The third pillar

Today we are bringing you a few new images from the game that is definitely not losing our love - Euro Truck Simulator 2. Yeah, we have been taking our time producing a new patch, but this is mostly due to the fact that we are working on so many improvements in parallel. We have some cool things coming, and they should appear in patches through the Spring, but tuning and tweaking them all to a stable state takes time.

We are not working just on code and gameplay improvements (and the map DLC), the core game will also get very cool new content. Iveco Stralis Hi-Way is among the first major additions, but there is even more to come...

 

Stuff we are working on, too

As we have hinted before, SCS Software is branching into several directions since the release of Euro Truck Simulator 2. (Don't worry ETS2 devotees, more news about evolution of the game in upcoming blog posts)

Here is a couple of images from yet another project we have under construction in our labs:

 

 

Disclaimer - any brands appearing in the images are only illustrative and not guaranteed to find their way into any future SCS Software project. It's just an experiment. Though if you happen to be an owner of a major coach bus operator in Europe, we'd love to hear from you and discuss how to make it possible to feature your brand in our game(s) ;-).

Stuff we are working on

Our recent blog posts may have concentrated too much on non-development stuff, and you are probably quite tired of links to sales charts, press articles and app stores. Sorry, let's turn the page and start giving you glimpses of things that we are working on again.

Today we have a teaser shot of a new 3D truck model that was built from ground up in recent weeks. This truck tractor is not going to appear in Euro Truck Simulator 2 though, it is created with the plan to use it in a different game ;-).

The good thing about this 3D model is that it uses roughly half the polygon count of our highest-detail ETS2 trucks, yet due to smarter system of shading and rendering and the use of surface normal textures it looks even better, while consuming less video memory.

Scania TDS on Mac App Store

It has taken us almost half a year to port our current engine technology to Mac OS, but finally this weekend we have managed to get Scania Truck Driving Simulator released on Mac App Store. It's an important milestone for us on the way to port its bigger brother Euro Truck Simulator 2 to the platform as well. Hopefully this time we won't need half a year again, but there is still a ton of work to do on the port, so it's hard to come up with an estimate yet. And everybody knows how imprecise we can be on such estimates.

We are happy with the results so far, here is an analysis of best selling charts across various countries for the game as available on APPlyzer:

Speaking about failing with time estimates, we are tempted to claim that the Linux version of ETS2 is now less than two weeks away from being ready for release. Didn't we say it was two weeks away from release several months ago already? We are bad at estimates indeed, and we shouldn't give in to temptation yet again. But after overcoming some unexpected difficulties with input controllers code, we are feeling reasonably well about this new estimate.

Changing topic, GamaSutra published an interesting article titled Who's buying all these niche simulation games, anyway? We found out. It's a peek behind the scenes of niche simulators, not just truck sims but also farming and more. The story got picked up by Reddit, too, if you are interested in following this discussion.

Iveco Stralis Hi-Way Sound recording

Time flies so fast! We have had a couple of new 3D models of trucks in development since the start of this year already, but there is still work to do before we are ready to release them as a part of future Euro Truck Simulator 2 updates. As truck manufacturers come up with new or face-lifted vehicles, we'll need to try to keep up with them, but it's going to be a race with no end.

One of the all new 3D truck models coming to the game is the new IVECO Stralis Hi-Way. This is the first truck of ETS2 to be created by a new method, too. Rather than pushing polygon count to the limits (slowing down anything but the best of the best 3D cards), we are going to balance polygon count with higher surface detailed offered by normal mapping techniques. It's a bit of a learning experience for the artists, plus new rendering effects were required to be coded by the programmers to make this happen. The results are going to be well worth it; perceived detail is comparable or higher, while the number of triangles that your 3D card has to chew on is limited, which should have positive implications for framerate.

Part of our research when we are building a new truck for the game is of course spending some time with the vehicle - we need to record engine sounds, we take lots of photos of exterior as well as interior, and try to get a general feel for the truck. The recording session with Stralis Hi-Way took part several weeks ago already, today at last we have managed to prepare the little video from the day...

Euro Truck Simulator 1 on Steam

Five years late (and five years after we started trying), the original Euro Truck Simulator is finally on Steam as of today, basking in the success of its younger brother ETS2. Here is the Euro Truck Simulator 1 Steam Store page.

Both Windows PC and Mac OS versions are available on the service (note though that the Mac build is a very different codebase from Windows version and due to file format incompatibility does not support mods).

By now the game is of course an old classics in the genre, but it may still be interesting for players just now discovering to the truck sim phenomenon...

ETS2 reviewed by Inside Sim Racing

Highly respected site Inside Sim Racing reviewed Euro Truck Simulator 2 a couple of days ago, and it looks like they quite liked it...