Euro truck simulator 2

Scenes from ETS2

Great video

Quote :

A few scenic looks at the wold of Euro Truck Simulator 2 for today...

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

I fond some interesting shots from the beta version of ETS 2

Some others

Special guest

Quote :

A lucky combination of factors on both sides has brought a special guest into our office. During the next few weeks, we'll have Piotrek from eurotrucksimulator2.pl "embedded" here in SCS Software's office, helping us test and balance Euro Truck Simulator 2, and no doubt doing a little reporting from the trenches on his own. (OK any bugs left in the game when it ships are his fault! ;-) )

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

Piotrek has been taking screenshots along the way while playing, mostly for use to document bugs and glitches in the game of course, but here is his own choice of a few nice screens from his testing today...

ETS2 Gameplay Movie

Quote :

Our friends at Excalibur Publishing, our UK publishing partner, have started helping us with testing the early betas of the game (thanks Tim!), and they are also starting to warm up their market to the existence of Euro Truck Simulator 2 (thanks Chris!). Promo material has to go out well ahead of the game's release to be effective, so often games are hyped well ahead of the time they hit the final development stages of post-production and testing.

Excalibur is planning to publish a series of screenshots and movies from Euro Truck Simulator 2, they even launched a dedicated ETS2 page on their site for it. For a start they created a cool movie worth showing here. While the team at SCS is very busy actually finishing the game and processing feedback from (so far) internal testing, our publishers will no doubt produce more and more material that we can also recommend here on our blog.

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ craotor's blog: Blog scs software

Congratulations to the winners!

Quote :

The best results of the competition make the challenge look like it was too easy! Ourselves we did not think it was possible to get the time under 1 minute, but you have proven us wrong repeatedly - we have some real masters of the steering wheel among the game's players :-). It's quite late here, we'll revisit this topic tomorrow again and get in touch with the winners.

(Text by SCS software)

Quote :

Thanks everybody for your effort, that packed parking lot really got a lot of diesel burnt on it during this weekend! For those of you who did not win, here is a little consolation prize - a short movie made of scenes in Euro Truck Simulator 2, showing variety of daylight changes and weather. (Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog SCS software

Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Game play - London to Frankfurt

Video by SCS software's partner: Excalibur Publishing

Can you help us with ETS2 license plates?

Quote :

We are working hard on finalizing Euro Truck Simulator 2 for release, but there are still some unfinished tasks which we would like to get done so that the game is released in great shape. One of the problems are correct and believable license plates on vehicles.

In our previous projects, usually the license plate was a part of a vehicle's texture, so there was no chance to dynamically alter it or pretend that the trucks and cars come from different countries. For Euro Truck 2, at first we thought about a system providing slightly more variety - have a small set of license plates for each country, and assign them around, but it turned out that too many people take it as an offense if they happen to see multiple vehicles in the world sharing the same license plate texture, not to speak about lack of variety.

In the end, we are about to bite the bullet and implement a system to be able to procedurally generate the license plates based on a set of rules for each country in the game.

See the image below to see an example of how this is setup for the Czech Republic (specifically these would be license plates for Prague from recent years). There is a background for the license plate ready to accept the letters and digits in a given pattern, and then we generate the "text" with the particular combination of letters and digits that follows the country's rules for license plates, picking the alphanumeric symbols from a font texture with font specific for the given country.

Quote :

Our problem is that for some countries like our own, we know those rules and can implement them with no problem, but doing the research for other countries is a time consuming task for us, with the risk that we'll still misunderstand the rules and implement the license plates for some countries incorrectly.

That's where the idea to approach our community and ask for help on collecting this know-how came to us. We would be very grateful for any pointers or URLs of documents that may help us, or explanations that you can provide, on how to compose believable license plates for vehicles in the various countries in Europe, mostly those present in the game already. Especially if you could point out if there are any things to pay special attention to, like differences between front and back plates, possibly differences between trucks and passenger cars and again if anything special is in place just for trailers, license plates differences as they are issued in different years etc, all this could help us to create a world which will be more believable when you drive though it.

If you have something useful to suggest, please mention it in a comment to this blog post, or alternatively send it to us by mail to info [at] scssoft [dot] com.

Here is a short movie as a way to saying thank you very much in advance..

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

ETS2 Management screens

Quote :

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is primarily a game about driving trucks - about the time spent behind the wheel, trying hard to deliver your load safely and on time. That's why we are building so detailed virtual world to drive in. We tried to calculate how much real time you'd have to spend driving in the game, at maximum speed allowed, to visit every place in the world just once. The theoretical minimum is over 40 hours of time! In practice, it will easily take double the time.

However, we are aware that for many players the second gameplay pillar of our big truck simulation games is very important as well - the ability to build a company and progress though a "from rags to riches" kind of career. We are not attempting to go overly deep with this aspect of the game, to compete with "tycoon" genre games when it comes to company management, but we still hope that you will have an interesting time with this part of the game...

(Text by SCS software)


Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Back from Gamescom 2012

Quote :

A small team from SCS Software made a quick two-day trip to Cologne, Germany, to "talk business" at Gamescom, the biggest European game show. We have spent most of the time in a section not accessible to general public - two of the huge halls at Koelnmesse are dedicated just for trade visitors to give them room for networking and business development talks. In fact we were so busy with the business aspect of the trip that we did not venture much into the public halls, staying away from the deafening sounds and big crowds. We haven't even managed to take any cool photos worthy of showing you on the blog. But the trip was very important for us and the future success of our games.

We try to keep an open dialogue not just with our fan community, but also with our publishing partners. They better have total confidence into us and our projects, to be willing to spend money and effort on massaging the retail as well as digital distribution channels to offer and promote our games. Big games industry events are a good opportunity for us to meet our colleagues from publishing companies in person and discuss our plans.

Without good partners who are specialists in the field, a niche game like Euro Truck Simulator 2 would hard time standing out among much bigger mass-market titles on the shelves. Inn fact without a network of reputable partners we'd have hard time even appearing on the shelves at all in most countries

We were also excited to meet a representative from Valve's Steam to discuss our chances to get our games on their service. We have tried submitting our games to Steam before, but without success (truck simulators really were considered too niche by their approval committee it seems, especially after a competitor truck game was given a chance but was not quite accepted so well by Steam players). In a few weeks, Steam is going to come out with Greenlight, a new system that will depend on fans of games to help them sort out candidates for inclusion on Steam. We definitely plan to be on Greenlight with ETS2 as soon as it launches; we have high hopes that we can count on your help! With the number of fans of our games, we should be able to get our voice heard. You are definitely going to hear from us again on this topic soon, asking you to join us in the rally to put our games to Steam!

To conclude this post, let us show you something that wasn't yet shown extensively - the central "hub" screen of the user interface system of Euro Truck Simulator 2. The game doesn't have a text-based main menu any more as did our previous games, and another set of menus for other in-game screens (the old "notebook" mental concept). With ETS2, we knew that the system needed to be more flexible to accommodate a lot of features, and yet we wanted to have a chance to make it understandable, to be able to liken it to an existing paradigm of control of an application or device. After some experiments, we settled on "desktop" approach - there is a central screen which you can think of as a desktop screen of the operating system on your computer, where we can add "application icons" for various features in the game. Where appropriate, related function icons are grouped into "widgets." We will make the "applications" appear over time on the desktop; we don't want to overload the player too soon with too much stuff. The learning curve is not too steep initially, but we have lots of room to add game features, which we plan to do even beyond the initial release of the game ;-).

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog:
Blog scs software

Another cool ETS2 movie

Quote :

Our friend Piotrek from www.eurotrucksimulator2.pl has just published a really nice movie from his gameplay session in Euro Truck Simulator 2. We liked it so much that we thought it was worth mentioning quickly here on the blog.

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software
Or: Euro truck simulator Poland

Quote :

The raw footage for this video was recorded on a testing machine, a four years old Intel Core 2 Duo E8500, with 2 GB of RAM, and with not so fast passively cooled edition of Nvidia GT 9600 video card. The game was not only playable but in fact some performance was still left for the video grabbing software. The game may not be running at the best visual quality settings, but the use of a G27 steering wheel makes the ride feel smooth in the video.

(Text by SCS software)

Early Morning Job in ETS2

Nice video

Quote :

A little video dramatization of a truck driver's early morning assignment in Euro Truck Simulator 2...

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Cool time-lapse ETS2 video

Quote :

Our friends at our UK publishing partner Excalibur Publishing have just released a really great time-lapse movie from Euro Truck Simulator 2. The video is compressing some two hours of real-time driving (actual time spent by a human in front of the monitor) into the space of only a few minutes. This footage really puts the scale of the ETS2 world into perspective!

(Text by scs software)

Original post @ creator's: Blog scs software

Not enough zombies!

Quote :

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!

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: [/center]Blog scs software

Quote :

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.

Bratislava to Birmingham

Quote :

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.

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

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

ETS2 vehicle registration plates

Quote :

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.

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

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.

(Text by SCS software)

I found some other videos from Euro truck simulator 2. You can see a lot of interesting and buetiful places and roads also thincgs you couldn't see in other ETS 2 videos, they are not made by SCS software but they are worth to be watched.

Ivedo and the Neatherlands - Euro Truck Simulator 2



The MAN on the move - Euro Truck Simulator 2



ETS2 Luxemberg To Rotterdam

Final stretch

Quote :

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."

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Click here

Development update

Quote :

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.

Original post @ creator's blog:

Quote :

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.

Quote :

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

Success at eleventh hour

Quote :

Yesterday afternoon we have successfully concluded our talks with Renault Trucks, yet another major truck manufacturer, bringing the total of licensed truck brands in ETS2 up to three. Yeah, still long way to go, but with Euro Truck Simulator 2 on the market soon, chances are the other big names will finally take notice, too.

We are happy to give you a new wallpaper to celebrate the occasion!

You can download the wallpaper in several resolutions here.

__________________________________________________________________

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Wallpaper

Quote :

We have prepared a cool ETS2 desktop wallpaper designed in the same style as the official game packaging.

Quote :

You can download the wallpaper in several desktop resolution sizes from here.

We have a Scania here in the center of the image, but in fact on different markets there may be different (though similarly looking) game boxes. Here are the possible designs that we have offered to our publishing partners to choose from. Logically different trucks may be more interesting to customers in various countries.

Quote :

A short update on Steam Greenlight ETS2 campaign - we have jumped another place to #40 yesterday. Maybe the mention in yesterday's blog post has made the difference? Anybody still has friends on Steam who were not yet lobbied into voting for the game? ;-)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

ETS2 Translators needed

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

Community translation of ETS2 has been under way for some time behind the scenes already, and several languages are now reported as 100% complete. We have privately invited major contributors from our previous translations, and they are doing a fabulous job.

We are still tweaking things extensively in the game based on tester's feedback, so strings are changed or added frequently. Our translators fortunately are quite patient with us so far when "breaking" their translations this way.

Unlike with the previous projects, this time we do not intend to open up the translation system to just anybody. It was causing problems with too much "noise" and sometimes even malicious abuse of the system.

We are now ready to bring in more translators for languages which haven't got enough contributions yet, and we would kindly like to ask more of you for help.

The languages we need help with are: all Nordic languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Balkan languages. We DO NOT need any help though German, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Silesian (yes, we are ready to cover even "small" languages if we find dedicated contributors, Basque anyone?), Italian, and French. We are setting the per-language maximum to 3 people to allow for productive discussion in smaller circles of dedicated people.

What we are looking for: mature approach, solid language skills, excellent English language comprehension, and team spirit. Experience with previous community translations a plus, provable history of community participation a big benefit, too.

What you are getting in exchange? This is a volunteer activity with no compensation, so the most you can get is feeling good about helping your favorite game to be available to players in your own language. We have a history of expressing gratitude to people helping us out by giving out free activation codes for our games (for Scania TDS help we have gifted over 100 free copies of the game), but this is really up to our discretion if we see that the quality (most important criteria) and the overall effort really were a solid contribution.

How does it work? Take a look at Scania TDS translation project.

Please do not respond to this plea here in the comments, DO NOT expose your e-mail or any other contact info here on the blog. If you have read and taken in the whole info above and still want to help, get in touch with us instead on our mail info at scssoft dot com.

Thanks!

(Text by SCS software)

Gorgeous YouTube movies

Quote :

Two great videos drew our attention today. We thought we'd share them with you, along with saying big thanks for so many offers to help with ETS2 translation. We apologize that we cannot really accept you all, on some languages we have been approached by 30+ people ready to help. It's humbling really. We have covered several languages were well it seems, though we might still need a bit more help with Scandinavian languages where we are pressed for time.

Now on to the movies.

The first one is recorded in Scania Truck Driving Simulator, and it's really so stunning.

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software



The second movie is from Euro Truck Simulator 2 beta test, and again it's spectacular film-making.

Quote :

Thanks guys for helping us with so great promotion of our games on the Internet!

PS: tomorrow, a new wallpaper.

MAN TGX wallpaper

Quote :

As promised yesterday, we are happy to give you another cool computer desktop wall-paper with a licensed truck from Euro Truck Simulator 2 here on SCS Software's blog.

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

Click this link to download the MAN TGX wallpaper.

Our adventure with Steam Greenlight is taking interesting twists and turns. When we last mentioned Greenlight here on the blog, we were excited to see quite a burst of new votes on that day (see the picture below).

Quote :

We were hoping to witness the game surging to a higher position, however things got quiet two days later, in fact too quiet. The influx of votes has slowed, and the game has lost a place and is now at #41. We don't think it's a good idea to bother you with this campaign in every blog post, but if it works and always sparks a new wave of votes, we may still do it from time to time. Most of you have had a plan for means of obtaining (hopefully purchasing!) a copy of the game before the possibility of Steam even came up, so you my not care. But for us, having the game appear on Steam could really help get it in front of a much larger audience than just our current fan community, to increase the sales, and to get better funding for future truck simulators.

So if you are a Steam user who just bumped into our game for the very first time today randomly visiting our blog, our long long-time fan who was still sitting on the fence, please consider spending a minute of your time and vote for ETS2 on Greenlight Thanks! (And tell your Steam friends to do the same ;-) )

Hi guys,
I have found a new video from Euro Truck Simulator 2, the video is not made by SCS software but by a fan channel: RestaCar youtube account. It's tottaly an amazing video so please enjoy

Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Epic Fan Trailer

Final Stretch on Euro Truck Simulator 2

Quote :

We have a very tough week behind us, but the light at the end of the tunnel is very near now...

For the past several days, we have been creating so called Release Candidates for the Gold Master of Euro Truck Simulator 2. At the end of the beta process, when the game is mostly stable and the ship date is near, there inevitably comes the time start generating RC's. Release Candidate is a build of the game which the develop considers good enough for being used for distribution of the game to stores. This build goes through final test stages before eventually being proclaimed Gold Master. Not everything goes perfect on the first try, often show-stopping bugs are still found, that's expected, and that's why these builds are only considered candidates before the final GM is chiseled out of what started as the first rough Alpha and went through more and more refined Betas. When the GM is finally "cooked" and sent for duplication, it still takes on the order of weeks to manufacture the CD's (or DVDs), put them into boxes and distribute them to stores.

So here we are, on the brink of "Going Gold" - tired, but proud that we have finally fulfilled our ambitions and built the best game in SCS Software's 15-year history.

The game is not perfect, there will be small glitches discovered here and there, there will be additional features that people will ask us to add to the game, and we are committed to support the and improve the game well beyond the initial release. There are so many opportunities for evolving the game further, and it may be hard for us to choose where to focus our limited capacity. But we can discuss this later, for now, all our attention is on finalizing ETS2 for production.

The official release date across Europe is still October 19th both for retail and digital (ESD) version. We are getting lots of e-mails asking about this. Some retailers may take a bit longer to stock the goods, and may announce different dates. Keep in mind that we are not Apple or Blizzard to be able to orchestrate midnight product availability across the globe, in fact the release timeframe is a bit fuzzy as the game can be expected to pop up in various stores ± a few days around official date. Things also largely depend on our publishing and distribution partners in various countries - SCS is not the distributor of the game, just the developer.

When we are tired and need more energy, there is a great way to rest and recharge our batteries - looking at fan-made videos from our games. We are sure that once ETS2 is out, there will be an explosion of new movies. So far there is only a handful of beta testers with access to the game, and some of them don't hesitate to pour overtime into creating screenshots or recording and editing really great movies. You can check them out on our ETS2 Beta Testing Playlist. Most recently, this one movie made the greatest impression on us; it's just Epic as the title says, but admittedly the music plays its part there.

(Text by SCS software)

Original post @ creator's blog: Blog scs software

Quote :

Some inspiring news are also coming from digital distribution channels. ETS2 is today basking on the front page of EA's Origin store, and it's there in the company of some very fine games.