Welcome to version 0.50! Whilst the game is far from being "complete", the game has matured a lot this year, and it is still a significant milestone. So let's celebrate with an update! And a big one at that!
Speaking of milestones, the game exceeded 10,000 total players back in early November! On the 24th of December it will also be three years since the public beta, as we know it today, was launched and I nervously began broadcasting it to the wider world...
So let's begin with what's new!
Kicking-off we have the release of the 21st Members Choice Pack as chosen by the community!
Vehicle Updates: Amended some stats and added a couple more pics for the recent 1991 Nesson TX-20 1.8i Turbo.
As usual, the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A massive thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
Vehicle photos now appear in far more places:
This should hopefully make it easier for people to relate to the vehicles in-game and add a nice dose of colour and interest!
Please Note: For older entries it may show the wrong photo / colour vehicle since that is only recorded going forwards.
Player vehicle history is now a thing, albeit not currently visible since it has primarily been implemented to aid in cheat detection. However, now that it exists, I would hope to make this visible to players in the not-too-distant future!
It has long been the case where quick-sold vehicles or those bought by MotorNation citizens (the computer) that those vehicles were deleted, or as affectionately known by the community - scrapped. This is no longer the case. In future, it is possible these vehicles may come back. Although the latter has not been implemented yet.
Whilst there is much still planned, I have begun improving the anti-cheat measures:
As usual, please obey the game rules which are found in the terms and conditions. Breaking these will ultimately lead to a permanent ban. The rules are there for the benefit of everyone.
As usual, I plan to release an end-of-year member update before the Christmas Holidays. This will outline my basic plans for the beginning of next year and where I see the game going. I will also be pausing active development and having a well-earned rest! I will still be keeping an eye on things, but please note that unless it is urgent, replies will most likely be a week or so into the new year.
And on that note, thank you to the community and members. Without you this would not have been possible.
I wish you all a happy, healthy and safe festive period and a (hopefully) peaceful New Year!
With new membership perks being regularly added, there has never been a better time to join! It all makes a difference and costs from as little as £2.50 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the release of the 20th(!) Members Choice Pack as chosen by the community!
As usual, the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A massive thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
Members can now see a preview of the current Members Choice poll standings in the Members Discussion forum. Want to vote for these car packs and not already a member? Check out the membership page to check out what benefits membership brings!
With new membership perks being regularly added, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £2.50 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the release of the seventh Gold Member Pack, featuring vehicles from the community!
The following vehicle was also updated:
As usual, the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A massive thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
At the request of the community, I have now made some changes to the rarest vehicles in-game to somewhat relax the real-world limitations in-game. Further tweaks may be made in future, but I do want such vehicles to remain a hot commodity. It is a fine balance to ensure that people have access where possible without the game being flooded by identical, otherwise extremely rare, vehicles.
In short, the limitations on such vehicles have now been increased by a factor of three. Where vehicles are only one-of-one in real-life, for example, there may now be up to three in-game. This will also affect other limited production vehicles which were otherwise capped.
Such vehicles will, however, remain to be very rare.
With new membership perks being regularly added, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £2.50 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Big releases have been a bit fewer and far between than I'd have liked, despite the hard work going on behind the scenes, so I'm pleased to kick off this post with the release of a significant new feature: New Vehicle Storage options!
Members now have access to a further storage option - off-site vehicle storage! The options are membership tier dependent to give something back to those that help keep the game afloat! With six options in total:
Other things to note:
The basic premise of this is to provide additional storage options to those that:
It is also a way for me to say thank you to all members, especially those that opt to pay for higher tiers. This keeps the game development progressing, a roof over my head and food on the table! Thank you!
As a monthly in-game fee is taken for the storage, especially the bigger options, it also offers a new layer of strategy for those that wish to have an especially large vehicle collection!
Welcome to the release of the 19th Members Choice Pack as chosen by the community!
The following vehicle was also updated:
As usual, the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A massive thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
* Unfortunately, the 4-door version wasn't available in the UK for this generation. Pictures were also hard, as well as ambiguous, to come by across different versions, so instead I've opted for the more common UK variant — apologies for any disappointment!
In the past, there have been cases where small groups of players try to empty the classifieds. This is something I always anticipated, and took steps to mitigate, but it can still cause disruption to players.
To tackle this, I have now made changes so that vehicles that are bought and quickly re-sold will now re-appear in the classifieds. This all being well should further mitigate the issue, and as part of this I also thought I'd add something of visual interest - vehicles that are now sold will now briefly show as such in the classifieds!
Also: It is no longer required to remove any classified advert before quick selling vehicles!
Unfortunately, this was missed, certainly not helped by once again having some advertising difficulties! I will be spending some time on this very soon to try and get this fixed to hopefully get things back on track!
Due to rampant inflation across much of the world over the past year, I will unfortunately have no choice but to raise the prices for new members and will affect those switching to a different tier in the near future. This will also unfortunately affect those that wish to buy annual memberships through Ko-fi going forwards as there is no automatic renewal for that. Annual Ko-fi members will at least have already benefited from previous annual membership discounts (and new ones will too, going forwards!).
Whilst I wish I could absorb such increases; this simply isn't possible with my own expenses increasing and being behind where ideally need to be from a financial point of view. I will, however, try to keep them as low as possible.
In general, and as before, existing members will be unaffected by these changes providing you do not switch member tiers and that you keep your subscription running.
It is easy to overlook how much work has gone into these changes, but it has been significant. This is reflected in the game jumping from version 0.47.x straight to 0.49.0! I also decided that it was time to try to manage some of the games 'technical debt' as the game, as well as the code base has grown. Because of this, there were a lot of code changes. I will likely talk about this more in the next member update, due soon!
Despite my best efforts, issues may occur. If you spot anything that seems amiss, then please report it and I will look to rectify such issues as appropriate.
Otherwise, enjoy the changes and, as always, know that there is more to come!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, as well as the new vehicle storage options(!), there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £2.50 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
In on-going efforts to improve the Discord server for everyone and to better support the growth of the Discord server (having grown around 50% since the last recruitment round a year ago!) we are looking for more moderators to join the team.
If you feel like you could make a positive difference, if you think you could help and you can find the link (hint: below)... then maybe you can join the MotorNation Discord Moderation team!
Applications are open until around 23:59 BST (GMT +1) on the 6th August
There have also been some updates to the rules to improve the clarity, namely:
Also just a quick note to say that I plan to send out a member update this week!
Welcome to the release of the 18th Members Choice Pack!
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the release of the sixth Gold Member Pack, featuring vehicles from the community!
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
Please note that this section was previously published in a member update back in April 2023.
I have further tightened up the rules for Own / User / Gold Member Vehicle submissions. It is now even more explicit that you must own, or have owned, the vehicle and be able to provide a suitable photo (that you also own) to submit the vehicle for inclusion.
I have always tried to offer a degree of flexibility but there are increasing numbers of vehicles being submitted that do not meet these criteria.
I do not like to disappoint but equally I must balance what is best for the game and community. Since vehicle submissions take my time away from other aspects of the game, I reluctantly can no longer afford to offer this flexibility. Vehicles usually take around 2 hours or so to add but can take more than 8 for some vehicles.
In future I may offer limited commissions to get specific vehicles added to the game. These commissions will be charged at a rate consistent with my effective hourly rate and so will not be cheap. The existing perk is a favour to the community and not done for financial gain. It also relies on a degree of trust, if breached then it directly hurts the game.
The own vehicle submission perk otherwise remains as it always was intended to be and of course so do Members Choice Pack polls which is where such non-owned and ‘wish list’ vehicles belong.
Hopefully people can appreciate the above reasons!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the release of the 17th Members Choice Pack!
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
Whilst it might look broadly similar at first glance, the capacity of the single race events has now doubled with the opportunity to scale it up as I see fit. Further changes will roll out in future!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Having got the members choice pack out of the way earlier than usual, it has allowed me some time to get some of the previous photo submissions that the community contributed into the game! Updates are as follows:
I do still have more photos (and vehicles) to add and update when I get time, both from submissions a long time ago as well as those that have been posted into the Discord #feedback "The great picture update thread" and I plan to get as many of these included as possible in time.
Submissions that have been made where the vehicles are modified, or slight variations on those in-game will have to come later. If modifications are fairly subtle or vehicle appropriate then they may be included earlier (as per one of the above) but this is not guaranteed.
As always, a big thank you to those that submitted the above and for those that haven't yet made it in-game!
A new #events channel has been created on the Discord server! Events will be advertised in here and threads created within the channel for anything that's going on!
The first event, by our latest moderator SgtStig (welcome!) called `Singin’ the Blues` will be taking place on "Friday evening Eastern Standard Time (basically Saturday morning GMT)" and unsurprisingly is about owning blue cars!
To quote SgtStig: "On Sunday morning there will be a Cars and Caffeine event open to all cars. So if you don’t get to participate in the Singin’ the Blues event, we hope to see you at Cars and Caffeine!"
Quotex is also planning on running a "24 hours of Snickerton" event within a thread in #general and may also be running future events in the #events channel too, so keep your eye out for those too!
Very occasionally players may have found themselves unable to log in to the game due to not having enough game-time or money to travel home. Travelling home is automatic when you log in to the game, hence the issue. There was also the rare possibility for a player to be unable to do anything in-game if they completely ran out of money and they had quit their passive income job.
I have now released a fix which should hopefully fix both of these issues.
I am pleased to say that the game has continued to meet goal 2 after hitting it in February which is fantastic news! Therefore I have now moved the income target to the 3rd stage! Each stage has a huge impact on my living standards, so I am supremely grateful both to new members and to older members that have or continue to support the game. Without your support it simply wouldn't be possible to develop the game at this pace - thank you!
It does feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that is an amazing feeling after so long!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to become a member! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the, slightly earlier than normal, release of the 16th Members Choice Pack!
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
As you may have already seen, members can now advertise vehicles for up to four weeks at a time! This means less work selling cars in the classifieds and it does work out slightly cheaper per week of advertising.
The finish date of the next members choice poll will be moved back to the 17th April due to holidays. In future, I am thinking of launching a poll about the possibility to increasing the time between members choice polls to allow other content and features to be delivered sooner.
At present my ability to deliver other content, features and tools is more limited due to the time taken and frequency of the vehicle packs. I do however very much appreciate that everyone will have different preferences and ultimately I'm just trying to strike the best balance! So keep an eye out for that to have your say!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Welcome to the release of the 15th Members Choice Pack!
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
The following vehicles have been chosen by members to inspire the vehicles of the next Members Choice vehicle pack!
And the bonus ball results...
The following vehicles are recognised as being nominated on at least three unsuccessful occasions and one of these was randomly selected to be added as part of this car pack:
And finally the bonus ball result is:
1984-1996 Leyland DAF/Freight Rover/LDV Sherpa/200/400 Series Van 2.0D
A special thanks to everyone that participated in this poll!
The next poll will go live shortly and will be found in the General section of the in-game forums!
Members can now have up to 30 news items, up from the standard 15, for the in-game News feed! Further improvements will come in future.
The game has finally hit the second funding goal! However, this is in part due to a "temporary" boost by two annual Diamond memberships (a big thank you for those!). This means that whilst the goal has been hit at present, this funding level is by now means guaranteed going forwards since annual memberships provide a great cash injection, but they are of course annual rather than monthly. Both are valuable and much appreciated but for different reasons!
In the longer term I hope to automatically calculate the current income, where annual memberships would be calculated as if they were split across the year for more balanced income tracking!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
It has come up a few times now at least, so without further ado...
When a Diamond member submits their own vehicle for inclusion into the game, they now have the option to have first refusal to that vehicle for up to one month. They will have the choice to be the first to buy their vehicle and as soon as they have it will be unlocked for everyone else.
The vehicle will appear in a new 'Offers' -> 'Special Reservations' section of the classifieds that will only appear if you have a reserved vehicle available. If they do not buy it after a month, the lock will release automatically for everyone else to buy it!
The submit your own vehicle page within the support section has now been updated to cover this and other situations in a more detail. This perk is limited to Diamond members for now as it was time consuming to implement and will require some additional on-going effort. I will review this in time but please note that more perks are coming for other tiers too!
This feature does also bring us closer to potential inter-player trading however...
Following on from the above, a new vehicle will soon begin appearing in-game. The 1998 VoltPogen Transfer MPV! This vehicle is currently serving as a test bed for the above feature and will initially be limited to a Diamond Member. Once they have bought it, or a month elapses, whichever is sooner then it will start becoming available for everyone else!
Following the recent changes to the head to head system, a few weeks ago I released some changes that improved the winning odds across all three difficulty levels. I intend to review the effects of this in time but ultimately, I'm hoping this change will have at least brought it back on par to how profitable it was before the tweaks that were made in December!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (If paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!
Happy New Year & welcome to the release of the 14th Members Choice Pack!
Also: Data corrections to the existing Alsten Montague cars.
As usual the above vehicles may be available new or second hand in the classifieds, as appropriate, from time to time! All players can access these vehicles. A big thank you to those that have contributed towards getting these in-game!
Other changes, including those that were delayed from before the Christmas break will be coming soon but you will need to bare with me as I catch-up after the holidays!
With the Job Centre offering the ability to do much more in the game, there has never been a better time to join! Every penny makes a difference and it only costs from as little as £1.99 a month! (when paid yearly)
Don't miss out on the full experience!