SCS Blog

It’s only been a few weeks since our last release, but many of you are wondering and guessing, what does the future hold? What are we doing now? When will we add something new to our games? Well, as you know, we don't publish any "road plan" or "release hopes" type articles. We simply don't like promises, until we’re sure that we’ll be able to deliver. And as much as we’re certain that 2018 will be a great year, we don't have anything ready... yet. But if you really want some news at least - check these out! Any ideas what is it and where it belongs? View the full article

In the frenzy of releases at the end of last year, we have not managed to sync the codebases of American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 to the same revision. With multiple builds of games and DLC to pass through QA, we did not have enough testing capacity to dedicate to this update. The 1.29 revision was solid and working, and we didn't want to risk releasing a new build just a day or two before starting our whole-company vacation, only to find out that a hotfix is needed immediately. It was deemed safer to live with known little glitches for a few weeks rather than to risk introducing an unknown game-breaking bug. This maintenance release mostly brings some bug fixes and safety measures for mods. Your game on Steam should update automatically, unless you have opted out from auto updates, or unless you prefer to stay with a particular branch to preserve older mod compatibility. Features: Code support for multi-torque engines Fixed generation of terrain when it is connected to terrain in unloaded sector AI will not use blinkers when canceling a lane change while it is in progress Fixed sleeping area triggers not being visible in UI map after initial game load Improved calculation of trailer weight distribution when lifting trailer axles Various editor fixes and improvements (stamps in content browser, support hiding of instanced geometry, collections, item performance info, searching, traffic tool) Cleanup of OpenGL support Fixed light sources in multi-time HQ screenshots Prevented crash if road is using a stamp whose material is missing Prevented crash when creating new board template in mod Updated localization View the full article

Hurry up all Santa's trucking elves! You may be a little late, but your effort still counts! If you want to participate in our Christmas event, there is plenty of time left to deliver those parcels and earn your chance to get unique prizes both digital and physical! To get up to speed, make sure to read our earlier Grand Gift Delivery 2017 blog post first. Physical rewards will be drawn randomly from all participants for each Tier after the special event completion on Monday, January 22, 2018. Keep an eye on our social media so you do not miss the event winners announcement. During the event so far, we have noticed several questions being asked repeatedly. To address them, we decided to create a little f.a.q. list: Q: How can I see my progress? A: Both in-game (in a new little bar at the top of the main menu screen) and on your Profile page on the World of Truck web site. The latter includes the Log Book page to help you keep track of recent jobs' details. Q: I keep delivering things and the progress still shows 3/6. How comes? A: Please make sure your jobs are: External Contracts - Quick Jobs nor Freight Market doesn't count. Gift jobs - only the big gift boxes as the cargo count, nothing else does. Different destination cities - each job has to be delivered to a different city than any of the previous ones. Check the log book! The list of visited cities doesn't reset after finishing tier 1. Q: I get an error that my vehicle is too long when I try to take an External Contract. What's going on? A: You have very likely some incompatible mod enabled. It's recommended to disable all mods when participating in World of Trucks events. Q: I finished Tier 1 and got nothing!?! Help! A: You have to log in to World of Trucks and claim the Steam inventory items from the Event page. The "Open Events Page" button from the in-game event description will steer you there as well. Q: I finished Tier 1 and got no Steam achievement. What's wrong? A: It's a World of Trucks achievement, not a Steam one. Q: How can I activate tier 2? A: Just keep going. Once you deliver another gift job, it will be counted towards Tier 2 automatically. View the full article

Dear truck simulation fans, After a couple of very frenzy weeks, we are taking a few days off to recharge our batteries. There is a lot of opportunities to spend quality time now in both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator - with New Mexico, Italia, Special Transport, and with the ongoing World of Trucks end-of-year event. So we hope that you will have some forty tons of fun (or more!) with our games in the next week or two! We want to express our sincere thanks for your support. This year was great and full of promise, but our ambition is much higher. Our feature and content wishlist is very long, and our desire to provide you with the best truck/vehicle simulation anyone can build still very strong. We want to wish you all the best in 2018. Party hard, celebrate and make a New Year’s wish. Have a healthy and prosperous New Year! Happy Trucking! Your SCS Software Team View the full article

Santa needs our help! Our 'On The Road' crew has just arrived from the North Pole. Santa's logistics network is having a hard time coping with deliveries of all the gifts, and SCS Software has been summoned for help. Honestly, though, our humble sim trailer is just not enough, the motion seats just take up too much space. Way more capacity is needed. It is clear that we need to turn to players of our games for help! There are billions of gifts around the globe waiting for delivery, and we have duly informed Santa that we may only be able to help him with a tiny fraction of the number, and only in limited territories. Even with the addition of New Mexico to American Truck Simulator and Italia to Euro Truck Simulator 2, our coverage of the two continents is still not satisfactory, not to speak about the rest of the planet. Yes, we know! Now even Santa is pushing us hard to improve the coverage for the next year already - as if he planned to depend on us again and again. For now, let's try to do what we can do. There are rewards waiting for everyone who'll join in! Santa has some special cabin toys and accessories straight from his domain for you. He's even willing to let you park your mighty diesel beasts at the North Pole - in a new main-menu background scene. How cool is that? This World of Trucks event is a bit more complex than what we had in the previous seasons. Players of both American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 will be able to participate, but each game is counted separately and provides its own set of achievements and rewards. On top of it, each game's event actually has two levels of accomplishment, and two tiers of rewards! The rewards are not just digital this time. At the conclusion of the event, we'll draw five lucky winners for each game and each tier (that's 20 prizes in total) and offer you a choice of merchandise from our e-shop to pick your reward from. Rules & Rewards We're running two events in parallel - you can choose between American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2, or participate in both events to earn the most goodies! Deliver gifts (that's a very specific cargo that you will only find on World of Trucks contracts now!) to at least 6 (for the 1st Tier) or 12 (to complete the 2nd Tier) different cities. Only deliveries of over 240 km / 150 miles are eligible. Receive unique rewards on each tier: Tier 1: Exclusive World of Trucks achievements for event completion in each game Hanging cabin decorations - Xmass Ball and Plush Bear (ETS2), Polar Star and Polar Plush Bear (ATS) Main menu background theme - "Magic Time" Five people who completed this Tier have a chance of winning the physical reward: choose any amount of merchandise of your choice from our e-shop for a sum up to 50€. Tier 2: Hanging cabin decorations - Polar Beast and Snowman Trucker (ETS2), Grizzly Bear and Snowman Trucker (ATS) Customizable paint-jobs "Crystal Dream" (ATS) and "Crystal Dimension" (ETS2) Main menu background theme - "On top of the world" Five people who completed this Tier have a chance of winning physical reward: choose any amount of merchandise of your choice from e-shop for a sum up to 100€. Important Notes Latest game version is required for participating in the event. In-game rewards are granted as tradeable and marketable Steam inventory items Quadruple (x4) your chance of winning a physical reward by completing the event in both games for both event Tiers! Physical rewards are drawn randomly from all participants for each Tier after event completion on Monday, January 22, 2018. Winners will be announced on our blog! That's it! Put on your hauling pants and hop behind your steering wheel! There're some delivery jobs waiting for you! View the full article

On Wednesday, we have offered the players of Euro Truck Simulator 2 a new challenge with the release of Special Transport DLC. We wanted to bring you something fresh, something different from the monotony of standard deliveries. Some of the tight passes should put your skills to a real test, and the escort vehicles make it all look really exciting. Reading your excited and positive reactions, comments, and reviews on the various communication and social channels, it looks like we have succeeded in our goal, and made our fan base mostly happy. Searching the Internet, we have found many great fan-made videos, stream records, let's plays, and first looks. Let us show you just a small sample here... MrMorrelo's Fan Made Trailer TGM's Fan Made Trailer Daggerwin's First Look Gadarol's Video (German language) Hilmi Şahin's Video (Turkish language) JNR-SNR Gaming's Video Gamekeepers_cz's First Look (Czech language) If you are in the mood for even more movies, here is a link conveniently asking YouTube to search for "special transport ets2." However, who would just sit and watch movies all day when you can actually get behind the wheel to deliver those huge loads!? :) View the full article

We are proud to bring you the final major release of 2017 - Special Transport DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now available for everyone on Steam Store! Important: If you are a long-term fan with a larger portfolio of ETS2 expansions but little patience to read the following wall of text, make sure to check out this Cargo Bundle link first! It has been a very busy year for SCS Software, a year of major studio growth, and also a year with the record amount of content releases in our plans. We were planning to space out the releases through the autumn, but you know us, we don't release stuff until it's done. So we kept coming back to tweak, test, polish, re-test - rinse and repeat - until we are finally satisfied with the quality. We ended up with several releases all lined up for the final weeks of the year, we apologize for the avalanche. This expansion is quite special for us and not only for its name. It's not just about a bunch of new highly detailed 3D models - as the regulations of oversize transports are very specific, we had to develop a ton of new AI code and created a sort of a game inside a game. These jobs just don't allow you the same degree of freedom to roam the continent as standard deliveries, quite the contrary, you have to adhere to very strict instructions, keep your hand steady on the steering wheel and your eyes on every centimeter of the road. We have spent over a year coding and scripting the functionality and the first batch of Special Transport jobs for the release, but it's only a start, we are committed to bringing you a wider variety of routes in the future. Your route will be secured by two escort vehicles guiding you through the transport job from its start to the place of delivery. It's not going to be a piece of cake, but if you obey the escort vehicles' advice and deliver the cargo in pristine condition, you can consider yourself a real pro, a true veteran behind the wheel who can deliver even the most enormous cargoes. Let's take a look what the Special Transport DLC for ETS2 offers: Key Features 11 huge cargoes (up to 70 tons, 6 m width, 5+ m height and 20+ m length) 4 new special trailers Unique job routes for to challenge you with Special Transport (most in the base map, some through DLC expansions, more to come!) A combination of over 80 Special Transport Jobs Custom AI escort vehicles Original intros for the cargoes and jobs, crowds and police cars along the routes New models, characters, and animations of people assisting or spectating the transport Curious pedestrians, journalists or transport co-workers along the routes A new set of warning beacons for the trucks Special Transport Achievements Gameplay Features Close collaboration with AI escort vehicles required Enhanced AI behavior: clearing the path, stopping traffic, giving advice, pushing opposing vehicles to the side etc. The risk to fail the given Job on the spot if you do not adhere to strict instructions or regulations New checkpoints system to keep your progress in a special transport job safe We hope that you still have some free time left in your Christmas 2017 Calendar because these enormous cargoes will require some truly dedicated drivers to deliver them safely! View the full article

If you think that we are done with new releases for our fans this year, rejoice, because the hype train is not slowing down! The Special Transport DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now in the final testing phase. In our humble opinion, it looks pretty promising so far! We feel that it's the right time to tease you a little bit with its promo trailer: We hope that the weekend ahead - that we plan to spend on re-testing and double-checking everything - won't shatter our confidence and that we'll be able to announce the Special Transport DLC's release date next week. Stay tuned! View the full article

Only a few days have passed since we released the latest ETS2 map expansion - Italia. The fan community's response has been overwhelmingly positive, we're so happy and honored by your voice of support! There were still some bugs reported, and we are working on a quick update of the game and the DLC for next week. For a very brief moment in time, for some two or three hours on Tuesday evening, our humble map DLC has enjoyed its moment of glory at the very top of Global Top Sellers on Steam. This is a major accomplishment and an indication of the decication and strength of our fantastic player community. Not many full-priced games can do it, especially now in the era of total dominance of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the chart. Quite a lot of players and fellow truckers have also celebrated the release their own way - with "First Looks" or "Let's Play" videos for their channels. We think it may be of interest for you if we list some notable videos here... MrMorrelo's Fan Made Trailer Squirrel's First Look SiSL's First Look Daggerwin's First Look Wujek Bohun's Video (Polish language) NU89's Video (Italian language) There are many many more! It would make a never-ending blog post if we tried to list them all, so if your favorite YouTube or Twitch.tv hero isn't placed among those above, try to search some keywords on these sites (like at this link) and surely you'll find their uploads as well. Thank you all and see you next time! We have some HUGE news lined up for you very soon! ;-) View the full article

We're excited to announce the release of Italia map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2. This map DLC expands Euro Truck Simulator 2 with our rendition of the beautiful European country Italy with its rich history, modern industry, traditional architecture, and diverse natural environments. Players will experience the typical features of Italy from behind the wheel. Explore roads leading through the Apennines, where tunnels and bridges alternate with scenic vistas and curvy segments, opening the view to distant horizons. Descend from the height of mountain passes to the shores of the seas, travel from manicured farmland to wilder and more arid places. The geography and shape of Italy have led to a comparatively high concentration of cities in the Italia map expansion. Local industries contain, among others, famous places like Carrara marble quarries and Europe‘s largest Steelworks in Taranto. Main features 11,500 km of new in-game roads 19 new cities, including Rome, Napoli, Palermo Unique new 3D-assets Realistic junctions including ring roads around big cities Many regional industries and companies Typical Italian toll gates and signs Recognizable landmarks Typical Italian architecture Improved vegetation for the Mediterranean climate Interesting new cargoes added New Italia achievements to unlock Useful links ETS Map Booster Bundle page (make sure to visit first if you already own any other map DLC!) Italia Steam store page Italia press kit (screenshots, video, assets, information) View the full article

Paving the way for next week's major map expansion release, here we are with the official Update 1.30 for Euro Truck Simulator 2. We would like to thank everyone for their participation in the Open Beta, your support was awesome as always! The game should update automatically through Steam. If you have switched to a beta branch, don't forget to opt out now! On the other hand, if you are concerned with mod compatibility and need to stay on the older version of the game for a time, there are still branches available on Steam giving you access to previous game versions. Update for non-Steam legacy edition of the game and VR-compatible beta build of the game may take a few additional days to get ready. MAIN FEATURES New Generation Scania R-Series and S-Series trucks With almost two man-years invested in building the new vehicle models and implementing them into the game since the start of the year, this is our most detailed truck ever created. Map improvements - city of Milano was completely remade, the whole northern part of Italy improvedWe refreshed the old part of Italy which is already present in the base game to make it fit better with the quality of the upcoming Italia DLC. Consider it a sneak-peek into what it is going to be like. Overhaul of navigation algorithmsNew navigation code has been introduced in American Truck Simulator already and it is a huge change that required major programming effort and ended up being a large improvement over the old one. The navigation is now capable of sending the driver back along the same stretch of the road if need be, which may seem trivial, but it actually required a total redesign of the underlying data structures. We are looking forward to your feedback on this. Time zones supportETS2 now also supports time zones, which is going to be handy for further growth of the map. For now, this change will be affecting the UK only, since other ETS2 countries are in the same time zones. ADDITIONAL CHANGES ZF-16 transmission supporting upcoming DLC for all trucks that missed similar one Map fitted to correct projection (more exact environment behavior), map panning option Multi-torque engines support (used in DAF engines 2017) Basic engine and transmission info in quick job truck tooltip Trailers with country restrictions are towed only to services in given countries Further polish to DAF, Volvo, and SCANIA trucks Tons of map tweaks and fixes in the base map and older map DLCs New luxury yacht cargo TOOLS / MOD ACCESS New interactive tool for environmental lighting and weather setting (included in the editor) New interactive tool for traffic behavior and rules debugging (included in the editor) New scene preview tool (included in the editor) New navigation parameters in map data Assistance service parameters in economy data Truck scale weight costs in economic data View the full article

The roads are stretched. The trees are planted. The buildings and landmarks are in place. You can hear a deep hum of engines from the garage. Minor cosmetic touches are still applied this week, but we are pretty much done, and ready to announce the release date. We cannot wait to present our work in all its beauty! Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Italia DLC will be available on December 5th, 2017. To be more specific, we are planning to release the DLC in afternoon hours our local time - Prague, Czech Republic (GMT+1). We are planning a pizza party in the office to celebrate the occasion! ;) Please be aware that in places ahead of us on the clock like Australia or China, it may be very late night already and the calendar may even show a new day. On the other hand, for our fans in Brazil or Canada, it will still be morning hours. We have less than a week to orchestrate the release in the digital sphere. The DLC will also be distributed as a boxed edition in some territories and our distribution partners are doing their magic in the retail channel to be on time, too. The ETS2 - Italia coming soon page on Steam is loaded with screenshots, video trailer, and all the other important information. Do not forget to add Italia to your wish list! If you are wondering about pricing, here is a copy & paste of the pricing string as it has been set up on Steam: $17.99, £13.49, 17,99€, CHF 17.--, 699 pуб., 69,99zł, R$ 44,99, ¥ 1,980, 126,00 kr, Rp 125 999, RM35.00, P459.95, S$18.00, ฿339.00, 179.998₫, ₩ 19,000, 35,00 TL, 219₴, Mex$ 175.99, CDN$ 19.99, A$ 19.99, NZ$ 21.99, ¥ 60, ₹ 559, CLP$ 8.800, S/.44.95, COL$ 36.000, R 199.00, HK$ 110.00, NT$ 438, 50.00 SR, 56.00 AED, ARS$ 209,99, ₪66.95, 2 600₸, 3.15 KD, 38.99 QR, ₡7.800, $U389. View the full article

Over two weeks have passed since the released of the New Mexico map expansion for American Truck Simulator. We’re really happy that the new map expansion has been accepted very positively by the fan community. There was 25 man-years of hard work invested into the creation of the New Mexico DLC, but of course, we hear you that you want and expect more from us and faster. Our ambition for the upcoming year is to keep on growing the teams for both of our truck sims and finally make the transition to multiple map DLCs under development in parallel. This is going to be a whole new level in studio and team management, with massive content creation efforts running hand in hand with technology evolution and changes in toolchain and the game engine. A ton of great videos, let's plays, and reviews of New Mexico DLC have appeared on sites like YouTube or Twitch. We thought that several of them deserve a mention here. You will be able to find hundreds more if you just search YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=New+Mexico+DLC) for them. So let's take a look... Squirrel's New Mexico DLC First Look SiSL's First Look SimülasyonTÜRK (Turkish language) MrMorrelo's Fan-made Trailer Wujek Bohun's First Look (Polish language) WORLD OF TRUCKS EVENT REMINDER (6 days left!) In case you haven't yet completed our current World of Trucks event, worry not, you still have about 6 days left to do so, and grab a collectible reward. The event will end December 3rd, 2017. With Christmas approaching fast, we have more pleasant surprises in store for you! ;) View the full article

We are in the final stretch of fine-tuning the ETS 2: Italia DLC for release, and it's time to crank up the hype machine again! The participants of Open Beta Update 1.30 have already been exposed to a few glimpses of things to come in the reworked parts of Italy belonging to the base game, and the feedback is very positive so far! All the reports coming our way are an opportunity to polish the new region as well fix cosmetic issues with older parts of the game world. We are very grateful for such great cooperation with the volunteers in the fan community. We hope to be able to confirm and announce the release date next week. Check out the Italia DLC Steam page, as we have uploaded a batch of new screenshots there today. View the full article

A year ago, we were both shocked and humbled when Euro Truck Simulator 2 managed to win the very first Steam Awards - and in two categories at the same time. It was such a great gesture of support from our great fans! Yesterday, we noticed that Valve has announced this year's categories for the 2017 Steam Awards (with a piece of graphics showing a little hint of Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the background!), and invited the player base to vote for their favorite games. We are wondering - can our fantastic fan community bring us another nomination? If you'd like to nominate us once again, you can visit this link and pick ETS2 or ATS in the category where you think it fits in the best. As we posted the link on our twitter yesterday already, it looks like our community mostly agrees on the category "Labor of Love" for Euro Truck Simulator 2. But the choice is totally yours, of course. We really appreciate all your support! Now it's back to work for us, we still have some important releases to get out of the door in the coming weeks! ;-) View the full article

The island of Sicily lies in the south on the very tip of Italy's "shoe." Our version of the island contains three coastal cities with seaports, it is the second largest island we have created so far. Considering the scale of our game world, this relatively small piece of land surrounded by the sea required a specific approach to its design and to the creation of the distant horizon. It was quite a tough challenge to fit in all the roads, the cities, industries, and natural beauties, including Mount Etna, one of the largest natural landmarks in Italy. Our design of the island reflects the typical Mediterranean climate and its unique architecture. The feeling of Sicily with its scorching sun is central to quite a few famous Italian movies, so we have tried to transfer this mood to our virtual world. View the full article

Open Beta of Euro Truck Simulator 2 Update 1.30 is ready for you to try! How come we have skipped a version number? As both our flagship truck sims were getting ready for a major DLC release relatively short time apart, we had to run two parallel testing tracks. Code and data "freeze" for ETS2 happened several weeks after ATS was already "forked" for the release of its 1.29 update. As a result, Euro Truck Simulator 2 will be skipping a version number, while American Truck Simulator will catch up to the same 1.30 codebase version shortly after the update of its older brother. Anyway, ETS2 Update 1.30 is bringing plenty of new, cool, and, of course, free stuff that we'd like to discuss... MAIN FEATURES Map improvements - city of Milano was completely remade, the whole northern part of Italy improvedWe refreshed the old part of Italy which is already present in the base game to make it fit better with the quality of the upcoming Italia DLC. Consider it a sneak-peek into what it is going to be like. Overhaul of navigation algorithmsNew navigation code has been introduced in American Truck Simulator already and it is a huge change that required major programming effort and ended up being a large improvement over the old one. The navigation is now capable of sending the driver back along the same stretch of the road if need be, which may seem trivial, but it actually required a total redesign of the underlying data structures. We are looking forward to your feedback on this. Time zones supportETS2 now also supports time zones, which is going to be handy for further growth of the map. For now, this change will be affecting the UK only, since other ETS2 countries are in the same time zones. ADDITIONAL CHANGES ZF-16 transmission supporting upcoming DLC for all trucks that missed similar one Map fitted to correct projection (more exact environment behavior), map panning option Multi-torque engines support (used in DAF engines 2017) Basic engine and transmission info in quick job truck tooltip Trailers with country restrictions are towed only to services in given countries Further polish to DAF, Volvo, and SCANIA trucks Tons of map tweaks and fixes in the base map and older map DLCs New luxury yacht cargo TOOLS / MOD ACCESS New interactive tool for environmental lighting and weather setting (included in the editor) New interactive tool for traffic behavior and rules debugging (included in the editor) New scene preview tool (included in the editor) New navigation parameters in map data Assistance service parameters in economy data Truck scale weight costs in economic data We are ready for the open beta and looking forward to your feedback! Positive or negative, send it our way, as we are striving to improve the game as much as we can. Your help and participation in Open Betas is highly appreciated. During open betas, we are operating a dedicated alternate site for World of Trucks, which is used to safely test all new features. Please visit World of Trucks Open Beta web for more information. Also, check our modding wiki to get details pertaining to mods for the game. If you wish to take part in the open beta, you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right click on Euro Truck Simulator 2 → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta → 1.30 public beta. No password required. Just as with the previous Open Beta releases - please keep in mind that this is still only a beta version of the update! You may experience instability and/or bugs and kinks. It’s completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you are interested in providing feedback at this stage, be sure to let us know about your findings on our forum; you can join the general discussion here, and report any bugs here. We appreciate all your feedback. Oh right, I would almost forget: New Generation S and R Scania trucks are a part of this update! With almost two man-years invested in building the new vehicle models and implementing them into the game since the start of the year, this is our most detailed truck ever created. Just as the reworked northern Italy, the new Scania will be released absolutely for free. Enjoy your Open Beta and be sure to check our forums if you are having any trouble and need to report anything. Preferably, test the game both without and with your MODs, to see how the "vanilla" version behaves, as well as any interaction with the modifications you are used to using. Make a backup of your player profile to make sure you can go back in case that you do not find 1.30 ready for you yet! View the full article

Our small 'On the Road' crew had a really great time at Transport Expo 2017. Here is a photo from the event. It was a pleasure to talk to quite a bunch of dedicated and knowledgeable fans who visited us! We are already in the middle of preparations for another event. Our next stop will be Game Developer Session 2017, a special conference for professional as well as wannabe game developers, to be held November 17-18 in Prague, Czech Republic. We are looking forward to meeting industry peers from the region of Central Europe and listening to speeches presented by experts from around the globe. We'll be there with one of our 4D motion seats (just the seat, the whole truck & trailer won't fit inside this 19th century historical building!). The motion seat powered by our games is a great piece of technology to show off and brag about, and should be handy for starting conversations. ;) Also, one of our colleagues - Patrik, a senior map designer in our ATS team - will be giving a speech explaining the complexities of building a rich road network for our truck simulation games. We hope that it will be of interest for fellow game and map designers from other game companies as well as for students visiting the conference. View the full article

We are proud to announce that the New Mexico map expansion for American Truck Simulator has just been released! New Mexico's nickname is the “Land of Enchantment.” A lot of unique natural scenery will accompany the players during all hauls. The state has a lot to offer in terms of landscape variety: Rio Grande, Carson National Forest, Baylor Peak, Pyramid Rock and other recognizable landmarks. Thousands of miles of roads lead through urbanized areas like Albuquerque, sparsely populated trading posts, lush forests, mountain ranges and rest stops in the middle of the desert. There are many unique functional truck stops around New Mexico's highways to spend the night, rest, refuel or repair a damaged truck. Main features Over 4,000 miles of new in-game roads 14 major cities, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Roswell 11 custom rest/truck stops for parking and refueling More than 600 completely new 3D assets Complex and realistic custom-built junctions and Interstate interchanges 8 new company docks and industries Unique landmarks both natural and man-made New Mexico achievements to unlock Useful links New Mexico Steam store page American Truck Simulator Enchanted Bundle Steam store page (make sure to visit it first if you consider buying the DLC!) New Mexico press kit (screenshots, video, assets, information) We hope that all virtual truckers will have a lot of fun in the latest map extension of American Truck Simulator! American Truck Simulator official Update 1.29 is out We want to thank everyone who participated in the open beta. The final version of the update is now ready and the game should update automatically on Steam, unless you have automatic updates disabled. We're very grateful for your help! You can find the whole list of major changes and fixes in Update 1.29 outlined in our previous post here. View the full article

Welcome back to the fourth article of the 'Under the Hood' series. Today, we're going to take a look at the traffic signs in our games, specifically focusing on American Truck Simulator development. As our experience and our team size are growing, we can afford to dedicate more attention and development time to various aspects of our game world. Traffic signs are no exception. During the early years of development, with a relatively small development team, we had to take a lot of shortcuts and simplifications to finish the project in a reasonable time. Looking back, we now realize that our first take at the arrangement of traffic signs as used in our rendition of California and Nevada left much to be desired. From our perspective of a developer based in Europe, we thought it was believable, when in fact we have unknowingly omitted quite important building blocks of the whole logical system. We have focused a lot more on research in the past year, and managed to dedicate enough manpower to road signs. Especially for drivers with actual experience from US roads, this is going to be very noticeable in New Mexico It's not just about the look of individual signs, their shape, dimensions, color, numbering, or proper font choice - these are non-negotiable of course. We now have a very flexible toolset at our disposal to compose a sign from its elements. We can also choose specific details that are particular to a given state or region, like different poles. But ultimately, it's about the whole system. New Mexico DLC marks the start of a new era, taking advantage of the new set of traffic sign building blocks. The new set is also used when building the next ATS world region, which is already very much under development. For future game updates, we have a plan in place and capacity reserved to also revisit the "older" states of American Truck Simulator, to make the signs more accurate. So you can look forward to further improvements in California, Nevada, and Arizona. As you can see in the images, our asset designers have created a new set consisting of about 200 new traffic signs. Our programmers have come up with a new system, allowing the map designers to use and combine the base and info part of the traffic signs from a wide variety of options. This efficient new system will be useful for example for traffic sign poles made out of wood instead of the more typically used metal. Only overhead traffic signs on our highways? Not anymore, because we've also created several new types of traffic sign placement. There will be signs placed on highway bridges you're just passing under, affixed to sound barriers placed alongside the road, and so on, just like in real life. We are doing some tweaks and upgrades to the standard overhead signs. We can now appreciate even small details like the difference between the placement and style of how the exit number is positioned. With all these upgrades we're trying to cover as many specifications per state as possible. You can also look forward to meeting some diagram traffic signs, showing a schematic drawing of the upcoming intersection. We can also work better with "control cities" on highway signs. Eventually, even though for sign placements we are somewhat limited by the 1:20 scale of our world compared to reality, our ambition is to have 100% realistic road signs in American Truck Simulator. Please let us know your opinions, wishes and suggestions, or which topic should we cover next our 'Under The Hood' series articles. View the full article

We would like to invite our fans to see us and our magnificent "sim trailer" next week at Transport Expo 2017. Especially if you are living in Prague, Czech Republic, or within reasonable driving distance, this is an event that you should definitely consider. The team at SCS Software is super busy these days, and we were not sure if we can risk investing our time into any other activities. We have our hands full with testing, bug-fixing, polishing, and pushing out New Mexico, Italy, Special Transport, and a couple of related game updates to you in the coming weeks. However, when we realized that this exhibition is our unique and perhaps last opportunity this year to meet the players of our games in our home city, it was clear that we just have to find a way to come! We are really looking forward to meeting you! And for our fans in Czech language: Těšíme se na Vás! Můžete se projet v naší speciální mapě, kterou používáme pro veřejné akce. Rádi Vám ale také ukážeme Nové Mexiko, Itálii i Special Transport DLC. A pokud Vás zajímá jak probíhá vývoj našich her nebo volné pozice v naší firmě, je to také dobrá příležitost pobavit se přímo s našimi developery. View the full article

After extensive testing, we are ready to announce the release date of the latest American Truck Simulator map add-on. The wait for New Mexico DLC will be over on Thursday, November 9th, 2017. We're still working on final touches and optimizations, but feedback from both internal and external beta testing is, fortunately, coming back mostly very positive, so we feel reasonably confident to finally commit to the release date. For Steam digital distribution, we set the price to USD $ 11.99, € 11.99, £ 8.99, the DLC will also show up in box distribution in some territories. Do not forget to check out New Mexico coming soon page, where you'll find screenshots, the trailer video, and the feature list. View the full article

We expect to be posting a lot of information-heavy posts in the coming days and weeks concerning the upcoming DLC and game updates. But we hope that you will not mind us taking a little break again, to revisit the topic of pictures of community driver seats. We're back with the sixth set of photos with custom home-made gaming setups, built by some of the most devoted fans of our games, to haul cargo in Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. The number of pictures we are receiving from you every week is impressive, and we have a hard time choosing the best to publish. It's incredible to see so much effort (and money) spent to enjoy playing our humble games. It looks like the effort was worth it! Thanks everybody for sending your cool photos to us. If you have a cool driving rig setup that you would like to share with us, you can always send your photos straight to the inboxes on our Facebook profiles: ETS2, ATS or SCS Software. Also, don't forget to keep an eye on our Instagram and Twitter profile too if you don't want to miss anything important about us, our games, and projects. Related articles: Community's Driver Seats #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 View the full article

Today, we'd like to provide you with a quite detailed look at a project that has been underway for well over a year - our upcoming Special Transport DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2. We have hinted at its existence in last year's New Year Wishes video, at that point we actually thought that we would be ready to release it in only a few months. Obviously, the project needed more time to mature. So we kept on working; you may have noticed that a few months ago a screenshot was revealed in a report from Gamescom 2017 private presentation. Recently several curious visitors were allowed to try it at Warsaw Games Week 2017 and then we've allowed local TV to come to try and record it as a little teaser. Ultimately, a cross-disciplinary team has poured an incredible amount of time into this project, and today we are finally revealing it in full glory. But first, a photo... Some time ago, a couple of our colleagues were invited to become a part of a convoy for oversized transport of a huge metal tank to the city of Mělník, Czech Republic. This rare two-day experience had one goal - to gather as much data and info as possible about the whole transport and how things like this are done. Why? Because we know that our community is obsessed with realism and authenticity, you guys are always pushing us to make things more real, and want to avoid making naive mistakes. A lot our fans are very vocal about getting something new and more challenging to test your skills. We felt that it's time to try and satisfy some of this hunger! A lot of time has passed, and now as you can see in the video below, we are testing one of these Special Transport jobs on our motion seat in the office. What's going on there? It's quite big, right? And what are those cars with flashing beacons? Are they perhaps escort vehicles? Yes, they are. Yes, the cargo is big, it's huge. And yes, the escort vehicles can affect the traffic. There will be two of these, one escorting the player in front of him/her and one in the back. Their purpose is clear, to assist the driver to get the cargo from the start to the finish line of each special transport job. But that's not all. Let's review what this DLC is all about: 11 New Special Cargoes (up to 70 tons, 6 m width, 5+ m height and 20+ m length) 4 New Trailers 17 Unique Routes with the Special Transport Jobs (12 Base Map, 2 Scandinavia, 2 Going East!, 1 Vive la France !). This list will grow over time. A combination of over 80 Special Transport Jobs Escort Vehicles with a custom AI like clearing the path, stopping traffic, giving advice, pushing opposing vehicles to the side etc. Special intros and cutscenes related to the cargoes, missions or places along the routes New Models, characters, and animations of people around the scene Pedestrians, journalists or transport co-workers along the routes recognizing day, night or bad weather Possibility to Fail the "Mission" if you do not adhere to strict regulations New Checkpoints System to keep your progress in a special transport job safe New Warning Beacons Animations New Achievements Higher XP and Money Profit for successful completion of this type of jobs There is more, but we think that's enough for now. Better do some preparing, because this is going to be the biggest challenge for you and your mighty diesel beast so far! We are not yet ready to promise a particular release date, but the wait should not be too long anymore. We are super busy finalizing, bug-testing, and releasing a lot of stuff that we want to get into your hands before the end of the year, but we hope that you will have a chance to deliver Special Cargo in Euro Truck Simulator 2 still this side of Christmas. View the full article

As we were working on our Italia map expansion DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 (please consider pressing the Follow button on the Steam page!), we also reserved some time for retouching the bit of northern Italy that is already included in the core of the game's world. As a result, there is going to be a very visible change for you in the upcoming game version update, whether you hurry to get the DLC to enjoy driving all the way to the south of Italy or not. Euro Truck Simulator 2 already contains several cities and quite a stretch of road in Po Valley. We have added considerable improvements to the whole region, but we went even further with Milano. The city was completely rebuilt from scratch. Articles related to Italia expansion: Bella Italia Architecture Ring Roads New Industries View the full article