Here we are again, Milan and his trusty yellow lorry, for the 10th set out of 11 from ProMods' Black Sea region.
Leaving Dimovo in Bulgaria en route to Montana, we find ourselves heading uphill via a twisty and forested route.
Quite nervous about the bends ahead, but at least the trees will break our fall if we go over the edge.
View back to Dimovo.
One of the bendiest bends.
Then we reached a hilly area - perhaps the town is called Montana for that reason. Doesn't sound very Bulgarian, that name. I associate it more with Switzerland, where I once visited Crans-Montana.
Arrived in Montana at dusk.
Drove into town to find a parking area and slept in the truck.
Took some aerial photos the next day. Another realistic looking town... it's the New Vanilla.
New Vanilla is meant as a complement, as it means 2019 SCS quality. However... couldn't help but notice after visiting this town and Pleven that I ONLY had aerial photos at the end. There was nothing much of interest at street level, just places to find jobs and other services for truckers. Not much by way of representations of monuments, historic buildings, different urban areas, town centres. In short, the 2 towns are a bit boring, unlike most of the places in Romania, which each had their own character - and the last Bulgarian place we'll meet in the next set, Ruse. They are an exact example of what happens if you only provide things for truckers and don't try to make places interesting and memorable by creating town centres, market places, churches, parks, cafes and the like. You end up with cookie-cutter SCS 2012 style cities with 2019 assets... much nicer to look at than the 2012 cities but just the same as them fundamentally. I hope they are like this because either they are quite dull in real life, or the modders ran out of time, or were just learning to use the new assets, or whatever. It would be a real shame if this was the new ProMods approach to development - just things for truckers, no individuality, most areas unvisitable, cut-out skylines instead of 3D models and rely on the quality of the assets to make everything look good. This would be a real mistake, in my opinion.
Well, like I said, Dimovo and Ruse are great so no need to panic just yet... and don't get me wrong, the cities in this set look great. Just not as much character as one normally sees in the majority of ProMods cities...
After consuming some black coffee and stale sandwiches, and doing a few exercises in the parking lot, we set off on our way to Pleven.
More mountains...
Another scenery village - Borovan.
Each village we've been to has been different, hats off to the modders for creating this attractive addition to the map in such a short time after the Baltic DLC came out!
Nearing Pleven now - looking forward to delivering this large crane at last.
We've arrived. Here come a few shots from Pleven.
Crane delivered. The guy in Chisinau handed over a fat sum of cash - job well done. The last places on the schedule are Ruse in Bulgaria and Constanta in Romania. A city by the sea sounds nice, and I've been working pretty hard these last few weeks, so I decided to hire a car and have a short holiday.
The local rental place had this nice yellow BMW available, so I loaded up with some provisions and started off on the last part of the tour.
Car mods are often problematic, I find... and not just because the car behaves like a truck. Often they just don't work at all, or there's a problem with something or other. This car looks decent and has a full interior. The sound is also good, though with a noticeable regular clicking noise presumably as the sound loops. It accellerates really fast, and I crashed into the backs of several vehicles before I got used to it. However, there was one serious issue with it...
In the read-me the authors warned that the car may scrape on the ground. In this case, they recommend typing g_suspension_stiffness 1 into the console. What they neglected to mention is that this has absolutely no effect whatsoever. The car still scrapes on certain roads, not sure why, and each time it notches up a few damage % points. It started doing this just after we left Pleven, but then things went okay for a while so I made the fateful decision to keep using the car... a decision that lead to a very nerve-wracking final leg to the trip... hopefully coming soon : )
Cheers! Milan.