New developer blog video! (67)

This week I’m showing off the new defects system as it will appear in the next update (although it will need some balance, maybe some bug checking and GUI improvements before its done completely)

Hiya Cliffski,

Great developer blog this week. I am very excited to see the new defects functionality as well as the new reports that were mentioned last week. A new intro sounds cool and also looking forward to HD vids.

Strengths:
I am loving the introduction of defects into the game and I am pleased with how you have incorporated the majority of the players feedback and suggestions.
The severity system seems unclear. Especially the numbers. This will need a tweak I think with a bit more clarity on how the number is obtained. I would rather say that a car with 3 defects has 3 flags.
The idea of increasing the quality of inspections through research upgrades appeals to me. I would consider a research upgrade equal to staff training to improve their performance.
I also like the idea of having quality specific marketing campaigns. You never mentioned how a player can improve on their quality ratings outside of using the marketing campaign?
The new logo’s look amazing. Thumbs up to your graphics designer for them.

Weakness:
The logo’s may look amazing, but the new Rework station is a bit of a let down in terms of how it looks. I would have expected a new look and feel to this station, but instead it looks a bit hap hazard as if it was made up of previous bits and pieces at the last minute ( which perhaps it was).
The rework station also did not have a stockpile? I am wondering if this is intentional?
I am also left wondering what has happened to the QA Office that has been in the main menu. Will this fall away?

Opportunities:
I sense that the game is coming to an end with your interest starting to shift towards D4 ( your linguistics give you away).
This is reasonable as a game can only be in early access for so long.
My concern is that you still have so much to do.
You mentioned breakdowns and that will be an interesting feature. I am looking forward to adding my thoughts when that comes up for discussion.
A lot of discussion in the forums has been about the inclusion of new body types. Will this be a DLC once the game is launched?

Threats:
Now I love the game, but there are still a few major ( and I cannot emphasize this enough) frustrations. The limited map size ( for us non-modders), the fact that a open top vehicle is researched as a new model but never appears as one, the aircon slot being the only slot researched under technologies etc, no luxury cars, etc.

Thank you again Cliffski for a great game and for being so passionate about it. I am looking forward to the next update ( hopefully very soon) and know that you will continue to make a great game even better.

The severity number is based on how long it has been from the part being fitted to it being noticed as a defect, so the longer it takes to notice the longer it takes to fix.

The quality rating was all based on the defects in the cars so I’m presuming, the more rework stations you have and defects that get fixed the better the quality rating.

I’m guessing that there is an intentional lack of stockpile as it’s somewhat difficult to stock 1 or multiples of every part. Plus how does the game know what needs to be stocked for that specific slot as you can place them in stages across the map. It then comes down to the player being clever and putting a stockpile nearby that has the relevant parts for that area. So if you had one after chassis you can get the stockpile to keep chassis parts, if you have one after engine you can have engine parts.

I think the QA office concept has been dropped now. I think from memory there was a plan of having those dotted around to decrease faults in a specific radius but it didn’t get very good feedback.

There’s been a fair bit of discussion on different body types along with lots of more luxury features of vehicles that as far as I’m aware are still in the pipeline but I think most of that comes down to the graphics rather than cliffski coding the gameplay so they’ll probably get added closer to the end.

My first thought after watching this one was to make a merry-go-round style line with the stations in reverse order so the cars would have to do a full loop after each fitting; and include a single QA station that they then go through multiple times.

Yup, QA is basically now the visual inspection and re-work pairing.

No, I’m not working on code or even most of the design for Democracy 4, I’ve bought in someone to work on that full time so I can carry on with Production Line. I’m just doing top level design and project management for D4.

I think the rework system works okay, although making a shed or series of sheds and looping through rework is kind of mindless. I’d watched one of your blogs about this and I assumed that everything was going to be auto-detect and auto-fix, and I was sort of delighted that I had to find a way to deal with none of this being true.