Euro Truck Simulator 2: 1.40 Release

Hot on the heels of yesterday's ATS update, we are excited to announce the highly-anticipated arrival of update 1.40 for Euro Truck Simulator 2 as well!

We'd like to thank all those who took part in the 1.40 Open Beta, made bug reports, and provided general feedback on this new version. We hope you can now begin to fully enjoy the various new features which are included within this update. So, what can you expect to find in the 1.40 update for ETS2?

Let us give you a quick recap of the most significant changes.

New Visual Lighting System

One of the biggest changes you'll notice when you first hop into your truck cab is the implementation of our new visual lighting system.

To prepare for this new lighting system, our teams had to make a lot of changes not only to our graphic renderer, its code, and other functionalities, but also to existing in-game world objects; including a majority of the in-game assets, textures, and materials to better work with the new physical model of the new lighting system. Want to get an in-depth look into what we had to revisit to make this major graphical change happen? Read more about it here.

We are very excited for you to be able to experience and immerse yourself in driving in the new light. The result is the culmination of a ton of hours by our programmers and visual effect artists and many other teams involved in the creation process of this new system. And even after this tremendous amount of work already spent in this area we are still not completely done. You can expect further changes and improvements to be done in the future. So while the open beta is done, we are still open and more than happy to get your feedback and opinions about this new graphics upgrade for our games.

Revisiting Germany

1.40 also brings the final phase of our Revisiting Germany project which a small team of mappers has been working on.

For those who are new to our game, the Revisiting Germany project consists of a small dedicated map team, who has been working hard to update one of the oldest map sections of the base game with a more realistic and up-to-date look.

The biggest change that comes with this update is a complete reskin and rework of all the highways and roads in this part of our in-game world, which was not retouched in previous updates.

Additionally, the areas around Dortmund, Köln, Dusseldorf, and Duisburg have not only benefitted from a complete road network redesign but a few new intersections and roads as well! The southern part of the Bundesautobahn 7 is now available in this update.

Vive La France ! New Cities

With the upcoming release of the Iberia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, we know that many drivers will be excited to progressively make their way down Europe to cross into the peninsula for the first time. With France being mainland Europe's gateway to Spain and Portugal, our team has developed 2 new French locations which are a part of a free update to the Vive La France ! DLC coming with 1.40. 

The first of these is the city of Bayonne, located in the southwest of France; it is the capital of the French Basque Country and an important connection for drivers heading to Spain as it is located close to the border.

The second location is the smaller commune of Lacq, which is located in the Arrondissement of Pau. While this small village is going to be just a scenic drive-through for most, Lacq is home to the largest refinery in France. 

Both of these areas plus two new connecting junctions in Toulouse and Bordeaux come as a free update to the Vive La France ! DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2, which we originally announced would arrive with the release of Iberia. However, with them being ready now, we thought it would be a nice surprise to include them early in this update. 

Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack Update

Our latest ETS2 DLC is also about to get an update - two of the amazing designs in the Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack have been expanded and are now applicable on owned trailers! And believe it or not, there was a small social media experiment behind the choice of the two paint jobs that were picked for this upgrade.

Back in November 2020, we wrote several short and seemingly insignificant posts on our Euro Truck Simulator 2 and SCS Software Facebook pages, where we called upon our community to cast votes on which DLC designs you liked the most. Today we are happy to share with you that the two most popular designs are getting an upgrade so that everyone can match these designs on both trucks and trailers! 

Your engagement and activity on our social media channels really do matter! We can't wait to see all the beautiful matching combinations on your vehicles. This may be a good opportunity for some VTCs to redesign their virtual corporate identity!

Changelog

Visual

• New Visual Lighting System

Map

• Germany Reskin 
• New French Cities (Vive La France ! DLC)

Vehicle

• Two new paint jobs (from the Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack) for owned trailers

UI

• Full-text city/company search in the job selection screen
• Improved vehicle adjustment menu (F4)

Vive la France ! DLC: Iberia Connections

With the upcoming release of the Iberia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, we know that many drivers will be excited to progressively make their way down Europe to cross into the peninsula for the first time. With France being mainland Europe's gateway to Spain and Portugal, our team is currently developing 2 new French locations which will be a part of a free update to the Vive La France ! DLC in the future. 

The first being the city of Bayonne, located in the southwest of France; it is the capital of the French Basque Country and an important connection for drivers heading to Spain as it is located close to the border. Bayonne will also feature local industries from which drivers can deliver to and from.

The second location will be the smaller commune of Lacq, which is located in the Arrondissement of Pau. While this small village will just be a scenic drive-through for most, there is one major industry that is located there. The industrial complex was built after the discovery of one of the greatest natural gas fields in the world. Today Lacq is home to the largest refinery in France and is one of the world’s largest sulfur producers and exporters. 

Both of these areas plus two new connecting junctions in Toulouse and Bordeaux will come as a free update to the Vive La France ! DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 when the Iberia DLC is released. Please keep in mind that all of these screenshots you see here today are work in progress, both in terms of development and the new visual lighting system present. 

If you haven't already, check out the Vive la France ! DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2; and add the Iberia DLC to your Steam Wishlist. It really helps support the development of our DLC's and we thank you for your support if you have chosen to already. 

Corsica

Surrounded by the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea between France and Italy is the island of Corsica, best known for its stunning scenery and mountainous areas.

We are excited to announce that you will be able to explore this beautiful island for yourself as a free addition for the Vive la France! map expansion in the upcoming 1.36 update.

The Island of Corsica in Euro Truck Simulator 2 features 6 cities (Ajaccio, Calvi, Ile Rousse, Bastia, Porto Vecchio and Bonifacio), a number of landmarks, sleepy villages and an atmosphere similar to regions surrounding. And as with other islands, the biggest road you'll find here is an expressway. So if you like meander climbs on rural roads surrounded by vineyards leading to spectacular coastal viewpoints, Corsica is the place for you!

To get there, you can take a ferry from Marseille to the picturesque town of Porto Vecchio, or - if you're already an islander on Sardinia, you can jump boat in Sassari and get off in Ajaccio, the biggest city on the island, also serving as its capital.

Looking forward to it? Because Corsica is just around the corner!

ETS2 Special Transport revisited

Last December's add-on release for Euro Truck Simulator 2 - the Special Transport DLC - has been accepted very positively in the fan community. As you may remember, a comparable game expansion is also in the works for American Truck Simulator, but meanwhile, the team behind Special Transport still keeps on tweaking and improving their creation.

We are happy to reveal that along with the upcoming ETS2 1.31 Update, the Special Transport DLC will also be updated with new jobs. There are new routes added to the core map, and several new routes will also be accessible for owners of other map DLCs.

This is not our last take on Special Transport, you can count on further tweaks and improvements down the road!

"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...

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...

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.

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!

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.