decisions about markets and pricing, and have taken a lot of the guesswork out of the process.


Factory staffing page.

We've also had a complete re-think of how factories work in Campaign Mode; each country has a finite pool of workers available at a given wage, so don't build a huge factory in Dalluha in 1946 with the expectation of running three fully-staffed shifts immediately! Careful planning will be needed to make sure you have the right number of employees in your factories at the right time.

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A fun example of what's now possible with the Advanced Trim Settings tool in LCV4.2 - these also export to BeamNG.drive!



Take your Automation designs to the next level with the Advanced Trim Settings tool in the Car Designer. Alter engine sounds to your liking, and the visual appearance of your designs by changing tire sizes and appearance, ride height, wheel parameters and many more. These changes also export to BeamNG.drive as well!

Note: These changes are visual only and will not have any effect on the performance of your Automation car, or on your exported car in BeamNG.drive.

---

Shinyodd's Super Silhouette build, looking fine in one of the new HDRi photospheres.

We've added a cool new tool in the Photo Mode; the ability to use HDRi photospheres to place your car into an entirely new world of photo locations. What's more, the new photospheres have a pretty major performance increase over the conventional photoscenes, so those with less powerful computers will be able to produce some fantastic results regardless!

---

As fun as the 80s Engine Test Room was to have in the main menu background, it really slowed things down...
As mentioned earlier, we've taken much of the old LUA game code and translated it into C++, which has granted a huge performance increase in the speed of calculations, both in the Engine Designer and especially in Campaign Mode. In many cases, we've seen an improvement of a factor of a hundred or more, which will be welcome for those very complex, late-game Campaign Mode playthroughs!

A lot of attention has been paid to loading times as well in LCV4.2; we've completely changed how Workshop mods are loaded into Automation, so we have now done away with the game launcher as the default option when starting the game.

---

Because LCV4.2 is basically all-new under the hood, all of your cars and campaign saves from 4.1 and earlier will not be accessible. The file structure has completely changed, and we've moved the save directories to %localappdata%\AutomationGame\Saved - this was done to eliminate the issues we've had with antivirus programs and protected folders affecting Automation.

When you upgrade to 4.2, your 4.1 saves are still all there, but they won't show up in latest version.
There is a way you can bring your 4.1 cars into the 4.2 version of Automation, but you need to be on 4.1 and export your cars to make that happen.

1. Start Automation and go into the Car Designer, then export all of the cars you wish to keep as .car files. These will be found in Documents\My Games\Automation\CarSaveExport. You will need to do this for each trim you want to carry over.
   
2. Update Automation to the new version, and subscribe to any mods you want that are compatible with the new version. To find compatible mods for the new version of Automation, go to the Steam Workshop page, and in the bottom right corner, select "UE4_27" from the dropdown menu labelled "Game Engine".
   
3. Once Automation has completed updating, copy the .car files you created in Step 1, and paste them to %localappdata%\AutomationGame\Saved, then run the game.

Do note that none of the engineering (engines and drivetrain) will import, and any bodies and fixtures that have not been updated with the new version will also not import either.

What are branches? Branches of the game allow you to access different game versions through your Steam Library. You can pick which branch to run on by right-clicking Automation in your Steam Library, selecting Properties, then going to the Betas tab, and selecting a branch. Once that is done you need to let Steam update the game.

We will be keeping the existing LCV4.1 version available as a rollback. Additionally, we have opened up a branch of an older LCV4.2 with only the updated turbochargers but not the rest of engine designer revamp, listed as 42_pre_ed_revamp. There are also other legacy versions of the game available to you.

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That's about it - we hope you all have fun with the new version! We'd love to hear from you too; get in touch here or on our official Discord server, on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, or on Reddit or the official forums. Have fun and enjoy, all!