[REL] Improved licence plates [1.6 - 29/12/2021]

[Smarty]

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This is a simple mod that replaces truck and trailer plates with their appropriate commercial motor vehicle variants, and corrects the serial formats of these plate series.

States Included
Arizona - Apportioned truck plate, colour, position and general serial format corrections; custom font
California - Apportioned truck plate, permanent trailer plate, and general serial format corrections
Nevada - Apportioned truck plate, permanent trailer plate, colour and general serial format corrections; extended passenger plates to include recent serial formats; custom font
New Mexico - Apportioned truck plate, permanent freight trailer plate, and serial format corrections; custom font
Oregon - Serial format corrections; custom fonts
Washington - Serial format corrections; complete overhaul of backgrounds; custom font
Utah - Serial format corrections; overhaul of exempt background; custom font; highway patrol plates

Special Thanks
Art - Reference photo for current-issue California Apportioned plate

What this mod doesn't do
This mod doesn't increase the resolution of the license plates. There are three reasons for this: First, it would require reconfiguring the UI template that generates them (doable, but obnoxious). Second, it would require remaking the font template (doable, but very time consuming). Lastly, and most importantly, each increase in texture size would quadruple the amount of texture memory used by license plates.

Support
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Workshop Link

Manual Install Link (scr-rigs.com)

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Here's a quick preview of one of my 'flights of fancy.' The current license plates in the game aren't quite correct for semi tractors and trailers engaged in interstate commerce. Nevada is by far the worst at the moment because the background only applies to light vehicles. I can't really blame SCS though, the Nevada DMV Motor Carrier Division makes information about current plate classes next to impossible to find...

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Corrections made so far (not all are represented in the title card yet):

• Apportioned commercial plate is used for trucks
  • Correct format (00000 A and 00000A)
  • Rear plate has sticker well and 2016 sticker
• Permanent trailer plate is used for trailers
  • Correct format (00000 /P/T)
  • Makes more sense than apportioned because California finally got with the program

Still to do:

• Extend car plates to include recent series
  • Current issue is 00A 000
  • 2015, state silhouette is now used as separator
  • Pipe dream: If I can find a good way to use multiple templates, I may add the white-on-blue historical reissue series
• I think there's a non permanent commercial trailer variant (with the suffices F through L?); If I can figure out if that's still a current thing, I'll toss it in (and maybe get a taste of the UI template markup).

I'll be doing this for all states as they come along, if/when it's necessary. For now, I'm not increasing the resolution because it would involve more UI work than I would like/know how to do. Plus I figure SCS has legitimate performance reasons; That's a wee UI window being fired together for every vehicle on screen. I can't imagine that's computationally cheap.

[Frontiersman]

Wow nice Smarty!

EDIT you know what I would LOVE to see? No plates on the rear of commercial trucks for states that don't require them, like Missouri. But that's nitpicking.

[Chrodazar]

lol I can understand why SCS has gone with a generic approach, if you add in the fact a lot of trucks have more then one plate on the tractor and then add in the trailer plates which of course are separate and do not go with the tractor and have thier own laws...

I guess it all depends on how deep one wants to dive into this, at the moment having only 2 states to deal with makes it easy, once all states and other countries are involved..well....i just want to say good luck with this undertaking.

[xDope]

Looking forward to this!

[Axel Slingerland]

Good job, eh!

[LeafeonGold]

I'm looking forward to this.

Also, reminds me of a request I had in ETS2 to variants for license plate for specific countries, to do taxi plates, classic plates, dealership plates, and other things, I hope SCS adds it.

[Keeper]

Here in Nevada there are dozens of plate designs available, so this could get complicated if you want to get complete. Plus, not only is the state silhouette in the middle of new plates, but the font is different (and the plates are now embossed whereas previously they were printed)!

[Smarty]

Frontiersman: I can make the plate itself invisible easily enough; The round corners are done by alpha blending (the model is literally a rectangular plane) so if I fill the alpha channel with black on the rear plate texture for these states, that's half the battle. The text may prove more resilient. I'll have to play around with it.

Chrodazar: This is why I've chosen to stick with Apportioned/Prorate plates under the IRP, and appropriate permanent or token trailer plates where appropriate. It's the simplest way to ensure that any combination will be valid, albeit at the expense of variety/completeness.

Axel: Take off, hoser!

Keeper: I'm not quite that obsessive. As for font differences and embossing, I think the plating system is limited by one UI template and thus one font. I'll play around with the markup a bit to see if it's flexible, but for now I'm limited by the 'one template to rule them all' situation.

[LeafeonGold]

It is flexible, with a bit of tweaking. In ETS2, you can see that license plates in Scandinavia, Poland, The UK, and France use different fonts than the standard one. Not sure of the complete depth of how it works, but it can be done.

[Smarty]

Ok, a little less restrictive than I thought. You're right about the font-per-country thing; I now recall seeing this a few weeks ago.

It also looks like the template markup can appear directly in the string. As long as the parser is okay with nested tags, multiple fonts per country should be no problem.

Now I just need to figure out whether the UI markup supports conditionals. If so, that pesky text can be made invisible based on the value of the SIDE flag for states where the rear plate is not issued. OOH! Or make a blank font and use the flag in the file name! Now we're cooking with gas!