ETS2 Steam Achievements are live now!

It took a longer than anticipated testing process to produce the Steam Achivements Update a.k.a Update 1.13 for Euro Truck Simulator 2, but finally, quite late tonight, we are here with the release on Steam!

The central feature new to this game update is the introduction of Steam Achievements, as described in our earlier blog post.

The rest of the changes is relatively limited and non-critical, these are only very local "diffs" implemented on top of the previous stable 1.12 and 1.11 versions:

Code

• Steam achievements
• Added functionality to unbind keys/buttons/axes in game ui
• Added cruise control grid option
• Cruise control speed limited to truck speed limit speed (if enabled)
• Quickload and quicksave
• Bindable keys/buttons for increasing and decreasing of radio volume

Data

• Fixed speed limits in some countries (Belgium, France, Poland, Slovakia)
• Fixed license plate generation in some cities (Graz, Klagenfurt, Ostrava)

From this point of view this update should not break too many mods, but your mileage may vary. If you are playing the game with mods, it is always a good idea to make backups of your profile folder structure to safeguard older save game files, and be aware of means to revert back to earlier version if you deem it desirable. This is actually very easy on Steam - we are using the system of Steam betas for keeping older releases of the game accessible.

Retail variant of this game update, of course without the Steam Achievements, will be made available in a couple of days.

For the next game update to version 1.14, the changes in code and game data will be much bigger. We are merging in changes to the game world, especially the northern parts that need to be altered for having good connections to the future region of Scandinavia. A lot of game and engine code has been changed, and 1.14 will roll in various improvements that the programming team has queued up for release over circa past 3 months. And last but not least, finally the new Euro 6 DAF truck tractor is almost ready, with the last round of iterations based on feedback from DAF Trucks N.V. getting us very close to desired quality. Testing all this mix of changes and additions is a complex procedure, please have patience with us!

SCS at IAA Hannover 2014

Quite an expedition from SCS Software journeyed to Hannover in the north of Germany at the end of last week to visit IAA Nutzfahrzeuge 2014 - the biggest Commercial Vehicles show in Europe.

We have reported from the show in real-time on SCS Software's Twitter, but we don't have that many followers there, so maybe a short recap here won't hurt.

We have taken hundreds of gigabytes of reference photos, and more importantly, we have talked to number of very important people in the transportation industry and from truck and trailer manufacturing companies. Hopefully some of these initial contacts will grow into fruitful discussions and down the road to noticeable improvements of Euro Truck Simulator 2.

The good photos we took would fill twenty long blog posts, here is only a very short selection. If there is interest from the community to see more photos, we may put them somewhere more appropriate, like SCS Software's Facebook page, so let us know!

 

New countries, new opportunities

During development of DLC Scandinavia we felt that our roads need further push of variation and fidelity.

There are tons of new assets like new highway junctions, local roads with new crossroads, or new types of roads with different lane count on each side, as it often happens in reality. The main idea off course is to make sure they actually look and feel close to their actual Scandinavian representation.

Check out the following screenshots that bring a little glimpse of how it is shaping up:

The first news about design

 

Greetings,

Starting of with tad of unfortunate news right away: we had to postpone the Achievements update of Euro Truck Simulator 2 to get extra two weeks for additional polish. Sorry about that little delay, it's almost there and still coming, just a bit later this September.

Now the good stuff

During feature development, lots of time is spent discussing the designs and how the gameplay is revolving around particular feature and how to evolve it further. However we realized we seldom shared such kind of behind the scenes info with you...

One of the features that has been under discussion for a long time is another type of DLC - Rigid Trucks.

Having rigids in the game brings quite a bit of challenges for us - the developers, as we would have to touch an established gameplay formula, and for you - the drivers, as backing these beasts is far from easy!

Naturally we need to take care of seamless in-game integration, with physics, economy, loading / unloading places infrastructure... There is both good and bad there, this challenge may persuade us to reconsider the concept of trailer ownership. But you know us, the more ambitious we are in altering the gameplay, the more time we typically take to make this happen. We will push to arrive to a broad concept of trailer ownership, though here we will start with one particular case - a swap body trailer on which you'll be loading the containers, cisterns and other loads suitable for rigid truck transportation.

For a driver, this is going to be a whole new challenge, especially when it comes to loading and unloading cargo. So in case you thought your parking skill is near perfection with ETS2, think again! :) Rigids with attached swap body trailer will test your maneuvering skills again. Of course, if you are not a hardcore player or just prefer just to chill out and ride, auto-parking feature is still at your disposal.

Riding the American Dream

Los Angeles and San Francisco are huge cities in the American Truck Simulator map. We haven't tried to portray sprawling agglomerations of this type in our games until now, though there was a bit of a hint of it in 18 Wheels of Steel Long Haul. Our ambition is higher now, as we want to capture the feeling of driving in an actual US city, which is quite different from typical European locations.

This trend isn't only ATS bound, but you'll get much higher city-feel authenticity in new world expansions coming to Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Check out some fresh screenshots taken from American Truck Simulator!