Development update

We owe you an update on some things happening now which are already frequently discussed in comments.

Truck brand licensing situation is clearing up, and we don't have just good news. Despite years of trying to approach truck and trailer manufacturers, and in some case very extensive negotiations, we are far from securing all major truck brands. For a long time, we have been showing you in-development screenshots and movies with proper branding. It was a part of our negotiation strategy: to show truck manufacturers how public - our fans - react to real brands in our games. Fans' reaction has been without exception always positive, people are excited about driving "real" trucks - but even that is not strong enough argument it seems. As you may have seen in recent movies and screenshots from the game finding their way on the Internet, we are now in the process of switching back to "Majestic" and "Valiant." The destiny of another major brand still hangs in the balance - after two years of discussions, there are only precious few days to see if the negotiations are concluded successfully at the last minute.

 Steam Greenlight situation is tough, too. We have been giving a good fight, but recently it looks like our little campaign for our fans to vote on Steam is losing steam a bit. It's not a lost cause yet, but our chances of making it into Top 10 anytime soon are not too high. In fact recently the number of votes for ETS2 seems to be slipping compared to the average votes of Top 100 games in the rankings. Here is a screen-grab from current Greenlight statistics available for developers.

We are not losing faith that Euro Truck Simulator 2 can still win your hearts even without all brands covered. The release of the game is only a new beginning, with any luck will be able to boast about good sales numbers, so we may have better arguments to persuade brand owners to join in. We are going to support the game long term with updates, fixes, and improvements, there are exciting things planned beyond initial release.

If you are eager to see some more moving pictures from ETS2, we have created a new Playlist on our YouTube channel with a collection of movies coming out of beta testing. There are 8 videos in it at the moment, but it looks like there are going to be hours of in-game footage there eventually:

ETS2 Beta Testing YouTube Playlist

Scania Truck Driving Simulator Update 1.5.0

The Scania TDS team has updated the game again, without any fanfare the update to version 1.5.0 has been published on the game's website.

Most of SCS Software's crew is of course going through the crunch time on the final days of development of Euro Truck Simulator 2, but we still care about those thousands of customers who have bought Scania TDS so far. We are committed to supporting and extending the game well beyond release date - and the same and even more is planned for Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Final stretch

Consider it good news whenever you notice lack of updates here on the blog - it just means that we are working so hard and are so deep into high-priority work that we don't even have any time left for creating movies or screenshots. ;-)

This has been the situation during this week - testing and tweaking of ETS2 is consuming all our time. We are close to finish line - our plans call now for releasing Euro Truck Simulator 2 into retail and digital distribution on October 19, 2012. So here you go - here is the date that you have been asking for so persistently!

After leaving you hungry for any news for several days, today we finally have something new for  you. It's an interactive "mini game" on YouTube - actually it's 15 movies linked together, with only the first one being public, the rest you must discover by making choices while "driving."

Scania YETD 2012 With My Own Eyes

It is not a big secret that 99% posts on this blog are actually written by SCS Software's CEO Pavel Sebor. For this post, let me now switch into first person account [click] rather than keeping the corporate "we" line that I have been always using. (Yes indeed, we don't have a dedicated marketing department, we really are a small team trying to punch above our weight.)

This post is not going to be about ETS2, if you are desperate for the news about this game, please save your comment vitriol for some other day. You could be asking why lose time here when SCS should be fully concentrating on getting Euro Truck 2 out of the door. Well, we need to work on our relationships with truck manufacturers all the time to establish, maintain and improve them. Licensing brands officially is definitely not something akin to walking into a store, putting a "brand" into the shopping cart and going towards the check out line. It's always a very individual process, requiring identifying and getting in touch with the right human in the huge company machinery. Sometimes, we don't even get our chance to start with the proverbial 30-second elevator pitch, but other times we do make some traction, and we can't afford to ever let go. In this particular case, the cooperation is really going strong fortunately.

I was always curious to see the Young European Truck Driver finals in Sweden. We spent a lot of effort on Scania Truck Driving Simulator, and I thought that it would be great to witness the event that was the blueprint for one of the key features of the game. I am happy to report that I was lucky to see it, actually I turned this opportunity into a deeply personal test of what kind of impression real trucks can make on very young computer game players. ;-)

Scania is holding an open day event alongside the YETD finals in their factory, and it's really a massive event. Thousands of visitors were expected, and as the weather was very favorable, you can tell from the pictures above that the crowds pouring in were indeed big.

We started the day by taking a tour through the floor of the chassis production factory and checking out some nicely styled pimped up trucks parked along the way to the competition area.

As planned, our Scandinavian publishing partner Wendros had a row of ten computers with large LCD screens and steering wheels lined up under the roof next to the factory hall, and the seats in front of the monitors were constantly occupied right from the start of the event. It wasn't so packed when we first passed by, but later in the day usually each computer would have a little line of people, kids as well as adults, waiting to be the next to play. It was really heart-warming to see such interest in the game.

Visiting the Scania Shop tent felt good too - boxes of Scania Truck Driving Simulator were very visibly on offer among all the other merchandise and in high demand from what I could see.

Further along the way towards the competition grounds, we have admired even more spectacular trucks presented by Swempa.

 

This cabrio probably isn't meant for everyday haulage jobs, though. ;-)

Finally after some popcorn, games, and quality time spent crawling through the cabins of trucks parked in the open for kids to explore, we reached the competition grounds. I couldn't shake the feeling that I have seen this all before, many times, on my computer screen in the office. This was my final realization that the Scania TDS art & design team at SCS Software truly did a great job portraying the competition so realistically.

I am no expert in photography or movie making, but I did my best recording the very finals of the competition from our seats among the cheering audience. The video is a bit shaky and the perspective not so great, surely Scania will eventually release a much better cut recorded and edited by their professional team. But I still hope that this "personal perspective" may be interesting for some of you, the atmosphere is definitely there to experience.

 

The final Super Z  discipline turned out the be very dramatic until the very end. Congratulations to Gabriel Warde from Ireland for winning the Grand Prize!

PS: On a related topic - we are ready to release a new patch of Scania TDS, but we are stuck on quite a few languages not having the new texts translated on GetLocalization. Can you help?

ETS2 vehicle registration plates

One wish-list item we can take off the list, a hundred more to go...

During the past weeks, we have toiled on the flexible registration plate system both for trucks as well as all types of AI vehicles. The goal was to represent each country in the game with proper license plates for front and back of vehicles (which usually differ, and not just by color as in the UK). Our previous license plates system was often criticized before for not being good, in fact in the early days of beta test it was the most raised issue for taking away the feeling of reality on the roads. So we decided to listen to player's feedback and do something about it. The new system is very flexible; it's data driven so customizable and extendable, it's procedurally generated so a huge number of combinations are possible, and it's actually better optimized than the old system.

 

 

We DO listen to your feedback all the time, you just must keep in mind that the volume of requests for features to include in the game is huge. If we were to grant all your current wishes (and no doubt more will come), we'd have to spend several more years on the game before it's finished. Nobody really wants that, right? ;-) We really need to concentrate now on just wrapping up what we have started already to get the initial release of the game out. We know you are very impatient to get your hands on the game already.

The release date of ETS2 doesn't mark the end of development for the game. Just as with Scania TDS, and if fact even more so, we are committed to continuing development of the game beyond release version. Future updates will not contain just bug fixes if any are needed, but also major feature additions. There are also plans brewing for extending the virtual world - of course we are aware that many of you are not happy that we are not properly covering more of the territory of Europe. It will not be a small undertaking, but with your support, we may be able to gradually grow the virtual world, too.

Scania YETD 2012 finals this weekend

You may still remember our little game Scania Truck Driving Simulator. ;-) By the way a new update for the game is coming with two more Dangerous Drives challenges. (You can also now vote for this game on Steam Greenlight, just as for ETS2)

One of the goals when we created this game together with Scania was promotion of their Young European Truck Driver competition. It was a tough task for us to implement the fine control and detailed truck vs. world collision model for the competition events in the game, but we think we came pretty close to the real thing. The project has been an important stepping stone and great learning experience in our quest to develop the ultimate truck simulator.

This weekend, the genuine YETD competition is concluded at the final event taking place in Södertälje, Sweden. On Saturday, September 8, a crowd of some 10,000 people is expected to show up to cheer for their champions from all around Europe.

SCS Software's CEO Pavel Sebor will also be coming to enjoy the day. If you happen to be a true truck freak, you can see the finals streamed live on your computer, unless you actually plan to come in person. Here is a short video recap of how it looked during the 2010 finals days and the superfinals if you are interested.

Our Nordic publishing partner Wendros will also be coming too, in quite some force. They will bring and install 10 "demo stations" - computers with large screens, wheels and pedals, to run Scania TDS. This should give the visitors plenty of opportunity to check out the game and have fun with the virtual re-creation of YETD, while the finalists will be sweating in the "Knock the King" and other disciplines on hot asphalt. It will be a great event, Pavel hopes to take some good photos and post them on the blog next week.

Let us conclude this post with screenshots from the upcoming Scania TDS update as an appetizer for the patch :-)

Bratislava to Birmingham

We would like to point you to another time-lapse Euro Truck Simulator 2 video depicting a cargo delivery, created by one of our hard-working beta testers. The video is a bit grainy due to high compression rate, but quite cool nonetheless.

Meanwhile, ETS2 Steam Greenlight campaign continues. Don't worry, we are not really adding any zombies ;-)

 

Not enough zombies!

Thanks for everyone's support with Steam Greenlight campaign for Euro Truck Simulator 2. We have over 1,600 votes already, and over 50 pages of mostly very encouraging comments.

Still it looks like it might be a good idea to add a few zombies into the game; judging by some of the leading submissions so far, adding zombies could bring us an order of magnitude more votes! ;-). We'll most likely resist the temptation - but kidding aside, this is a cold reminder for us as well as for you our fans that the potential of our truck sim "niche" is really limited compared to mainstream topics that Joe the gamer wants to deal with in the games he buys. The scope, depth and quality of our games are always going to be limited by how much money = manpower we can invest into them; how much money it's possible to make selling them to people willing to buy them. This pool is not that big. Exposure is key to get the game in front of as many eyes as possible.

The push for ETS on Greenlight will definitely continue for some time, nothing is decided yet. We thought that perhaps the fan community can help us even more in this long term effort. The effect of our blog has its limits, the news will get old very quickly. But quite a lot of you are running trucksim-related websites, blogs, facebook pages and message boards. Some visitors may come to you only from time to time, wouldn't it be great to have something permanent on the page to bring their attention to our cause?

We would like to offer you a set of banners and buttons that you can put on your web property to support ETS2. If you like any of the buttons, please use them to link them to the ETS2 Greenlight page. Big thanks!

We have these buttons and banners nicely packed in a ZIP file for download, with version including JPG on black and white backgrounds and PNG with transparency, at several sizes here:

www.eurotrucksimulator2.com/ets2_greenlight.zip

To wrap up this post, we have another YouTube movie for you. This one has been actually recorded over 2 weeks ago, some of the things in the game have been changed since then, and even the game logo in it is now obsolete. But we thought it would be a shame to lose all the work invested into creating the video, we quite like it.

Steam Greenlight is here!

Euro Truck Simulator 2 has been officially submitted to Valve's Greenlight today!

Let's celebrate it by unveiling the new official ETS2 logo :-)

If you want to help us make the game appear on Steam, please vote for it here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93066271

Quite a few people have raised their concern that if the game supports Steam, they will avoid it. Obviously public opinion on Steam is split - some people like it, some don't. Rest assured that Steam was always considered as a complementary distribution channel for us - we would not require people buying the game in the box edition in stores or digitally from our own website to have to install Steam or use any Steam services. But being present on Steam is very important for any independent game developer. Steam is the 800-pound gorilla of the digital distribution world, many people just go there for their games, many people discover new games only thanks to Steam. This could bring us additional sales that we couldn't get otherwise - and additional sales mean more funding for further improvements of ETS2 as well as for our future projects. Our games are 100% financed by your purchases and nothing else - we don't have any big publisher investing into our projects.

Note: There appeared a fan submission for the game to Greenlight system yesterday already, causing a bit of confusion. It looks like a too-active fan from Poland has managed to submit the game overnight, faster than we could have done so ourselves. Please don't vote for this alternate submission, we have no option but to have it removed by legal action. We have no control of the contents of the other submission.

If the person who submitted ETS2 for Greenglight reads this, we would really appreciate if he could get in touch with us so that we can try to see if we can fix the problem in amicable way. I am sure the game wasn't entered to do us harm, it looks like a dedicated fan trying to help - but in fact it is competing for people's attention with the official submission, probably taking away votes voting process that should be going to the correct entry.

[post updated to reflect recent developments]