Preface: I'm again having some trouble with my internet connection so this is actually the update as it was intended to be released a week ago. The update to v0.32 will follow soon.
Version 0.31 offers mainly small improvements and fixes over v0.30, as well as a couple of more components. The tire selection is now complete for the time to 1950 with later tires being visually wider and new in-between tires coming with white walls.
Please remember that there is currently a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo aimed at speeding up the somewhat slow development of Cars Incorporated. Side effects of a successful campaign will include better and more optimized features and can make the planned add-on possible after the main game is finished. The Add-On would allow you to drive your own cars.
You do not need to contribute financially to the campaign if you don't feel comfortable with that but helping spread the word by tweeting about it or sharing the link through facebook and other social media sites can go a long way in helping the game as well. Take a look and share or contribute.
Now for the update:
New Features
v0.31 begins the process to build on v0.30's component system with 3 new tires and 1 new wheel added. To be easily recognized the design of the default pneumatic tires has been changed to look like thin white walled tires as a kind of intermediate between full rubber and the adv. pneumatic tires. Cross ply and radial tires are represented by wider and flater versions of the pneumatic and adv. pneumatic tires. Radial tires are the last new component at the moment, becoming available for research in 1946. More components will follow in the next releases.
A new dedicated options menu has been added, bringing the options that were distributed between the office screen and the menu screen together in one place. This can and will be expanded in future updates, but for now the only new option is the volume control for the music.
A credits screen has been added. Besides the regular info on who made the game it also contains the names of the contributors from the first Indiegogo-campaign, unless they chose to stay anonymous in the campaign. You can get your name on that list for future releases as well by contributing to the new campaign for an appropriate perk.
Other changes
- The brown box behind the seats in a gen 1 car with no engine hood has been replaced with a model, representing an early 19th century style engine
- The menu screen has been rearranged and cleaned up, options like language settings have been moved into the options sub-menu. Options from the office have also been moved there.
- You can now paste text to an non-numeric input field like the registration number field from the system clipboard by pressing the usual key combinations: Ctrl+V or Shift+Ins
- The behavior of the key delay in input fields has been optimized to be more in line with the usual system behavior. Holding down a key will cause the game to wait longer before it accepts it as a continous input after the first input but will speed things up after that
- The amount of cars or parts you want to produce in your factory can now be entered by clicking on the amount and entering how many you want. The game will assign enough workers to meet that production goal provided that you have enough. The endresult can however be slightly higher as that amount of workers may produce more cars while one worker less could not produce the desired amount
- The backdrop of the awards screen now uses the newer logo
- The prices you can win in the annual awards have been reduced
- A new button to link to the new indiegogo campaign has been added to the menu screen
- The buy now buttons have been updated for non-registered players
Fixed bugs
- The type detection for sports cars should now work correctly
- A bug has been fixed that prevented the game from loading AI data correctly from savegames (*)
- A faulty warning light about missing parts on the factory screen has been fixed(*)
- Fixed a bug that could cause the game to report the completion of a new factory line setup when there was none(*)
- Workers and engineers will no longer strike when you don't employ any(*)
- Fixed a bug that could produce debug data in the savegame directory(*)
(*) These problems were previously fixed in a hotfix.
Script / Modding
- Body descriptions accept multiple components after a curtech condition or if clause. If one of them is present the condition will count as true.
- The text size and color of adjusters can now be manipulated with adjustfont
- The text of an adjuster can now have a shadow. Use adjustshadow for that.
As usual this version is already available for download. Please be aware that savegames from versions older than v0.30 cannot be loaded any longer.
