Euro Truck Simulator 2 catch-all

Had a funny moment last night as my 2.75 year old came into the Computer Room and asked to "drive the truck."

Turns out she's a lousy driver, but she occasionally turned the wheel over to me, and at her request we went to "the park" and "home." Tough time explaining that we couldn't actually leave the truck, though...

Elycion wrote:
billybob476 wrote:

Also: How many of us are going to make an Optimus Prime truck?

Bah, that Go-Bots stuff is for kids! Real men will rock the Goliath mod!
IMAGE(http://www.imcdb.org/i042464.jpg)

It'll have to make that crazy ass roar too!

groan wrote:

All of us

Peterbilt 379 fo life!

Veloxi wrote:
Elycion wrote:
billybob476 wrote:

Also: How many of us are going to make an Optimus Prime truck?

Bah, that Go-Bots stuff is for kids! Real men will rock the Goliath mod!
IMAGE(http://www.imcdb.org/i042464.jpg)

It'll have to make that crazy ass roar too!

And there will be a black Trans-Am that keeps causing accidents around you.

Have you guys seen the latest BundleStars Sim bundle?

8 sims for ~4 bucks

Ship Simulator Extremes
Lunar Flight
Dogfight 1942
Bridge It (Plus)
Airport Simulator 2014
Skyscraper Simulator
Agricultural Simulator: Historical Farming
Woodcutter Simulator 2013 Gold Edition

Woodcutter Simulator 2013 Gold Edition

For when you just couldn't get enough of regular Woodcutter Simulator.

IMAGE(http://i59.tinypic.com/2zgvg9x.jpg)

Ain't no shame in my game.

I kind of want airport simulator but the reviews are fairly abysmal.

Understandable.

I installed it out of morbid curiosity and wound up playing it for an hour before realizing the time flew by.

It reminds me of a slower-paced Order Up! or Cook, Serve, Delicious-type game. You basically have to manage various planes arriving at gates, driving over mobile stairways, fuel tankers, luggage carts, catering trucks and more. Once you get to the plane they go into auto pilot, but you have to manage time as each vehicle/service has a countdown timer to keep everyone happy.

You can have several gates going at once, ferrying and returning vehicles to the planes and back.

I was ready to turn off the game in the first few minutes as there's not much of a tutorial, but once you understand the goals and get into the rhythm of achieving them, it's an fun distraction.

I certainly got my $0.50 (8 games / $4) worth of fun out of it in that hour of play, even if I never pick it up again.

Yeah, Airport Simulator is... broken.

But as you say, easily worth 50 cents.

Anyone have any experience with Rescue: Everyday Heroes (US Edition)?

Looks pretty fun, not a sim in the sense of ETS2 but still quite interestring.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/25...

I'm holding out for the release of Goat Simulator 2014

ETS2 Open Beta 1.9

Highlights

The 1.9 update is one of the largest patches we have ever worked on, hence the long time to wrap it up. Work on the new vehicle AI code has actually started even before ETS2 was released, some year and a half ago, but we gave it all the time it needed to mature. It replaces the entire traffic AI code with a new system. Its far more flexible, and it is paving the way for yet more improvements in the future (country-specific behavior of traffic lights is a much needed planned feature for the future for example).

Code:
Brand new traffic car AI system;
Improved maneuverability, touches to suspension and collision physics (more work planned still);
Early support for Oculus Rift and gamepad-controlled mouse cursor;
Improved handling of automatic gearbox (more gears, interaction with cruise control);
Improved compatibility with semi-broken prefabs used in mods;
Improved error handling in radio playback.

Models:
Scania Streamline improvements (model, textures, paint jobs, new parts and accessories) - you may need visit truck dealer and re-purchase some parts;
Volvo FH16 improvements (interior, wipers, shadows);
Iveco Hi-way improvements (dashboard computer, shadows);
Paintjobs are properly applied on add-ons in interior views;
Map improvements.

Sound:
V8 engine sounds for Scania R and Scania Streamline.

Well damn, I didn't realize until now how long it's been since I last made a run in ETS2. VERY interested to see how the new traffic model works.

Just watched the preview video - great! This is the biggest change in how the game operates since release AFAIK.

I haven't played in over a month now since my house is being remodeled and I'm living the hobo lifestyle until it's done. Can't wait to get my wheel set up again and get on the road...

billybob476 wrote:

Well damn, I didn't realize until now how long it's been since I last made a run in ETS2. VERY interested to see how the new traffic model works.

Seconded, very excited to see the new AI traffic.

Glad to hear they're cleaning up the Volvo FH16 interior views. The shadowing always seemed a bit off to me.

EDIT:

IMAGE(http://cdn4.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/258760/header_292x136.jpg?t=1393859937)

While this is bumped, did anyone notice SCS put Scania Truck Driving Simulator on Steam last week? It was originally released in 2012 just prior to ETS2 and shares the same engine.

You can nab the demo from the Official Site. Keep an eye out for the Dangerous Drives content. It’s pretty wicked.

Ah I didn't dig too deeply, I was wondering if it was from SCS or some weird ETS2 copycat.

SCS's American Truck sim is out in May, per Amazon. It appears to be a much more modular product - the initial box is California, but if you buy the box preorder from Amazon, you get the Arizona add on DLC free when it is released later in the year.

That sounds a bit more like the kind of Trainz/Rail Sim experience, where buying all DLC would have you remortgaging your house in pretty short order, so people just buy lines or areas in which they are particularly interested.

davet010 wrote:

SCS's American Truck sim is out in May, per Amazon. It appears to be a much more modular product - the initial box is California, but if you buy the box preorder from Amazon, you get the Arizona add on DLC free when it is released later in the year.

That sounds a bit more like the kind of Trainz/Rail Sim experience, where buying all DLC would have you remortgaging your house in pretty short order, so people just buy lines or areas in which they are particularly interested.

So my initial response to this is kind of meh.

But I thought about it a bit, and then I realized that California alone is probably over half of the size of the ETS2 base game.

And Arizona is almost as big as Germany.

So now I'm just excited. These areas are going to be huge. It may end up being expensive to own them all, but given how huge this country is, I think it's understandable. And I think I'd rather have an ETS2 (or greater) level of fidelity at a higher cost than have them compress the US further.

For me, the draw of America is not traveling through 1 state, but experiencing the vast difference in geography and the well known US landmarks such as the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, etc. The east coast is also far more appealing to me (my home turf) than the west coast.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but I can't imagine they will be making an add-on for every state (49 expansions?).

Fair enough DonD, but you are either going to end up with extremely concentrated versions of areas or some other compromise which makes the experience less of a sim. I can imagine that the East Coast would be higher on the agenda than a lot of other places, but in all of this we might want to consider that ETS 2 wasn't just a driving simulator - it was also a management/resource sim about setting up new bases and staffing them. Gore mentioned that Arizona was as big as Germany...in space terms yes, but is it full of roads, resources and the like, or is it just crisscrossing 5 or 6 major routes through great swathes of desert ?

DonD wrote:

For me, the draw of America is not traveling through 1 state, but experiencing the vast difference in geography and the well known US landmarks such as the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, etc. The east coast is also far more appealing to me (my home turf) than the west coast.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but I can't imagine they will be making an add-on for every state (49 expansions?).

I do think it's really unlikely that they'll have every state; ETS2 includes only a fraction of the EU (even with Going East) and the US is over twice as large as the EU. SCS isn't a massive studio, and I think we have a pretty good idea about how quickly they can get content out from ETS2 - doing the whole US seems too ambitious. I'd personally hope they could get the coastal states and at least one East/West route to link them then branch out from there...

davet010 wrote:

Fair enough DonD, but you are either going to end up with extremely concentrated versions of areas or some other compromise which makes the experience less of a sim. I can imagine that the East Coast would be higher on the agenda than a lot of other places, but in all of this we might want to consider that ETS 2 wasn't just a driving simulator - it was also a management/resource sim about setting up new bases and staffing them. Gore mentioned that Arizona was as big as Germany...in space terms yes, but is it full of roads, resources and the like, or is it just crisscrossing 5 or 6 major routes through great swathes of desert ?

Part of what makes me OK with the idea of starting small and building up is that it would mean they aren't compressing things too badly. I feel like ETS2 is pretty near the "sweet spot" - it's realistic enough that places feel genuine, but it's compressed enough that you still make progress getting around. I think ideally I'd want slightly more detail and slightly less compression than ETS2 has.

It's true Germany has a higher density of roads and resources than AZ, but there are some amazing things to see in AZ and I would love to see their take on e.g. the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, etc.

Now that said, even though I would be OK with buying an AZ only expansion, I agree the game would be better served if they could add a larger area in the Southwest due to the reasons you mention.

Again this all seems like a lot of speculation at this point though... have to wait and see.

DonD wrote:

. The east coast is also far more appealing to me (my home turf) than the west coast.

Ha ha, can't wait to get stuck under a low clearance train bridge while the jerk in the Audi behind me honks continuously.

Don't need to go to the US for that, big fella

I'm not enthused by California as the setting for an American truck sim. I'm sure that having spent the first decades of my working life driving commercial vehicles there has soured me a bit, but I suspect few people realize how utterly boring the vast majority of commercial routes there are. The majority of truck traffic in California uses Interstate 5 as the main North/South route, and I5 south of Redding is nothing but flat and monotonous for the entire length of the state until you hit the Los Angeles metro where it becomes flat, boring, and gridlocked. There are some more interesting (in a technical sense) highways in the Bay Area that would challenge you to do more than hold the wheel straight and try to stay awake, but that's going to be a small portion of the average haul.

Arizona is even worse, the Central Valley of California is downright exciting compared to driving across Arizona. People mention the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon as being exciting to see, yet the Grand Canyon isn't viewable from any commercial routes and Hoover Dam is something you blow past in 5 minutes without time compression!

ETS2 has a great setting because Europe is densely packed with roads and cities, while the vast majority of the Western U.S. consists of small towns separated by hundreds of miles of empty land. If they had at least based the American sim East of the Mississippi there would have been a bit more parity between the settings. As things stand it appears to me as if they started on the "easy" West Coast and now have potentially hundreds of dollars in DLC purchases to go before you get to anywhere more interesting in the country.

imbiginjapan wrote:
DonD wrote:

. The east coast is also far more appealing to me (my home turf) than the west coast.

Ha ha, can't wait to get stuck under a low clearance train bridge while the jerk in the Audi behind me honks continuously.

Man, if I can get a full load stuck on Storrow Drive in Boston, I'll be happy

I want them to model Nebraska. Model a field of corn. Model a field of soybeans. Model a fallow field. Model a hog shed. Copy paste paste paste paste paste paste, rotate tool paste paste paste paste paste... and then countless forum posts complaining that it isn't realistic because one of the hog sheds runs north-south instead of east-west.

tanstaafl wrote:

Yeah, Airport Simulator is... broken.

But as you say, easily worth 50 cents.

That was seriously funny!

So, American Truck Simulator is starting to look like the spiritual successor to Desert Bus?