AutoSim Dev Blog
6/13/20 - 5.1 is out! Here are some of the statistics we've had for the game as per request right before the 5.1 release.
6/9/20 - 5.0 has been out for a few days and the reviews are quite positive! We here on the AutoSim Dev team are really happy you are satisfied with our BETA. Kamikaze Games, a YouTuber with 34,000 subscribers, featured us in a play through! 5.1 is currently underdevelopment, which will see the new owner mode features roll over to Simulation mode, as well as some bugfixes with car creation.
5/30/20 - Progress is coming well on 5.0. It is the biggest update the game has seen, essentially a re-write of several main functions to allow for a lot more user customization and flexibility. The world of AutoSim will be expanded quite significantly, as four new seasons will be implemented in addition to the existing 2005 and 2020 owner modes (simulation support will be added in 5.1 most likely). The work we put in, from a back-end perspective, was quite game changing. The game ran on 9 different files (one for startup, four for 2005, and four for 2020) before 5.0, now it will run on four (one for startup, one for the owner mode, one for the sim mode, and one for storing all the classes like Drivers, Teams, Staff, etc. in one place), which is extremely efficent compared to before and allows for us to implement way more seasons. We also rewrote a lot of code to basically be self-reliant in the sense that magic numbers are no longer required to make a lot of things in the game work. Before this update, adding a new season was extremely time consuming and had to be hard coded using multiple files. Also, the game would essentially be forked as bugs could exist in one season but not another. Now, things are way more simple in that category, which will help reduce bugs and make it easier to add new seasons to play with. Overall we cannot wait to bring you this update!
5/20/20 - Get Ready to Load and Save. It wasn't easy but we have curb stomped a large amount of bugs, including:
Glitch with Martin Truex Jr #1 not qualifying for races in 2005 Owner Mode
Glitch with the #46 Car in Team Creator Mode
Various Typos
Leavine Family Racing not being playable in 2020 Owner Mode
Glitch with the #3 car not having a sponsor or manufacture in 2005 Owner Mode
Loading/Saving being broken in Owner Mode
Glitch with Martin Truex Jr #1 not qualifying for races in 2005 Owner Mode
Glitch with the #46 Car in Team Creator Mode
Various Typos
Leavine Family Racing not being playable in 2020 Owner Mode
Glitch with the #3 car not having a sponsor or manufacture in 2005 Owner Mode
Loading/Saving being broken in Owner Mode
5/15/20 - 4.0 is almost out! And we thank you all for the support. The subreddit is getting a fair amount of attention and we have had 272 unique views and 550 total views! This is super motivating and we are glad you guys like it.
5/9/20 - Wow! After posting this to the /r/NascarBeyond subreddit we've received a lot of attention! This page has gone from 27 views and 11 unique viewers to 161 views and 57 unique viewers! Thank you all for the kind words and feedback. Because of your feedback, we've decided to create a subreddit, which will be out soon, and also put a focus on having a Mac-friendly version of the game by the time the game fully releases. We've also released Beta 3.1, which has a lot of bugfixes that were reported by our beta players, as well adding some more depth to a few aspects of the game. In the Team Editor tab, you will be able to now create part-time teams (which will qualify for 10-20 races), and upgrade them to full time. This is a great way for a smaller team to get another car in the field without having to break the bank. However, it is more expensive to make a part-time team and upgrade them (200k for a full time car compared to 225k, which is broken down in 125k for initial investment and 100k to upgrade). Silly season is now improved as well. If driver morale is high, they may ask for a contract extension, which you can approve or deny. Drivers will no longer automatically leave when a contract expires. 2005 Silly Season also has some "realism" additions as well. Try it out and let me know what you think.
5/6/20 - Beta 3.0 is nearly complete! Overcame a significant issue with saving and reloading in owners mode. The bug caused the game to crash if the player added a new car to their organization, saved, and reloaded the game. Beta 3.0 should be out by the end of the weekend, and will be the last major update before the game's release. I plan on adding 2005 Owner Mode after the initial release of the game as the first major update. As I can just move over most assets and code from the 2020 Owner Mode. Owner Mode right now is looking somewhat good. There's options to upgrade equipment, add new cars to your organization if you have less than 4 cars, talk to drivers, scout free agents, scout younger development drivers, and recruit sponsors for sponsor less teams. There is a money system to balance how fast you can upgrade your cars and what kind of drivers you can hire. Your team will gain money from sponsorships and finishing races (the higher your car finishes, the more money you get), and can currently be spent on upgrading equipment, adding teams, and signing drivers to contracts as said above. The main feature I want to expand on before I feel ready releasing Beta 3.0 is driver contracts. Right now you can sign drivers to a contract with a certain pay over a certain amount of years. This feature is pretty barebones right now. I want to establish some complexity to this feature by adding options for drivers to extend their contract or quit depending on their morale, as well as an option to "haggle" a driver's price down by promising equipment upgrades. Not all of these features will be added right away and some may be added down the line, but I aim to add some of these features prior to the Beta release. Similarly, there is a bug where once you sign a sponsor, they will stick to your team for life. I want to add some variety to sponsorship deals in the future as well. Cannot wait for you all to try out the owner's mode!
5/1/20 - Started development of Owner Mode. Due to the changes in points systems and such, the 2005 and 2020 sim modes run off of different codes. I initially had them both be the same code, with a depressing amount of "if" statements differentiating based off the start year. However, a lot of bugs would pop up because the game would try to read non-existent cars from different start dates and such. In order to fix this, I essentially had to fork the 2020 season into a new file. This fixed a lot of my issues, but I will also have to fork the Owner Mode as well.