Please strongly consider use of mirrors instead of direct download, for faster speed and to avoid overloading of our own lines. Just last week one of our server capacity providers (we have three servers at different providers) requested that we switch to a higher-bandwidth higher-price tier for our machine, citing too much bandwidth consumed that they have hard time load-balancing. Keeping the game maintained for a long period of time does have it costs you see.
Finally the time has come - Euro Truck Simulator 2 update 1.11 is now officially out on Steam. We are now preparing 1.11 builds for retail game versions, give us a day or two to prepare it all and upload to mirror servers.
It has been quite a long beta period, but we have managed to address a lot of issues thanks to community feedback. If you are interested what had been done during beta, here is a series of patch logs of beta builds fixes.
We have covered items in the 1.11 update over the last several blog posts and even have shown here on the blog a promo trailer with the new cities included in the update. But in case you have missed it:
Let us shortly recap the major items that are included in ETS2 1.11 update, as it touched pretty much every aspect of the game: physics, AI, simulation, and gameplay refinements:
3 new cities: Venice, Graz, and Klagenfurt with a lot of new kilometers to explore
Seat Adjustment feature
Several months of tweaks of car AI code
Re-designed radio player for with additional sorting and filtering options
New Cruise control features
Displaying current road speed limit in Route Advisor (disable, or switch car or truck specific limits in options)
Complete UI facelift
Support for sway bar simulation
Refined the truck suspension for more control over truck and trailer stability
Recalculated the center of gravity of each cargo (more individual behavior of the whole rig)
Controls to adjust trailer stability in options
Improve collisions of player's truck and AI vehicles
Re-created all scratch and crash sounds in the game
Equalized the sound volume of in-cabin engine sounds and external engine sounds for all trucks
More realistic timing for the air brake sound
Retarder indicator is lit during automatic retarder usage
Ability to sell a garage
Ability to relocate your headquarters to another city
If you wish to read the full list of changes for the 1.11 update, you can do it here.
The Fantasy Paint Jobs Pack DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 has just been made available for purchase on Steam.
There was some grumbling that we did a time-limited exclusive deal for this new DLC before actually releasing it at large, depriving the fan-base of the chance to get it immediately, too. To make up for this sin at least a little bit, we are launching it with a short but very generous 80% discount!
A frequently asked question concerning ETS2 is when are we going to add achievements to the game. We are aware that achievements could increase the enjoyment of the game (some of us are Steam achievement hunters too!) and we are working towards them, but it may take a while before we are ready to release an update with achievements for everyone. Your ideas for achievements posted in Steam Discussions and on other places are highly valuable for us, so keep them coming!
Sometimes before we go and try to implement something new in the bigger game, we use an older game of ours as the testing and proving grounds. This time Trucks & Trailers got into such role.
Formerly in-game-only achievements in this game are now available as Steam achievements, too. Your achievements and progress will synchronize with Steam after opening your game profile. Full achievements list is here.
You can also compete with your Steam friends and other Steam users thanks to the Steam leaderboards support for all combinations of difficulties and levels.
Steam cloud saves are now supported in Trucks & Trailers too, so you can continue your game on any PC. No need to worry about profile backups, just launch the game anywhere from the Steam client and play.
We have accepted an invitation to make Euro Truck Simulator 2 a part of Humble Weekly Bundle: Simulators 2. If you don't know what Humble Bundle does yet, they are worth checking out and maybe even bookmarking - you can get good games on the cheap, and at the same time do your bit to make the world a better place by supporting charity.
Somewhat related, our regular audits reveal that there are still hundreds of thousands of people playing the game, to put it gently, with no valid activation code. This discounted bundle may be a chance for them to finally buy a genuine copy of the game and support SCS Software in our work towards the ultimate truck simulator. To improve the proposition, we have even spiced up this bundle release with a time-limited exclusive: an all-new truck paint job DLC, with a theme quite attractive to old-school gamers. We'll make it available for purchase after the event, but for a few days the Fantasy Paint Jobs Pack DLC can only be had in the Humble Weekly bundle.
The comments below this blog post will of course be mostly about the status of the upcoming ETS2 update and overall progress...
So here is a short status report before the weekend:
The open beta for ETS2 update 1.11 has brought in a lot of feedback. We have a huge changelog of bug fixes and improvements since the open beta was launched, probably more than we anticipated, but it only proves that spending some time with the community at large providing feedback is very useful before actually going public with a game update. ETA for release? Possibly early next week, unless a new major bug is spotted. In that case, we'll test your patience again - but surely you'd prefer to get game updates with as few bugs as possible.
The new DAF Euro 6 truck is now very close to finish line at last. It had better - over a half man-year has been invested into it so far! We hope to release it as the main star of one of upcoming game updates at some point this summer. Meanwhile, the teams are working on two more truck models for ETS2, and two more for ATS!
The Euro Truck map design team working on a new ETS2 expansion - DLC Scandinavia - is working very hard even now in the middle of the hot summer. There is extensive work being done on the back-end of World of Trucks. Yet another bus model is under construction in one corner of the office, while a new trailer set is under construction on the opposite side of the office. New game features are trialled for future 1.12 ETS2 update already in closed testing... you see, we keep ourselves busy!
We are happy to report that we are proud owners of twenty tons of sand.
We also happen to own a trailer to carry it around, repeatedly, as need arises.
We have been doing it wrong. Until now. The truck sound recordings.
We have been through several recording sessions with various trucks, but we were never quite satisfied with the results. We have never managed to record the necessary variety of sounds, and most importantly, as we seldom had access to a loaded trailer; we lacked sounds with the truck engine working under strain.
Now finally, we are going to fix the problems. This IVECO sound recording session starts a new era for us, and we should now come up with much better results. With the quality bar pushed higher, we will need to go back and revisit most of the trucks we have already considered "done" - but the result should be well worth it.
We are a bit crazy, still trying to improve what some people now consider an "old game" - but we definitely do plan to keep improving and evolving Euro Truck Simulator 2 for a long time. And it is only possible thanks to your continuing support. Thank you guys! [Yes, this is where earnings from stupid things like paint jobs DLCs is invested into]
This time the final cut of the video material recorded during the sound recording is quite more extensive than usual. You can tell that the sound recording and filming crew - Irenej, Matej and Milos - all had a lot of fun during the two days of the recording session. Over 50 GB of raw sound was recorded! Out of so much sound data, with any luck, you should hear a bit in one of the upcoming game updates.
We are happy to announce that an open beta of Euro Truck Simulator 2 update 1.11 is now available on Steam, accessible in the public_beta branch. Although we feel that we have been through a good amount of polish for this update, Steam open beta system proved to be invaluable testing ground to iron out the final build during the previous game update testing cycle, so we are trying this method again. Please note that this is a BETA, not the final patch - only install it if you want to help spotting and reporting possible problems!
As an appetizer, we have a short promo trailer unveiling this update:
Unless something unexpected is discovered in the beta, we hope that it will only take a couple of days in beta before we are ready to make the final build for Steam and retail editions of the game.
There is one more feature in 1.11 that we haven't shown you yet - we have cleaned up the Radio Player. We have revised the listing of stations, so now you can take advantage of additional filtering, add radio station to favorites and sort station by available categories.
Here are a couple of fresh images from the new areas of the map from the 1.11 update:
P.S. Metallic Paint Job Competition was concluded a few days ago. Thanks to all participants! We are in the process of picking best of the best submissions, you can expect winner announcement shortly.
We are taking two more steps in our plan to create custom truck paint jobs for players in the countries where we have the most registered copies of Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Today is Canada Day! Canadians obviously happen to be a trucking nation - Canada has made it to our Top 10 list, even for a game that is squarely aimed at European audience. It's an important reminder for us that our American Truck Simulator team should not forget to expand the game world up north eventually! Here is the DLC link: Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Canadian Paint Jobs Pack.
This week a new edition of our game is entering retail stores in Poland - Euro Truck Simulator 2: Edycja Roku. It is an attempt to attract new players to discover the genre; seasoned ETS2 players of course have been playing the game forever and don't need to go and buy it again. In cooperation with our Polish publishing partners, we have spiced up this new edition with additional paint jobs, including a new set of paint schemes inspired by Polish national symbols and flag colors. This edition requires Steam to install - adding the "mini DLCs" to the game is technically only possible for us by taking advantage of Steam's infrastructure for installation and maintenance. The DLC is also now available on Steam as a standalone purchase: Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Polish Paint Jobs Pack.
We still have a bunch of countries on our paint job to-do list - most likely a few more months of work ahead of us. For some of the countries, we really need to hurry - Independence Day is almost here! ;)
There is some grumbling here on the blog in comments sometimes that we should concentrate on different features. Rest assured that creating these optional "cosmetic" DLCs is not a distraction that would delay the other teams at SCS Software. It can keep a dedicated 2D artist here occupied full time, and we hope for a modest profit in the long run that will help us in further development of the Euro Truck Simulator 2 project. Our focus is firmly on expanding the core ETS2 game with worthwhile features and expansions, and we have some very cool stuff is in the pipeline!
