Euro Truck Sim 2: Open Beta 1.9 (Week 2)

As a large number of Euro Truck Sim 2 fans already know, beta testing for the new Version 1.9 build has continued with near-daily revisions. Despite the explanations offered for it being a Steam-only testing programme, a fair few blog and forum comments have been left regarding that decision and its reasoning. Given what’s unnecessary flak and the now-usual impatience of a ‘want it now’ sector of the gaming community, it only seems right to show the other side of the equation by highlighting what’s behind SCS Software‘s testing method. I’ll further underline that gesture now with the mainly unrecognised fact that the company is doing what so few do so well in this era: support its game as comprehensively as it can (and in a long-term way).

A Euro Truck Statement…

 
Before I move to the many tweaks within another week of patches, here is the forthright post placed on SCS Software’s blog and its Steam channel. Plans are outlined, the rationale behind using Steam is given and the scale of the updating process is outlined both in terms of effort and the time taken for development. It’s worth reading.

We have spent considerable time in closed beta testing, and we feel the stability of the build is now very solid. That’s why we would like to invite everybody in our fanbase for the final check. Hopefully, if things prove solid under such a scrutiny, the final official retail/Steam update may only be hours or at worst days away from us.
 
We are making the open beta only available on Steam. We know that there might be grumbling about it, but as each additional publicly available patch causes future patches to get bigger and take longer to apply, we try hard to avoid having to release hot-fixes to major game updates.
 
The 1.9 update is one of the largest patches we have ever worked on, hence the long time to wrap it up. Work on the new vehicle AI code has actually started even before ETS2 was released, some year and a half ago, but we gave it all the time it needed to mature. It replaces the entire traffic AI code with a new system. Its far more flexible, and it is paving the way for yet more improvements in the future (country-specific behavior of traffic lights is a much needed planned feature for the future for example).
 

Continuing the beta…

 
This is how the second round of patches for Euro Truck Sim 2 unfolded:
 
Build 1.9.6

• AI: Fixed speeding
• AI: Fixed detection of wrong way lanes on prefabs in some cases
• AI: Fixed speed camera check
• Fixed handling of zero sized railings, buildings and short roads which could cause problems after map rebuild
• The ‘wrong way’ offence is reported only while the vehicle is moving
• Fixed blinker flag on Poland toll gate
• Fixed floating navigation points on some prefabs
• Updated localisation

Build 1.9.8

• AI: Fixed waiting for high priority actor
• AI: Reduced probability of usage of low probability navigation curves
• AI: Limited speed around railroad crossings
• AI: Improved behaviour of truck with trailers
• Prevented engine stall in some situations

• Editor: New “Follow road dir” flag for signs. It orients the sign along the underlying road and moves it when the road moves.

• Reduced memory consumption when Asian character sets are not used
• Fixed navigation curves on some prefabs
• Updated localisation

Build 1.9.10

• AI: Improved spawning
• AI: Improved overtaking
• AI: Increased patience factor for trucks with trailers
• AI: Improved handling of acceleration
• AI: Improved handling of movement in the wrong way lane
• AI: Fixed oncoming vehicles not blinking at player with high beams on at high speeds
• AI: Improved obstacle avoidance handling near semaphores and stoppers
• AI: Fixed handling of non-symmetric roads
• AI: Fixed dynamic items being considered wrong way in some cases
• AI: Vehicles with high safety factor use lights even if they are not mandatory in the country
• AI: Improved zip lane merging
• AI: Fixed handling of the horn
• Added customized semaphore behaviour for several countries
• Improved physics handling for traffic and parked vehicles
• Streamline: Fixed jittering of wipers
• Fixed default value of g_developer cvar.
• Editor: Support for default prefab signs

Build 1.9.11

AI: Fixed wrong way offence being reported incorrectly in some cases

AI: Increased yield time so that it doesn’t occur too often

AI: Force the vehicle to stop if obstacle is too close

Fixed some floating curves

Added semaphore profiles for gas stations

 

That completes the second run of updates for this ETS2 beta. There are more to come!