Base Map Rebuild (CA, NV, AZ) General Discussion Thread

[Bedavd]

You can drive on them and I at least have never been fined for it

[trainguy_modding]

You can drive on them and I at least have never been fined for it

What do you mean?

[Madkine]

The road that's marked as non truck can be driven on and you won't be fined for doing so. I've done it myself.

[cadcla]

Ok, thanks for clarification, then in Road trip Dlc that roads Will should appear on the map?

[oldmanclippy]

Something to remember for Road Trip is that cars can in fact use the truck lanes in real life if they wish.

[flight50]

I usually follow the signage, but I also play with blockers hidden so I don’t know for sure.

There are no blockers for that road. The road just isn't discoverable.

I believe you can, Just you'll get a ticket for driving on it.

There is no ticket given for driving where the cars do. At least not when I drove it in the open beta when it released. I haven't driven it since ph 4 went public because I wasn't in California. Now I'm exclusively in California trying to clear roads before Louisiana drops. Once Louisiana drops, I'm going back to avoiding the West until Nevada or Arizona is updated. I-80, I-40 and I-10 are the paths unless you are in the PNW. I-15 is too much of a bottleneck.

[flight50]

ecently, Nemiro said on a stream that there are now 420 employees, and Pavel said he met with a lot of new SCS map designers back in March/April.

I brought up the idea of potentially more reworks (for both games) being announced because it just sounds and seems plausible given the sheer growth of SCS even from a mapper perspective (because it sounds like they are hiring a lot of mappers).

Yeah mappers is the easiest thing to hire for. 2 rework teams could get the older parts of ATS up to speed much faster for sure. I'd have to think they are console minded if they do this and they'd be good for thinking this. So if ATS's base map it brought to current standards faster, the base map is solid too. Thennnnn focus on older dlc's. Once both reworks teams are up to speed, I'd put one in Mexico assuming that a new 4th paid map team is in Canada. To be honest, I think the California team took their experience to Canada while the new mappers do the reworks. Kinda like an intro or beginning stage for new mappers. There is no time table for reworks like paid maps.

The thing I worry about though is ATS having too many map teams. Is ATS making enough money to have 6 map teams? What about the longevity? They will finish North America faster with 6 teams yes. That is a fans blessing and great for us. What about once they do finish North America wayyyy ahead of what we speculate? What about people's jobs? What will they do next. Fingers point at another game/continent. But it doesn't get much easier than North America and Europe with Google Street View. There is Australia but where does the ETS2 team go? That's getting off subject though...just random thoughts.

But yeah another reworks team mapping is good news short term. My biggest fear is what are the talent levels for Nevada and Arizona mountains with new mappers. Surely enough seniors are still on the team but they are thinner if there are more map teams. The best mountain mappers must stay on teams in the West. No point in wasting their talents going East. Experience mappers or not, those mountains for Arizona and Nevada MUST be a good as ETS2's reworks with their mountain modeling. We got a taste of what's possible thru ETS2. Bring that level to ATS is what we need to see quality wise. Otherwise its going to be very disappointing if one game can deliver but the other takes a break on crucial scenery. If they are going to rework it....rework it right and as realistic as possible. Too much inconsistency in California's rework. This doesn't work for the console market where everyone has the same spec machines.

[flight50]

I'm kinda upset that when they reworked CA they didn't add more 3-4 lane freeways. If map mods can add them, I don't see why SCS couldn't.

Just because mods do it, what's the real benefit to SCS doing it when traffic is already pretty light by default? What difference does it truly make. We have plenty of 3 lane highways in the game. 4 can be in the largest cities. But when you have a city that is very huge and complex like LA for example with tons of interchanges, everything is competing for space and is truncated a lot. Not every city needs to be an exact duplicate of its real life lane.

Keep in mind we are 1:20 and not 1:1. So distances between junctions and 3+ lanes roads only gives you so much time to get over. Once traffic is increased when the game engine is updated, this can be problematic getting where you need to go. One more lane means one more lane of dealing with the AI traffic. Not many of us like how AI traffic operates. More lanes just makes them worse. You have to think about the consequences of the request. I see this request a lot and mods don't have to worry about common sense like SCS does. People want realism....then mods can fix it. You want practical...then SCS does it their way. We just need the vibe....not 100% accurate on everything.

[Tristman]

I was wondering myself, maybe we haven’t seen anything regarding Nevada because the California rework team went on to start mapping British Columbia.
It’s entirely possible I’m wrong, or another team is already working on Nevada. But we have signs that BC is in the plans, and the big questions are who will do it and when?

[flight50]

The California reworks team makes more sense to do BC than a new team. A rookie team starting Canada doesn't make much sense. That's paid content. Although when Davido started, his team was a rookie team. But that was Wyoming and they did great. SCS shouldn't chance such as huge dlc for a 85%+ rookie team like Wyoming.

So the California team had enough seniors on it to tackle BC. A new map lead can easily take over for Janek on the reworks. That lead would obviously be proven due to his/her experience already spent at SCS mapping. Not to mention the training academy that SCS started a couple of years ago to train new mappers. We still need landscaping specialist for mountainous terrain in the West. Nevada and Arizona depends on it. Western Canada depends on it as well as Western Mexico. So as most of the teams keep pushing East, we still have mountains to deal with in the West for all of NA and that takes experience.

Speaking of.......for those that played Ph 4 last year when it released and remember the mountains along US-395 and I-10 between Indio and Blythe.....does it look like they reworked the mountains to you guys? I drove between Indio and Blythe last weekend and the mountains looked better. I just drove US-395 today and it too looks better. Like they have more detail in organic modeling and textures. I am not playing 1.56ob with the new heigh blend either. Or perhaps were we just a lot more critical last year and its the same exact mountains? Either way, its not so bad now.