Vývojáři na svém blogu vystavili otevřený dopis komunitě, ve kterém promlouvají k fanouškům, a informují o budoucím vývoji kolem jejich her. Jednoznačně nejdůležitější informace je přibližné datum vydání ETS2.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 vyjde první týden v srpnu tohoto roku
Dopis je poměrně obsáhlý, takže ho nebudu celý přepisovat (pokud máte zájem, abychom ho celý přeložili, napište to, prosím, do komentářů pod novinkou), ale vyberu jenom to nejdůležitější. Mimochodem je pod ním podepsaný CEO SCS Software, Pavel Šebor, to jen tak na okraj.
O datu vydání ETS 2 už jsem se zmínil. Dále se rozebírá, proč vývoj hry trval tak dlouho – prostě je to hromada práce pro málo lidí, SCS je malé studio, což je dáno hlavně tím, že truck simulatory jsou úzký profil. To je také důvod, proč se ve hře neobjeví vše, co si fanoušci vysnili (jako multiplayer, celá Evropa, více tahačů atd.). Vývojáři by tyto fíčury sice rádi přidali, ale jednoduše to není v jejich silách a finančních možnostech, snad pokud budou mít budoucí hry úspěch, se na něco z toho dostane.
Další zajímavou informací je, že SCS momentálně vyvíjí mimo ETS2 další hru. Zatím neznáme podrobnosti, ale nejspíš půjde o menší hru typu Trucks & Trailers (rozsahem, ne obsahem), svázanou s nějakou konkrétní značkou (můj smělý tip je Scania, a něco co se bude točit kolem zkušebního polygonu této firmy, ale mohu se pochopitelně mýlit, a to tak že hodně).
A nakonec taková skoro žádost – pokud se vám ETS 2 (nebo i jiná hra od SCS) bude líbit, kupte si ji! Jedině tak se můžeme dočkat nových her tohoto žánru, a možná i takových věcí jako je multiplayer, rozsáhlé mapy a nové tahače.
Původní text dopisu:
Dear friends of truck simulation games,
I have news about the Euro Truck Simulator 2 release: finally, we are ready to commit to a specific release time.
This piece of good news may however be mixed with a bit of disappointment, especially for the less patient among you.
We have been working on the game for almost two years, sticking to the proverbial „when it’s done“ planning all this time. Now, at last we are confident that the status of „good enough to be proud of the achievement“ is on the horizon.
We have set the release time to first week of August 2012.
We are aware that waiting almost 6 more months is a lot for many of you. We haven’t announced any release date ourselves until now, but some of our distributors have been working with speculative time-frames for the release, raising hope among you of an earlier release.
Taking 30 months to develop a game is a tough decision to arrive to. It is testing the patience of you – fans of our games, it is testing the patience of our distributors, and it is definitely testing the dedication of the development team. However we are confident that it was The Right Thing to do – we needed enough time to re-factor the graphics engine at the core of the game and to develop the cool effects on top of it, we needed the time to build the high-detail 3D models to populate the virtual world with, it took considerable effort and time to establish industrial and commercial relationships that will elevate our games to a new level. Giving in to time pressure would only result in us having to make too many compromises. We have just one chance to make a good first impression.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 will bring a massive improvement over our previous games, but in fact, it will „only“ be a major milestone along a long and windy road ahead. There are many cool features that we would like to add, but lots of things will have to wait for a future game or games. Our wish list is very long, and you are constantly helping us grow it even longer with your input and feedback. It would be a dream scenario to be able to pack all those features in – season changes through the year, cities teeming with pedestrians, other types of big vehicles to drive, being able to get out of the cabin and explore the world on foot, vehicle damage from collisions, real brands for everything in the world, loading and unloading cargo from the trailer, multiplayer, covering all of Europe from Iberian Peninsula to Ural mountains, from polar circle to Asia Minor, and then going beyond the confines of Europe to both North and South America, to Africa, Asia and Australia, the list goes on and on. Euro Truck Simulator 2 should be a solid step towards the goal of the ultimate truck simulator, but only the first such step (well, second actually). With your continuing help and support, we want to continue the effort beyond the release of the game and take the remaining steps in the years to come.
Many of you may question why we are taking so long, and why we are not able to grant more of your wishes for features to include, why we are not covering more European countries. The answer is the same that we have always offered – truck simulation games are far from mainstream, and limited sales of our past games can only support a small development team. With ETS2 we have taken a bold step to grow the team size, from 5-7 to a bit over 10 people, but compared to AAA driving games productions with hundreds of people on payroll, we are tiny. We are trying to punch above our weight, putting in as much content and features as we humanly could manage to produce, but to build even more, we will have to rely on profits that should hopefully come from future sales of our games. If you want more features, bigger world and more vehicles in our games, all I can say is this: If you consider our games worth playing, consider them worth buying, too. Recommending them to friends wouldn’t hurt either.
Your wait for something new from SCS Software doesn’t have to take full six months though. As you have learned with the release of Trucks & Trailers, there are actually two internal teams at SCS Software now working in parallel. While the bigger team is still toiling on our opus magnum – Euro Truck Simulator 2, the smaller team is now taking advantage of a new opportunity arising out of our cooperation with the transportation industry. Very soon, you can expect an announcement about an exciting project that’s under way in our labs, project which should be out even before ETS2 hits the stores. These smaller projects turn out to be significant contributors to pursuing the dream of the ultimate all-encompassing truck sim, and while they deserve merit on their own, we hope that you can understand that they are not delaying us from working on ETS2, but rather helping us finance its development and broaden its feature set.
Please keep your patience in check and stay loyal to us, and keep your eyes and mind open for future announcements from SCS Software on this blog. To keep the long wait a bit tolerable, we will be sure to post more news, images and movies from what we are working on.
Yours sincerely,
Pavel Sebor
CEO, SCS Software