There's always something to improve...

Today's post digest: state of the upcoming ETS2 1.9 patch, sneak peek at graphics team work in the area of vegetation.

We know that you are eagerly anticipating the release of Euro Truck simulator 2 update 1.9; we hear your complaints that already quite some time ago we hinted that it would be out "soon." We definitely do not want to delay the release, but thorough testing in closed beta keeps revealing more and more little yet annoying problems and bugs. We'd like to make a good impression right out of the bat, even in the planned open beta pre-release, so we would like to ask you for a bit more patience. It's not just tuning and bug fixing, now that we are close to release, there is also significant effort under way so that we don't ruin the work of mod makers with the new update. Existing mods out there unfortunately too often contain semi-broken assets and data, and we need to add backwards-compatibility layer into our data loading code to workaround the problems. Hopefully important existing mods won't break too badly and can be fixed where necessary and made compatible with the updated game.

Shifting gears a little.

Our graphics teams are always thinking about how we could improve the visual perception of the game world. We though you might like a sneak peak into raw graphics development, sort of a glance under the hood of what's coming...

One such area of graphics improvements is vegetation. Perhaps our current vegetation is 'good enough' for some, but we see that there is still plenty of work ahead of us on improving it. We always felt we could push for more variety to further distinguish the feeling of driving in various countries; also mix up some bushes between trees, add different tree types, and even improve the look and feel for the grass... Overall going for little more realistic feel.

Here are some work in progress screenshots, and the references that the graphics team is using during their discussions:

A Few Quick Renders

...done today, ahead of an important visit to a certain company in Kirkland, WA, USA...

(Work in Progress. Please note that any presence of real brands in the game is only tentative until officially confirmed)

And the winners are...

Greetings!

Finally we are ready to announce the winners for our Christmas and The New Year 2014 paint job competition.

Needless to say how hard it was to pick just 3 winners. We felt it wouldn't be fair to limit the prizes to so few submissions where there were more great quality entries. Instead we opted to recognize and award a dozen winners!

And the winners' paint jobs are:

You may view all the participants in the World of Trucks's Editor Pick's section.

We will contact each of the winner you by World of Truck's email address with further steps of prize delivery.
Our congratulations to the winners and thank all of you for participation!

Paint Job Competition update

Happy New Year everybody!

We thank all of you who found the time and eagerness to participate in our Christmas and The New Year Paint Job Competition. On the World of Trucks Editor's Pick section you may see plenty of awesome truck paint artworks. Obviously we have quite a hard time to pick the best three, but the results will be announced shortly.

There is plenty of awesomeness coming your way in 2014. SCS team size has nearly doubled in size since the release of ETS2, and we plan to keep on growing this year to increase the pace of development. We are still learning to operate as a bigger company, but with the great opportunities on the horizon, with the grand vision of what our current simple truck sims could and should evolve into, we are taking the risk and throwing in all we have.

One of the most important topics for the beginning of the year is American Truck Simulator. Soon we would like to make a series of posts talking in depth about it. Please take note that the release date of "stage 1" of the project is still not settled, we still have work to do. Any release date you see published on the Internet is pure speculation coming from distributors or merchants.

Also with the fresh power gained during holidays the team is preparing Steam beta build 1.9 for Euro Truck Simulator 2. The most prominent features are reworked truck physics with improved truck-trailer stability and improved suspension behavior, and finally the new AI traffic code. Please bear with us, we are still in private beta testing and tuning mode.