The Rock-afire Simulator

The Rock-afire Simulator is an in-development official Creative Engineering animatronics simulator, set to be released in 2025 or 2026.

History

Brief History

The simulator would be a successor project to The Rock-afire Explosion Simulator from 2020, which was a Kickstarter project that did not receive its required funding due to the prior fangame release of Rock-afire Replay taking the spotlight from the project. While the initial development would cease around early 2021, Creative Engineering would still tout wanting to eventually have an official simulator.Communication over the successor project would begin with CEI and its soon to be lead, BattleXGamer2, would begin in late 2022. Unofficial plans and prototyping would begin in early 2023, with things being officially set into motion by 2024. Showcases of the simulator have appeared on the members-only Creative Engineering Premium Video Service , though most public statements of the simulator have been brief and vague- as it is still in development.

Pre Simulator Days [3/12/22 - 11/02/23] (DD/MM/YY)

The Simulator initially started as the Unreal Engine Continuation of Showbiz Pizza Time Experience (SPTE which has now become an RR Engine Mod) after the original developer SalS26 lost hope in developing SPTE in Unity. After SalS26 saw what BattleXGamer2 was doing with Unreal Engine, Sal recommended that the owner of SPTE ReminaProd make BattleXGamer2 the new developer.
Many of the main features that the simulator uses or has deprecated but still remain in some small capacity were established and developed during these early days. These features being the data format for the simulator and the early save format which was based on the Unreal Engine Save Game functions.

CEC RR Engine C&D

When Chuck E Cheese cease & desisted The 64th Gamers Reel to Reel, it left ReminaProd and the people working on SPTE in a panic as to whether Aaron Fechter would cease & desist SPTE. This and a multitude of other issues resulted in SPTE ending.

The Early Simulator Days [11/03/22 - 1/1/24] (DD/MM/YY)

During the final months of SPTE, BattleXGamer2 began communication with CEI in regards to creating a simulator that would allow fans to view original showtapes. Programming wasn't going to be a feature. Aaron enquired and asked questions about the intial idea to then gain a better understanding of BattleXGamer2's idea. He then suggested that programming should be a built in feature as fans might not like it if there wasn't any ability to program shows. From early 2023 until November 2023, Aaron was unable to give attention to the simulator due to his move from the Jefferson Building to his new warehouse. Plans were still happening during this period which even included a demo video for Aaron showing off the progress made at the time. The Simulator was officially announced to the members-only Creative Engineering Premium Video Service on December 31st 2023 with the original demo video initially sent Aaron around May 2023.

Current Simulator Days [1/1/24 - Present] (DD/MM/YY)

The Rock-afire Simulator has had a significant amount of progress put through from the beginning of 2024 to Now. The Simulator has been worked on progressively throughout the year with many changes to the internal code to support various things amongst other compatibilities being developed and finalized. Updates about the Simulator have become more and more public with some more major updates only going out on the Creative Engineering Premium Video Service . BattleXGamer2 (Lead Developer & Coder for the Simulator) has been on the breaking edge of Unreal Engine's technology as to further the performance and quality of the Simulator as time goes on. This includes discovering a method to allow realistic fur to be put on characters while keeping performance good and using MegaLights to keep raytraced lights looking good but without a huge performance hit.

Overview

Multiple features are confirmed for the simulator:

• Watch the entire library of The Rock-afire Explosions showtapes
• Program songs on The Rock-afire Explosion
• Export your programmed showtapes to CEI .wav Files so you can watch them on a Real Show

Speculated Minimum Specifications

From previous testing between the group of testers who test out the Simulator and Aarons own computer. We speculate that most computers will be able to run the Simulator without much lag on at least the lowest settings. These will be subject to changes.

CPU	AMD: Ryzen 7 7730U	Intel: i5 4590
Ram	8GB	16GB
Storage	2GB	10GB

TODO:

Need to explain more on development changes if warrented and upon release potentially catalogue patch notes and give a more indepth patch note analysis on the changes here. Could be cool. Probably need to explain some more on the Current Simulator Days too.