SCS on the Road: PGA 2016

Last weekend, the visitors of Poznań Game Arena 2016, a gaming expo taking place in the beautiful Polish city, had a unique chance to enjoy the very first gameplay of our upcoming Euro Truck Simulator 2 DLC - Vive La France!

SCS was represented there as well, Eryk and Piotr were there to face the crowd. The whole showcase and the visit of two of our employees was possible thanks to kind invitation of our licensing partner IMGN.PRO.

We were truly amazed with the number of people who visited the IMGN.PRO booth to see and try out this upcoming ETS2 map expansion. There was just so much positive feedback and observations that they were sharing with us! There were even some people from abroad who came to PGA 2016 specifically to check out the new DLC, we recall chatting with people for example from Austria or Russia. It's always a great motivation whenever we meet our beloved community in person. The both was also visited by Polish Youtubers/streamers including lArturlPL, Janusz0821, and Wujek Bohun. We guess that they will share their impressions of Vive La France with you very soon.

We had prepared five different scenarios located in various parts of the new region of France included in Vive La France DLC, but the visitors had a chance to get off these prepared scenarios and freely explore the whole map of France - we had the full DLC content accessible during the presentation. While all of you who came to try out our latest and upcoming content were enjoying brand new roads of France, our employees were doing their best to answer all of your questions. Many of the questions were smart and tricky, always trying to extract more information from us than we may have been allowed to reveal yet, luckily we were prepared for this.

The most popular question, as we expected, was the release date of Vive La France DLC. The current state of the project was openly discussed at PGA 2016, so now we would like to share this information with the rest of our great community too.

As the PGA visitors has already seen with their own eyes, the world construction process is pretty much content-complete. We are now in the early stage of optimization and bugfixing. Most of you may already have heard from us that our motto is not to ever compromise quality. We only release a new piece of content "when it's done." And then we hurry to get it out to you. This means that we are not ready to announce the final release date until very close to the finish line. Our publishing and distribution partners do not actually like this approach very much, they would prefer a guaranteed release date set in stone a couple of months before the new title is supposed to appear on the store shelves. But they have mostly learned to deal with us being stubborn about this.

One of the most respected video game developers, Shigeru Miyamoto, once said: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is bad forever."  We never want to "rush" our work to meet a particular date, and we do not like disappointing people by delaying the release after announcing a release date too.

At this moment, our best estimate is that the final testing and polishing may take us anything between 6-10 weeks. So we may be able bring you the DLC still ahead of Christmas, but we may also miss it by a couple of weeks. We work really hard to wrap up the work as soon as possible, but there is still quite some uncertainly we have to deal with during the beta test loop.

In any case, you can start practicing your French accent, because you will need it soon at the tollgates of France!

World of Trucks - New Achievements To Hunt

We would like to do more to recognize the dedication of hardcore players who spend a lot of their time with our games. Behind the scenes, our World of Trucks back-end has already been able to gather quite some statistics and information about the job deliveries taking place on the system, and this gives us a great base and toolset to use for something new.

We are happy and proud that the number of drivers connected to our WoTr project is steadily growing. We know that truckers like to show off their accomplishments, their statistics, the distance driven and the volume and weight of jobs they have delivered with their mighty, devoted, diesel beasts. And how better to show what kind of a trucker you are than by hunting achievements?

So today we're adding some brand new achievements for all of you who've taken the time to connect their in-game profiles with our World of Trucks site:


FIRST HUNDRED
Complete 100 World of Trucks contracts





INTERNATIONAL DRIVER
Complete 10 World of Trucks contracts in American Truck Simulator and 10 contracts in Euro Truck Simulator 2




WEEKLY RUSH
Transport 1,000 tons (984 lg tn) in a single week. Counts any 7 consecutive days, minimum required job distance is 250 km (155 miles)



COMMITTED HAULER
Transport 1 million kilograms (2,204,623 pounds)





THE ULTIMATE AVERAGE
Complete 5 jobs in a row with average delivery distance not smaller than 1,000 km (621 miles)




PUNCTUAL PERFECTIONIST
Complete 3 contracts in a row with a minimum of 300 km (186 miles) per contract. Your time on duty shouldn't exceed 25 minutes per contract. Each delivery must be perfect (no cargo damage, in time)


LITTLE MARATHON
Deliver 100 t of cargo in 1 hour. Minimum required job distance is 100 km (62 miles)




There are also two hidden achievements to pursue, but we'd like you to discover them on your own. You can check the whole list of all available achievements on your profile at worldoftrucks.com

Also a little reminder: our achievements work retrospectively, so don't worry, if you've already passed some of the required criteria, they won't be forgotten and will be counted. Moreover, some of these can be achieved multiple times so you can really show even more skill and passion for trucking by getting them over and over!

There is only one question remaining...

Are you ready to fasten your seat belt, ignite the engine and accept the challenge?

Halloween Giveaway

While multiple teams are working on various updates and improvements for our games, we want to say thanks to all of you for your patience.

We have a very strong motivation to keep bringing you new content and features; our survival in business depends on our ability to innovate after all. But at the same time we do not intend to release new stuff until we feel that it is ready. We may not be perfect, but it is a matter of pride for us to withstand the pressure and avoid releasing unfinished stuff.

We have since crossed another milestone: there are now over 80 people working on our games either at SCS Software or as part of our network of our contractors around the globe (as far as New Zealand!). Great stuff is on the horizon, and way more is in the pipeline. After many months of trying, it also looks like we may have overcome the legal hurdles for us to finally release new content that has been waiting for clearance for quite some time.

Meanwhile though as a way of saying thanks we are offering every American Truck Simulator player a way to get a free Steam key for our upcoming new Halloween Paintjobs Pack for ATS. Anybody who has at least 3 hours of playtime into the game can get a key for free.
You can get your key below and activate it now before the release of the DLC on Steam which will happen later this week.

Halloween content has been available for Euro Truck Simulator 2 players for a couple of years already. We are about to update this DLC with a couple of new paints jobs very soon too, so that ETS2 players have something new to have fun with.

Yeah, it's only a bunch of cosmetic stuff taking advantage of an event in the calendar. We know that you are eagerly awaiting more substantial updates. Looking at what we have in store for you for late 2016 and well into 2017, we hope to make you happy with many more hours of fun driving big rigs.

ATS Halloween Paint Jobs Pack giveaway

SCS on the Road

The life of a game developer is not all just about basking in the glow of a computer screen. We need to get out too - to perform "business networking" - and it's especially true in case of SCS Software, as we need to establish and maintain contacts not just within the games industry, but also in the huge universe of transportation and logistics.

You may have noticed a recent blogpost with a short photo report by a small band of SCS developers visiting IAA Commercial Vehicles 2016. Trade fairs are an amazing opportunity for us to have conversations with the companies in transportation industry, to establish new contacts, as well as take a ton of photos as inspiration and reference for future development.

The IAA tradefair is taking place in several huge halls of Hannover Messe, each the size of a football field, and all around and between them. We have reserved two days to explore the expo, but still we have not managed to see it all. We have created a short movie with impressions from our IAA visit, to give you a sample of what it is like, though we cannot claim it to be exhaustive nor representative of all important stuff that was there to be seen. We were happy too see a lot of supporters of our truck games there, it was also great to see our game technology used in a 4-screen technology demonstrator by TrailerVue.

We hope that by the next IAA event, our ties with the industry will be even closer, and thanks to establishing new cooperation, there will be a lot more to be seen in the games and perhaps even on the show floor.


Only a few days later, a bunch of SCS guys were already sitting on a plane to Seattle, to visit Steam Dev Days. Valve's Steam platform is of critical importance for our business. With over a hundred million users there it is helping us reach new customers and grow our fan community. Equally important is their robust network infrastructure and easy game updating system, and support of "branches" that we use for our various betas. It allows us to experiment, gives us more room to grow, and we can focus on developing and expanding our games rather than struggle with their maintenance.

It was a great pleasure to see our American Truck Simulator logo on Valve's presentation slide recognizing games released in 2016 that succeeded thanks to being able to engage their fan community.

Talking about traveling the world and trade fairs... our fans in Poland, and we know that there is a lot of them, are invited to visit the upcoming Poznań Game Arena trade fair, taking place October 21 - 23. Our games will be there, and you will have a chance to play them and even get a peek into what's next, as this will be the first chance to play our upcoming Vive La France DLC expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2! The add-on will be kindly presented there by our publishing partner IMGN.PRO, and even supported by a couple of SCS Software's very own Poland-born employees. Come see the add-on in Hall 7, booth 65!

Truckers.FM Is Turning ONE!

The following text is a guest blog post that we are bringing you on behalf of Truckers.FM. The phenomenon of fan community radio stations is something very special to our truck simulators, and we think it's worth wider recognition. Good luck in year two!

The success of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator have brought people together from across the world in ways we never imagined.  This weekend, a unique part of the community will be celebrating its 1st Anniversary.  Truckers.FM is a non-profit community radio station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, bringing your favourite trucking tunes right to your in-cab radio.  Volunteer presenters from around the globe dedicate their time to the station, taking song requests and making shout-outs.  They also help to advertise community run ‘Virtual Trucking Companies’, multiplayer mod events, and twitch streams.

Running a radio station like TFM is no easy task; it takes a team of 32 members to keep things running smoothly.  Although it takes a lot of dedication to keep drivers up to date on the latest traffic on the servers, broadcast live presentations, and take requests on the air, it’s all in a day’s work for the TFM Team!
So far this year, TFM has taken in over 42,000 requests from avid listeners, over 3,000 hours of live shows, and have even have had listeners into the thousands during special events!

“We are proud of our team and what we have created here,” says TFM Founder Mark. “We knew from the moment we started that it wouldn’t be easy, but we also knew how much we would enjoy supporting and entertaining the community.” It all sparked from an idea put together by the original founding members of TFM: Alex (London), Mark (The Stig), Chris (Chjl1234), and Zer0, who, along with many of the volunteer presenters and staff, make up the popular radio station. “It is the trucking community we are most grateful for,” says London. “Without their support throughout our time on the air, we wouldn’t be where we are today. That’s why we are giving back to the community with our #ONE celebrations this weekend!”

Truckers.FM #ONE celebrations will take place with support from SCS Software, Scania UK, and Flagship Events.  This birthday celebration will include special radio broadcasts, TruckersMP multiplayer events, game giveaways, Scania merchandise prizes, and much more!  Details can be found on our supporters’ social media outlets, and on the TruckersMP Forums.

Under The Hood

Greetings Truckers from all corners of the world! We've been having an internal discussion here at SCS Software and we've decided that we would like to put up, from time to time, some special and dedicated blog-posts for all of you who've ever wondered how things are going behind the scenes of our games. We are not able to promise how often these articles will be released and neither can we tell which topic will be the next one, but we think that they will shed some light into your minds about who we are, how we do things and so on. We all hope that you will like these articles and we are also looking forward to your opinions which you can, as always, leave in comments section below.

Have you ever wanted to know…
Have you ever wondered how our games are made? Where it all begins, which steps are implemented, how things are done, what is connected together and who is doing it? If you have, then this blog section, which we would like to start doing for you, is the right place you want to visit from time to time.

So without any further ado, lets take a look at our first topic of this series: 'Research'. It may not be as technical as some of our later posts but it reveals some of the most important work we do. So you can sit back, relax, and enjoy this piece about how SCS works „Under the Hood“.

The lights of Paris are on the horizon

Our map design team has put huge effort into the new region of the game universe. We have lots of highly detailed places in the countryside that make the world interesting to drive through. We are doing our best to try to show France as it really is through the eyes of a truck driver. We hope that you will enjoy driving through "our" France as much as we do creating it.

   

We are mostly finished now with the new areas that we are building for DLC Vive la France! Our attention is now also focusing on re-touching some parts of the "old" of France that were already present in the base Euro Truck Simulator 2 game. At this stage of the project, there are still many weeks of work ahead of us - putting in finishing touches, testing everything thoroughly and making sure any problems we find are addressed, optimizing performance of critical spots, balancing the economy.

Lights of Paris
One of the decisions we made at the start of work on the new DLC was to concentrate on the "old" Paris in addition to building the new cities and roads. We have rebuilt whole new city from scratch, there is nothing left from the old version. We are serving a taste of the "new" Paris for you today. Welcome to Paris!

The city of Paris has been included in the base Euro Truck Simulator 2 game, together with partial map of France, ever since the game was released. But we felt that it deserves major improvement. This content, after undergoing the quality upgrade, of course remains available for all ETS2 players including those who do not plan to obtain the DLC Vive la France!

   

Francilienne and Périph
The most important element of the Paris transport structure are ring roads around and inside of Paris area. We focused mostly on the outside ring Francilienne and Boulevard Périphérique aka "Périph". Heavy goods vehicle traffic is being conducted for thoses bypasses and the inner Paris area does not intervene. Most important part of our work was to demonstrate the real feel of those city areas.

   

In addition to the road network we have built the tunnels which are integral part of Périph. The same applies for typical junctions that we built anew. For the rebuilding of Paris, we created a large and unique building asets that are all based on real landmarks. You will discover many of those unique locations on your way through Paris.

      

Smoothly running economy
An important part of each new town is its economy. We have built economic infrastructure, and you can look forward to new companies such as the airport or car factory and others. As a result, it was necessary to balance everything so that our new work is compatible with the global economy of the entire game.