Congratulations to the winners!
The best results of the competition make the challenge look like it was too easy! Ourselves we did not think it was possible to get the time under 1 minute, but you have proven us wrong repeatedly - we have some real masters of the steering wheel among the game's players . It's quite late here, we'll revisit this topic tomorrow again and get in touch with the winners.

Thanks everybody for your effort, that packed parking lot really got a lot of diesel burnt on it during this weekend! For those of you who did not win, here is a little consolation prize - a short movie made of scenes in Euro Truck Simulator 2, showing variety of daylight changes and weather.

Playing with Depth of Field
First of all, big thanks for everybody who tried to help and sent us information about license plates looks, logic and rules in the various European countries. The amount of feedback was overwhelming, a real avalanche of information.

The realization that so many people are eager to help and devote so much of their time to write detailed explanations is humbling. It gives us great inspiration to build our games, it's such a great feeling to know that we have such a devoted fan community!

For today we are going to show you two images from the world of Euro Truck Simulator 2, showing one of our artists playing with "DOF" feature in the game's 3D engine. In these two shots the effect is a bit too artistic (though it may come handy in creating fancy screenshots perhaps), but we are using this graphics engine feature in a more subtle way usually, for example in worsened daylight conditions it makes a good combination with hazy atmosphere, or when there is rain out there. A bit of work is still needed to make the pedestrians look better, good enough to show them in focus .

Баловство с глубиной резкости
Во-первых, всем огромное спасибо за помощь и информацию о гос. номерах, и правилах в разных стран Европы. Количество откликов было огромным, мы получили настоящую лавину информации.

Осознание того, что так много людей готовы помогать и уделять столько времени, чтобы написать подробное объяснение дает нам большое вдохновение для создания наших игр, нам приятно знать, что у нас есть такие преданные фанаты!

Сегодня мы покажем два изображения из Euro Truck Simulator 2, показывающие "DOF"-эффект в 3D движке игры. На этих скриншотах эффект слишком сильный (хотя с ним можно делать классные скриншоты), но мы используем эту возможность графического движка в более утонченной форме, например, в условиях ухудшения дневного света, эффект имеет хорошее сочетание с туманной атмосферой, или когда идет дождь. По-прежнему необходимо доработать пешеходов, чтобы в фокусе они смотрелись лучше .

Not enough zombies!
Thanks for everyone's support with Steam Greenlight campaign for Euro Truck Simulator 2. We have over 1,600 votes already, and over 50 pages of mostly very encouraging comments.

Still it looks like it might be a good idea to add a few zombies into the game; judging by some of the leading submissions so far, adding zombies could bring us an order of magnitude more votes! . We'll most likely resist the temptation - but kidding aside, this is a cold reminder for us as well as for you our fans that the potential of our truck sim "niche" is really limited compared to mainstream topics that Joe the gamer wants to deal with in the games he buys. The scope, depth and quality of our games are always going to be limited by how much money = manpower we can invest into them; how much money it's possible to make selling them to people willing to buy them. This pool is not that big. Exposure is key to get the game in front of as many eyes as possible.

The push for ETS on Greenlight will definitely continue for some time, nothing is decided yet. We thought that perhaps the fan community can help us even more in this long term effort. The effect of our blog has its limits, the news will get old very quickly. But quite a lot of you are running trucksim-related websites, blogs, facebook pages and message boards. Some visitors may come to you only from time to time, wouldn't it be great to have something permanent on the page to bring their attention to our cause?

We would like to offer you a set of banners and buttons that you can put on your web property to support ETS2. If you like any of the buttons, please use them to link them to the ETS2 Greenlight page. Big thanks!

We have these buttons and banners nicely packed in a ZIP file for download, with version including JPG on black and white backgrounds and PNG with transparency, at several sizes here:

www.eurotrucksimulator2.com/ets2_greenlight.zip

To wrap up this post, we have another YouTube movie for you. This one has been actually recorded over 2 weeks ago, some of the things in the game have been changed since then, and even the game logo in it is now obsolete. But we thought it would be a shame to lose all the work invested into creating the video, we quite like it.

ETS2 vehicle registration plates
One wish-list item we can take off the list, a hundred more to go...

During the past weeks, we have toiled on the flexible registration plate system both for trucks as well as all types of AI vehicles. The goal was to represent each country in the game with proper license plates for front and back of vehicles (which usually differ, and not just by color as in the UK). Our previous license plates system was often criticized before for not being good, in fact in the early days of beta test it was the most raised issue for taking away the feeling of reality on the roads. So we decided to listen to player's feedback and do something about it. The new system is very flexible; it's data driven so customizable and extendable, it's procedurally generated so a huge number of combinations are possible, and it's actually better optimized than the old system.

We DO listen to your feedback all the time, you just must keep in mind that the volume of requests for features to include in the game is huge. If we were to grant all your current wishes (and no doubt more will come), we'd have to spend several more years on the game before it's finished. Nobody really wants that, right? We really need to concentrate now on just wrapping up what we have started already to get the initial release of the game out. We know you are very impatient to get your hands on the game already.

The release date of ETS2 doesn't mark the end of development for the game. Just as with Scania TDS, and if fact even more so, we are committed to continuing development of the game beyond release version. Future updates will not contain just bug fixes if any are needed, but also major feature additions. There are also plans brewing for extending the virtual world - of course we are aware that many of you are not happy that we are not properly covering more of the territory of Europe. It will not be a small undertaking, but with your support, we may be able to gradually grow the virtual world, too.

Автомобильные номера в ETS2
Одно пожелание фанатов можно вычеркнуть из списка, осталось ещё пара сотен...

За последние несколько недель мы создали гибкую систему генерации номерных знаков как для грузовиков, так и для траффика. Наша цель была воссоздать реальные номерные знаки разных стран. Наша старая система была жёстко раскритикована, она была одной из самых обсуждаемых в комментариях. И мы решили послушать наших фанатов и вот что у нас получилось. Новая система очень гибкая; она настраиваемая и расширяемая , она способна генерировать огромное количество всевозможные комбинации и работает стабильнее старой системы.

Мы ПРАВДА читаем ваши отзывы, но помните, список ваших желаний очень огромный. Если бы мы стали воплощать все ваши желание (а их бы становилось больше и больше), нам бы пришлось отложить выход игру на несколько лет. Это же никому не нужно? Нам очень нужно сконцентрироваться на завершении того, чего мы задумали, чтобы наконец выпустить игру. Мы знаем что ваше терпение уже кончается.

Релиз ETS2 не значит полное окончание разработки. Как и со Scania TDS, мы собираемся продолжать доработки после релиза игры. там будут не только необходимые баг-фиксы, но и дополнительные функции и возможности. Есть планы и на расширение карты - мы знаем что не все раны текущим покрытием Европы. Это большое дело, но с вашей поддержкой мы справимся с этой задачей.