After a long open beta phase with a total of eight big updates since early January, we’ve now reached the point where the Car Designer Revamp is ready to be signed off as done. Thanks to all of you who provided feedback and bug reports during this period!



The Car Designer Revamp means a complete overhaul of many of the core game mechanics, determining the car stats. The biggest changes were made to the previously pretty shallow secondary stats like Practicality, Utility, and Offroad, which received a complete rewrite and a lot more detail. In many aspects the game has been made more realistic by adding more dependencies that require you to make hard choices when it comes to your car designs.

One of the main examples of this is the all new suspension tuning which now majorly impacts the main stats, and not only when it is spine-crushing. The UI and user feedback has been improved across the board. Via the new warning and suggestion system we now give you more info on what potential areas for improvement could be. The various demographics have become a bit more picky, too! No longer will you be able to successfully sell one trick ponies to people and get away with it.



Many have asked us why we needed to do the Car Designer Revamp instead of focusing on the implementation of campaign. The answer to that is the need for significant structural changes to how cars are handled in game to even make possible a properly functioning campaign with facelifts, the reusing of engines, and particularly a competent AI opponent!

The now implemented car building AI allows us to quickly generate new competitors that automatically adapt to balance changes and within minutes builds a whole set with 2000 competitor cars over the game years. Contrast that with many weeks of work by our testers to hand craft a single set of competitors that with the next balance change becomes more or less obsolete. Without car building AI, there would be no possibility for a dynamic campaign. With this update we now have a solid foundation to implement the campaign.

https://youtu.be/iOEMUebUriQ
The first vestiges of the upcoming Lite Campaign V3 can be seen in the new Project Manager feature we recently added. It shows the basic structure of how cars and engines are managed in the campaign and allows for the creation of facelifts and reusing of engines in completely separate car models and facelifts. Yes, you will be able to build 2015 versions of your favorite 1974 design and put it into your latest line up… or just use the original from 74, not recommended though.



Please note that due to the massive changes to the car calculations and car data structures, unfortunately, your old cars from the previous public “default” branch release version will not be compatible with this new version! Your cars you built during the open beta will work fine though.

We hope you will enjoy this big update, we sure look forward to seeing all the fancy creations you will be able to make and set in scene in the massively upgraded photo mode. Don’t forget to share your pretties!



Next up is 100% focus on the campaign. Engineering is up first, factories and production, sales and distribution thereafter. On the engine side Boxer 4 and Boxer 6 engines will most likely make it into the campaign update, which many are looking forward to as well. If necessary, of course we’re going to fix any significant problems popping up with hotfixes the coming days.

Cheers!