Montana Discussion Thread

[VTXcnME]

I know it won't be rushed. I know it'll be done in the timeframe it's done in (no matter how badly we all want it faster). I know there are a lot of roads to connect around. But there's also a full dedicated team working on Texas unless I've been mislead by other forum posts on the topic.

Texas has been in progress for a while, a long while. It was announced March of 2021 if memory serves right. That leaves a full year between announcement and release. 13 months if they push out to the end of Q1 2022. I'm not trying to rush anything. A full year on one state, even one as large as Texas, is a solid target for release.

Again, I get it. It'll be done when it's done and not a second faster. And no, no one wants a half baked/half done product.

Just figure a year, 13 months is a long enough even given the above mentioned size of the state.

[flight50]

Texas has 2 map teams for the most part. Pavel mentioned he wanted 20-25 on it. I'm sure he's pretty close if he said most if the team is there. Texas was officially announced last Dec on the xmas stream but Pavel noted Summer of 2019 that he had a person in preliminary production for 6 months (at that time). Come Jan/Feb 2022, it will be 3 years Texas was started. Texas will take a lot more than 13-18 months though. Now Montana on the other hand, 18 is perfect.

The team in Montana took 10-12 months for Wyoming as newbies mostly. Considering Montana is perhaps 30% larger, that extra 6-8 months puts us Q4 2022 perhaps. So if we had Texas and Montana for the 2022 Xmas event, how awesome would that be?

[VTXcnME]

So it was announced in December 2020. But had been in pre-production since... 2019?

More than enough time has been spent on it. There is no reason it can't be released Q1 2022. That'd put it at about 4 years, if everything you say is true, with two dedicated map crews for the better part of 2 years. The Coast 2 Coast mod is significantly larger and was done in significantly shorter time than that. And as far as I know, it was free (I've always found it for free when I wanted to install it).

And anything done the first time is done slower. WY team was newbies for that build. Now Montana should be more common material for them, I'd say 12-16 months with experience isn't unreasonable. 18 months, it better be the best dang state they've put out yet.

I say all this because they are not creating all these assets from new, every single time. There's precious little that has changed from state to state for the last few years. We've spoken on this in other threads and I think agree.

They aren't even generating new building prefabs, just recycling the same over and over. If it's gonna take 18 months, there better be new map assets/prefab buildings. New businesses developed. New job drops. More than just the same old same old we've been seeing for the last few releases. Livestock came with Wyoming.... I bought a livestock trailer and couldn't find any livestock jobs anywhere. If Montana takes 18 months, things like that best not happen, yanno?

[flight50]

Mapping takes awhile. The assets can be there, old or new. That doesn't matter much. The asset team always has to stay ahead of the mappers. Its the detailing that takes the time. Somethings are just more complex than others. What I'm hoping for is more road density in the wide open spaces. That will take time. The long stretches of roads in Montana and Texas are not exactly fly thru mapping. If they don't spend the time on it, the quality drops and we don't wish for that.

SCS should be able to get back on track for 2 states a year next year though. Texas is either Spring at best or Summer as the worse case. Montana would be later in the year best case. Worse case Q1 of 2023. I'm really hoping both get out next year that way 2023 possibly kicks of 3 maps a year. Between Oklahoma and Louisiana, one has to follow Montana. Oklahoma makes the most sense. I'd love to get North of Texas and to get that panhandle to get from Lamar, Co to Amarillo, Tx without having to go around the Texas panhandle.

[TheAmir259]

The Coast 2 Coast mod is significantly larger and was done in significantly shorter time than that. And as far as I know, it was free (I've always found it for free when I wanted to install it).

Please don't mention that mod for comparison, it has a very notable reputation for a map, and mapmaking.

[flight50]

Yeah it lacks detail in general. But people have been adding parts in better detail to make things a bit better. It's hersay but I won't touch the map. I'm perfectly fine waiting for SCS and ProMods for their maps.

C2C is done at a pace that matches its quailty. Notice how long it takes SCS and ProMods. Speed, Quality and Quantity. Pick 2 of the 3. Impossible to have all three at once.

[clifflandmark]

More than enough time has been spent on it. There is no reason it can't be released Q1 2022.

Yes, it's long time and TX requires all this effort and time. They're expecting a big impact that makes sales to bring close ETS in terms of $. So, 3 or 4 more months can take TX higher quality with 25+ employee. I think it worths waiting.Also, I'm not that optimistic for Montana.Remember how long WY took.Montana is wider in so many terms. MT could be 2022 Q4 or 2023 Q1.However, after TX release, we can see 2 other states (OK-KS) from TX teams in 2023.With an exchange personnels in teams -a smaller team that lead the SouthEast TX added to WY-MT team- this new hybrid team can make Louisiana. Thus, 2023 could be the quadrable or triple map year. (MT-OK-KS-LA [2023] or OK-KS-LA[in case of MT released in 2022 Q4)

[flight50]

Wyoming only seemed long due to impatience. But since it didn't come out June or July people made a big deal about it. End of the day, we go it and it turned out great despite the Northern gap. Davido said it took 10-12 months...that's pretty normal and actually pretty good for a team that was basically all newbies.

[VTXcnME]

More than enough time has been spent on it. There is no reason it can't be released Q1 2022.

Yes, it's long time and TX requires all this effort and time. They're expecting a big impact that makes sales to bring close ETS in terms of $. So, 3 or 4 more months can take TX higher quality with 25+ employee. I think it worths waiting.Also, I'm not that optimistic for Montana.Remember how long WY took.Montana is wider in so many terms. MT could be 2022 Q4 or 2023 Q1.However, after TX release, we can see 2 other states (OK-KS) from TX teams in 2023.With an exchange personnels in teams -a smaller team that lead the SouthEast TX added to WY-MT team- this new hybrid team can make Louisiana. Thus, 2023 could be the quadrable or triple map year. (MT-OK-KS-LA [2023] or OK-KS-LA[in case of MT released in 2022 Q4)

I get quality takes time. But 3 years, 4 years? My worry is the longer it takes, the higher the expectations are going to be. I know that my expectations get higher and higher the longer it goes on.

Partially, I'm ready for SCS to break out of the midwest and hit the gulf coast in the south.

It happens when it happens, but dang if it don't feel like feet dragging to release states. There has been significant time spent on just this state, it better be the pinnacle/shining example of ATS's abilities and talent. Anything short of that will be a disappointment.

Yeah it lacks detail in general. But people have been adding parts in better detail to make things a bit better. It's hersay but I won't touch the map. I'm perfectly fine waiting for SCS and ProMods for their maps.

C2C is done at a pace that matches its quailty. Notice how long it takes SCS and ProMods. Speed, Quality and Quantity. Pick 2 of the 3. Impossible to have all three at once.

I get that C2C is sparse in places, notably the wide open spaces that SCS is currently trying to map for Texas/Montana. And apologies if I made some folks feathers fall out (eye roll) by the mere mention of it. But there are parts of that add on that are fairly well done. Honestly, for people working for free... they've done a helluva job getting the entire nation in game. It's not perfect, I understand. I look at it this way: with a paid team (sorry, teams) working on these states for SCS, it feels like they could be moving at a better speed then they are. And that's my only point to bringing up the apparently fubar topic of the forum. SCS has had more than sufficient time to get this mapped out. And as I mention above, the longer it takes to release, the higher expectations are going to be.

Mapping takes awhile. The assets can be there, old or new. That doesn't matter much. The asset team always has to stay ahead of the mappers. Its the detailing that takes the time. Somethings are just more complex than others. What I'm hoping for is more road density in the wide open spaces. That will take time. The long stretches of roads in Montana and Texas are not exactly fly thru mapping. If they don't spend the time on it, the quality drops and we don't wish for that.

SCS should be able to get back on track for 2 states a year next year though. Texas is either Spring at best or Summer as the worse case. Montana would be later in the year best case. Worse case Q1 of 2023. I'm really hoping both get out next year that way 2023 possibly kicks of 3 maps a year. Between Oklahoma and Louisiana, one has to follow Montana. Oklahoma makes the most sense. I'd love to get North of Texas and to get that panhandle to get from Lamar, Co to Amarillo, Tx without having to go around the Texas panhandle.

Mapping should be a smoother process for them by this point. Yes, they are creating digital something from digital nothing. But how many states have been created at this point? The basics of mapping out features and topography should be almost second nature at this point. Recycling assets from map pack to map pack reduces time to create said prefab drop ins. There's nothing to really code or create, you're just copying and pasting from asset pack to asset pack. I'm not expecting states to get churned out at 7 a year, but dang if they can't get even larger states done a little faster than they are.


Back to Montana though: I am still very much hoping that the US 14 to Cody gets filled in as part of MT release, and that it'll connect into MT from the bottom southwestern corner of the state. That would help flesh out the corner of WY, and provide another route for detours/alt routes. I'm hoping they add more diversity to cargo and businesses. There's a lot we've talked about that I hope makes it into montana to justify the time it's going to take to produce the state.

[Tristman]

Even if Texas has been in development for several years now, it has only been announced in March last year, so technically we haven't even had to wait a year yet.
It's the biggest state after Alaska (which we might or might not get in the future), so it's not like every state after Texas is going to take just as much development time. On the contrary, SCS will probably be able to bring out content more rapidly after Texas is done, because it frees up a lot of people.

Other people have already brought up how important Texas is for ATS as a whole, so if they rush it, they risk ruining that breakthrough chance. I don't think it's much asked of us as fans to just be patient with this one DLC.