Overview
Media
Devstream
Forums
About
Contact
Robert Hoischen (Killrob)
Producer, Lead Beta Tester

Robert was born in Germany in 1982 and lived there for 15 years before moving to Sweden. He ventured on to study physics at Lund University and successfully finished his PhD studies in 2011. During his time as a PhD student he designed and prototyped a new plastic-scintillator detector for ultra-fast time-of-flight measurements in relativistic heavy-ion beams at GSI.

Also, he would like to point out that he in no way plans to use this knowledge to help build a planet-annihilating particle cannon... Upon completing his thesis back in Sweden, he moved back to Germany again to take a job with GSI.

On a side track he built his skills in the art of photography over the past 10 years and now is on the verge of becoming a professional photographer, giving lessons and traveling to find the best motifs and places.

Having a great interest and love for games since 1989, and for PC Games specifically from 1995 onward, he set out to design his own game - before he stumbled upon Automation in its infancy early 2011. Even though he is not a car guy at all, the project stuck with him and he with the project.

He is valued by the team for his eye for detail, his ability to write documents that are more than a page long, and his uncanny knack to spot UI items one pixel out of alignment from 951.29 m distance. The rest of the team suspects this must be some kind of German thing, but they aren’t complaining...

Engine Designer Patch Released
|

Hey guys!

Good news after a long time waiting: the patch for the Engine Designer is live now and contains more fixes and improvements than originally planned. In some areas it could be considered to be more of a mini-revamp actually. Caswal is working on the patch notes, which will follow soon. In the meantime, check out my latest video summary of the update:

We’re working full steam ahead on the Platform Designer / Car Designer now, and will have a first internal prototype test later this week. This also means that I’ll be able to give you more regular Youtube updates on our progress again, mostly on Car Designer related stuff from now on. So please subscribe to our channel if you are interested in that.

Hope you enjoy the patch!
Cheers!
/Robert

Before Getting to the Car Designer
|

Here a little update on what will be going on the next 3-4 weeks.

We’re almost ready to get going with the Car Designer, but before we start production, we use the (re-)design phase to do some clean-up work in our bugtracker and use valuable tester time to check the Engine Designer calculations for all the engine types that will be available in the finished game. Looking good so far!

Turbo Release-Candidate Testing Coming Up!
|

We are closing in on a possible early March release of the Turbo & Advanced Test Mode update. There are many more bugs to kill and some more balancing work to do on the 16 new scenarios that come with the update, but all is going well so far.

For those interested in getting their hands on the turbos a bit earlier and joining the team of testers for the final stretch of testing, this link is for you!

Also, if you want to take a look at what insane stuff you’ll be able to make in the upcoming update, check out the following vid we just uploaded:

Cheers!

New Beta Testers Needed
|

Hello there guys!
As was posted in the news previously: a final rework of the Engine Designer, as well as turbos & compressors, and Inline-6 engines are coming up. After the release of V8 engines to those who have preordered the game, we will start work on this next big update which we all have been waiting for. For this subproject we will need additional (wo-)manpower for the testing team.

What will be done (among other things):
- Test and evaluate the core changes to the Engine Designer
- Rework and rebalance all existing scenarios
- Add and balance 16 brand new scenarios where you have much more freedom of choice
- Gather and test real engine data in Automation to make the game as realistic as possible

If you are interested and have at least 1h you could spend on testing per week (on average), please visit this thread for more details:
New Beta Testers Needed

Hope to see you in the testing team soon!
Cheers!
Robert

P.S. On a different note… if you have ideas for one of those 16 scenarios, it would be greatly appreciated if you could write it down here.

Eröffnung des Deutschen YouTube Kanals – AutomationGameDE
|

Wir haben uns dazu entschlossen den deutschen Automation Fans eine Extrawurst zu bieten – ein YouTube Kanal mit Videos in Deutscher Sprache. Dieser wird von Killrob und Pyrlix gemanaged und befindet sich noch im Aufbau. Für den Anfang werden wir jeden Tag ca. ein neues Video veröffentlichen, bis zum ersten exklusiven Video, das zum ersten Mal ein V8 Szenario in Aktion zeigt (am Sonntag). Wir wünschen uns natürlich viele Besucher und Abonnenten – also gebt allen möglicherweise interessierten Leuten Bescheid!

Schöne Grüsse :)
Killrob & Pyrlix

 

Launch of the German YouTube Channel – AutomationGameDE

The German Automation YouTube channel has opened its gates. You find it here. We are currently adding content to it, and on Sunday the first exclusive video will show one of the brand new V8 scenarios that are currently in the making.

Cheers!
/Killrob

New Testers Needed
| |

New Testers Needed

The devs are making great progress on the engine designer currently, moving ever closer to a demo release.
The proposed inclusion of scenarios has started and their in-game mechanics are now fully functional.
Of course you will be able to sandbox-it-up in the demo too!

The good news:
At this pace the demo will be released within about a month, if all goes well and no major problems surface.

The not so good news:
Currently the engine designer demo is in its true beta-phase, meaning there are bugs, but it is basically
feature complete. So what is bad about that you ask? Well, we do not have enough (wo-)manpower willing
to test and fine-tune certain aspects of the demo. More specifically there is a specific task we had in mind:
precisely model existing engines in Automation and compare their performance figures to their real-life
counterparts. One major question mark right now is how accurately the fuel octane rating is modeled in
Automation. And we need help with that!

So here’s the deal:

If you:

  • Have preordered Automation
  • Are willing to test the demo
  • Are willing to document your findings in a detailed fashion in the tools provided (Pivotal Tracker & Engine Spreadsheet)
  • Know that “testing” does not mean “just playing around”
  • Are able to give detailed feedback to assist in making Automation more polished and fun
  • Write here in this thread how much time you are willing to put in

You will:

  • be accepted into the beta if we deem your offered effort both reasonable and sincere.

If you like the sound of this, you are most welcome to post down below! Also, be honest. We don’t need more
people not doing any testing and playing around. Your help would be greatly appreciated, and will make the
Automation Demo a better product in the end – and the consequences of that should be to everyone’s
advantage!

Cheers
Killrob (Lead Beta Tester)

Copyright 2010-2012 - Camshaft Software - All Rights Reserved.
Get the Demo Preorder Automation Activate Preorder My Downloads
Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game
Share