Trade Connections - France

We would like to invite you to a new World of Trucks event.

The grand vision of World of Trucks has been keeping a dedicated team of senior designers and programmers at SCS Software fully busy for several years already, and there is still a ton of work ahead of them until they are ready to unveil the next major phase of it. Fortunately, there are smaller milestones along the way that will allow us to bring something new for you, and one of them is better support for "meta game" events. Automating more of the event infrastructure means that we can organize more events per year, and with freshly introduced support for Steam Inventory, there is also a better way to give cool little rewards to successful participants. We used to depend on the somewhat clumsy system of redeemable Steam Keys and heavy DLCs, but now with Steam Inventory drops, we can work with individual pieces of content.

To promote our "Vive la France !" map expansion, our first event of this new type is centered on the new game region. 

Help us strengthen the economic relations of France with the rest of Europe! Kick the economy to a higher gear, and establish new Trade Connections!

It's surely going to be a ton of work, but we have a special reward for everyone ready to help. Can we count on you?

Now straight to the rules of this event:

To get the reward for this event, your goal is to complete a delivery of any cargo to or from France with at least 10 other countries in Europe. The event will last for a whole month, giving you plenty of time to complete it until October 1.

We are introducing a new feature to World of Trucks called the 'Log Book' - it will allow you to check on your past transportation jobs. Refer to it to check on your progress in the event.

If you'll pass this requirement, you will get a special reward, which includes:

- 'Heart of France' - an interior copper statue decoration inspired by France's iconic landmark

Plus a random drop reward:

- 3 random country pennants to further customize your truck interior

As we are taking advantage of Steam's very own Inventory infrastructure, there are a couple of features that come along with it. The individual items can be traded or even sold through Steam, which may create interesting interactions. Just remember that if you get rid of a particular Inventory item, you will no longer be able to see it in the game's Upgrade Shop and equip your truck with it.

An exciting week for SCS Software

This post is quite special for us. It's the first post written from our new office - the new place from where our company will work, from where our teams of designers will create new content for our games, our programmers will code and bring new features to life, from where anything related to SCS Software will happen.

While we were very happy at our previous office in the center of Prague, it wouldn't work for us anymore. It has become urgent for us already to move on, to be able to keep on growing our current team so that we can increase the pace of progress on our games.

Moving a company is no easy task, but we managed it over the weekend, and the design and programming teams are already back at work as of Monday afternoon.

In the mean time, a sizable part of the company, our 'On The Road' crew, was facing a very different challenge. Last week, there were two important events taking place at different locations, and we wanted to be at both places at the same time!

At the beginning of this year, we made a commitment to come closer to our fans at public events, both game industry expos and transportation industry shows. Our "sim trailer" was born to travel the world, but now we would need it at two locations.

We decided to split up and formed two groups. One party headed to Gamescom 2017, the biggest games industry show of Europe, taking place in Cologne, Germany. This larger crew could enjoy the advantage and comfort of having our sim trailer with us there. The other team set off to the FIA ETRC racing event at the Hungaroring, having to deal with somewhat more improvised set up with a spare motion seat sitting inside a regular container box.  Both teams have come back quite exhausted (the weather was really hot in central Europe last week), but they report that they've had really fantastic time and met a lot of awesome people at these events, participating in a lot of inspiring discussions.

Both teams also experienced something unique and special. At Gamescom, thanks to the FIA ETRC organizers and Team Lenz, we had one of the racing trucks parked just next to our special trailer. Any visitor was able to hop in, take a picture and feel like a race truck driver for a moment. The roar of its engine can really shock some people! At the Hungaroring racing event, we've been allowed to participate in the festive & honor ride through the city of Budapest, which was a really cool experience.

If you are following our Twitter and Instagram profiles, you were able to see a ton of our posts and tweets with photos from both events. Our work on the games has not stopped of course, and very soon we'll be returning to regular programming to show you cool new stuff coming to American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2. We consider our trips to show our games to the world at large very important, and we honestly enjoy meeting our fantastic fans, and introducing our game to the fans of trucks in general. It makes us feel proud of our achievements and eager for more.

SCS Software's 'On the Road' crew will recharge their batteries and get on the way again, as the next round of European Truck Racing Championship is almost here. The next race takes place in the city of Most, Czech Republic, the homeland of our company! Great attendance is expected, and we hope that a lot of fans of our games will show up, too. If you live within reasonable driving distance, we'd like to invite you to see us at Most race circuit during the weekend of September 2-3. Come to try out our motion seat simulators, talk to the developers on the team, and enjoy the truck race!

DAF Tuning Pack

As we are touring the various truck fests and transportation industry shows, we are gathering a wealth of material as inspiration for aftermarket tuning options for various trucks. We would like to reflect this real world phenomenon in our games, as we believe that it is also close to the heart of many players.

You have probably noticed that with Update 1.28 for Euro Truck Simulator 2 we have refreshed our  DAF XF 105 and DAF XF Euro 6 in-game models, adding an extra layer of polish to them.

Now we are ready to bring even more joy for the fans of DAF trucks - we are releasing a new content module for Euro Truck Simulator 2 - DAF Tuning Pack DLC, to Steam Store today. There are over 70 new customization options included in this pack, going from the bottom to the top of your truck.

Time to start to thinking which parts you'll tune up first! Mud flaps, hub covers, side-skirts, lower grille guards, bull bars, front masks, logos, stone-guards, windshield frames, sun-shields, front fenders, door trims, window trims, door handles, special rear exhausts... And that's not all, because the cabin interior got some special attention too! You'll be able to customize the view from your DAFs with some new toys like window curtain, caps, cups, emblems or light boards!

ETS2 and ATS update 1.28 has arrived!

We want to thank everyone who participated in the open betas for their feedback. We are truly grateful for your time and dedication.

After several weeks of thorough testing and bug fixing, the open beta is finally over today, and we are here to release live 1.28 update for everyone. Thank you for your patience, we hope that you will enjoy this update as much as the previous ones. 

Here is the list of major changes and added features in this update:

MAIN FEATURES

• Doubles

We introduced doubles in this update into Euro Truck Simulator 2 across Scandinavia where they are allowed and doubles into American Truck Simulator with the addition of triples and Rocky Mountain doubles in the state of Nevada where they are legal.

• Background screen options

This feature, admittedly mostly cosmetic, is a neat break of monotony when coming back to the game's main menu. As the options for alternate background scenes will grow over time, there will be more choice for you to picking a unique atmosphere that matches your style.

• Changed light look on the player and AI vehicles

Light flares are a great change that sharpened the game's look quite a bit, as such, they have earned their own dedicated blog post.

• DAF XF 2017 Facelift

We have added facelifted version of DAF XF Euro 6 as a free update for everyone!

MINOR CHANGES

• Auxiliary brakes system support (engine brake and retarder in one control element)
• Fixed licence plate change in states/countries where no city formats exist
• Fixed brake vs parking brake behavior
• Fixed tire noise of silent tires
• Retarder improvement (better cruise control behavior, no braking with throttle, icon when moving only)
• Steam Inventory support to allow for distributing rewards from upcoming World of Trucks events
• Added three more steering wheel designs into Steering Creations DLC

Your games will be automatically updated on Steam (make sure to opt OUT of beta branches now!). For the legacy non-Steam edition of ETS2, an update should be ready in a few days. Enjoy!

Related:

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Open Beta ver 1.28

American Truck Simulator 1.28 Open Beta

Bella Italia

We are proud to announce the "Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Italia" map expansion. Our ETS2 map design team is working on it with maximum effort, and we are looking forward to bringing you our rendition of beautiful Italy with its rich history and modern industry.

You are most likely aware that the game already contains several cities from northern Italy. These areas of the game world will receive an extra layer of polish to coincide with the DLC release so even players who decide to wait with the purchase of the new DLC will benefit from a partial upgrade of the game map.

Our map designers have fallen in love with the new region right from the research stages - there are so many diverse environments to combine! From tall mountains to the shores of the seas, from manicured farmland to wilder and more arid places, it was clear that we are looking at quite a challenging and demanding task. We tried our best to depict the typical features of Italy from behind the wheel, like roads leading through the Apennines, where tunnels and bridges alternate with scenic vistas and curvy segments, opening the view to distant horizons. The geography and shape of Italy have also led to a relatively high concentration of cities and industries in the new DLC.

If everything goes according to the plan, we expect to release this latest Euro Truck Simulator 2 map expansion towards the end of this year. We hope that you will be as excited about our work as we are, and appreciate our efforts to show Italy for what it is: Bella Italia!

New Mexico: Musical Road

Rumble strips, also known as sleeper lines, or alert strips, are a very smart invention that is definitely saving lives. For some people though, this is not enough. At various highways around the world, in places as diverse as Denmark, South Korea, or Japan, creative minds have altered the frequency of the grooves to produce actual melodies when a wheel is in contact with the rumble stripe. If you keep the correct speed, you will hear a real melody from your tires.

One of such Musical Roads is located on Route 66 between Albuquerque and Tijeras. While maintaining 45 mph speed, you'll hear "America's Beautiful" melody.

We thought that it would be fun to feature this section of the road in American Truck Simulator. After a short research and experimenting with frequencies and musical scales, we have succeeded in realizing this peculiarity. Check out the enclosed video, you can see and hear that this effect is working now in our prototype. It should become a part of the upcoming New Mexico map expansion.

The Musical Road is an all new little feature, the preview you are seeing/hearing may not be the final state. Development is still ongoing and will be subject to extended testing.

Articles related to New Mexico:
New Prefabs
Places to Rest and Refuel
The Land of Enchantment
Roswell

Unknown video footage

Here is a mysterious video hinting at what some of our developers have been working on for the past six months. Our faithful fans will surely know very quickly what's going on here! ;)

SCS On The Road: Gamescom and Hungaroring!

Why do we bother? We have heard from some of you; questioning our effort to actively promote our games and SCS Software at public events. With so much work ahead of us to improve the games, why lose time and money traveling to distant places? Everybody should sit at their computer and work round the clock on the software, shouldn't they?

There are in fact multiple reasons for us to try to be more visible. It is of course very important for game companies to be in touch with their fan base. With our "sim container," we are going to have an easy time visiting various game expos - just drive the truck to the location, and deploy it with a single push of a button (or so the theory goes). There will be ample opportunities for you to meet us. It's really not just about us doing PR to push our games to the crowd, it is more about meeting our passionate fans and hearing their opinions and suggestions.

But there is more - we also plan to attend the various transportation industry events, to raise our profile within the industry. Our games would definitely benefit if we can improve our ties to the industry in general. The quality of our work would go up with input and feedback from the companies and the pros. We also hope that the situation with brand licenses may improve with better visibility to transportation industry senior managers. As you are aware, it's not going all so smoothly in this regard.

We trust that you can view our activity with the sim container though this optics - it's not delaying the work of the core teams working on the games. On the contrary, it should be providing them with feedback and inspiration, and hopefully also with networking leads and contacts to improve our business relations.

Let us look back a little bit to the most recent event when our small 'On The Road' crew has visited the FIA ETRC racing event at Slovakia Ring. We are still in the learning phase, the trailer with the 4D motion seats was in fact not yet fully completed, but it was such an exciting time, both for us and the visitors! Maybe you have followed us in real time on our Twitter or Instagram profiles, here is a gallery of photos we've taken during this field trip.

Thanks to the FIA ETRC organizers, we had a really great location in the Fan Village at this event and we enjoyed every moment of our time there. We've been having crowds of people interested in our games and simulation seats for the whole weekend - there were lines since early morning till the evening hours and it was simply amazing!

It was the first event where we used this new pet of ours - a refurbished shipping container converted into a fantastic demo trailer. While it wasn't in its supposed final look - in fact, we still had to put some work into it after its arrival - it served our purpose very well and it also has got lots of interest from the visitors.

We have committed to participate in the upcoming rounds of the FIA ETRC championship too! Here is the calendar of races. Next stop is at the famous Hungaroring from the 26th to 27th of August.

However, there is a bit of a collision in the calendar, as the world famous Gamescom is happening from 22nd to 26th of August in Cologne, Germany. We know that there will be fans of our games at both places!

We have to split to attend both! And indeed this is the plan! One team and one motion seat will be set on the road to Hungary, while the big sim trailer and an even larger team will be going to Gamescom. We have a nice place reserved for us just next to Hall 8, so this year we'll be there for you as an exhibitor with the full parade. You can look forward to trying our games on high-tech 4D motion seats and getting some fresh info about our projects. It's a chance to grab some stickers, have a chat with members of the development team, take a picture with our crew, or maybe get a piece of our SCS merch? Plus one big surprise which we're trying to prepare for you and which we don't want to spoil yet.

There is only one question remaining: are we going to meet at Hungaroring or at Gamescom?

Related article: SCS On The Road: ETRC 2017 #1, #2