Preordered, went to download and was asked to log in. Set up a registration, but got a message that email is already in use. Pretty sure I haven't regged before, and if so have no idea what my username would be. tried my 'usual' ones already....
There's a demo for pre-order since 8th of April and a public demo at 22nd of April.
The demo contains an engine designer where you can design naturally aspirated inline 4 engines.
To get a bit of playability out of the demo, they added scenario's.
From what I have seen, you start out with an engine that does not have the required specifications. It's up to you to fiddle with the engine until it does make the requirements.
I'm not sure, but it looks like there are 14 scenario's (16 for the ones who pre-ordered?)
In a year or so(?) the whole game will be done, or at least that's what they are aiming for and what I am hoping for.
Been on the fence of pre-ordering this for some while now, as I thought the price was a bit steep. But I did it anyway now, can't wait to see what the future brings.
Edit: One thing is bothering the hell out of me now that I've messed around with the demo for a while, the tiny un-scalable subwindow is REALLY annoying at 2560x1600: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15957408/stanaktomaatti.jpg
I also jumped aboard and found the engine designer demo very nice.
Still a lot of rough edges in user experience and mechanics, but I'm sure they'll iron those out in time.
While I'm seriously looking forward to the other parts of the game I really hope they take their time and polish things properly before moving on and spreading themselves too far.
this has been mentioned (Though its probably by you if I look back on the automation forum!) and is being looked at I believe.
Progress is very good at the moment, and it is 99% user feedback for new additions etc to the game, the devs are very good with sharing the development! Been playing it a few months now and its come on leaps and bounds.
I did look through the official forums (and posted about the issue too) but apparently nothing will be done about it. It's 1280x720 or the highway.
One would imagine there will be quite a lot of backlash once the game becomes more popular due to this silly subwindow size restriction, as higher resolutions are in a clearly rising trend.
Pretty much like everything else about the game (the GUI looks a bit messy, but that can be forgiven since it's indie) is pretty solid and ticks my inner mechanic boxes quite well.
Locked at 1280x720 full screen here, which gives me an out of range error on my older monitor.
Any way round that apart from forcing it windowed?
EDIT: Not 1280x720, the one three settings up, it detected that as my monitor's native resolution. It isn't. It works fine at 1024 up to 11xx, 1280 it throws a fit at.
Personally I absolutely hate using any programs that don't allow you to change window size. Or force you to use some needlessly small window sizes... Some programs I've used at work are some of the worst offenders. Like that one maintenance reporting program you could resize to fill to the max screen of 1600x1200 yet the one information window stayed the size of your thumb. And you had to constantly scroll the stuff in that window up and down to find that one line you are looking for and there were like 30 lines with only 5 of those visible at a time. And not just vertically but horisontally as well. I ABSOLUTEKLY HATED IT! Wish I could strangle the person who coded that stuff. Or at least slap him/her with a poisonous 20ton forklift.
And the same thing with some smart phones. Who the hell thinks it is a good idea that it is a good idea to show just one icon that fills the whole screen that you can then "scroll" one icon at a time to randombly and blindly find the icon you are looking for.
Maybe it is some new form of disease that some people are just addicted to squinting and tenosynovitis...
Beside the UI being generally rather unresponsive and some minor drawing errors there's an issue with dialogue boxes that aren't modal when they are supposed to. That means you can sometimes click on a button in the main menu while you're navigating the options screen. I'm very sure that this is unintentional behaviour.
Regarding the engine designer's mechanics I'm rather sure that the effects of valve timing and the bore/stroke ratio aren't final yet. The design parameter "responsiveness" doesn't completely make sense to me either because it behaves unintuitive in relation to the cam profile. And I'm still not sure why the forged piston is the only type of piston that affects knocking.
However I can't say I'm qualified to voice my criticism in a more direct manner because I didn't specialize in IC engines in my studies as an engineer.
Minor criticism aside this is a great piece of software and I wish the developers all the success they can handle. I'll keep following this until it's finished.
Yea I encounter the same problems, especially noticing the main menu buttons still active when in a game.
I think they should get rid of the 'window' system, but I guess when the engine designer and car designer are both available it makes it easier to switch between the two.
Lots of testing went into getting them right.
