ProMods 1.45 updates and Prague meetup

ProMods 1.45 updates

ProMods Europe, ProMods Middle East, ProMods Canada, the Trailer & Company Pack and the Cabin Accessories Pack have all been updated to version 1.45 of ETS2 and ATS!

ProMods 2.62 is the first of our new smaller updates, as discussed in the previous blog. It comes with a host of new content as well as a brand new country – Malta!

ProMods Middle East 2.62 also comes with some changes, these being rebuilds around the Gulf of Aqaba and in Turkey.

ProMods Canada 1.2.1 is a compatibility update with critical bug fixes. Work is still being done to expand the map in all directions! You can keep up to date with development here.

Prague meetup

Last month you may have seen us appear on SCS Software’s social media. Why were we in Prague? Well, the reason for this was because – after some considerable planning (and travelling) – we had a grand team meetup for the first time since ProMods started in 2012! Smaller sporadic meetups of a few team members have happened before, but this was the first time so many of us have met in person. And where else to hold this meeting but Prague, home of SCS Software. We had a packed couple of days in the Czech capital, enjoying the company of SCS, the sights of the city, the local cuisine and of course the bars!

Thursday (and before)

Some of our team members had to travel quite the distance across the continent (2000+ km by car!) so in order to reach Prague on time they had already left days before. Others came from even further (New Zealand!) so planned a longer stay in Europe. But on Thursday almost everybody embarked on their journey to Prague by train, coach, car and plane (with pretty much everyone suffering from public transport issues at some point!)

Friday

On the first day we were kindly invited along to SCS Software’s offices just outside the city centre. We are incredibly thankful to SCS for offering to invite us for the morning when they heard of our grand meetup. Our founders ScuL and Nico gave a short presentation to some of SCS’s staff, including CEO Pavel Šebor, after which we were all shown around the office. Our team then had a go on the motion rigs, with only a few crashes ensuing! After a fantastic morning at SCS – and some selfies with the CEO – we explored the city sights before meeting for dinner at a delightful restaurant in the centre.

Saturday

Thanks to excellent preparation by ProMods founder ScuL, our second day was packed with activities. We had a fun morning of bowling followed by pool, darts and various other bar games. Moderator Volleybal4life (or should we say Bowling4life) was crowned winner of the inaugural ProMods Bowling Championship! After this we once again explored the sights of the city before many of us reconvened for drinks and dinner. It was another great evening, but all too soon we had to say our goodbyes and most of us headed home the next day.

This is what some of our members had to say about the meetup:

Developer bricksathome said:

“It was great to finally meet some of the team that I’ve been part of for 5 years in person. Getting to tour the SCS offices and chat to some of the people behind the game was a fantastic opportunity and it was weirdly surreal to walk around and see the map editor, a program that I’d spend so much time using as a hobbyist, open on everyone’s screen in a professional setting. Prague is a beautiful city that vastly exceeded my expectations, it was a great time all-round.”

Moderator Volleybal4life said:

“The trip was great, meeting fellow ProModders and SCS peeps was a nice experience. To me, the journey to the meetup proved how good the spirit within ProMods is. Chris94_NOR just waits in Berlin for 3 peeps (MandelSoft, Nico and me) he never met in person before, to take them to Prague, to make sure they are getting there in time too. Furthermore, I’m the winner of the very first ProMods Bowling Championship, so that goes into the history books. ScuL planned it all very well – the meeting at SCS, dinner and bowling.”

Developer ETS2-User said:

“It was fun to recognise the way people text and their humour, which I’ve known for 7 years now, in the actual people I met for the first time. It was a meeting of old friends but took the team spirit to a new level, as we finally got to know each other in person.”

Beta tester AlexBr967 said:

“Honestly, it was great to meet everyone. I thought it would be more awkward but honestly I think because I knew a lot of people from discord it was more like meeting people I already met before. Also having an excuse to visit a city outside England was absolutely amazing.”

While it was a shame the meetup couldn’t go on for longer, there was no question that it had been a great success. Everyone agreed that we shouldn’t wait long before organising the next one!

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?

ProMods 2.45 Has Arrived!

ProMods 2.45 brings in the “Road to the Black Sea” DLC content and has been in development for quite a while now, so we did not want to withhold release any longer. We have decided to release version 2.45 for ETS 2 build 1.36 as that is the current and official version. Since SCS will bring a completely new sound system to the upcoming build 1.37, it may take some time until we can release a compatible version of our map.

The Balkan Merge

The main purpose of this release is the Road to the Black Sea DLC merge. This new DLC has been integrated, and is therefore now mandatory to use our mod. 

In order to successfully connect the new areas, more than 10 new borders have been created, between the areas by SCS and our work in Ukraine, Serbia, North Macedonia and Greece. Alongside the new border routes, we have also added a few new cities in the Balkan region including the new country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Northern Rescale

Another major technical adjustment that has finally been integrated is the northern rescale. Changes in the map projection by SCS a few game versions ago had particularly large effects at high latitudes, leaving cities in the far north (i.e. Russia, Finland and Norway) displaced to the south. This meant that the cities had to be moved northwards and several roads had to be extended.

At the same time, some of the roads received refurbishment or rebuilding with newer textures, vegetation and road signs to enhance the quality of these areas. We can now finally show the results of our efforts.

New Content in the Middle East

In addition to ProMods 2.45, we have prepared a new version of the Middle East Add-on for you to enjoy, which contains major improvements in the previously included countries, whilst also expanding to 3 new countries and over 20 new towns that are spread out throughout the Middle East region for you to freely explore.

The expansion of both existing and brand-new countries will enhance the authenticity and atmosphere of this region by providing players with a range of climates, scenery and an individual feeling in each area – from scorching and desolate Iraqi and Jordanian deserts over hundreds of kilometres of highways with no settlement in sight, to lush farms and the Mediterranean climates of northern Israel and Syria.

General improvements in the previously released areas include increased quality and aesthetics of the towns, such as the removal of old rocks and other assets, as well as correcting regional road markings. In addition to that, we have also prepared some very unique police vehicles, which were selected to provide an authentic look for the region. 

Lastly, the land connection from Lebanon to Israel is now available by travelling via Jordan and Syria, decreasing the need for the ferry service via Cyprus and preventing any inconvenience for players who have to travel to/from Lebanon.

Other Changes and Improvements

Last but not least, we have tweaked several areas around the map and added a new city in Czechia. We have also fixed several (major) bugs including the invisible walls in Rotterdam and Milano. Rest assured that much more new content across the map will come in ProMods 2.50!