Welcome to what is already the fifth ProMods 2.50 preview. This week we are taking a look at the changes coming to the UK, which has seen one of the largest overhauls yet: four cities brand new or rebuilt from the ground up, two dozen cities reskinned, and a large portion of the UK road network upgraded in some way. We’ll start with the southwest of England, specifically the county of Devon, where all content in 2.50 is either new or rebuilt.
Plymouth and Exeter
As we saw in last week’s preview, ProMods is far from a one man job. Plymouth is another great example of that. Back in 2016, IvanGF14 started with the basic layout of this large port city. He planned it ambitiously and was very motivated. Sadly, because of spare time issues, he couldn’t continue his project and so it was put on hold for the time being. Years later, developer Plum decided, together with his Exeter project, to finish Plymouth. Plymouth is a vast city requiring a lot of work, so developer FisherJB decided to help him on the industrial part of the city (once his own project in the Balkans was finished). After Plum finished Exeter, he took over development again from FisherJB and finished his areas and the road to the city’s port, going right through the city centre. But that wasn’t the end. A city without signs doesn’t look realistic or pretty, that is where Mandelsoft, ScuL and Dawid2849 came into action and did a fabulous job. After a lot of time the city is finally completed and you can enjoy the screenshots here, and drive it yourself in the near future.
Plum has some more details:
Plymouth was no easy city to make, it was a challenge. One of the hardest parts was making the road to the port right through the heart of the city. Currently there aren’t a huge number of high quality assets in the game for British city centres, yet with lots of hard work I managed to make something which represents the city centre. Sure, not every building will look identical to its real life counterpart, but there are lots of landmarks which locals will recognise, such as Charles Church in the middle of a roundabout, an anchor made out of flowers near the city centre and much more. The port itself also got a complete rebuild making it as accurate as possible, where you will be able to recognise a lot. By far the hardest challenge though was getting the view from the A38, which cuts right through the city. The fact you can drive deep into Marsh Hills retail park and the industrial estate made it a challenge to optimize too, yet the results are staggering.
Exeter was also a major addition to the South West. The city of 130000 is a centre for business and tourism in Devon, and so was an important addition to include in the UK. In game, Exeter has likely one of the most complex prefabs in the game – namely Junction 29 on the M5 which MandelSoft worked hard on for several weeks to make it highly accurate compared to its real life counterpart. Along with this, Exeter has many recognisable landmarks such as the River Exe, Exeter Airport and more. Below you can see some screenshots of the city.
For those who haven’t seen, some time ago Plum made some cinematics showcasing his work. You can check them out here:
Cambridge and Norwich
We now cross the width of England to the region of East Anglia, where longtime UK developer cashtime2013 has extended the road network and built the region’s largest city, Norwich.
As well as enjoying the view of the cathedral puncturing the city’s skyline, you can look forward to the dirt road to reach a sawmill, which he tried to make both challenging and scenic.
Cashtime has also completely rebuilt the university city of Cambridge. His favourite spot is the view across the river.
Rather than connecting Norwich to the rest of the UK with just one or two roads, a proper representation of the key road network has been created, so you can enjoy an authentic driving experience through rural Norfolk and Suffolk with a choice of route.
UK-wide reskins
There are multiple possible levels of improving an existing part of the map. At one end, the whole area can be deleted and rebuilt from the ground up, as has happened in Exeter, and is effectively brand new content. Sometimes, the basic road layout can be kept, but almost every other aspect is upgraded.
Then, at the softer end, are what we call reskins or refreshes. The goal with these is to get the maximum improvement for the time and effort invested. Swapping out map elements in place can make a remarkable difference: just by replacing ground and road textures, building and vegetation models, interchange and company prefabs, and upgrading the signs, an old area can be made to look ‘nearly new’. Of course, the results are not as impressive as a complete rebuild, but they take a fraction of the time.
This is exactly what cashtime2013 and Plum have done in the UK, making use of the shorter time requirements to refresh a large portion of the country. Shown below are 20 (!) cities which have received this treatment, covering both vanilla cities which were long overdue an upgrade, and older ProMods content which has been brought up to today’s standards.
Large parts of the road network have also been refreshed, with old single-prefab interchanges replaced and landscapes made more realistic. If only we had unlimited developers with unlimited time, we could rebuild everything to the highest possible standards. But in the real world, the reskin/refresh strategy is the best way to improve large areas of the oldest parts of the map at once.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back again next week.
Stummer
I'm into truck simulators for several years now and made some simple mods for "18 Wheels of Steel - Haulin". Besides being a moderator in the forum, I maintain the blog and the social media channels.
george waring says:
Sterling work by all the lads, on the promods team. Without promods, ETS 2 would be finished as a game. The vast majority of people only continue playing ETS2 because of the work you lads put into the maps. .. A Big Thank you!!!!
Kal says:
Totally agree.
Much props to the promods team you guys are incredible
Mike Cullen says:
I’m very excited to see Pro Mods 2.50 finished in the coming weeks or months, I wish Newcastle had more attention though, would have loved to see the tyne bridges, the millennium bridge and the swing bridge as part of the area and the ability to drive over them into the city, pipe dreams I suppose.
arkon says:
I think that 2.50 is going to be an incredible addition to the ETS 2 experience. Looking forward with great anticipation.
Norbif1fan says:
It is very good job, well done, Guys!
Djoka says:
UK already looks great, in comparison to Athens, which doesn’t even exist yet or in comparison with Budapest which hasn’t been touched, while German and British cities are getting their hundredth reskin.
Alex Parsons says:
Thanks so much for creating my home city of Norwich. I am looking forward to seeing it and other new places when the update comes out!
Norbif1fan says:
Very good job, guys! Well done! Congrats! Im waiting for 2.50 update!
Chloe says:
Would you be able to do places like Aintree and Skelmersdale industrial estate? Skem has so many roundabouts
Timo says:
Ich finde Die Promods super und warte schon sehnsüchtig schon drauf und das ganz geduldig
Ich danke das Taem und die ihre Patnerin und Parnter das die es mit machen und sich die zeit dafür nehmen dürf es ist eine Großes opfer das soviel zeit dafür drauf geht und die Partnerin und partner auch die zeit geben
Roy says:
Via the M58 what joins the M6 at Skelmersdale . Of which M58 via Aintree goes to Liverpool.
The Daf Factory is at Leyland near Preston next the M6 North or South. Would make all Daf trucks fans like Promods even more.
retjo1 says:
The new update looks Fantastic as usual, very well done Pro Mods.
Arron Sorrell says:
Fantastic Can’t Wait For The New Update 🙂 Is There Any Chance You Can Fit Derby In To The English Map As Well As East Midlands Airport And Gatwick Airport In Future Updates As Well As Reworking Hastings On The South Coast And Improving Swansea In South Wales. Thanks In Advance For Reading And Keep Up The Good Work
malcolm says:
What’s happened to Portsmouth, Folkestone Canterbury and other towns???? no longer showing.
Jan says:
Great work. It would be great if you could reflect border controls at UK/French borders in the docks and also unify the signage when you are entering the European Union. Eg. you do when you enter Croatia from Montenegro or Serbia, but you do not when you enter Estonia from Russia or France from the UK. 🙂