Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

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Emaulligu
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Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#1 Post by Emaulligu » 03 Feb 2021 23:09

Greetings fellow truckers ! I have started my journey with ATS a bit more than a year ago, followed a couple of months later by ETS2. I've been active on WoT and Steam since, unfortunately WoT doesn't allow for much communication, and adding the entire community on Steam would prove tedious to say the least :p
I'm still very new on the forums and only took interest in them recently, discovered those screenshot threads and became very interested in doing my own to share my passion for art and trucks, of course !
I live somewhere in France, and my interest for trucks is purely sentimental, not professionnal. I don't work around trucks and probably never will, but I've always loved seeing these powerful machines rolling by.
Playing on a potato PC, hope you will excuse the low quality of the first pictures, that was before I started to turn up the graphics to take screenshots. I still do it to this day, which allows me to take good graphics at the cost of resetting the AI traffic on the road. Can't have it all eh ?
Hoping to hear from all of you on here now !

I suppose I should start with this, the first picture of my first owned truck in ATS, a SCS W900 daycab. The W900 has always been my favorite truck, and I still drive one in ATS to this day, while my ETS story has been a little more hectic.
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My first truck in ETS was a Renault T, with the mandatory start small cab :
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poozykrem
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#2 Post by poozykrem » 03 Feb 2021 23:27

Welcome to the forums my friend, I'll keep my eyes on your thread!
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Emaulligu
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#3 Post by Emaulligu » 04 Feb 2021 12:06

My SCS W900 made it to a Studio Sleeper cab until I started learning about mods, and eventually turned it in for a GTM's W900B, that had some more interesting customisation options.
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Flash forward a bit of time, and I went for a less "flashy" paintjob, something more classic, as well as a new heavy duty bumper, the 8x4 chassis I finally had unlocked after some hard driving, and some big wheels to go along. I was driving owned doubles and triples back then, because the pay was handsome. They're surprisingly manovurable (unless you need to back) but I eventually switched them again for a single trailer so I could do reverse parkings and make myself feel a bit more like a "trucker" and not just some kid driving around (but that's still what I am deep inside :p). I also started taking my first HQ screenshots and fine-tuning my camera settings, something with which I already had experience due to former softwares.
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During this time, I also bought ETS and my little Renault T had grown up a bit :
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So I finally had both games, though my enthusiasm for ETS was mild back then and I probably bought it on sale rather for the sake of completeing the "International Driver" achievement on WoT than truly thinking I would drive a lot in good ol' Europe. Trucks and countries weren't exotic enough for my taste.
Now, there's at least two more chapters to write until I can catch up to present day, but I shall do so later.
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#4 Post by poozykrem » 04 Feb 2021 12:12

Nice story! :D
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Emaulligu
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#5 Post by Emaulligu » 04 Feb 2021 12:14

@poozykrem I'm glad you like it, because you're going to be in the next part !
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#6 Post by poozykrem » 04 Feb 2021 12:29

Ooo nice! Can't wait to hear about myself >:3
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Emaulligu
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#7 Post by Emaulligu » 05 Feb 2021 13:56

Now I must take some time to talk about Poozykrem and his Vandalyzer :
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His truck has been in constant evolution for a long long time (to see more about that, refer to his own screenshot thread), and when I randomly found it on WoT, I thought it was so cool I wanted to do the same. I had seen custom skins on the workshop and on a few pictures but nothing of that scale, and it just felt full of personality.
My main game on Steam was and remains Team Fortress 2, which is technically irrelevant here, but I've grown accustomed to a certain level of customisation to make myself stand out from the crowd, and that seemed really great. I had never looked too seriously into skins until I saw the first pictures of the Vandalyzer. Hard too, until I found out about ModsStudio2 which replaced the former ETSStudio, back when there wasn't many tutorials around.
After the initial setup time and once I managed to make everything work, I started working seriously on my first skin for ATS.
ETS and the High Power Cargo pack comes with universal heavy duty-styled paintjobs. However, ATS lacks such a feature and the closest we can get is the Juggernaut paintjob, from an event I didn't take part in. I know I could just have bought the paintjob but first I didn't feel good about wearing the reward from an event I didn't do, two I don't like the ram head anyway, and three, I'm driving a modded W900 which settles it. I really wanted a heavy duty paintjob to compliment the rest of my heavy duty W900, and so I did, along with some stickers from World of Trucks achievements.
In parallel I also did my first paintjob for ETS, a very simplistic skin whose job was to turn the front grid of my Renault T white to replace the plastic black.
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Very quickly afterwards, the Genoa bridge event started, following the tragic incident that we know, and I reworked my Renault T skin.
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Yet, I felt less and less happy about the truck and started to look for another one that I might like more. Something a bit more powerful and... American.
My choice went on the K100 as well, not to imitate Poozykrem (and indeed we have very different setups), but because I wanted a flatnose to limit the loss of turning radius, no question of bringing a W900 on the windy roads of France.
Skin is a perfect match to that of my W900 in ATS and yes, the yellow rims make it look like a Lego truck.
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But I wasn't done with ETS yet...
So far I've only been doing one post a day but since nobody reads those, I'm just going to drop them all and catch up to present day so I can start posting about 1.40.
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#8 Post by Emaulligu » 05 Feb 2021 14:28

Not much is to be said for ATS as my trustworthyW900B followed me through everything up to this day and he even paid himself a little trip in 1.40 Open beta, even though mods aren't fully ready for it
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For ETS... Being European myself, I still fail to find the interesting part of European trucks and as such, I've moved back and forth between a good deal of trucks, in addition to my K100 who makes for a good backup when I'm in the mood for heavy hauls (which is a lot of the time). We find here :
- A Volvo FH2012 which, lacking the Volvo Tuning Pack, looks incredibly basic
- A golden Renault Magnum that looks as advanced as a Magnum can be (not very far sadly, Renault trucks still lack a bit of customisation)
- My short-lived Volvo F16, first of the name, killed by the 1.36 update.
- An Actros MP3 small cab, probably the "cutest" of ETS trucks with its round lines, went as far as to make a combo skin for it and the aero trailer, yet drove it very little too.
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Then there's my RJL Scania. That thing deserves a whole story of its own, along many pictures. It's the truck I invested the most time in, and unfortunately the one I can't drive at all, due to poor performance and occasional crashes on my poor PC. It started out as a Tandem mod, which was an adventure in itself, especially to skin properly, but it didn't stay under that shape very long and I quickly refitted it as a 6x4 short semi, partly because the Christmas event was happening and I needed a truck to deliver gifts all over Europe. Ho ho ho. In addition to that, the one LED bar mod I wanted to use was severely hurting my FPS so (after asking the original modder) I had to dive into the files and try to make it a little less FPS-hungry, with mitigated success (it does work better but blinkers still kill my FPS, a little embarrassing). Once the even was over, I fitted it with a matching Knapen Extreme trailer by Kast, and that's the last we've seen it.
Truth is, it has been upgraded and updated since, but the performance issue being still as terrible, I doubt it will come out of the garage anytime soon.
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So what did I find to replace the FPS-killer Scania ? I unexpectedly came across a copy of the new version of the Volvo F16 mod, both tandem and semi. Started out as a tandem but again, the surprise Hauling Hope event made me buy a semi chassis version, in order to take part. This is also the first truck that features some kind of company livery with my own name and may or may not be the last as I just don't like hauling box trailers anyway. That shade of red seemed pleasing so I just went with it, and the cab was initially full red until Poozykrem offered to come up with something for the cab, which he did wonderfully. Yes, him again. Thanks a lot buddy (and double thanks because so far you're my only reader lol).
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The F16 is a great oldschool truck, unfortunately I'm unable to say who truly "owns" it today and who's in charge of the maintenance, which makes me scared for its future, in regard of version 1.40 closing in, and the need for all modded trucks to be updated.
This brings us to present day, on ATS my immortal W900 who served me for a year now, and on ETS a line of trucks I failed to get emotionally linked with so I could consider keeping them, except perhaps the F16, whose fate is still uncertain to this point.
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Emaulligu
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#9 Post by Emaulligu » 05 Feb 2021 14:48

1.40 Open Beta
Activated it on ATS because my ETS profile is a little clustered with mods, I must admit. Also I was really eager to get a look at the new Western Star and the new chassis, been waiting for that long enough.
Gave my 49X a well-deserved upgrade, and took him on the road. The colors are wonderful, everything feels so vibrant and real. Not so intense, not when it doesn't have to be, but the colors feel right. It's hard to explain, but it makes the game look much much better. We're still far from official release, but I can only appreciate the work that's been done here. And my 49X does too.
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poozykrem
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Re: Emaulligu's Mechanized Ventures

#10 Post by poozykrem » 05 Feb 2021 23:55

Glad to see somebody being inspired from me, keep it up buddy!
And i'm not your only reader :P
This thread already has over 250 views, dudes just don't post stuff here, lol
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