Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2017

Hello Truckers !

For us in our little corner of central Europe, and also for many of you across the globe, this part of the year is very special. It's a time to wind down and recap the past, it's a time to make plans for the future, it's also a great time to express gratitude.

This year was of huge importance in the history SCS Software. We have strenghtened our commitment to Euro Truck Simulator 2, we have a new major project to nurture in American Truck Simulator, we have grown the company by over 20 new employees. We have released solid quality projects, and we have several great new things in production. Our future is clear, and we know what we want to achieve as we enter the year 2017.

We are very proud that our games have attracted such an awesome fan community, and we would like to say thanks for all your support. Thank you for every positive appreciation, for every constructive criticism, for every encouragement, for your helpful feedback, for every single suggestion for future improvements, for every sharing of the moments of joy that you have got when playing our games.

Also thank you for staying loyal to our communication channels and social sites like our dedicated Facebook profiles for SCS Software, Euro Truck Simulator 2, American Truck Simulator, the Youtube channel, Twitter profile and newly also the Instagram profile.

And because this is a time with a touch of magical and mythical, filled with kindness and great forebodings, we thought it would be cool to wrap up the year with a little teaser video of what you may look forward to in the future.

Let us also remember the real heroes behind the steering wheels of actual trucks, who are tirelessly hauling cargoes out there day and night. We owe them a ton. Not just for an inspiration for a bunch of truck sim games, but for making it possible for us to live our lives in the comfort of modern society.

May you reach your destination, and may your journey be wonderful!

Have a great time during this awesome and peaceful part of the year. Let us step into the New Year ready for any big, heavy, and oversized cargoes that may come our way. Happy New Year!

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a Steam Awards Finalist!

We have heard from the kind people at Valve that Euro Truck Simulator 2 has been selected as a finalist for the 2016 Steam Awards. This is a nomination by gaming community at large, with 15 million votes coming through to suggest people's favorite games. We are humbled, even more so for actually being nominated in two categories. Here is Valve's news announcement.

We know that we owe this honor to the very active and vocal truck sim fan community.

No matter which game is going to win in the respective categories eventually, this is a very strong message for us. Truck sims are relevant, they are an important part of life for many fans. This gives us more confidence to push harder, hire yet more developers, look into more features and content to add that could make our games yet better. Thank you!

Steam has already set the rules for the final voting. If you would like to support Euro Truck Simulator 2, we invite you to mark the 23rd and 30th of December in your calendar. Each day, Steam will open the voting in the various categories at 10 am PST. With your help, we may be able to send an even stronger signal to gamers across the world, letting everybody know that truck sims are worth their attention.

Grand Gift Delivery 2016

Dear Truckers, today we are coming to you with something special and really important. We have received an urgent letter from Santa Claus himself, and oh dear it contained nothing good. In fact, this year's Christmas is in grave danger.

Somehow, a pair of really bad, malicious, and spiteful Christmas spirits escaped from Santa’s magical leashes, and now they are nowhere to be found. Various national legends call them different names – Grinch, Jólakötturinn a.k.a. the Christmas Cat, Hans Trapp, Belsnickel, Père Fouettard, Krampus or Grýla. Reports from around the globe suggest that this time, they’ve taken on the form of two dragons, and that they have already started doing their usual mischiefs. Unfortunately, Santa Claus is the only one wielding the power to put them on a leash again. But Santa is supposed to be loading his sleigh at this very moment with his magical cargo, he certainly does not have any time now for tracking and catching these spirits!

Unless... we all lend our helping hand!

It is up to us, dear fellow truckers. If there is anybody qualified to help with this long haul gift logistics business, it's us! Our help can provide Santa with much needed relief to hunt these “dragons” down. Will you help us save Christmas?

Together, we will prevail. And there is something to look forward to as well! Our reward will be more than just feeling proud about saving Xmas. Santa himself has promised to return the favor. Once the dragons are in chains again, he will offer to permanently decorate our mighty diesel beauties with the touch of these dragon forms.

Here come the rules of this Christmas Event:

Deliver gifts from World Of Trucks Job Offers (External Contracts) to at least 10 DIFFERENT cities across European or American continents. Log in to your World of Trucks account to begin. Event will end in the beginning of 2017.

Reward: 
Event-exclusive Dragon Truck Design DLC Steam keys, one for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and one for American Truck Simulator, plus a special World of Trucks achievement.

Euro Truck Simulator 2:

• 2 Exclusive Paintjobs
• Front Wheel Hub Cover
• Rear Wheel Hub Cover
• Exclusive Dragon Designed Interior Backlight

American Truck Simulator:

• 2 Exclusive Paintjobs
• Front Wheel Hub Cover
• Rear Wheel Hub Cover
• Exclusive Steering Wheel

Game updates 1.26.3 for ETS2 and 1.5.2 for ATS is required for participating in the event.

You will not be able to buy this DLC, it has to be earned!

Everyone who passes the requirements will get keys of this DLC for both games, even if you don't have one of these games yet.

Please, put on your warmest coat, grab some hot chocolate or coffee, and start your engine. We have some work to do!

Trucking Christmas

It's Christmas time again, and everything around us is being tuned and decorated in colors and motifs related to this special part of the year. Players of Euro Truck Simulator 2 may remember us creating a Christmas-themed paint set last year already, and we have been hearing requests from American Truck Simulator fans that they would like to have a chance to tune their trucks for Xmas, too. So today we are bringing you the American Truck Simulator Christmas Paint Job Pack, containing five exclusive paints for your metal beasts. Here is a few sample screenshots:

While creating the new ATS paints, we decided that even ETS2 set could benefit from additional variety. So we have also silently expanded the Euro Truck Simulator 2 Christmas Paintjobs Pack with two new truck liveries as well. If you already own this DLC, it has been automatically updated with the new paints.

Now it's up to you, do you want to let the world around recognize your Christmas spirit wherever the roads may take you?

ATS World Rescale is released in Update 1.5!

We are happy to announce that our work on the rescale of American Truck Simulator world is finished! Looking back, we see thousands of hours that we have invested into this project over the last six months. Our efforts have produced a result which we’re very proud of; the reworked road network is much closer to reality. We've made another big step on our quest to show the United States as they really are, as they can be seen by truck drivers in real life.

In recent months, we have kept you updated about the rescale project of the American Truck Simulator world from 1:35 to 1:20. The changes are quite extensive, with the different world scale comes also a longer day-night cycle and rebalancing of the economy, so the gaming experience is changing way more than would be expected through "mere patch" of an existing game. If you want a small refresher on the changes, we are linking the relevant blog topics below:

The Rescale – basic pillars of the project and the reasons for its creation

American Truck Simulator Rescale Screenshots – screenshots from rescale project

American Truck Simulator Rescale Screenshots #2 – the second series of screenshots

ATS World Rescale Open Beta – notes for open beta 1.5 update and main features

Rescaled map main features:

• Scale 1:35 → 1:20 – 1,75x larger map
  
• Hundreds of miles of new longer roads
  
• A new city - Santa Maria
  
• Completely reworked city – Oxnard
  
• Reworked roadsystem topology:
  
  • New Interstate I-580 and I-80 connections
    
  • I-5 near LA topology corrected
    
  • I-5 Redding topology corrected
    
  • New stretch of CA-101
    
• Correct interstate junctions - no more same level crossing, freeways exiting on itself, etc
• 28 reworked or new junctions - most notably - Reno, San Francisco, San Diego, L.A.
  
• 6 new custom rest areas – truckstops
  
• More accurate height profiles - new steeper climbs and descends
  
• Famous recognizable landscape landmarks: Donner pass, Grapevine, Kumeyaay highway, Picachio peak, Humphreys peak, Cajon pass

ATS 1.5 patchnotes

Main features

• Map rebuilt in 1:20 scale
• Upgrade Shop and Truck Browser Search Tool
• New chassis options (6x2 & 6x2 Midlift)

Game

• Adjustable interior FOV per truck
• Weigh station UI behavior made more real
• Truck repair/refuel performed by hired driver cost money, included in logs
• Added informational dialog showing when game detects upgrade or downgrade
• Added pounds + short tonnes as weight unit option
• Add possibility to buy driver and co-driver plate in truck dealer
• Online job offer: Replaced refresh button with browse jobs
• Better trailer air pressure simulation
• Low air warning should only be active with running engine
• Parking brake mechanical safeguard on low air added
• Revised rolling resistance computations
• Hired driver use same math for eco skill as player
• Added selector modes to shift layout, correct detection of split shifts (advanced mode)
• Adaptive shifting logic improved
• Mod manager: Added link to load game screen in case game crashed and user has at least one mod activated
• Mod manager: Added possibility of setting profile by name and by user profile pointer
• Mod manager: Added dlc dependency list to mod manifest
• Prevent to AI trucks disappearing in players view
• Tweaked traffic spawn frequencies

MOD

• Changed map parameters (climate_profile, map_data)
• Moddable interior camera zoom parameters. (speed, factor)
• 1 degree rotation on Ctrl + R, 90 degree rotation on Home
• Merged editable sign and sign dialog
• Refresh sign template and its model from content browser
• Added letter-spacing to sign editor
• Store content browser navigation history
• Support for day/nigh effect switching and child hookups for lod_model_hookup_u
• Undo of veg sphere manipulation

Belgian Paintjobs: The Value Of Feedback

About a week ago, we released a new truck paint job set with Belgium-themed liveries. The goal is always to make the players from a particular country happy with each paint job pack added, but this time we have realized quickly that we had not done our research properly. Our choice of stylized Belgian Lion wasn't a particularly good one, and on top of it about half of Belgian players who have bought the new DLC felt that they were not properly represented there.

With this community feedback in hand, we have decided that we can mend things so that both major ethnicity groups of Belgium can be happier. Please welcome the reworked Flemish Lion and the newly added Walloon Rooster:

The reworked paintjob pack will be automatically downloaded through Steam. 

SCS On The Road: Transport Expo 2016

At the end of November, SCS Software was showing our games at Transport Expo 2016, a new transportation show in Prague. This is not a gaming show, it's all about real trucks and trailers, about commercial vehicles, mechanics, machines and systems related to them. But we didn't feel like we were out of place there with our games. It was also another learning exprerience for us, as we are considering exhibiting our games at more venues in the future. We feel that it is really helpful for improving the dialogue with the transportation industry.

We were equipped with a 3-screen demo station with a steering wheel, h-shifter and pedals, and another demo computer was sporting Oculus Rift. We gave visitors a peek at American Truck Simulator and also the "Vive la France !" expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2.

While we've been expecting less gaming-tuned audience, especially the mornings on all three days surprised us a little bit because there were vocational schools and high schools visiting the expo from different corners of the country. And as you can imagine, most of this younger crowd was interested way more in our booth with flashy screens and cool VR than in the real vehicles, no matter how shiny they were! But in the afternoons we've greeted visitors from the more mature serious industry audience, too. And as always, we had a great time with our fans as well as with people who never heard about our games until now, but were really curious about them.

We would like to thank everyone who stopped by our booth, tried our games and chatted with the SCS Software crew. We've gathered some valuable experiences and contacts which may lead to some form of cooperation in the future.

If you want to know on which public events we plan to participate, please follow our social media channels like the Instagram or Twitter profiles.

"Vive la France !" Available Now!

We are proud to announce that the Vive la France ! map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now available for purchase and activation!

You are invited to check out Vive la France ! Steam Store page.

Make your way through broad boulevards of industrial cities and narrow streets of rural hamlets. Enjoy the French outdoors with its diverse looks and disparate vegetation from north to south. Discover famous landmarks, deliver to expansive industrial areas, navigate complex intersections and interchanges, enjoy visually unique roundabouts inspired by real locations. Transport a variety of new cargo to service new local French companies as well as connecting the region to the rest of Europe.

Main features

• Extensive map of France to explore
• 20,000 km of new roads and highways
• Famous landmarks, recognizable places
• 15 new cities
• Rural French villages and sceneries
• Enhanced vegetation with dense forests along to roads
• New local companies to work for
• French tollgate system
• New industries including 5 nuclear plant zones
• New cargoes to haul

Vive la France ! YouTube Trailer

Useful links

• Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Vive la France ! Steam store page
• Vive la France ! press kit
• Euro Truck Simulator 2 Steam store page

We hope that you will have a great time exploring the new part of the universe of our truck simulator games!

First Vive la France ! Community Videos

Only three days are left until Monday December 5th. That's when the new map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 Vive la France ! is going to be released after well over a year of hard work of our ETS2 design team.

We are very excited by the reactions from people who have reviewed the DLC or had access to it as part of closed beta test. We have already started sending out press keys to media, so reviews, videos, and streams are now popping up online. There will surely be more of them over the weekend. A few of our friends helping us with beta testing have also contributed with their own opinion on what a launch trailer should look like, or started showing extensive gameplay videos.

If you are curious what to expect with "Vive la France !" this post is going to collect what we have found on YouTube so far...

New paint job packs for Finland and Belgium

We are continuing our effort to expand the range of national motifs for the Euro Truck Simulator 2 trucks with two more paint job sets. This time we went on a trip to Finland and Belgium. We hope that especially the players from these two countries will enjoy our creative design of these two new Euro Truck Simulator 2 DLCs: Finnish Paint Job Pack and Belgian Paint Job Pack.

ETS2 Update 1.26 Is Now Live!

We would like to sincerely thank the fan community for the awesome feedback on Open Beta of Euro Truck Simulator 2 version 1.26. We have received a lot of valuable input on the new content and tons of reports for little things that we would have almost missed but that were fixed thanks to you.

We are now ready to make the 1.26 Update live for everyone.

The game will actually update itself automatically on Steam. The legacy non-Steam edition of the game will have the update ready for download in a couple of days.

If you participated in the Open Beta on Steam, please don't forget to switch back to the non-beta branch in ETS2 properties.

We have already covered the changes and improvements coming with this update extensively, in the post annoucing the Open Beta, but let's review them again so that you have all the news in one scoop.

Older Parts of France Reworked

The main star of this map refresh is the city of Paris, which actually has been completely rebuilt to make it way more elaborate than before! We have re-touched the existing region of northern France in the base game. It's not a total rework from scratch, but we believe that you will appreciate some very visible changes in the world; new models, new intersections and use of higher resolution textures in many places.

New Transmissions for all Trucks

We have adjusted and added some new options for the transmissions of all the trucks tractors in the game, so now there are more options to choose - from the standard or overdrive style of transmissions or even the Allison 4500. We hope that especially the players who care for more choices and precision of the vehicle simulation will appreciate the new adjustment, now there are new opportunities to play with the ratio between engine and wheels.

Upgrade Shop & Truck Browser Search Tool

A new search line was added into the game's upgrade shop and truck browser screens, so now you will be able to look up for example a specific paintjob or a particular engine upgrade. This new feature will come handy if you own a lot of our minor DLCs or if you happen to have lots of truck tuning mods installed.

Game Changes

• Adjustable interior FOV per truck
• Added parking difficulty (preset option included)
• Truck repair/refuel performed by hired driver costs money, included in logs
• Added informational dialog showing when game detects upgrade or downgrade
• Added pounds + short tonnes as weight unit option
• Better trailer air pressure simulation
• Low air warning should only be active with running engine
• Revised rolling resistance computations
• Hired driver use the very same formulas for eco skill as the player

Info for Modders

• Changed map parameters (climate_profile, map_data)
• Moddable interior camera zoom parameters. (speed, factor)
• 1 degree rotation on Ctrl + R, 90 degree rotation on Home
• Merged editable sign and sign dialog
• Refresh sign template and its model from content browser
• Added letter-spacing to sign editor
• Store content browser navigation history
• Support for day/nigh effect switching and child hookups for lod_model_hookup_u

You can follow this link to see the whole changelog of this update. Please also check out our modding wiki to get the best advice for modding the game.

Vive La France ! Map Expansion Next Week

We're ready to let everyone know when you will be able to hop into your trucks and start exploring the roads of beautiful France!

"Vive La France !" map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is going to be released December 5, 2016. To be more specific, we are aiming at 4 pm Prague time (GMT+1) on Monday, that's when the activation keys should be enabled and the DLC will be ready for download and purchase.

We are going to price it the same as Scandinavia map add-on on the channels that are under our control (like Steam - here is the "Vive la France !" coming soon page). There may be small price and timing differences on local markets, in retail, or at places like Amazon, where we do not have the power to enforce strict pricing policy.

Everything is happening very quickly, we were still not sure about the final date a week ago, as we have been thoroughly testing and polishing the DLC pretty much until today. Now we want to give you a chance to play the expanded game as soon as possible. A week of preparations is sufficient to arrange the release on digital channels, but our retail publishing partners will be struggling with manufacturing deadlines, so some sales channels may take longer to stock the add-on.

The Roads of Vive la France !

Next week, we will make an anouncement regarding Vive la France! DLC which we believe will make Euro Truck Simulator 2 fans very happy. Until then, we have a picture to tease you with! :) It may actually answer some of the questions that we get bombarded with...

ATS World Rescale Open Beta

We are ready to show you our progress at the American Truck Simulator map rescale project!

Some places could still benefit from additional love, but the pieces of the puzzle are already in place, and now we would appreciate your feedback. Please keep in mind that our goal was not to completely rebuild the whole world, so set your expectations accordingly. Changing the scale from 1:35 into 1:20 gave us a lot more room for better placement of intersections and interchanges, and a chance to introduce some roads and places for which there was not enough space in the old map. But we've kept in place the parts that were working as expected in our view, so of course you will still recognize most of the destinations.

So, what to expect of the (Open Beta of) ATS version 1.5?

Scale

It's bigger! You will understand it once you start the game.

New chassis options (6x2 & 6x2 Midlift)

There is an option now to choose 6x2 chassis or 6x2 chassis with lift-able axles (lifted axles avoid unnecessary tire wear when the weight distribution stays within legal limits).

Weight stations

We have improved how they operate to better reflect reality. A message will always pop up before you apporach a weight station telling you if you can bypass it (green light) or you have to go get checked (red light).

Parking brake behaviour

Thanks to pneumatic safeguard you have to manually disengage parking brake if you had low air pressure previously.

Map projection

We are now using Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC) instead of Mercator projection so it will more accurately show the area and shape of each state as you are used to from any other source.

(Apart from these four new crucial changes, any new features recently introduced to ETS2 Open Beta are present in the new update of ATS too)

Anyway, time to get behind the wheel and see for yourself! There are so many miles waiting out there for you to explore and enjoy - like steep hill climbs to familiar places (or brake-busting downhills!), a new city and yet more. 

As with any open beta we are looking forward to hearing feedback from our players! Please visit our forum where you can find and participate in relevant discusions under topics like SCS Site discussion and American Truck Simulator Section.

How to access the Open Beta? In the public_beta branch on Steam! (Steam client → LIBRARY → right click on American Truck Simulator → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta - 1.5 public beta). No password is required. Please note that this version of the game is only intended for testing, it may contain bugs. It's perfectly fine to wait for the official update of the game!

Blender Tools Update

It always makes us feel both proud and humbled when we see that there are so many brave souls out there creating mods for our games. We may not be able to monitor everything that is happening in the modding community, but we have seen a lot of incredible mods over the years.

Most mods require tons of time and hard work to create, and after that, yet more attention and patience is needed to maintain them so that they are compatible with new updates of our games. We keep trying to improve the tools available to modders, and today's topic is about another step in this direction. A new improved version of SCS Blender Tool has just been released. (If you are wondering what this is all about, here is an earlier post about how it all started.)

We've created a short video overview showing some of the changes and new additions in this update:

We've also prepared a more extensive change-log for those who appreciate more detailed knowledge of the changes:

• Added support for one-click setup of environment lighting loaded from sun profiles SII file (eg. /def/climate/default/nice.sii). This enables the best possible preview of a model in game like environment.
• Asynchronous paths initialization on startup, resulting in faster Blender startup and faster blend files opening
• User option to load all libraries and resources from sibling "base" directories also (by default off)
• Ability to reload library on the fly beside the setting where it is used (eg. Hookup Lib can be reloaded in Model Locator Settings)
• Improved material flavors behavior, with implementation of filter for non existing effects combinations (prevents user to create non existing effect)
• Added support for creation of SCS Locators and SCS Root via standard Blender add menu (menu accessible via Shift+A in 3D viewport)
• Normal maps properly visualized in 3D view even if active UV layer on object is not the one used for normal maps calculation.
• Reloading shader presets only when cache is out-dated (again speed-up of opening blend files)
• Updated Prefab Locators flags:
   - added Map Point split lanes setups,
   - added Weight Station CAT Spawn Point type,
   - added Traffic Semaphores types: Traffic Light (virtual), Barrier - Automatic.
• Improvements & Fixes:
    - fixed unpropper UI snapping of TOBJ settings,
    - ensuring same order of bone channels in PIA export (useful when working with VCS),
    - negative add ambient material values supported in export and also visualized in Blender 3D
       viewport (more info here),
    - properly reported python error on screen and in BT log while importing/exporting
    - rejecting wrongly named SCS Root Object on export (more info here),
    - reporting missing UV layer used for normal maps on export,
    - reporting multiple animations with same name overwriting each other on export,
    - properly handling none existing UV mappings aliases on import (most properly produced with ConverterPIX),
    - fixed Blender crash if rapidly enabling/disabling SCS Blender Tools add-on,
    - fixed error on import if no 3D viewport is found or active object is on currently hidden layer      in scene.

Open Beta for ETS 2 Update 1.26

The next major update for Euro Truck Simulator 2 will pave the way for the release of Vive la France! DLC. The plan is to get the new official game update out simultaneously with the new map expansion.

After internal testing and several iterations in closed beta, we now feel good about where we are. There are still some minor issues to fix and and an extra round of polish to apply in the next few weeks, but we are not aware of any critical or show-stopping issues anymore. But we would like to be sure, and that's what our Open Betas are for!

The tentative changelog for the 1.26 Update can be found below, but first we would like to point out the main features, game changes and general adjustments that are a part of this upcoming game update.

Older Parts of France Reworked

The newly-built regions of France that make up the Vive La France! DLC look gorgeous, and this inspired us to also refresh the regions that were already present in the game from the very start. In the picture above, you can see the area of France which we have retouched - the area that you will already be able to experience in this Open Beta of course. It's not a total rework from scratch, but we believe that you will appreciate some very visible changes in the world; new models, new intersections and use of higher resolution textures in many places.

The main star of this map refresh is the city of Paris, which actually has been completely rebuilt to make it way more elaborate than before!

New Transmissions for all trucks

We have adjusted and added some new options for the transmissions of all the trucks tractors in the game, so now there are more options to choose - from the standard or overdrive style of transmissions or even the Allison 4500. We hope that especially the players who care for more choices and precision of the vehicle simulation will appreciate the new adjustment, now there are new opportunities to play with the ratio between engine and wheels.

Upgrade Shop & Truck Browser Search Tool

A new search line was added into the game's upgrade shop and truck browser screens, so now you will be able to look up for example a specific paintjob or a particular engine upgrade. This new feature will come handy if you own a lot of our minor DLCs or if you happen to have lots of truck tuning mods installed.


A list of features coming with 1.26 Update for ETS2:

MAIN FEATURES

•  Old Parts of France Were Reworked
•  New Transmissions for All Trucks
•  Upgrade Shop & Truck Browser Search Tool

GAME

• Adjustable interior FOV per truck
• Added parking difficulty (preset option included)
• Truck repair/refuel performed by hired driver costs money, included in logs
• Added informational dialog showing when game detects upgrade or downgrade
• Added pounds + short tonnes as weight unit option
• Better trailer air pressure simulation
• Low air warning should only be active with running engine
• Revised rolling resistance computations
• Hired driver use the very same formulas for eco skill as the player

MODDERS

• Changed map parameters (climate_profile, map_data)
• Moddable interior camera zoom parameters. (speed, factor)
• 1 degree rotation on Ctrl + R, 90 degree rotation on Home
• Merged editable sign and sign dialog
• Refresh sign template and its model from content browser
• Added letter-spacing to sign editor
• Store content browser navigation history
• Support for day/nigh effect switching and child hookups for lod_model_hookup_u

You can follow this link to see the whole changelog of this update. Please also check out our modding wiki to get the best advice for modding the game.

If you're so inclined you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. (Steam client → LIBRARY → right click on Euro Truck Simulator 2 → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta - 1.26  public beta). No password is required.

Just like with the previous Open Beta releases - please keep in mind that this is still only a test version of the update: it's perfectly okay if you want to hold off until the final release. But if you're the adventurous sort that doesn't mind a little instability and/or are an active member of the community who wants to assist us in the finalization of the new game version with your feedback, we really appreciate your help. Please report any bugs you find on our forum. Coming soon - Open Beta for the new update of American Truck Simulator!

SCS on the Game Developers Session 2016

Last week, our company participated on Game Developers Session 2016. This is a local game developer scene event similar to GDC, with two days of presentations and a small expo area to show the games. It's a chance for companies in the Czech Republic and in Central Europe to discuss their projects and visions with fellow colleagues from other game dev companies and also to interact with people who want to break into games industry.

We were demonstrating our games there too, to get peer feedback on our tech as well us on upcoming stuff for both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator.

Our colleague Hynek was one of the presenters with a speech explaining the steps of adding a new truck to the game, all the way from licensing issues through technical details of production and into final approval step. The organizers had a pro camera crew on the spot, so hopefully we will be able to let you see it when it's processed and placed on YouTube eventually.

It was an awesome experience for our team. We were presenting our stuff on two demo stations, one with an Oculus Rift virtual reality system and the other with a three-display setup along with a steering wheel, pedals, and h-shifter. Our goal was to let the visitors try out both of these setups freely as they wanted and to gather feedback, comparing impressions and preferences from the VR vs. 3-screen system.

 

We have experienced a lot of very cool moments. The visitors were really kind to our stand and team, and even if some of them may have never heard about our games, they quickly found out that truck simulators can be really addictive and fun to play. It was also really exciting to meet several hardcore fans of our games on an event aimed squarely at gaming industry professionals!

We would like to thank all Game Developers Session 2016 visitors who came to our booth for all their feedback and kind words about our games. Also big thanks to the organizers of this gaming exposition - great job!

And for everyone who would like to be in touch with us right when we are sharing some pictures and info from the events like this, please follow our Instagram or Twitter profile.

Peterbilt 389

Have you guessed it? Of course you have!

But let's start with a little teaser. The rescale of the American Truck Simulator world is looking great, and it won't take long before you can see it for yourselves. I suggest you get comfortable with what we have for you today so you're ready for the updated map. Because believe me, with the bigger map you'll need a comfortable ride to get across it without developing serious back pain. ;)

Speaking of a comfortable ride, I have good news for you! At last there's a new addition to the ATS family of trucks! The title of this post already gave it away - but finally our rendition of Pete 389 is coming to American Truck Simulator.

A little disclaimer: the new truck is making it's appearance in the game today, with features as of ATS version 1.4. The video is actually revealing certain features and content that will only be available in the next major update of the game, so you can see that there's more to look forward to!

Recent trends in truck design strongly favor streamlined aerodynamic cab shapes, but with 389, we are talking about tradition; a real road legend here. For decades, long nosed trucks have been the very definition of an "American truck." Conventional cab with tons of chrome, big wheels, prominent exhaust pipes, bold box-like shapes... this beast makes it clear that it's about strength and endurance, a pure expression of free spirit on the road.

And you, our dear player, can now drive it at last! Go ahead - reap the rewards of your patience and update the game! We've worked hard to bring this beauty to you based on reference photos, scans, and sounds recordings that we took on our trip to the PACCAR Technical Center earlier this year.

To make things super clear, this game update is free of course!

We thought that at least some of you may appreciate a little walk down history lane, so let us tell you a bit more about this great piece of engineering and human ingenuity.

Peterbilt 389 is a successor to Peterbilt 379, manufactured until 2007. Peterbilt 379 in turn replaced the iconic 359 in 1987. Peterbilt 359 one was first wide nosed big rig for Peterbilt, produced since 1967, and achieved extreme popularity. This tradition is still very much alive - while new trucks in the 3x9 line have introduced major technical improvements under the hood and greatly enhanced performance, truckers' aesthetic preferences have not changed as much. It's outward appearance is still mostly the same after almost five decades on the road! An interesting little fact about the new 389 is that it has the longest nose of all Peterbilt trucks ever. It is 131 inches (332,74 cm) long! One hell of a nose if you ask me! But surely an experienced truck driver will not have any problems maneuvering the vehicle through the challenges waiting for you in American Truck Simulator!

SCS on Instagram

Starting today we are joining another popular social site / sharing application in addition to our current social channels like this Blog, our Facebook, Youtube and Twitter channels. We have heard repeatedly from some of our fans and even from our industrial partners that Instagram is their prefered choice when seeking or publishing pictures. We do not want to neglect this segment of our fanbase or possibly miss out on the opportunities for new people to discover our games.

While we are online on our Facebook pages nearly every single day, posting frequently on Twitter, trying to inform all of you about everything important via our blogposts and Steam community pages, we would like to do more to keep in touch with our awesome community. And that's why we are going to become a part of the wide Instagram family, too. We believe that Instagram will prove to be a great platform for us when we would like to publish some pictures right from a public event, or some quick, hot and first-handed screenshots or videos related to our games. We will be happy if you follow us on the Instagram at this profile.

Let's kick it off with a little teaser! :) There is something interesting in the first post on our Instagram profile. What's there hiding under the cover of the night? Check it out, maybe you will recognize a new addition to American Truck Simulator which is finally very close to being added to the game. But anyway don't worry, it will be fully revealed with deciated blogpost later this week.

Finally a little SCS Software social media reminder: if you are not following our Facebook pages yet, you can give us a like and follow there. We have a central SCS Software company page and dedicated pages also for our games Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. If you are more into Twitter or Youtube, you can of course follow us there as well.

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!