Alaskan Road Truckers News

Whew! Saturday was something.

The first day of the open playtest brought us much-required feedback - and a lot of fixes. We've been fixing the game in real-time, reading and watching you on Discord and on your streams. This is becoming a tradition for us, isn't it?



Moreover, overnight we created a new build with even more fixes and improvements! So if you played at the start of our playtest, here's what has changed.

• Batteries are available at most gas stations and not only in stores
  
• Fixes to invisible bumps on some roads
  
• Fix for the camera prediction resetting itself to "off"
  
• Some traffic fixes (still WIP)
  
• Bugs fixes in Cantwell, Paxson, and Palmer
  
• Fixed the part of the road leading to Prudhoe Bay
  
• More items in stores from the clerks
  
• Invisible road bump fixes
  
• Fix for the crash when you eat certain items from inside the truck
  
• Improved gear 6 and 8 behavior
  
• Some landscape fixes
  
• Day-night lighting improvements
  
• Additional traffic improvements
  
• CB radio loan system fixes
  
• Removed requirement of the engine being off when (de)coupling a trailer
  
• Steering animation fix
  
• Reduction of sliding on some surfaces
  
• AMD GPUs graphic bug fix
  

We also know about many other issues that are in the works. These include:

• Battery depleting too quickly
  
• Newly bought trucks not working properly
  
• Wheel turning speed is too low (ultimately we think we'll go with an option with a slider, but we'll speed it up by default first)
  
• Remaining AI wonkiness
  
• Steering wheel detection problems for some models (try running the game in admin mode, it often helps)
  
• Force feedback being too strong (FFB options in the works!)
  

We might be able to include at least some of those before the playtest is over.

If you want to support us, wishlist Alaskan Road Truckers, follow us, and tell your friends about it.

Thank you all for testing with us and helping make the game better!

Michal from Road Studio

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.trucker

This playtest has now finished - thank you to everyone who has taken part!

Hello truckers!

Alaskan Road Truckers is nearing launch, every day we’re getting closer to the 18th of October when we’ll be sending our trucker game out into the wild and you’ll be starting your diesel-fuelled adventure.

But you don’t have to wait until then to play Alaskan Road Truckers. We’ve been running closed playtests on our Discord channel and now we’re ready to invite everyone!

[h2]Open Playtests[/h2]

We’re running open playtests! Between 08:00 UTC / 09:00 BST / 10:00 CEST / 04:00 EDT / 01:00 PDT / 16:00 CST on Saturday the 7th of October until 08:00 UTC / 09:00 BST / 10:00 CEST / 04:00 EDT / 01:00 PDT / 16:00 CST on Monday the 9th of October, you’ll be able to download and play the beta playtest version of Alaskan Road Truckers. You will be able to play for a maximum of three hours, but you can choose when you want to play during the above hours.

Signing up is incredibly simple:

• Go to our Alaskan Road Truckers Steam store page
• Press the green button to request access
  
• Open Steam to download the Alaskan Road Truckers playtest
  
• Once that’s finished - play!
  

Note: If you are outside of the playtest hours above, you will not be able to see the button to sign up for the playtest. Please wait until the playtest begins to sign up and download.

That’s all you need to do to get trucking. But as a playtester, we’d love to hear from you.

Remember that this is a beta playtest, we are still working on the game and will be right up to (and after) release. So if you encounter bugs, technical issues, gameplay issues, or just have suggestions and feedback for us - please let us know. We’re working round the clock to fix issues and make Alaskan Road Truckers ready for release, and your feedback is essential to that. As we mentioned in a previous devlog, we’re a small indie development team which means we need as much help as possible with testing, playing, and letting us know what you think!

Give us your feedback on our Steam Discussion Forum to make sure you get heard. We’ll be checking constantly throughout the playtest and your feedback will make all the difference in making our game a success.

Also - if you’re a streamer or content creator, please feel free to stream or record your experience. There are no embargos, NDAs, or anything else. Share our game with your communities - we’re looking forward to seeing what you create!

Thank you to everyone who takes part and who tells us what you think. Don’t forget to tell your friends to join in - we need as many people as possible trying our playtest to get as much essential feedback as possible.

We can’t wait to hear what you have to say and we’re incredibly excited to get you all behind the wheel.

[h2]Stay in Touch[/h2]
If you want to help us make Alaskan Road Truckers a success, the best way you can help (other than playing the playtest, telling other people to play the playtest, and giving us your feedback) is to wishlist us on Steam - so head over to our store page and mash that wishlist button!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.trucker

Hello truckers!

Today marks TWO WEEKS until Alaskan Road Truckers launches on Steam!

In the buildup to launch, we've been running a few closed playtests for our Discord members. This has been incredibly useful to us, helping us to refine our focus, fix bugs, and make some changes that the community has asked for.

[h2]Community Playtest Updates[/h2]

We've received a ton of feedback over the most recent playtest sessions. Here are some of the changes we've been able to implement in our playtest build, which all helps make the final game better than ever:

• Added dedicated quality settings for rear view mirrors
  
• Can now disable the first-person camera following the steering wheel
  
• Camera toggle speed is increased
  
• NPC cars now use taillights
  
• Truck and trailer stop lights, reverse lights and direction lights now work (still WIP)
  
• Wet road reflections have been improved
  
• Trucker perk tooltips don’t flicker anymore
  
• AI car improvements (still WIP)
  
• UI scaling fixes
  
• Concrete barrier collision fix
  
• Sky and light tweaks - night is darker, sun reflections are fixed, fog is tweaked
  
• Bird size and velocity tweaks
  
• Draw distance improvement in some places
  
• Subtle UI changes in facility and map menus
  

There are many more changes, these are just the headlines, but we wanted everyone to know - we're listening to your feedback very carefully. This won't stop here either, when we launch the game we want to continue hearing from you - you're an essential component in making Alaskan Road Truckers a success.

[h2]Playtest Videos[/h2]
We've been able to let streamers and content creators get their hands on the latest playtest builds over the last few days and the response has blown us away. Here's a few for you to whet your appetite in anticipation of the full game launch.

[h3]Camodo[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]GametechUK[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Gadarol[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]SolderSolder[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

...and there's many more out there!

If you'd like to be involved in future playtests we may have an opportunity coming up - stay tuned for a potential Steam announcement.

[h2]Stay in Touch[/h2]
With only two weeks to go, the best way to stay in touch with everything Alaskan Road Truckers is to wishlist us - then you'll be all ready to start your trucking adventure on the 18th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.trucker

Hello truckers!

There are less than three weeks to go until we launch on Steam. Three weeks! We can barely believe it. We are so excited to be able to release our game into the wild and have you all play it - we hope you’re as excited as we are.

Last week we talked about how Alaskan Road Truckers fits into the field of trucking games, this week we’re going to look at how it compares to simulation games. We’re going to answer the question - is Alaskan Road Truckers a simulation game?

[h2]What is a simulation game?[/h2]


It’s surprisingly hard to pin down what makes a simulation game a simulation game. It’s an incredibly broad category of gaming, containing games as diverse as Gas Station Simulator, The Sims, and Stardew Valley. Despite allowing players to experience things in a huge variety of ways, there is one thing that unites all simulation games - they simulate an experience.

That experience can be as large as designing, building, and managing your own city or as small as living the moment-to-moment experience of a singular person doing a job. Simulation games are all about putting you into a role and giving you the tools to experience it, most often with a degree of fidelity to real life.

[h2]Sims and Alaskan Road Truckers[/h2]


So the question is: where does Alaskan Road Truckers fit into the simulation genre?

Do we simulate an experience? Yes. Alaskan Road Truckers is all about putting you in the shoes (and skin) of an Alaskan trucker. You’ll live, eat, drive, and exist as a trucker, and as a result, many things are simulated. Weather, driving conditions, hunger, energy, health - they’re all in the game, and they make the game step into the simulation space. So on the surface, Alaskan Road Truckers is a simulation game.

That said, we would hesitate to brand Alaskan Road Truckers as pure simulation. We’re focusing more on recreating the feel of being an Alaskan trucker rather than recreating every minute aspect of owning a truck or running a trucking business. We want you to feel like a rugged trucker, working through storms and against the odds to deliver your cargo, we don’t want you to feel like you have a never-ending spreadsheet of tasks to complete before you get to the fun stuff. This is a game inspired by real life, it isn’t a recreation of real life.

We spoke last week about how we’re not aiming to take the crown of trucking sims, and that’s still true. We are an indie team making an indie game and our ambitions are big but still modest. We’re making the best Alaskan trucker experience ever, we aren’t making the most high-fidelity simulation game ever made.

Every aspect of our game has been designed to put you in those trucking boots, and we think you’ll be pleased with the look, sound, feel, and level of simulation we’ve put into the game.
[h2]Playtests? Playtests.[/h2]


We’ve been running limited closed playtests with parts of our community, and we’ve got more planned! If you’d like to take part, the first step is to join our Discord, where you’ll find info on how to sign up:
https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4

[h2]Stay in Touch[/h2]
With less than three weeks to go until we launch on Steam, stay up to date with everything Alaskan Road Truckers by wishlisting us. We’ve also got a ton of social channels where you can stay in touch with us - come join us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.trucker

Hello truckers!

We’re warming up our engines ahead of the PC launch of Alaskan Road Truckers - coming October 18, 2023. We’re excited to let our game out into the wild, and we’re busy working away, making sure our vision of the game is achieved for the launch.

This week we wanted to take a moment to talk about what Alaskan Road Truckers is, where it sits in the field of simulation games, and how it compares to some of the other games out there. We hope this helps everyone understand what Alaskan Road Truckers is meant to be as a game.

[h2]Truck Sim or Survival?[/h2]
You might have heard us say (and if you haven’t, where have you been?) that in Alaskan Road Truckers you play as a trucker - not a truck. That isn’t just a snappy marketing slogan, it’s core to the identity of our game and how we differentiate ourselves from other trucking games out there right now.


In other trucking simulation games, what’s simulated is the truck. Not only driving the truck, but maintenance, upkeep, refueling, and loads of other aspects of running a truck - and often running a trucking business too.

When we decided to make Alaskan Road Truckers, we decided to take it one step further. Instead of simulating only your truck, what about the person driving it? Setting the game in Alaska, one of the most varied and rugged environments on the planet, helped us in deciding to focus the game all around living as a trucker, not simply driving a truck.

From there, the gameplay concepts flow naturally. You’re a human in Alaskan Road Truckers, so you need to eat, sleep, and stay healthy. Then things like temperature begin to play a part too, you have to stay warm in the harsh winters of the frozen North. These all helped us to flesh out what Alaskan Road Truckers is - it’s not just a trucking simulation game, it’s a survival game too where you take your life in your hands every time you climb out of your cab.


It didn’t just stop there - these ideas around survival also helped us provide a deeper trucking experience. The weather will also affect your truck - too cold and it won’t start. We added hazards to the roads so you’ll either have to clear them (if you can) or take detours, which can affect not only your ability to complete your current job but also if you’re unprepared for a lengthy trip, you might run out of fuel, your truck might break down, and you might end up cold and hungry in the wilderness.

From a simple start - what about playing as a trucker, not a truck - we’ve expanded our ideas to incorporate a ton of gameplay systems that add up to what we believe is a compelling simulation of trucking life. So when you look at Alaskan Road Truckers and other games and wonder why you should check us out, remember that we’re offering something fundamentally different.

[h2]How Alaskan Road Truckers Compares[/h2]
There are more trucking simulators released every year and a couple of big names that currently hold the trucking crown. It’s important to remember that we’re not aiming to take their crowns - we’re not looking to be the best trucking simulation game ever made. We’re looking to be the best trucker simulation game ever made.

Let’s look at American Truck Simulator for an example. The team at SCS created vast swathes of the USA (with more to come) and have the pre-eminent American trucking game out there. We’re offering something fundamentally different to ATS. We’ve built a smaller experience, focusing on nailing the every day feeling of being a trucker living in Alaska. As we mentioned in last week’s devlog, we’re a small team, so we’ve made our game deeper - not broader.


That’s not to say that it’s not important that we have a varied map and a satisfying driving experience - we do, and we’ve made sure that there’s plenty to see and many realistic roads to rumble over in your truck. We’ve ensured that driving your truck in-game feels like driving a truck, you’ll be spending many hours behind the wheel, so we needed to make sure that this is up to scratch. As we continue to support the game after launch we’ll also be adding more to the map and the experience, stay tuned for our post-release roadmap - coming soon!

We’ve also decided to launch on consoles, bringing our trucker experience to a wider audience who desperately need a solid trucking game on console. The biggest trucking games are still currently PC only, and we felt that console players deserve to get the same chance to live as a trucker as those on PC. We haven’t announced our console launch date just yet - but it is coming. We can’t wait to get the game in front of PS5 and Xbox Series X/S players - and we hope you’ll love what we’ve got in store for you.


[h2]More Beta Previews[/h2]
Over the last week, we’d seen more people play our beta build and share their experiences on Twitch and YouTube. Here are a few of the wonderful previews that have come in over the last seven days:

GametechUK
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Ebute Gamer[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Hilmi Şahin[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]アフロマスク[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Sign up for the chance to test our game[/h2]
We’re currently running some limited invitation playtests of our beta build of the game. To make sure you’re in with a chance to be selected, join our Discord and join in the conversation. Come hang out with us and talk about trucks!


[h2]Stay in Touch[/h2]
Now you’ve read all about how Alaskan Road Truckers fits into the field of trucking sims it’s time to head over to our store page and smash that wishlist button. We’re launching on the 18th of October, so make sure you're ready to hit the road with us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.trucker