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I salute you for knowing about that old title :)
Facelift maybe, but in what direction? The game was my vision of the old Detroit, to bring back the old feelings I had playing that game but without the hassle and annoyances those old games had. Still I wanted to preserve the feel. But when it turns out players simply do not remember the original (way too old maybe?) it was a flawed design decision. What now, should redo it to make it look like a modern game? Not sure it would make sense, plus I don't really feel like it, it was Detroit I was in love with, so it would be me remaking it to something I do not enjoy. Which is not really an option.
Anyway, the game is finished. I don't plan to add anything to it (expect crtitical fixes if the need arises).
A lot of people know it's a detroit clone, well before this particular person, that's why I bought it in the first place, it's just... a bit more fluffy and little less content filled than Detroit, which was the shame. What is missing (and I'm not the only one who feels this way) Is the customization that Detroit had.
Being able to pick the shape of my vehicle and have it affect the stats, was huge in detroit, because it wasn't the kind of thing that was done, back then. The problem with Automobile Tycoon is not that it's badly made or that it isn't stable. Because it's solid, and well done. It's just missing the SOUL that detroit had, and that soul was in feeling like you weren't just entering numbers into a spreadsheet and seeing how they calculated out.
Sure I could only have three different noses on a van, or five center pieces on a sedan, but they were mine to control. and I could see them. I could test the car with a little animation. I could make things to my satisfaction and see what it looked like outside of a sheet of paper.
That's where this game has fallen down. Honestly, truly. That's all that's missing to keep this game in the mediocre category, instead of the great category. And all of those things come back to the same thing over and over again, immersion.
Those little things, that seem so unnecessary, those are what pull people in, to play Detroit for 12 hours at a time (Which I still do, when the feeling hits me)
Detroit isn't forgotten, it's still very strongly and well loved by the abandonware community, lots and lots of people remember it and still play it. But that's the problem, why pay for an almost as good copy with less features, when you can have the old one, legally for free?
https://youtu.be/Cb40rfBFLuc?t=330
and
This:
https://youtu.be/z82NgbvHSCw?t=235
This is all that's missing from this game, to make it truly worth the same 100s of hours I've poured into Detroit. Automobile Tycoon looks good, just as it is. Nothing wrong with the graphics, it's just missing these, if it's truly meant to be a modern Detroit.
Overall, I think that Automobile Tycoon is the last game of the tycoon genre for me. I doubt I would be making another tycoon (it's tempting of course but...). The reception of strategies and RPGs I make is so much better (by an order of magnitude) that there isn't even anything to compare.
But I'm still glad that there are fans of the old Detroit and I hope that with this game I brought you at least a bit of joy :)
Different rear ends changed cargo capacity (particularly trucks and vans) and this had an effect on the overall rating, based on the weighting of cargo space to the particular type of vehicle.
Different center parts (or passenger cabins) changed the number of seats, but also could affect the grip factor on the handling test, which also affected the overall rating based on how important the passenger count was to that particular type of vehicle.
Different noses presented a myriad of options, some gave better top speed than others, some better fuel economy, some gave better grip.
And every time you chose one over another it changed the base cost of building it, often the better parts for your rating costed more, meaning you either had to charge more for the car, or take a bit more loss on manufacturing, to provide a superior product.
They weren’t pointless options, they actually could be the difference between a good car or a great one. For instance a 6 seater family car with a good fuel economy nose was rated much higher than a four seater one with a top speed nose. A 17 cu ft rear end rated better than a 5 cu ft one here also.
For sports cars you could have 2 or 4 seater centers exchanging capacity for grip, and here the 5 cu ft rear rated better than say the 20. And the economy nose was less valuable than the top speed nose.
Vans, hatchbacks, station wagons, 4x4s and luxury cars, they all had their parameters that made choosing your components and exterior design important. It wasn’t as shallow as it seemed. You could spend hours (and a good deal of the company’s money) testing out different body shapes before finalizing the design and moving forward with production.
It really felt like you were designing something.
This is the only real place automobile tycoon falls down. It sort of just lends to making one car that appeals to everyone (usually a 6 cylinder sedan, about 169 inches in size, with a 6 cylinder engine between 100 and 200 horsepower, give up aesthetics for fuel economy and cargo space and make up the difference in design points) and update the design once a decade. Because there’s only one factory and a penalty for making multiple different cars within it, (even on the same chassis) it pushes you away from diversifying. It makes more sense to just make a lot of just one thing. Where in Detroit, i’d make upwards of ten different models, across 16 factories. There was a penalty there too for making multiple different ones in one factory so it made sense to keep it down to one model per factory (unless you really needed to use the extra available production for a high volume model.)
Automobile Tycoon... it’s so close to greatness. And despite my ranting, i play it frequently, when i’m in that exact mood. But mostly i find it reminds me how much i miss Detroit, and then i go play that instead.
I’m glad you found a niche that strokes your creative side a little better. Every programming artist deserves to succeed. It’s just, a tiny shame, that Automobile Tycoon got so close to where it needed to be, and then skidded off the track because it just didn’t have the right passenger cabin.
i've mentioned,