mwl4

So let me explain a bit. First of all, support for 1.38 takes so long because in the engine of ETS2/ATS huge changes have been made. Basically SCS merged two modules of their engine into one. Though I am on good way of getting support done within few days I think. Switching from 1.37 to 1.38 in multiplayer sounds really easy for someone who just plays this game. It is only switching two numbers, right? But: TruckersMP project has really tough architecture bases. We read and write data(memory) from/to engine. In order to be able to do that we need to have proper memory layout defined in our code. Since we do not have access to source code of the game, we need to kinda duplicate how it looks in source code at SCS. Though that is not easy task if you don't have direct access to that code. Really often it must be done by Reverse Engineering. You look at compiled source code, and trying to understand what it does, what it modifies, what it reads, etc. You can also guess basing on given data what are given variables (what are their names, what they mean). And you need to be very very precise in guessing. Any mismatch in data layout might lead to game crash. Also to make everything a bit simpler we use already defined functions which operate on data from the game. Though you must be very precise in terms of what data you put as parameters to such functions. Again any mismatch may lead to game crash, and it might be crash that is hard to trace. Because for example it is memory stomp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_corruption). And there is really nothing you can do about it. Only getting PDB (debug symbols) file from SCS or source code access could speed up porting process. There is huge field to do in terms of ensuring many things on our side, but this will only help us with stability. If SCS changes code, then always we need to adjust our code to follow changes. So only that part makes development hard (working with prism engine). But consider this: SCS Software has full access to source code, and they haven't built multiplayer yet. Why? That is second part of the problem: engine & gameplay & network programming. To provide good mulitplayer you need to prepare stable systems. It is not really only about writing code. You need to provide design of systems - communication between systems - you need to couple somehow rendering, physics, gameplay, replication, sounds, AI, animations, vehicles simulation and more. More read here: http://ce.eng.usc.ac.ir/files/1511334027376.pdf Especially section : 1.6.14 Online Multiplayer/Networking Singleplayer games are already hard to create. Multiplayer additionally must serve gameplay with replicated objects with possible high latency, you need to take care of backend & security, etc. etc. I have seen something about hiring somebody full-time to do TruckersMP. So keep in mind what I wrote in previous paragraph + we need someone who knows C++ (very very good) / Assembler (good) / Reverse Engineering (very good) / Game Engines overall / Specific Systems - Gameplay & Replication deeply. Finding someone with that knowledge in ETS2 environment / simulation game is really very hard. First problem is that somebody with that knowledge usually goes working to big companies as they pay quite good, and provide good working conditions. Or such person just starts his own business as he knows what he does. Though situation is better now. We have ShawnCZek now, who is able to write some game code. And we have now stable solutions in terms of cowork on the same project. Standard DevOps is set on TruckersMP which makes simpler making experimental builds, code is build everytime when pushed to repository, we have full pipeline. And last thing is my job at CD Projekt RED. I started my job in February 2019. Consider this: we started Patreon in October 2019. Before Patreon my only income from TruckersMP were advertisements. And that wasn't good income. Now with Patreon it is better, but I work on this project already 7 years. If Patreon income will be constant/rising then I can think of getting back to TruckersMP full time. But for now it must stay as it is. I cannot just leave my current job for now.

I had working prototype of it. Though it has logic issue in multiplayer - which is time. Time in TruckersMP is synchronized between players and server, and even if you go sleep in game your time will be the same as before. So tachograph feature does not make sense so much. Also consider this feature as kinda hack. It was not prepared in good shape, but rather as prototype. Maybe in future we will get back to this. We will see.