ProMods for ATS

[Lion]

I would love to see a road run from Vegas, through Pahrump and Death Valley to Bakersfield. Although probably not a massively common trucking route, very scenic, and could take past Badwater and Furnace Creek.

[iBallasticwolf2]

If that happened then it would be multiple routes so you would be turning onto a different road multiple times.
I'd love to see US 395 redone and Independence, CA added. There's enough room for that.

[M4rkus]

Why should they bother with an 1:19 scaled map? In the end, it would be huge (and possibly boring). Actually, I think the larger scale enables both SCS team and modders to work quicker and add more variation. There are a lot of cities in California already – better concentrate on quality than quantity if any modding is planned for ATS at all. People complain about ATS scale and ask for a rebuild in 1:19 scale but for ETS2 scale they complain also. Some would even like 1:1 in terms of wishful thinking, which is rather ridiculous if one wants to build whole of Europe or America.

I think, the new smaller map ratio with bigger cities in between is a decent decision, design-wise. Already in ETS2, I find the rides getting quite boring and long sometimes, especially in more peripheral areas. That said, 1:19 was the initial scale for German Truck Simulator and was designed for this single country. And the map work is still far from finished – for both, the modders and SCS. I'd rather have 1:32 for ETS2 and a consistent, completed map. However, seems that this point of view is rather rare (or at least expressed rarely) amongst the players.

[ZelvaCZ]

M4rkus, maybe it's a rare opinion, but you're not the only one. I agree with you. But only about ATS, I actually find the 1:19 scale quite good for Europe

[iBallasticwolf2]

I actually agree with M4rkus, the scale makes work much faster. Hopefully when SCS gets to more densely populated areas we won't have major cities being a lonely rest stop.

[MandelSoft]

I disagree with Markus' points; we just need more breathing room. It may be "OK" at the west coast, but the problems will really occur at the east coast in the Boswash metropolean area. You have a lot of huge cities quite close to each other, and it would be ridiculous if you have to leave out Baltimore because Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are in the way, despite the fact that Baltimore is larger than for instance Amsterdam or København, all the while little towns like Jackpot do appear in game because there was space for it. I'd call it the Randstad-Effect*, and that is something I don't like to see. I've also heard quite a lot of people that the short distances killed their immersion into the game and I've already seen that there is a significant amount of people with 100% map coverage already in just ten days after the release.

1:20 seems to be a scale that's still workable, but it allows a lot more breathing room. If (and with an emphasis on "if") we decide to rescale the current map, we will probably not add new cities at first, but simply take the map apart and fill up the gaps. Once that is done, we can start rebuilding. But then again, this is just one of the possible courses of action we can take, and this greatly depends on how much people we can get to work on ATS. For now the future is still very uncertain.

*The Randstad-Effect is the effect that due to short distances on the map, some large cities just don't fit on the map because and even larger city is in the way. This happened to Utrecht and Den Haag in the Randstad area in the Netherlands, amongst with quite a lot of other 100K cities in the same area such as Leiden, Zoetermeer, Gouda, Hilversum, Apeldoorn and Almere. The same applies to cities like Breda, Tilburg, Nijmegen, Venlo, Mechelen, Hasselt, Gent, Essen, Wuppertal, Augsburg and Nörrköping. They are all large cities, but just too close to another city.

[M4rkus]

Some thoughts to add.

If you decide to rescale, you pile up an enormous amount of work right from the start and, in my opinion, with dubious benefits. Sure, you'd get more room for new cities but the area is well-filled with cities already. What's more, city building requires models, something which in the past was not very easy to achieve for modders, especially now that the cities are made to a somewhat different standard. They're bigger and roads seem to approach more deeply into the touristical centres. The other thing is landscaping and roads – if you stretch existing roads, it may even lead to less diversified scenery in case you've got to expand the more empty areas. This is a general gameplay problem due to the fact that the map uses (internally) one scale only, which is too small to build large cities but too big for vast areas you may not want to drive through for hours in a computer game. However, some of the problems that seem to occur right now might be due to the small map coverage so far. As the game grows, they may become less noticeable automatically.

Yet, I must admit that, as European player, I am probably quite biased. I just don't know many cities in California so I'm more unlikely to miss them.*
I have not played ATS yet, but from what I've seen it looks quite nice. Obviously, the map doesn't have the “map legacy” issues of ETS2 (basically the areas before Scandinavian map extension but especially GTS and UKTS map parts). If there's room for improvement, it's probably the details: Signs, custom prefabs (which require a lot of room, I know!), maybe road markings and small highlights along the way. Building new areas outside the existing states is risky because of the planned extensions. Could be that SCS will increase development speed and catches up with Promods' pace. So, perhaps only north of Mexico would make sense as of now as that's no area for SCS to cover soon ...

If it was rebuilt to 1:19, I'd probably not use the mod because I'd prefer faster variation in landscaping (less repetetive map) over the new features. However, I can imagine if you let the community vote, it might be in favour for the 1:19 scale ...

(*However, this also applies to ETS2 to some extent. What I missed there were some big “tactical” centres, whereas in other areas there are more cities and towns than I'd have needed. This is part of the one-scale problem I mentioned before.)

[MandelSoft]

We realise that rescaling is a lot of initial work up front without much gaining new map areas, which is why we are still undecided which course to go. Various options have passed in private discussions too and we need to assess the pros and cons of the different alternatives. ATS, as it is now, is a hard nut to crack when it comes to map modding...

[RustyShackleford]

Personally I think the idea of doing the US in 1:19 is insanity. I was assuming scs would be doing the same scale and as much as I was excited I was thinking great, its going to take them 15 years tom finish this thing. I don't think a lot of people, even those in the US, realize how absolutely huge it really is. and I was upset when I picked up ats and notice how much smaller the scaling was, but when I thought about it I think it was a good decision. well with the speed scs makes maps its pretty much necessary, if you ever want to get anywhere. but, at the same time it means the map is not nearly as big as I was expecting it to be. but I think I would be happy either way, I would be more in favor of keeping the scale and cleaning up and detailing the current map a bit. but it is weird, as someone who averaged over 20k miles a year drivng trucks in California, going up and down taking 15 minutes rather than a whole day and some change is whacky. 1:19 would be better quality wise, you would still have a bigger map, and the western states are the best to drive in anyway. who knows, I might really have to try again with the map editors and see if I could be of any help at all haha. I am pretty excited you guys are trying to get something going.

[smith121363]

I have never been to Europe and I can tell that most of you have not been to North America. I say this because I do not know what driving in Europe is supposed to "feel" like. But I do know what it is supposed to "feel" like in North America. You are right, North America is huge. And yes we do have large areas where our cities and towns are 30 to 45 mi. (50 to 75 km) apart. You say that in 1:19 scale that these vast distances will be boring. I thought that this is supposed to be a Truck Driving Simulator. I thought that the idea is to make it feel as real as possible within the game engine limits. The ProMods developers have been working to improve ETS2 (Europe) for, what 3 or 4 years. They are trying to allow someone like me to experience as much of Europe as possible without having to actually go there. They are struggling to get everything in that should be there. But they are limited by the 1:19 scale. You in turn are saying that ATS should stay at 1:32.5 scale and that should be enough for someone to give the world the "feel" of North America. What a joke !! There is a reason that the speed limits for cars, trucks, and buses are as high as they are here. The same reason is why at least half of our over the road trucks have team drivers. Our trucks and buses are not limited to 56 mph (90 kph). Most of the states in the USA allow all vehicles to drive 65 to 75 mph (105 to 120 kph)on interstate highways. California is an exception to this. Giving these speeds, 1:19 scale is small enough and 1:32.5 is ridiculous. Driving legally, it takes about 14 hours to cross Texas from side to side. One driver can not drive it in one day legally. At 1:19 scale it should take 45 min. real time. At 1:32.5 it should take 20 min. I say again: What a joke.

Yes North America is big. Very big. So please don't try to cram it into the same (or smaller) smaller space as Europe. I vote for 1:19 scale and yes, I am trying to figure out the editor. I would love to be able to show the world my country in a decent way.