An Update on Canada’s Progress And Future Plans

It’s been over a year since we last updated ProMods Canada with new content. We understand and share the sentiment that progress in ProMods Canada has been slow. As a small team with limited resources, we acknowledge that we cannot change this reality overnight. While we’re still a while away from releasing ProMods Canada’s next big update, we can at least share with you what’s been going on behind the scenes.

Improved weather effects

A neat change that will be included in ProMods Canada 1.2.4 is the addition of atmospheric bad weather effects. Now, during times of bad weather, you will notice the mountainous areas of British Columbia become surrounded by low altitude clouds and fog. Places such as the Coquihalla Highway are truly awe-inspiring; winding through majestic mountains and offering breathtaking views that many of our players have come to appreciate. These areas are now even more immersive during poor weather.

These changes are implemented manually as part of the map itself, and as a result the effect will not be affected by graphics mods, nor will they appear outside of areas included in our mod.

Check out the before and after shots below:

Venturing into Alberta

Over the past year, development has been focused in two directions: east and north. Expanding our horizons eastwards beyond British Columbia, we have set our sights on Alberta. Our primary objective is to recreate the Trans Canada Highway 1 (TCH-1) and the Crowsnest Highway (BC-3), extending eastwards. While we have made significant progress in certain areas, there is still much work to be done in others. Take a look at the images below to see the progress we have made so far:

Northern advances: The “Islands” approach

In parallel we are developing more remote areas, such as Prince Rupert. This decision was primarily made for organisational reasons and due to the freedom for our developers to choose where they wish to develop. While these areas are nearly completed, they currently lack road connections to the rest of the road network. Our plan is to ensure that these places are accessible by ferry (most likely via Vancouver Island), allowing people to enjoy the finished areas as we continue working on the road connections.

Looking ahead

While we acknowledge the slow pace of progress and share the frustration it brings, we want to assure you that our commitment to delivering updates for ProMods Canada remains firm. We have numerous plans and ideas, but regrettably, time constraints limit our ability to implement them as quickly as we would like. We hope that these updates provide you with more insight into our progress and what you can expect in the future. We appreciate your support and understanding as we strive to bring our plans to fruition in due time.

Introducing ProMods: The Great Steppe – Out now!

The first version of ProMods: The Great Steppe has been released! But what exactly is The Great Steppe and what does it add? Fear not, for all shall be answered in this blog.

What is The Great Steppe?

The Great Steppe is a map mod first released in 2017 that covers a significant chunk of Kazakhstan and has been a mainstay in many people’s map combos for years. At the end of 2021 the original author, 09_KZ, decided to step down as developer of the mod and offered the map to us to take up ownership. After some consideration to ensure we would have the manpower to take over the project and just over a year of work later, the first version of ProMods: The Great Steppe has arrived!

What’s new in ProMods: The Great Steppe?

Version 1.0.0 includes all the legacy content from 09_KZ as well as the first stage of our project to rebuild the map with the most up-to-date mapping techniques and detail. In 1.0.0, we’ve rebuilt two cities from scratch, Uralsk and Zhimpity, as well as extensively refreshed two more, Shetpe and Sai-Otes.

We’ve also rebuilt 3 roads:

  • The A-28 between Uralsk and Chapayev
  • The A-29 between Uralsk and the RU-KZ border crossing
  • The M-32 between Uralsk and Zhimpity
  • And refreshed the A-33 between Beyneu and Shetpe.

Within the new map areas are a wide array of brand new 3D models and assets, as well as new AI vehicle skins with new, authentic license plates. There’s also a collection of genuine Kazakh companies and custom prefabs. We’ve also introduced a number of bug fixes to ensure that the legacy area of the map is as stable as possible.

What’s the load order?

The Great Steppe 1.0.0 (TGS) can be loaded both as a ProMods Addon and as a standalone map mod. To use TGS with ProMods, the two files should be placed below the rest of the ProMods files.
To use The Great Steppe as a standalone mod, you will also have to activate the FLD Prefab pack, available from the SCS Forums. However, the FLD Prefab Pack is not required if you’re using TGS in conjunction with another mod that already includes the pack within its files. (Map mods like ProMods and RusMap already include the FLD pack)

There’s no road connection?

If you’re only using The Great Steppe with the other ProMods maps, you’ll probably notice that there’s no physical connection between TGS and the rest of the map. This is intentional. While we would have loved to create a connection to the rest of the map, doing so would have required a significant amount of development time.

If we were to hold back the release of 1.0.0 until a connection was finished, the community wouldn’t have had access to an updated version of the map that’s compatible with the latest version of ETS2 for many months, possibly over a year. Instead of holding the map back, we’ve released it without a connection.

The current workaround for accessing the map is as follows: If you’re only using TGS, or you’re just using it in combination with the other ProMods mods, you can access the map by using the ‘quick travel’ feature that’s accessible on the main menu on your in-game profile.

Alternatively, you can use other map mods to create a road connection between Europe and The Great Steppe. See our List of Recommended Compatible Maps.

Please note: When combining large quantities of maps together in one profile, you may find that the game crashes when viewing the in-game world map. This can be resolved by loading a Zoom Crash Fix mod.

Is it compatible with TruckersMP?

Yes! Well, not yet at the time of this blog post’s release. But the TruckersMP team is working on enabling The Great Steppe as an optional mod on the ProMods TruckersMP servers as soon as possible! Keep an eye on TruckersMP’s social media for when its compatibility is announced.

What DLC does it require?

The Great Steppe requires the same DLCs as all our other map mods for ETS2, that is all the currently available map DLC.

How do I download it?

You can download the latest version from our homepage at ProMods.net. Previous versions of the mod can be downloaded from our addons page. (once future versions are available)

ProMods update blog

We’re back with another blog, this time covering updates with the team and mod.

ProMods 1.44 Updates

ProMods Europe, ProMods Middle East, ProMods Canada, the Trailer & Company Pack and the Cabin Accessories Pack have all been updated to version 1.44 of ETS2/ATS!

ProMods Europe 2.61 incorporates SCS’s newly rebuilt Austria and some critical bug fixes and map tweaks.

ProMods Middle East 2.61 is a compatibility update and includes overhauled sign fonts and licence plates.

ProMods Canada 1.2.0 adds the TCH-1 from Hope to Cache Creek and expands West Kelowna.

ProMods Community Convoy

On the 11th June we hosted what we think turned out to be (despite a couple hiccups) a very successful community convoy, our 2nd ever. We are glad a lot of people turned up to drive and of course watch the live streams of not just us, but other members of the community. If you missed our stream you can watch it here. We hope to hold more of these convoys in future and have already gathered some valuable feedback from the event. We had fun live-streaming it and hope you enjoyed the drive! We’d like to thank our new event manager SvartWolf for helping organise the event, and thanks also to everyone from TruckersMP for their help.

Recruiting developers and beta testers

In the convoy stream we mentioned we are still looking for more fantastic developers and beta testers, and even moderators to join our team. If you have aspirations to join our developer team, please showcase your work on our forum or on our discord server so we can give valuable feedback and help grow your skills in mapping and/or modelling. We can then assess the best people to join our team!

Similarly with beta testers, if you’d like to help tackle all of the pesky bugs in our maps, be sure to report in detail on our forum where we can then pick the most enthusiastic and dedicated users to join our testing team.

Future releases

As a team, we have been discussing how to structure our future ETS2 releases. Currently, we have a rather varied release system, with a mix of compatibility updates, medium-sized updates and the big ‘2.x0’ releases. In order to further smooth our release process and workflow, we have decided to move towards adding content in each compatibility update – in short, more medium-sized releases. We feel this will be beneficial to both us as a team and you, the community, for a number of reasons:

  • Currently, we simply don’t have the manpower available to create big releases while sustaining our current quality level.
  • Perfectly ready content is held up unnecessarily, just to save it for the big ‘2.x0’ releases. Moving away from big releases stops this backlog.
  • Content will go out as soon as it is finished, providing new content in every version. This means that every new version will have something new for you, the community, to enjoy and to make the effort of downloading the new updates worth it.
  • Smaller releases let us spread out content for testing over time, allowing testers to focus more on smaller areas. This should lead to bugs being discovered earlier, thus improving the quality of the mod.
  • More frequent releases also makes the map more stable, preventing double bug-fixing jobs in the various map areas we work on.
  • Management of releases is easier to do with less new content in them.

Teasers for future release

Lastly, there’s lots of exciting content coming up, so can anyone guess where these are?