Thursday, September 27, 2018

Oregon DLC releasing next week

The wait is almost over. Our American Truck Simulator map design team is putting finishing touches on the Oregon DLC. We are ready to confirm its release date now...

Oregon map expansion for American Truck Simulator
will come out on October 4, 2018.

Let us prime you for next Thursday with a cool video trailer celebrating this announcement:


Please find the feature list and additional information on the Oregon DLC Steam page.



You may start seeing more news, reviews, images, and videos online this coming weekend. We will be lifting the veil of secrecy then, allowing the media as well as our friends in the senior volunteer tester group to openly start showing their footage from the DLC. We will also keep on working on the launch-day video trailer to make a yet bigger splash at the release.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

SCS On The Road: ETRC Le Mans

While the IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 motor show is still in full swing until Thursday, we need to coordinate our crazy "traveling circus" autumn schedule for another upcoming event.

Our On The Road crew will need to set a new destination on their GPS advisor. The next stop is the 7th round of the FIA ETRC season at Le Mans, France!


But life is tough. Our Sim Trailer is currently parked in the middle of Hall 23 at Hannover Messe fairground. Various companies have their booths built all around ours, and the deconstruction of the IAA 2018 presentation only starts on the evening of September 27. It's pretty much impossible to get us up and running with our Sim Trailer to make it to Le Mans in time, the participants must be there early on Friday. We will need to improvise a little bit again, like we did for the previous round at Zolder, Belgium.

But no worries - we'll be there for our fans! Even without our Sim Trailer, we will have a solid roof to protect us from the elements, and you can find us at our usual place in the Fan Village. So as always, visitors can stop by and try our 4D Motion Seat, play our games, spend some time with our crew, and walk away with a bit of our merch. We are looking forward to meeting our fans from France! Meanwhile, our big Sim Trailer will already get on the way to Jarama, Spain.

If you are not following the social media feed on our Twitter or Instagram profiles, let us give you a sampling of our activities at IAA through this post. We are taking a ton of photos all the time. Participation at IAA should be very beneficial for all of us - we have had a ton of very promising meetings with various transportation industry companies. Keep your fingers crossed, as these discussions should eventually bring some sweet fruit in the form of new licenses for our games.

Wish us luck! And for our fans living near Hannover, Germany - you can still visit us at IAA Nutzfahrzeuge 2018 in Hall 23, booth A18, until the late afternoon hours of September 27.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Bridges of Oregon

Let us bridge the time until the release of ATS Oregon DLC by a post showing some of the bridges featured in the map expansion. Thanks to a plentiful amount of rivers in Oregon, our DLC will also contain a considerable number of bridges. We've just shown some major bridges while introducing Portland, but there are way more of them scattered around the state!


Bridges are landmark objects in the game that are experienced really up close, whenever the player's truck is crossing them. We need to provide a lot of detail, they are not a cheap 3D asset to build quickly. As each bridge structure and the terrain configuration around it is unique, bridges ask for solid planning and coordination across our teams.

We can see the light at the end of the.. bridge. October is getting closer, as is Oregon!






Friday, September 21, 2018

Saint Petersburg - Санкт-Петербург

Today we'd like to focus on the biggest city in the upcoming ETS2 game expansion Beyond the Baltic Sea. Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia with over 5 million inhabitants. Its size and its location on the Neva river just at the head of the Gulf of Finland proved to be a difficult task for the map design team. With the scale of our virtual world, we need to distill the essence of real-world locations down to the most characteristic elements along the path the player will travel.


With so many huge pieces of architecture competing for our attention, both historic landmarks as well as modern transport infrastructure, we had to make some tough choices. Hopefully, the local patriots will be fine with our selection. As the main artery road passes through densely populated areas, we had to use every trick in the book to build and optimize the city for the game. In particular, the integration of the Western High-Speed Diameter was a real challenge. It's very new, and initially, we had troubles finding the necessary photo references to it. We have done our best to squeeze enough of it into the in-game city plan to make the right impression of its size and its aesthetics.







Tuesday, September 18, 2018

SCS On The Road: IAA 2018


Our team is converging on Hannover Fairground to finalize our IAA 2018 booth.


IAA is a giant and very important International Motor Show. Our crew there consists of ten experienced SCS Software's developers, so we'll have very knowledgeable people on the show floor. The team is accompanied by our CEO and Marketing and Licensing managers. We will be there with the Sim Trailer, boxes full of merchandise and special game builds so that we can allow curious visitors try out the upcoming ATS: Oregon and ETS2: Beyond the Baltic Sea expansions. As a cherry on top - the legendary Svempa's Chimera stepped off her throne in the Scania's hall of fame to accompany us on our booth! What a beauty!


IAA is a monster of an event, possibly the most important for the transportation industry in Europe. It takes place only once every two years, and pretty much every company related to automotive, logistics, machinery and similar industries are there showing their best and trying to steal some attention. Our purpose is clear - to show that we belong there, that our games are a phenomenon that the transportation industry should not overlook. We will also take a ton of photos of vehicle details for future reference use. And most importantly, to make friends with as many companies relevant for our truck sims as possible. The concentration of decision makers per square meter is really high. Wish us luck!

Of course, the show is also open for the general audience - so anyone who's going to visit this international event from 20th to 28th of September - make sure to stop by our place in Hall 23 and check out what we've prepared for you. Our team is looking forward to meeting our fans!

And for most of our readers who can't make it there - follow us on our Twitter and Instagram profile as we'll be providing an ongoing news feed. Just like we did with our participation in ETRC round at Zolder. If you miss the posts and photos, here is a selection; you can find even more in the gallery on our Facebook profile.

Monday, September 17, 2018

Krone Trailer Pack

With the 1.32 game update out, today we are proud to introduce a new set of trailers demonstrating the power of the new trailer ownership feature.

On our many journeys across Europe with our Simulation Trailer, we keep meeting the fine people from Krone Group. When we approached them about appearing in Euro Truck Simulator 2, they were very enthusiastic and provided all the support we could dream of to produce high-quality representations of their trailers for our game.

This is the result of our cooperation:


Now we want to return the favor and perform another of our PR stunts as a way to say thanks, as well as to spread the goodwill coming with this new great game content. Honestly, it's also a bit of muscle flexing in front of the transportation industry in general, as we try to demonstrate that our games' fan community is quite relevant when they think of their target group.

So what's the plan? We are going to release the Krone Trailer Pack in a few hours from now, but first, we are ready to give away 10,000 keys to our players! It's not just a random giveaway though, we are asking for your engagement in exchange. First of all, only veteran players with at 100 hours registered are eligible. Furthermore, we want to make a splash on social media that would be visible not just to @KroneTrailer. All in all, we came up with the following key giveaway campaign. Of course, it's absolutely fine for you just to wait till the DLC is available for regular purchase, in this case, you will be happy to know that we are releasing it with a 20% launch discount.



ETS2 Krone Trailer Pack giveaway

ATS and ETS2 Update 1.32

It's on! We have taken quite a while with the open beta - testing and tuning the new version was a very extensive task, as this is one of the biggest game updates we have ever produced. The reactions from the volunteer testers are very enthusiastic, and we are eager for the player-base to enjoy all the new features as well now.


The amount of open beta feedback was so huge, thanks a lot to all the participants! We may not have been able to respond to all of the messages individually, but rest assured that we read everything and all your opinions, suggestions and bug reports are noted. The power of the community is fantastic!

CHANGELOG:
  • Trailer ownership (read more)
  • Major UI changes (Main menu, Company Management screens, Dealerships, etc.) 
  • Job filters redesign
  • Some of the old trailers discarded and redesigned
  • Power/airlines on AI trucks added (optional)
  • Rendering speedups
  • Option for automatic parking brake - disabled by default

ATS only:
  • New roads added: US-550 (NM), US-95 (AZ), US-191 (AZ), Clifton city (AZ) and I-580 Carson city bypass (NV)
  • Remade and redesigned few places (e.g. I5-I80 interchange)
  • Long 53ft trailers (40+ feet from kingpin to rear axle) forbidden in California
ETS2 only:
  • Scania 2016 added to AI traffic
  • B-double type trailers added
  • Updated part of Germany map (read more)
  • Lighting improvements (sync with ATS)
  • The speed limit in France dropped to 80 KPH on some roads


MOD ALERT:

Completely redesigned trailer-cargo logic (cargo data, trailer data, economy, etc.). Most mods will need some work to catch up!

To enjoy the 1.32 update, make sure to OPT OUT of beta branches and your game will be automatically updated on Steam.

On the other hand, if you are a heavy mod user and believe that the mods in your mix are still not up to date for 1.32, you may consider switching to 1.31 branch on Steam to continue playing the game with all the mods, while the mod authors catch up to the new features in the game.

For the legacy non-Steam edition of ETS2, the update should be ready in a few days.

Enjoy! And keep your eyes open for the rest of today, we still have great news for you! ;)

Related articles:
American Truck Simulator Update 1.32 Open Beta
Euro Truck Simulator 2 Update 1.32 Open Beta

Friday, September 14, 2018

Big Monday Coming

We are getting ready for a really exciting week ahead. Many things need to fall into place just right, we are stretched quite thin to pull it all off, but the outlook is positive, so keep your fingers crossed.

First, this Saturday and Sunday, we have the Zolder truck race weekend to attend and to meet our fans from Belgium. At the same time, a second crew is right now in Hannover, Germany, finalizing our booth at the IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 Expo, which is kicking off next week.

Meanwhile, we are gearing up for a big day on Monday! We have some important releases on our radar, a new video is ready, and we are thinking of doing a Steam key giveaway for a new DLC that's coming up. You should definitely pay attention to our social media all through Monday so that you don't miss a chance to participate. Just keep in mind that we typically target giveaways to veteran players with lots of playtime hours under their belt.


Here is a handy list of our communication channels:

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Oregon rising

Our work on the Oregon map expansion DLC for American Truck Simulator is almost complete. The dev team is confident that they will reach the finish line in a couple of weeks. We are therefore ready to announce a little more specific info about the release.

We are proud to announce that the impatiently anticipated
DLC Oregon will be released in October 2018!


Here is the main feature list:
  • Over 5,000 miles of new in-game roads
  • 14 major cities, including Portland, Salem, and Eugene
  • 13 large custom rest/truck stops for parking and refueling
  • Lots of smaller rest areas and motels around the roads
  • 700+ completely new 3D assets
  • 25 Unique, complex and realistic custom-built junctions and Interstate interchanges
  • 17 new local company docks and industries
  • Well-known landmarks both natural and man-made - Mt. Hood, Thor's Well, Crater Lake, Crooked River Valley, Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Youngs Bay Bridge ...
  • Oregon-bound achievements to unlock

To keep you engaged and entertained, we plan to keep revealing more pictures and insights from Oregon's development right until the release. Don't forget to watch our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so you do not miss anything. You may also consider the advice below to get a notification straight from Steam the moment the DLC is available! We keep updating the project's Steam page too, to make sure the pictures there are the best we can pick.