This week we are taking a look at the new and improved areas in Poland. ProMods 2.50 brings the most changes in Poland in several years. Over half a dozen developers have contributed in one way or another. We are really excited to show you what’s changed, and there’s a lot to get through, so let’s dive right into it.
We start in the north, where Lynx21 has rebuilt the port city of Gdynia. He provided the following context:
From a small fishing village to a huge shipping port in 15 years? That was the case with Gdynia in the 1920’s when the Polish government decided to build the city from scratch. The city is a great example of modernist and communist architecture. Massive housing estates built mostly in the 70’s and 80’s are an inseparable part of the city’s panorama. Gdynia with its 250,000 inhabitants now has one of the biggest Baltic ports and remains vital for the Polish economy. In-game you will notice remarkable landmarks such as Sea Towers, Radmor Offices, Gdynia Powerplant and BCT Facility.
Next we move to the northeast, and Horizon’s city of Suwałki. The city has received refurbishment and a new expressway section of the S61 which bypasses the town, which was constructed for the purposes of relieving the city from international traffic on the E67 route. We are pleased to present this new road in-game while its real-life counterpart was only opened last year! The town itself will have enhanced aesthetics, such as more detailed textures, vegetation and various buildings, that were replaced with Baltic DLC assets.
The first brand new, rather than rebuilt, city we’re covering today is Piotrków Trybunalski. The favourite areas of the main developer, jdenm8, are the Kaarfor Warehouse (shown in screenshot) and the big interchanges with the A1.
Back to rebuilds now, and our lead developer MandelSoft has been at work in the southern city of Opole and its surroundings. He provided some slightly more technical details about his decisions and workflow:
Many of us know that many parts of Poland were outdated. I wanted to make my contribution to the renewal of Poland, by starting with just one city that could use a lot of improvement. In this area, Opole caught my attention. The city itself was not looking like anything from real life, so a complete rebuild would improve this region massively. However, the roads which the city connects to only had to be refurbished a bit.
For this city, I tried to approach it like how SCS would approach it. Usually, this means avoiding the city center because the delivery points for trucks are often located on the outskirts, and often this helps to optimise performance. I focussed mainly on the DK46 bypass and the company delivery points in the north, and did my best to deliver top quality work with the help of the latest assets at the time – mainly from the Baltic DLC – and the latest techniques – most of the landscape is crafted with the new vertex tool instead of bezier patches – to deliver an aesthetically pleasing and technically clean scenery. The only planned area I had to skip is the power plant, due to a lack of assets for it at the time. The cooling towers of this power plant are, however, prominently visible as background scenery.
The Kielce rebuild is another project headed up by Lynx21, and it’s clear from his description of the region that he’s really proud of his work here:
If you’ve ever been to Świętokrzyskie province you already know it has one of the best landscapes in Europe representing huge hilly fields. While not being very populated, the area has so much to offer. Here we want to focus on the city of Kielce – the capital of the province. Along with Poznań – Kielce is a city of large expo events. Located near the S7 and S74 expressways and with a population of 195,000, the city is a major transport hub in the area. As in almost every Polish city you’ll find these massive blocks of flats but do not let it discourage you from noticing the details of their surroundings! Well-known Kielce landmarks you will find in the game include: Galeria Echo Mall, Skanska-Comarch Offices, County’s Hall, City’s University and the Expo Centre.
The final areas of major changes in 2.50 are east and southeast of Lublin, primarily developed by FH-Fahrer, PapierSUHD and Lynx21. The connection to Zamość has been rebuilt as far as the town of Krasnystaw, while the DK12 heads east – first to the city of Chełm, but then on to the border with another country with a large amount of new content in ProMods 2.50 (stay tuned for the blog post on that!).
As you can see from the screenshots, the new content in Poland is full of small details, such as specific buildings and adverts, that go beyond today’s highest standards and make the scenery especially realistic and recognisable compared to real life. In addition to the main map developers already mentioned, this is possible thanks to the specialist prefab and signage work, and general mapping assistance, of Vøytek, Dawid2849, elot360PL and HixoPL.
And we have still not covered everything! There are multiple smaller stretches of rebuilt roads and new scenery towns and villages across Poland. While we can’t include it all, we had to show this screenshot from a roundabout in the far southeast of the country, which Lynx21 summed up perfectly as having a ‘Polish spirit’.
With that, thanks for reading this week’s preview, and we’ll see you again for the next one.
