American Truck Simulator News

Sound plays a very important role in interactive games, which is why we are very excited to introduce a new sound engine to the worlds of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator in the near future.



FMOD is a proprietary sound effects engine that will allow us to make really dynamic and complex audio. We have been working on implementing it for a long time already, and our sound designer has already poured hundreds of hours into implementing new vehicle sounds. Eventually, the changes to our soundscape will be more profound as we plan to revisit ambient sound sources all around the environment, this is planned to appear in the game through a series of follow-up updates. The feedback we receive from our community will surely play an important role in how we tune and tweak the sfx in future updates, we expect it to take some iterations.



Another part of the community that might be excited (or nervous) for such a change is our modders. Honestly, they will need to start from scratch to plug their sounds back into the game, as the changes in data structures are considerable. This update will make most existing sound mods incompatible. The silver lining is that the new wealth of features in the sound library will allow for way more fidelity especially with vehicle sounds, so we hope that the deep changes we are coming with will be appreciated. FMOD offers a free application for everyone to use, so mod creators will have the some power available to them as our own sound department. To help with the transition, we also plan on releasing some useful tutorials to help you become familiar with this new software.

For those with an eye for detail, you may have noticed a picture we shared across our social media channels this past weekend to tease you. Did you spot it? A long-awaited requested feature will be made possible with this FMOD update - the ability to roll down your truck windows! Look out for a more detailed blog post in a few days!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
While we still have a long way to go with this big new feature, we hope you will enjoy this sneak-peak of what is to come and how this new sound engine and the Doppler effect will change the way you hear things around you in ETS2 and ATS.

Sometimes driving the highway can be lonely work, you may have the radio playing, or even have the GPS Voice Navigation enabled, but nothing beats the feeling of driving together with a fellow trucker.

This Valentines Day, we want to share that same feeling with the community we love. We hope to see you out driving on the roads with us in the future.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Loads of Love,
SCS Software ❤️

P.S: We are also sharing the love with our weekly sale on Steam, with a variety of discounts available across the Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator range. Be sure to check it out!

After driving hundreds of miles through the night, the first light of the morning is often a very welcome sight for drivers. For many, it's the first glimpse of the surrounding landscape as the sun rises creating spectacular colors and rays of light in the sky, which makes for a beautiful photo.



With Idaho for American Truck Simulator beginning to take shape, we wanted to share with you a selection of shots from locations across the state during a sunrise. With just enough light to make-out some known landmarks, we thought it would be fun to present you with a challenge!


Let us know the location of each of these shots in the blog comments or on our Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and we will pick one lucky person who will win a special prize. Be sure to get guessing, and to add Idaho to your Steam Wishlist if you're excited by what you see.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209470/American_Truck_Simulator__Idaho/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

It's time for us to get ready for the SCS On The Road season 2020, and we cannot wait to get travelling again. Each visit to a different location presents the opportunity for us to meet people from our community, as-well as meet with new and existing industry representatives which could lead to potential future collaborations and releases.

We are excited to announce that for 2020, we plan to travel to a variety of industry and gaming exhibitions around the world. You can expect us to be on the show floor, however in some cases it might not be exhibiting with our SCS Sim Trailer or booth, but walking the show floor, so be sure to keep an eye out for us in our trademark ETS2 or ATS T-Shirts!

The first stop on our Calendar takes us to the Mid-America Trucking Show, which we last visited in 2016 (where did the time go?) shortly followed by our first ever trip to Truck World Canada to meet with various industry contacts, but we hope to meet many of you from our community too.



If you are planning to attend any of these events, be sure to let us know! Our team would be more than happy to say hello, have a chat, and take a selfie. You may even receive some ETS2 or ATS swag as a gift. However please keep in mind that some of these events are still being planned, and that changes may be made to our schedule, which will be sure to inform you of on our blog and social media channels.

Last year we also enlisted the help of some of our local fans willing to help us on some of these events. We think it's a great way to connect with a few of our most loyal fans and offer them a very unique (and also paid) experience.

If you would like to become a part of our crew for a weekend, please let us know. Successful candidates must be 18+, native speakers of the region of the given event, have great social skills, knowledgeable players of our games and active members of the fan community, ideally with a history of involvement with our betas, or perhaps recognised creators from the modding community.

If you are free for two days of your time, have the skill and the passion to become a "roadie" and become join our crew, please get in touch with us by mail on this address.

This article was originally created for Vortex, Czech-based media. Due to the growing interest in different positions in SCS, we decided to translate the whole mini-series of these talks to publish here, on our blog. Today, we bring you first episode, featuring Ondřej "Duffator" Dufek - ATS world architect



When I meet someone for the first time, they often ask "So, what do you do exactly?". "I make video games, I'm a game developer" I often say, expecting more questions to follow. "Oh, interesting, sounds cool" they respond, but I can tell that they don't understand what that means and continue to ask more. "So work in programming or graphics?" is a common follow up question. "Neither, I'm a Map Designer" which is usually followed by more confusion. And that's why I'm here - to explain what exactly a Map Designer in SCS Software does for a living.

As the name suggests, the main role of a Map Designer is to create maps. Our job is to create a virtual world and environment in which a player travels and works. In SCS Software as you know, we create truck simulators, so we have to create everything you could possibly see outside of your virtual truck's window.



"Ah, so you create 3D Graphics!" is probably the main thought running through your mind right now, but that isn't entirely true. To clarify what we do more, I like to think about map designing similar to building with Lego bricks or playing Minecraft. Being a Map Designer isn't about making an individual cube or element, nor does he create a specific model such as a house, bench, tree. All of these are created by his colleagues in the asset department, so he can put them together in a map editor, creating a small part of our open world. With enough trees, you'll get a forest, with a number of buildings, you'll make a town. We're called Map Designers because our game space isn't composed of individual game levels, it is an open world which we watch mostly from a birds-eye view. So the comparison to the creation of a map offers itself.



Nevertheless, that would be a very simplified description of our work. The important word in the job title is "designer" - a man or woman designing something (not just a car or electric kettle).

Our game world is stylized, a miniature variant of the real world. Due to the technical requirements and manpower, it has been created in a 1:20 scale. So a designer has to choose one thing out of twenty and drop the rest, there isn't space for more. It's a pretty hard decision and one of the first and foremost duties of a map designer, to what he wants to create.

For example - take a process of road-making. Think of a section of road with the surrounding country, which connects two cities. The goal is to find out as much relevant information about it as possible (the length, height, what landmarks are there, points of interest, climates, landscapes etc) to create a draft which s/he will able to process and finalize. So the task at hand is mainly about filtering and the priority of information, along with staying within the boundaries of limitations.




And what limits are we talking about? Everything! - from scale, time, resources available and more. The real world is unique, and almost every place is original. Unfortunately, we can't afford such a luxury in our game world, where the number of available models we can use is limited. Designers must make up their mind of which models to use, and where to place them. For example, which house is most similar to the pattern found in the real world, how it could be improved using his or her 'artistic license' to stylize the in-game world. Another limitation is technology, unlike pre-rendered animations, our world must draw itself in real-time using various PC configurations. We can't fill it with an unlimited number of models and details. Another limitation is surveillance distance, which is the number of reflections in mirrors or water surfaces. All of these aspects directly influence the output and framerate. And the last big limitation is time. Our players expect a new expansion in a reasonable amount of time, so we can't take too long with our production.

In our studies of the road section we are working on, we find out the most characteristic details of the road and see if it is possible to re-create these in-game. The goal is to transfer the look and design into our virtual world. In an ideal case, a map designer creates a landmark on a 1:1 scale. During the 1:20 compression, it's impossible for us to include all of the most interesting places, as they would be located next to each other (due to the scale), which would not be true to life or distance. So our task is to combine both interesting landmarks between longer stretches of road to make them stand out. For example, if a 20km stretch of road had three farms and a large forest, it would end up likely two of the farms and a majority of the forest would be removed to correctly imitate the real-life landscape on a 1:20 scale. Another task of map designer is to connect different types of landscapes together and to create a smooth transition when travelling between forests and towns.



And that is what a map designer job consists of. Finding solutions to various design, technical and artistic obstacles. Whether it be a virtual city, junction, or dirt road, it is a combination of art and technical skills to be able to find a creative solution.

So I hope this very explanation helps you understand a bit more about what a 'map designer' does. If we we're to go in-depth into all the nitty-gritty details of our work, we would need a series of articles, perhaps a documentary! Let us know if you enjoyed the general theme of this blog, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section.