Warming up for ATS: Special Transport

[EmpireKicking 155]

We have received a lot of positive feedback to our recently-released ETS2 Special Transport DLC. We continue to work on it - more routes are coming as well as various subtle code improvements. Meanwhile, we are bombarded with questions about a comparable expansion for American Truck Simulator, and we feel that we should not keep you completely in the dark. We are happy to confirm that ATS will also receive its own oversize loads!

Our vehicle team is currently building a bunch of new massive cargoes for ATS, so the route designers have to use placeholders for now. When the creators are setting up the route parameters, a ton of testing and iterating is required to make sure that the given cargo can get from point A to point B smoothly but with just the right level of challenge for the players. This is very time consuming, so we had better start on "scripting" the routes before the final cargo models are available. Let's take a look at a couple of screenshots below...
 

 

 

You can see our special cargo placeholder trailer. Our designers use it to verify that a particular cargo we have in our plans will eventually fit through critical places of the in-game world. If it doesn't fit, usually we try to tweak the map, perhaps raise a bridge by a feet or two, or move a big rock a bit further from a tight bend on the road. If such a change would ruin the place, we have to find and set up an alternate route. As you can see, some places are rather tight, with only a few inches of space left to drive thru!

Our Special Transport development team is spending a lot of time pulling this placeholder trailer, and as a joke they've started to call this weird empty box "the aquarium". When the vehicle team heard about it, they've decided to elaborate on this little joke. So now, when we're looking for suitable routes, we're also taking the SCS Hammerhead shark for a nice ride. :-)