Sunday, December 25, 2011
Country-specific Stuff
A little feature which was completed just this last week is support for country-specific license plates. Combined with generating the mix of AI vehicles in traffic with probabilities characteristic for various countries, it definitely improves the feeling of locality in the game. See if you can guess in which countries these screenshots were made... ;-)
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Merry Christmas!
That special time of the year is almost here, and we wanted to thank you for your kind support!
Our blog is now read by over 10,000 people every day, and we know of many other sites which take our content and repost it translated into various languages. That's a LOT of people looking forward to the release of Euro Truck Simulator 2, and you can be sure that we are not taking this liability lightly.
We are not ceasing work completely even during the final days of the year; this is hopefully not the final post of 2011 from us. Thank you for your patience, stay tuned, and have a good time!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Truck Sound Recording
Today we have something different to show you... a short "making of" kind of video created by our friends from Silent Noise, who are helping us record a new database of truck sounds.
Some two weeks ago, we were recording Scania sounds. The R-series tractor and the trailer were kindly lent to us by Scania Czech Republic.
We have found a suitable place away from the civilization and background noise at the Tlustice airport. We spent most of the day there goofing with the tractor, also making tests and observations useful for our vehicle physics development. We actually continued late into the early morning hours - waiting until a nearby highway was mostly empty, so that we could record proper sounds while repeatedly going uphill and downhill on a steep incline near Lodenice.
We recorded a wide palette of sounds that day, way more than we can possibly use for Euro Truck Simulator 2. Hopefully with your kind support, we will find a way to use all those sounds in SCS Software's future truck sims.
Some two weeks ago, we were recording Scania sounds. The R-series tractor and the trailer were kindly lent to us by Scania Czech Republic.
We have found a suitable place away from the civilization and background noise at the Tlustice airport. We spent most of the day there goofing with the tractor, also making tests and observations useful for our vehicle physics development. We actually continued late into the early morning hours - waiting until a nearby highway was mostly empty, so that we could record proper sounds while repeatedly going uphill and downhill on a steep incline near Lodenice.
We recorded a wide palette of sounds that day, way more than we can possibly use for Euro Truck Simulator 2. Hopefully with your kind support, we will find a way to use all those sounds in SCS Software's future truck sims.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Mirror Mirror Who Is The Most Beautiful Trucker Of Them All?
We are now revisiting the rear view mirror functionality in Euro Truck Simulator 2, and we thought it is time to share the progress with you.
In our older games, we had to do a lot of compromises due to performance considerations. With ETS2, we are now trying to match the real mirrors setup as closely as possible. For users with decent 3D graphics cards, the mirrors should really feel like in a real truck. For lower-class graphics cards, we will have to still implement some simplifications - there will be trade-offs to make - but overall the experience should be much better. Finally mirrors worthy of a Simulator, don't you think?
In our older games, we had to do a lot of compromises due to performance considerations. With ETS2, we are now trying to match the real mirrors setup as closely as possible. For users with decent 3D graphics cards, the mirrors should really feel like in a real truck. For lower-class graphics cards, we will have to still implement some simplifications - there will be trade-offs to make - but overall the experience should be much better. Finally mirrors worthy of a Simulator, don't you think?
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Rainy night
Things got interesting during the second part of the trip (see yesterday's post) - as the night was approaching, the weather got progressively worse...
To be completely honest, the new rain effects were only put into Euro Truck Simulator 2 during the past 2 weeks. Just as with every feature, after the initial implementation we will probably still be tweaking the effect for considerable time.
To be completely honest, the new rain effects were only put into Euro Truck Simulator 2 during the past 2 weeks. Just as with every feature, after the initial implementation we will probably still be tweaking the effect for considerable time.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Trip to Austria
The ETS2 map is almost completely populated with road signs now. During the testing of a particular area of the Euro Truck Simulator 2 world, we decided to grab some screenshots along the route. Today, we are bringing you half of the shots as daytime progressed towards the evening. Stay tuned for tomorrow, we'll be showing the late part of the day and night, and many of you may be happy to see what happened.
We also feel that we should address, again, at least some questions and shouts appearing in the comments.
1. Until year hear it from us, any published release dates are purely speculation coming from sales departments of our distribution partners. We see the light at the end of the tunnel, the game is not far from completion, but we are dedicated to quality, not to particular release date.
2. There won't be multiplayer in ETS2. With the size of our world, doing MP right is not an easy thing. Trust us that we are thinking hard on how to put multiplayer into our games and how to do it The Right Way, but you will still need to be patient with us, it is not doable in the timeframe of this project. Delaying the game any more because of this feature is not an option for us.
We also feel that we should address, again, at least some questions and shouts appearing in the comments.
1. Until year hear it from us, any published release dates are purely speculation coming from sales departments of our distribution partners. We see the light at the end of the tunnel, the game is not far from completion, but we are dedicated to quality, not to particular release date.
2. There won't be multiplayer in ETS2. With the size of our world, doing MP right is not an easy thing. Trust us that we are thinking hard on how to put multiplayer into our games and how to do it The Right Way, but you will still need to be patient with us, it is not doable in the timeframe of this project. Delaying the game any more because of this feature is not an option for us.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Spotlight on Volvo FH16
We still haven't managed to conclude licensing negotiations with some of the truck brand owners, but we are going to renew our effort again next week. We are now preparing materials to show to the truck companies - arguments to support the notion that they can only win extra PR points if they are officially present in Euro Truck Simulator 2. One of the brands that we still haven't secured is Volvo Trucks, keep your fingers crossed!
This is strictly work-in-progress presentation of an unfinished game. The all-new physics in ETS2 is still not finalized and in fact at the moment quite broken, so don't judge the truck driving behavior just yet - we still have a lot of work to do ahead of us to wrap up the work on the game.
This is strictly work-in-progress presentation of an unfinished game. The all-new physics in ETS2 is still not finalized and in fact at the moment quite broken, so don't judge the truck driving behavior just yet - we still have a lot of work to do ahead of us to wrap up the work on the game.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Customizing Name Plates
A little new feature was just today put into Euro Truck Simulator 2 - the ability to create and customize personalized name plates behind the windshield...
Friday, November 18, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Deer Drive scores on Mac App Store
We know that majority of visitors of this blog comes here for the news of our truck simulators, but there are other things happening at SCS Software, too. One of our goals is reaching feature parity in our 3D engine between the Windows PC and Mac platforms. We have started executing on this strategy by first porting our older, simpler games to Mac - first with good old Bus Driver, and now with another older game Deer Drive.
Bus Driver experienced a very good start on Mac, and now several months after it was introduced to Mac App Store, it still regularly features in Top 100 Top Selling Games.
Deer Drive has started phenomenally, a few days after release it is now well inside Top 10 Top Selling Games.
These days of course we are fully focused on truck simulation, but this additional business actually makes significant contribution to sustaining the development of Euro Truck Simulator 2.
The next stage of the plan is porting the original Euro Truck Simulator to Mac, we hope to confirm that the genre can be as successful on Mac as it has been for us on Windows. The more players we can reach and turn into paying customers, the more feature-packed we can afford to make our future games!
Bus Driver experienced a very good start on Mac, and now several months after it was introduced to Mac App Store, it still regularly features in Top 100 Top Selling Games.
Deer Drive has started phenomenally, a few days after release it is now well inside Top 10 Top Selling Games.
These days of course we are fully focused on truck simulation, but this additional business actually makes significant contribution to sustaining the development of Euro Truck Simulator 2.
The next stage of the plan is porting the original Euro Truck Simulator to Mac, we hope to confirm that the genre can be as successful on Mac as it has been for us on Windows. The more players we can reach and turn into paying customers, the more feature-packed we can afford to make our future games!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Truck Customization in ETS2
Today we have a gameplay video from Euro Truck Simulator 2 for you, showing the user interface for truck customization. Enjoy!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Road signs in various countries
We are finally populating the ETS2 world with road signs. This is a huge task, with the size of the world we expect to spend several weeks just on placing the signs, not to speak about creating them first and play testing them before release.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Scenic local roads
The ratio of local roads versus major highways is increased in Euro Truck Simulator 2 compared to any of our older games. Of course with the compressed scale of the virtual world we don't even have enough room to cover all important highways, and inevitably the selection of local roads is even more limited. But they work really great to spice things up and add variety to the overall experience.
