Automobilista End of Year Development Blog

Paul Jeffrey

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Automobilista Xmas Development Blog.jpg

Reiza Studios have today released their end of year Development Roadmap and the studio have not held back with some exciting news for players of Automobilista to look forward to over the festive period...

2016 has been a big year for Reiza Studios. We have seen the launch of their new Automobilista Motorsport Simulator (AMS) title move from Early Access stage to a full blown Version One release. We've had F1gate, increased FFB fidelity, improved graphics, an impressive rate of development and some unforgettable content added to the sim for free or, for the first time, paid DLC in the form of such items as the 'Brit Pack' and 'Imola' DLC. AMS has gone from strength to strength in recent months.

As has become the tradition at Reiza Studios, the small development team have been at pains to maintain a steady stream of communication with the sim racing community in the form of monthly development roadmap posts. Due to the time constraints of the upcoming festive holidays and development cycles with the sim, Reiza have combined both November and December's postings into one final end of year update - and its goooooooood...

You can read the full end of year development blog below:

"This is it then - our final dev update of 2016! We promised it was going to be a good one, so hopefully it lives up to that promise :)

It has been a long, hard but very fulfilling year for everyone at Reiza - we´ve brought out Automobilista in march and have been working very hard since to keep it growing and evolving throughout. We´re happy to say we´ve reached our main goals, though work is still to continue hard into the initial months of 2017 to fulfill its potential as we envisage it, before we finally wrap it up to shift focus to the longer term.

The next milestone for AMS is still to come before the year ends, as v1.20 and Formula Truck are still to be released at some point next week!

Here´s the summary then of the stuff we´ve been working on.

V1.20 highlights & Formula Truck DLC

We have nice developments coming for v1.20 - you can read through it on the changelog attached for the latest Beta updates since v1.1.6 release.

For the cars, one highlight is the filling up of the Caterham series from the Brit Pack to include some new variants from their motorsport ladder.

On the audio front, @domagoj Lovric has done an extensive revision of several sound effects both on the code as well as the samples themselves - tire rolling / scrub / skid, wind noise, chassis scraping, to improve the organic interaction of these sound effects with the physics engine and hopefully provide both better feedback from the cars as well as increased immersion from the driving experience. There is some early WIP stuff already on Beta but the full results will be in the new beta build coming out later tonight.

We´ve also done some progress with AI, with further fine tuning in various fronts. @Luis Miguel has nailed an old bug where AI would not properly estimate fuel for timed races, taking much more fuel than they needed for the distance. If you´re used to running quick timed races then you may have to do some tweaking to your usual AI Strength, overall though performance should be a lot more consistent in that type of race.

As you know v1.20 will also bring a new DLC in the shape of Formula Truck , who we are happy to confirm will be officially added to Automobilista, fully revamped from the original game, prettier and meaner!

AMS_FTruck_2.jpg

To begin with, as renewing the Formula Truck license has been a fairly late development we will deploy the same 2013 season we had in the official Formula Truck game; chances are good though we´ll expand on that with the new season as we move through 2017.
AMS_FTruck_10.jpg

One of the custom Formula Truck features we´ve added for this release is the Speed Trap rule - every Formula Truck layout has a Speed Trap in a section of the track (usually the fastest, indicated by icon on its trackmap, a flashing icon on top left corner as you approach it while driving, and by a line of cones trackside) through which drivers are supposed to cross going no faster than 160 km/h. Exceeding 160 km/h through the Speed Trap will result in lap being invalidated in practice / qual, or an instant drive-through penalty in races. Players however retain the option to switch the rule off from the Rules menu.
AMS_FTruck_3.jpg

We are currently still working on getting diesel smoking blowing from the exhausts to create some proper nasty virtual pollution - it probably won´t be quite ready for initial release but it should follow in the next update.
AMS_FTruck_12.jpg


Formula Truck for Automobilista
will sell for US$ 5.99, but will be free to everyone who already owned Formula Truck 2013 on Steam.

New Game Features

Recently we´ve conducted a poll among Reiza 51 members to gather which features they would most like to see us develop for Automobilista. While not all options were realistic in the short term, the idea was to gauge what users wanted most so we could factor not only into our remaining dev plan for Automobilista, but also longer term as we shift focus to the next title.

These were the results:

Survey.png


A few of these options are already in the works for Automobilista as previously alluded - one we can confirm to be in the pipeline is the Custom Season Tool for Championship Mode, which will allow users to design their own seasons, mix up classes, define points system along with a few more interesting new options which will also be available in other game modes.

We´l also continue to push towards improving AI behavior, rectify a few old issues and add a few new variants to get them to behave more realistically and provide a stiffer but fair challenge.


VX development


We have a new build coming up for our Virtual Xperience portal as well - @Dave Stephenson has been pushing hard to complete the new
Community section to go along with our League Finder tool, providing a searchable directory of communities and leagues serving AMS users.

Our
Time Trial of the Week challenges have been gaining momentum - we invite everyone to come participate and see how you measure up against the fast guys. Better get some practice in, as for next year we may be promoting some prize awarding challenges too :)

DLC Roadmap

Work is still going at full speed to develop the upcoming DLCs. There have been a few tweaks to the release plans, one of which being the switch in order for the upcoming Legendary Track packs coming up.

This is where we are going next:

Legendary Tracks Pt 2 - Adelaide
Adelaide_WIP.jpg

The famous Adelaide street circuit hosted many classic season finales as the Australian GP from 1985 to 1995, and is still used today by many popular aussie racing series, having retained a lot of the charm and unique challenges from the GP days.

In this (very early) preview of the mesh above, you get a sense of the workload involved in creating a street track such as this to modern standards - in order to deliver the full urban feel of the venue, @Alex Sawczuk, @ilka and the rest of the track team have to model a whole segment of the city neighborhood and roads adjacent to the ones used by the actual race track. Then we´ve got to fill these surroundings up with all the buildings and other trackside objects, which demands a solid 4 months worth of man-hours from the environment artists!

We´re confident this legendary track will be worth the effort and that will make a great place to race several existing as well some of the upcoming cars.

Adelaide will come in 2 versions - the longer
historic 1988 layout as well as the modern 2016 track. Both versions are expected to hit beta some time in February with release following soon after.

Legendary Tracks Pt 3 - Hockenheim confirmed!

We´re happy to finally confirm the historic german Hockenheim Ring will also be coming to Automobilista!

The old Hockenheim was almost 8 kilometers long and became iconic for combining long winded flat-out sections through the forest, before rejoining the stadium section where massive crowds gathered created a football stadium atmosphere, enhancing historical moments.

The shorter modern version has retained the stadium section and remains a great venue for close wheel-to-wheel racing for many of the major international series.

As with Adelaide and Imola before, the option for Hockenheim as a subject for the Legendary Track series derives from it combining many values - great relevance both in terms of historical heritage as well as presence in the modern autoracing scene, a natural venue for several of the series present in Automobilista, and an unique experience to complement the others already offered in the sim.

Hockenheim will receive same treatment as Imola, with the pack featuring the long version in its various guises from 1972, 1988 and 2001, along with the modern 2016 version. Work on the track is also already underway, and it´s estimated initial versions will hit Beta in March, with full release towards the end of April.


With all these tracks news one would be forgiven for getting the impression the car front is being neglected, but that would be wrong :p bigger news will have to wait a bit more however, hopefully as a topic for our first dev update of 2017.

For now, here´s a sample from our reference material to another new series currently in the works:

hot car Interlagos  abril 1981.jpg

Christmas Surprise!

We have also found a bit of time to put together a neat christmas present to go along with v1.20 release.

It´s not related to anything we´d previously discussed - a small surprise gift as a thank you to everyone who has supported us this year. It´s a semi-fictional car inspired by a local series, and also comes with a nice bit of terrain for it and others of its breed to play around. It´s simple but from the heart as a brazilian expression goes, and great fun to boot :D

Obviously we won´t say or show what it is as that would spoil the surprise, but here´s a little teaser to get you guys guessing.

christmas_teaser.jpg

Whoever guesses it right gets to become a driver for the series in-game :)

Steam Holiday Sale


The full Reiza catalogue is on sale on Steam since yesterday, with up to 75% in discounts


So lots of good deals there to secure the contents of this dev update, along with all the others that have come before :)

With that we wrap this last dev update - not quite the last you´ll hear from us this year of course as work is still ongoing to deploy v1.20 & Formula Truck next week before we can finally shut up shop for a few days, rest up to come back blazing in 2017!

In any case I´d like to take the opportunity in name of the whole Reiza team to wish everyone happy holidays! Hope you all have a great time and hopefully find the time in between turkey bites and champagne sips to come enjoy some sim racing"



Automobilista Motorsport Simulator is a PC only racing game by Reiza Studios. The game is available to purchase now via the Steam Network.

Automobilista Xmas Development blog 2.jpg


Here at RaceDepartment we have our very own dedicated sub forum for Automobilista. In our sub forum you will find a wide selection of downloadable content to discover, from some of the best add on tracks to a selection of interesting vehicles, our downloads section is a positive treasure trove of additional content for AMS. If that isn't enough, we also pride ourselves on hosting some of the most exciting and intense multiplayer racing events for the game. If you like AMS and want to take your enjoyment to the next level, head over to the Racing Club and Leagues section of our Automobilista sub forum and find out what we have on offer. Of course we love our community here at RD and to help spread the love we cover all the latest news regarding the sim, and offer you a place to share your opinions and discussion topics regarding all Reiza titles. Head on over to the AMS sub forum and join in the discussion today!

Did you enjoy the Reiza end of year blog post? Looking forward to the future of AMS? Has the game impressed you with its development during 2016? Let us know in the comments section below!
 
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They should get the trophy for fooling around with their customers, while they thank them for it :D man, nobody sees.. Back in their Kickstarter campaign they said they would have wrapped up SCE in the last months of the 2015. Then SCE became AMS and they said they needed some more time, so January 2016. Then it became march. Then instead of wrapping it up for good, they continued working on it, expanding it and making a DLC roadmap which goes deep into 2017. While in the meantime, no news, not even a teaser, of their promised 2017 title, which gets pushed into 2018 now. Technically, they are working on this Senna/Reiza 2017 title since what, 4 years now? Not even a picture ever seen.
They have no future title, no next game. They'll just keep expanding the present one until it won't sale anymore, and I can't blame them. They are in their 5th year now with this title and it's still going strong. Better sales with each year that passes. So why working on a new one, given that they have the know-how to do so (which at this point I highly doubt they have).

So yes, they talk a lot with their customers, but they just give half-truths. As my father used to say "they would be able to sell ice to eskimos" :D
 
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  • Deleted member 130869

Excellent to confirm Adelaide and more info on Hockenheim, two excellent tracks. The Adelaide track is super cool to walk around. I wonder how different it is right now as just a couple of months ago a huge portion of where the straight and old straight was, was under construction. Even pedestrian traffic was re-routed.
 
They should get the trophy for fooling around with their customers, while they thank them for it :D man, nobody sees.. Back in their Kickstarter campaign they said they would have wrapped up SCE in the last months of the 2015. Then SCE became AMS and they said they needed some more time, so January 2016. Then it became march. Then instead of wrapping it up for good, they continued working on it, expanding it and making a DLC roadmap which goes deep into 2017. While in the meantime, no news, not even a teaser, of their promised 2017 title, which gets pushed into 2018 now. Technically, they are working on this Senna/Reiza 2017 title since what, 4 years now? Not even a picture ever seen.
They have no future title, no next game. They'll just keep expanding the present one until it won't sale anymore, and I can't blame them. They are in their 5th year now with this title and it's still going strong. Better sales with each year that passes. So why working on a new one, given that they have the know-how to do so (which at this point I highly doubt they have).

So yes, they talk a lot with their customers, but they just give half-truths. As my father used to say "they would be able to sell ice to eskimos" :D
I always expected Reiza 2017 title to be released (at least first beta version) and the end of 2017 .. I think that even what they say on their forum and preproduction phase is already ongoing since most things done for AMS are gonna be used in Rieza 17 ... with new graphic engine, licences, etc .. I expect basicaly similiar transition like they did with SCE-AMS just more severe ... so far everything goes as expected ... well we are getting bit more than we though we will but I`m not gonna complain about that ..
 
Guesses from new car:

1 - Brasileiro de Turismo car (a stock car support series)
2 - Mercedes-benz challenge car (another stock car support series)
3 - the winner of 24h de Tarumã 2016, a MCR Grand-am prototype (races against Metalmoro MR18)
 

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