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Research Trips: Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan

As part of our ongoing mission to bring authentic roads, landscapes, and cities into our projects, our developer Tedesco recently traveled to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for on-site research. This journey focused on four major destinations: Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, and Almaty.

The aim of the trip was simple but crucial: gather thousands of reference photos, document road layouts, signage, urban details, and capture the overall atmosphere of each place. These resources will directly support the development of future expansions to ProMods: The Great Steppe (TGS), ensuring they feel as true-to-life as possible.

Bukhara

One of the oldest and most historically rich cities in Uzbekistan, Bukhara is a treasure trove of textures and cultural detail. Its maze-like narrow streets, intricate brickwork, and centuries-old monuments offered a wealth of references for our team.

We focused heavily on documenting the blend of Islamic architecture and modern additions, capturing caravanserais, bazaars, and mosques alongside contemporary roads and traffic flow. These details will allow us to recreate the unique charm of Bukhara accurately.

Samarkand

From the stunning Registan Square to its broad boulevards, Samarkand gave us contrasting references, historic detail intertwined with modern city planning. Both elements will play a role in shaping how the city appears in the map.

Samarkand felt to me like stepping into a living museum. The Registan Square and surrounding districts offered an extraordinary variety of tilework, ornamentation, and open spaces that we carefully photographed. At the same time, the city’s more modern avenues and wide boulevards gave me valuable material for planning the recreation of contrasts between historic and new areas.

Tedesco

Tashkent

The capital city of Uzbekistan provided another unique challenge: scale. Tashkent is a city where tradition and modernity collide most visibly. Wide Soviet-style avenues coexist with vibrant commercial districts, and tucked away side streets bring unique character.

We paid special attention to road markings, signage, and public transport infrastructure, such as metro entrances and bus systems, so we can portray Tashkent as accurately as possible in-game.

Almaty

Crossing into Kazakhstan, we arrived in Almaty, the country’s cultural and economic hub. The city’s dramatic setting, backed by the Zailiyskiy Alatau mountains, offers a very different atmosphere compared to Uzbekistan’s cities.

From glass towers downtown to tree-lined boulevards and bustling markets, Almaty provided us with diverse architectural and urban references. The surrounding mountains added even more variety, especially when we visited Shymbulak Ski Resort in the Medeu Valley. Its winding mountain roads, cable cars, and alpine-style buildings will help us create high-altitude environments that feel authentic and challenging for drivers.

What’s Next?

Trips like this are essential to the ProMods workflow: they ensure that our future expansions aren’t just accurate on a map, but also capture the feel of the regions they represent. With the material gathered in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, our developers have a strong foundation for recreating some of Central Asia’s most iconic cities and landscapes in The Great Steppe.

In the meantime, you can catch sneak peeks of our in-progress work on The Great Steppe, exclusively in our Discord Server.

“Stay tuned, and happy trucking!” – Tedesco

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ProMods Europe v2.76: Development Update

As many of you know, our next update for Europe, ProMods 2.76, is not the furthest away. While the full release will be landing when it’s ready, we thought this would be a great opportunity to give you a sneak peek at some of the new and reworked areas you’ll be able to drive in.

Much of this content was originally postponed in 2.75, so we’re especially excited to finally be bringing it to you. Let’s take a look at the highlights!

France: A13 Free Toll Changes

A smaller but meaningful change in France. The A13, one of the busiest routes connecting Paris with Normandy, recently scrapped its toll booths in real life, and we’ve reflected that change in-game.

This update helps keep ProMods aligned with real-world infrastructure and removes an unnecessary bottleneck for your deliveries.

Serbia: Belgrade Bypass

One of our biggest improvements in 2.76 is the addition of the long-awaited Belgrade Bypass route. This key road project is a vital freight corridor in real life, helping trucks avoid city congestion; and now you’ll be able to experience it in-game.

The bypass features new interchanges, smoother navigation, and a much more realistic representation of Serbia’s road networks.

The Serbia development has been great! It’s really rewarding to see work come to life from research projects, and I love articulating real world environments into the game!

ItzPxllel

Spain: Approaching Gibraltar

Now, we’re heading south. Many of you spotted our teasers of Gibraltar earlier this year, and the city is just around the corner, 2.76 brings the much-loved Rock, and a brand-new approach from Algeciras.

With improved road layouts and updated scenery, this iconic route feels more alive than ever, giving you a taste of what’s to come when you enter Gibraltar.

Switzerland: More Local Towns

Alongside the big new road updates, we’ve also merged with a small but thoughtful community project: More Swiss Towns for ProMods. Originally created to address the odd situation where companies were assigned to cities several minutes away, this add-on introduced new city definitions for Susten and Domat/Ems, matching them to the nearest scenery settlements on the map.

This approach was inspired by how ProMods (and other map mods) handled Austria, and it helps make Switzerland feel more authentic; especially when you’re delivering cargo to these local areas. From now on, the mod is officially part of ProMods Europe.

What’s Next?

These are just four of the many improvements packed into ProMods 2.76. Our team has been working hard across the map, and we can’t wait to show you everything once the update is released very soon.

Further than that? Our developer in the French region is working on the final part of the A36 Reskin Project, for a future version of ProMods; more of this soon?

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Tours: Map Merge

W’re very happy to announce that Tours Map has officially been merged into ProMods Europe!

For those unfamiliar, Tours Map was a standalone project focused on expanding the city of Tours and its surrounding areas in central France. Recently, it became a community favorite thanks to its detailed recreation of the region, offering players more variety and realism in a part of the map that often doesn’t get as much attention.

By bringing Tours Map into ProMods, we’re making sure that this content not only lives on, but also benefits from the same quality standards, technical updates, and integration work that you’ve come to expect from our team. This means smoother connections to the rest of the ProMods map, improved assets where necessary, and long-term support for the region as we continue to rework and expand France.

Another key feature of this merger is the inclusion of several new companies in and around Tours. These additions give players more delivery options and variety in freight opportunities, making the area not just a scenic drive, but also a more meaningful stop in your logistics network. Whether you’re hauling locally within France or passing through on international routes, Tours will now play a more important role in your economy.

Just like with our other mergers, this isn’t a simple “plug-and-play.” Our developers will gradually refine the Tours area, updating and reworking it where needed so that it feels like a natural part of ProMods rather than a separate add-on. In the meantime, you’ll already be able to enjoy driving through a more detailed Tours as part of the next ProMods Europe release.

We’d also like to take a moment to thank the original creator of Tours Map for their excellent work, and for trusting us to carry the project forward. Their dedication has given us a strong foundation to build on, and we’re looking forward to making Tours an even richer and more authentic experience in the future, with the ability to bring their developers onboard our team, expanding our existing quality..

With France being such an important hub in Euro Truck Simulator 2; connecting southern and northern Europe, as well as the UK and Spain, updates like these help us bring new life to areas that many of you drive through daily.

Keep an eye out for more updates as we continue to expand, improve, and integrate, & in the meantime, enjoy exploring Tours as part of ProMods, when we release this into our mod!

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The Great Steppe: v1.4.0 Dev Update

You may have noticed that we’ve recently released updates for all of our major map projects across both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, except one: The Great Steppe.

In today’s blog post, we’d like to explain the reason for the delay and give you a development update on what’s coming in ProMods: The Great Steppe 1.4.0. This upcoming release will bring a number of significant improvements and additions that take your Central Asian experience to a new level.

Aktobe Rework

Let’s start with the biggest highlight of this update — the complete rework of Aktobe.

Aktobe is a major industrial and transport hub in western Kazakhstan, rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, and chromite. Because of its economic and strategic importance, we prioritized a full rebuild of the city to better reflect its real-world scale and complexity.

Above, you can see the results of nearly a year of work by developers Tedesco and Horizon, who carefully recreated the city from scratch. This rework brings a more immersive city layout with recognizable landmarks, key infrastructure, and detailed surroundings from the greater Aktobe Region.

Reworked Towns: Kobda & Khromtau

In addition to Aktobe, we’ve also given attention to two nearby towns: Kobda and Khromtau.

These areas have been redesigned to better match the quality of newer parts of the map, ensuring a smoother and more immersive driving experience. Bit by bit, we’re replacing old mapping with high-quality environments that reflect the character of each region.

Locality at its finest.

So what’s helping us achieve this level of realism?.. As some of you may recall, a few members of the team recently traveled to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to gather reference material. That fieldwork was essential to improving authenticity, from signage and landmarks to one key detail we wanted to get right: local vehicles.

Below, you’ll find comparisons between some of our newly added traffic vehicles and their Development Stages.

Two New Locations: Martuk & Kendirli

And as a bonus for this update, we’ve also added two smaller but brand-new locations to explore: Martuk and Kendirli.

These towns bring more variety to the network and add extra depth to your journeys through the steppe.

What’s Next?

That’s all for now! We hope this sneak peek shows just how much effort we’re putting into upgrading and expanding The Great Steppe. From field research to city rebuilds, everything in 1.4.0 is focused on quality and authenticity.

You can expect the update to be released very soon, so stay tuned, and get ready to return to the roads of Kazakhstan very soon.

“Stay tuned, and happy trucking!” – Tedesco

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