AWESOME!!
SCS just released their Scandinavia DLC. Now we need to get very busy with making sure that this update will be ProMods compatible.
The current officially released ProMods pack does NOT work with the new patch and/or the new DLC.
You can follow the progress on the conversion here.
Also more info will be on our forum and on our page.
We expect a release of the ProMods 1.95 within two-four weeks. Meanwhile you guys can explore the beauty that SCS has created!
In ProMods 1.91, you have already seen what ProMods is capable of doing when it comes to landscaping. The ARP (Autobahn Rebuilding Project) is a clear example of how vastly different the map can become given enough time, assets and love (that last aspect is also very important, you know). Each version of ProMods builds upon the knowledge gained in the previous version and with our ever growing skills and team, we are able to excel ourselves in every successive version.
However, because implementing this stuff to our map takes time, not all areas are up to our standards. Scandinavia can use quite an overhaul, since the majority of this has not seen any significant updates since its first implementation in version 1.0. Merging ProMods with the DLC will help a great deal in this (this is the reason why we halted large-scale updates in that area). The UK and the rest of Germany also needs a huge overhaul. While Germany is being worked on in phase 2 of the ARP, we have to wait with the UK, since SCS is planning to do an expansion towards Ireland (of which no further details are known other than that it is definitely going to happen). Austria still needs rebuilding at several locations, as well as northern Italy, the Czech Republic and the SCS parts of France. But that is not the focus of today…
Today we are going to focus on the area that most ProMods mappers (five in total) call home: the Benelux. Benelux is a common abbreviation of “Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg”, and thus it makes sense that this name is used for this project. Although some improvements have been made in this area in the past (the addition of Antwerpen and the E34 and E313, replacing at-grade crossings with interchanges in Rotterdam and Amsterdam) a lot is still misrepresented. The current map still contains, single-lane interchanges, at-grade crossings on motorways, an odd selection of represented motorways, space-consuming or missing river-crossings, and a-typical landscaping. For us, it was time to set things straight in our own home country, just like we did in Northwest Germany.
Below is a map of the Benelux representation in the current version of ProMods:
Today the information embargo on the Scandinavia DLC ended, hence the huge amount of information that all of a sudden hit the internet.
The coming weeks we will reveal more insights of the DLC by showing certain areas with screenshots and videos.
However our first post about the DLC will be more of an insight of the huge challenge we are facing. We already posted an article about this and now it’s time to go into more detail. We have collected some screenshots and compared them with our own areas. We will also show the world map and discuss what the best strategy will be once we get ProMods converted to the DLC. This conversion can also be influence by YOU, the daily user of ProMods. We will open a new sub forum where you guys can post what you think needs to be changed. We already have alot of ideas but we might forget certain things. This way we will try to make sure that the Scandinavia DLC will be even better with ProMods installed.
So let’s get to the details. First a couple of pictures from the DLC (These pictures are taking on locations that do not exist in ProMods or look completely different.)
The trailer for SCS’s DLC looks amazing. However this DLC will prove to be one of the biggest headaches here at ProMods.
We already saw alot of the DLC’s development over the last months and had access to it for some time as well. Still we can’t yet start on adding it to ProMods, as SCS will keep changing alot of things in the course of their beta testing. Every build can have numerous fixes in the map, signs etc etc. So we need to wait for SCS to release the DLC before we can even start with adding it to ProMods. And that is not even the start…
… Because we, as ProMods, have been updating our Scandinavia constantly. Some of our parts are very old and starting to get outdated (Norway for example). Other parts are fresh and new (Stockholm and Jutland). So we now need to decide what we want to keep. We weren’t overly impressed with SCS Denmark, so that is an area we could keep from the ProMods map. However, in Denmark, there are still cities which are very outdated because the majority were build in ProMods 1.0, back at the start of 2013!
Stockholm will be a huge headache as well. Our city is a lot truer to life than the SCS counterpart, but their Scania factory is a lot better than ours. And then there’s the matter of the Scania test track.
All these decisions and having to wait to make them, will only ensure ProMods won’t be updated soon after the release of the Going North DLC. Our users will have to be patient. They either going to have to play ProMods on an older version of the game, without the DLC, or they can start exploring the DLC without ProMods and wait for us to release our improvements.
As always we can’t predict a timeframe/release date. It will be ready when it’s ready, but we estimate 2 – 6 months to get our map adjusted to the DLC.