SCS Blender Tools

While looking at the amazing stuff that our fan community is producing, we cannot help but admire the passion for our games. But of course the tools are the key for creation of the best results. We are aware that despite valiant efforts to reverse-engineer our formats, the current tools in the hands of the modding community aren't ideal yet.

Today we would like to announce that we are working on SCS Blender Tools, which we will make available for everybody with creative passion for our games.

As you may have already guessed we will use Blender to base our SCS Blender Tools on. Blender is fast, flexible, with good documentation and most importantly Free, without need to worry for having expensive licenses for commercial packages like Maya or 3d Studio Max.

SCS Blender Tools we are building are going to be 100% "developer grade". The package will be using exactly the same approaches and workflows we use for creating our games, in fact some people on SCS team plan to start using them on a daily basis, replacing current tool pipeline. With SCS Blender Tools, it will be possible to comfortably create models, texture them, assign and tweak correct materials, and export everything to the engine.

The plan is that with SCS Blender Tools it will cover everything - from the simplest models of buildings to fully fledged trucks, just as us developers are doing it. With provided documentation we hope to see even higher quality creations from our modding community. With community-created assets in source form compatible with SCS Software's internal processes, and with the map editor a native part of the game itself, this may open up huge opportunities for the future.

Here are few screenshots of ongoing Blender integration:

World of Trucks update!

We would like to announce several improvements for World of Trucks.

The prominent additions include:

User comments for images

Now you can comment and discuss the images you have uploaded. We feel that there are plenty of creations worth talking about! World of Trucks gallery is a great testament of community craftsmanship.

Country selection

Now you are able to set the country of choice to your profile.

Search for users

You can now search with ease for your friends and fellow truckers. Check out their profiles and comment of their recent uploads.

Use webcam to snap your profile image

In web browsers supporting the feature (currently Firefox and Chrome only) you can use your webcam to grab the image for your World of Trucks profile.

Editor's Pick history

You can list older Editor's Picks to see who ever managed to be noticed by SCS team for the front page.

We are truly astonished seeing how active the fan community is on World of Trucks. We hope that the current small set of feature additions will boost it even further. There are small improvements (and large new features) in the pipeline, we are barely out of the gate. Stay tuned!

Plus jump right away to World of Trucks website to check it out!

ETS2 Beta build 1.7.2.1

If you are running Euro Truck Simulator 2 on Steam, we are doing another public beta release experiment before releasing an update officially. Please note that is is a small interim maintenance update, not a major feature release.

Highligts include:

• gearbox tweaking for some of the trucks
• new exclusive Volvo FH 16 interior
• several tweaks and fixes of new Volvo tuning parts
• Volvo FH cabin decal now customizable, works with backlight

To access the beta on Steam, right click on the game's title in Library, select Properties, go to Betas tabs, and pick "public_beta" build. This version of the game should be fully compatible with all save games and stored profiles of the 1.7.x edition of the game.

The New DAF XF Euro 6

Last Friday we finally got our hands on the New DAF XF truck. Our artists are now going to have all the high quality references they need, including 3D scans of exterior and interior elements, in order to deliver the perfect game truck.

And off course our sound team was recording all of the the new vehicle sounds. So now you know the new DAF XF Euro 6 is one of the priority trucks we plan to deliver to you!

Let us show you a small video and photo report from the event:

Euro Truck Simulator 2 & Oculus Rift at G-Star 2013

Development version of Euro Truck Simulator 2 with Oculus Rift HD support was demoed a couple of days ago at a big game show G-Star 2013 in South Korea. We have not attended the event in person, it took us a few days to learn the details, but we are very proud that the custom version of our game was among the few applications selected to show the potential of the new high-definition version of this very exciting virtual reality device.

We have found a few photos from the event...

source: 오큘러스 (Oculus) facebook page

 source: inven.co.kr

Mainstream Game at Last

During the past 15 hours or so, Euro Truck Simulator 2 has appeared all over gaming news sites again. And it was mentioned in great company of other independent games - true "gamer's games" like Don't Starve, Prison Architect, or Chivalry. We are really proud that our game has been invited into the first batch of games for Humble Store launch!

But we have the ultimate proof for you that the truck sim games we all love so much are no longer a niche genre - getting covered by Dan Bull!

Photos, Betas

We are still processing the photos and videos from our Car Crashing Day event - and of course the sfx themselves still need a lot of work to process, clean up, and implement. This is not something that can be plugged into the game immediately, please have patience with us. Anyway, today we have placed a bunch of photos from the day to our facebook page here.

Meanwhile, work on game update 1.8 is in full swing, with testing going on in closed betas.

However, there are reports of problems people are having with 1.7 version. These may not be game-breaking problems that trouble everybody, normally we'd wait to include them with another major update. But especially for people running larger map mods, there are stability issues reported, problems that if fixed would no longer require arcane workarounds for mod users. So we thought that doing a public testing beta release might be a good way to see if have managed to make the game more robust. If you have been affected by any of these issues, please let us know whether this update makes the game more stable without causing some undesired side-effects. We'll consider making this into a regular game patch.

Changelog beta build 1.7.1:

• fixed crash on freight market when too many jobs were generated (mods only)
• fixed rare crash that sometimes happened with air horn usage
• fixed incorrect trailer placement when automatic parking was used in Trameri Warszaw
• fixed engine displacement volumes for Volvo and Iveco

This beta update is currently only available through Steam; to access it, you need to opt in to access betas, and switch to "public_beta" branch. Thanks for your feedback!

Demolition Day... erm... Sound Recording Day

There are so many elements and features in our game code and art assets that we know would deserve improvement. Sound effects are not an exception, sound is a very important part of the overall experience, in fact more important than what people think "at first sight."

We have taken the opportunity of earning a bit of extra revenue thanks to sales from Halloween Paint Job Pack on Steam, and today we wanted to show you how we invested the money! We organized a special event yesterday with the goal of making quality sound recordings of car crashes. We put special emphasis on having a safe event, we even had a fire brigade and an ambulance car at the ready should anything go not quite right. Behind the wheel, we had the honor of welcoming a star Czech stuntman Jarda Psenicka. His credits include stunts for many major movie productions, including Titanic, Doom, Hellboy, and many more.

Our plans for the next sound recording event? A V8 engine!

Status update

A short update on what is happening now at SCS Software...

We are now hard at work merging in two important code changes - improvements in physics, especially in the area of suspension, and major traffic AI rewrite. Both are big functional changes that need to be integrated and tested extensively. Time needed for testing each such major feature change is always hard to estimate, but we hope that it is a matter of weeks rather than months before it's all ready for release in another ETS2 update.

Of course, in the meantime our other teams are pushing for progress in other areas, including American Truck Simulator, new territorial expansions for ETS2, on new trucks, new buses, we are adding new features to World of Trucks... a lot is going on! We are placing big bets on the future, so four new people are coming to SCS just this week to help us speed up our work.

And there is more, we'll have even more exciting news for you in near future about our push for adding yet more development talent and capacity.

Meanwhile, there are some other cool things happening out there...

There's massive discount available now for a huge bundle of simulators - The Superpower Sims Bundle. The bundle includes the original classic Euro Truck Simulator game and many other notable simulators for ridiculously low price. We hope that this can bring in fresh players to the truck sim family, and for some people, it may also be a cheap chance to finally own a legal copy of the game. In addition to getting a bunch of nice games on the cheap, Bundle Stars will contribute to SpecialEffect charity from each sale made.

We are also happy to announce that Scania Truck Driving Simulator has been Greenlit by Valve with the help of fan community! While it's not a new game for many of you, the additional exposure to the 65+ million-strong Steam player base is great news for us. This could mean yet more revenue and funding for investing into our current and future work. Thank you guys!