SCS Blog: California Redevelopment Plans

Today we’re thrilled to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the ongoing work on rebuilding California and what we’re planning for future updates to American Truck Simulator.

In July, we released version 1.41 of American Truck Simulator, which included Phase 1 of the anticipated California Rework, which brought major road network upgrades, new farm stations and more. Since then, the team behind the revision has been hard at work on Phase 2 of this project. We spoke with the California Revamp project manager to find out more about the current state of the project and what changes and challenges this project has had.

Team

Much of the California Revamp team was made up of new junior map designers who were mastering the new environment and workspace. We continue to adjust our timelines for various DLCs and due to several changes this year we had to reach out to other projects like Montana and Texas and move most of the map designers from the California team to another location. to keep up with our plans for next year (s).

Because of this, the size of the California Revamp team has changed frequently. At one point during the year, the team had 12 people working hard in various fields, 10 of whom were new card designers. There are only a handful of map designers currently working on Phase 2, but we’re confident the team can keep up with the update, especially with new members joining the team in January.

Phase 2 of California makeover

So what’s in store for this Phase 2 project? The next part of the project is dedicated to 5 cities and their environs – Eureka, Ukiah, Sacramento, Redding and Truckee will be completely rebuilt!

All 5 cities and their surrounding road networks have been completely rebuilt along with local attractions and architecture. We also focused on creating new scenic routes and local industries such as the Napa Valley; which, as you know, is famous for its wineries and vineyards. New rest areas and stops for trucks have also been implemented, but that’s not all! You will also find new assets, vegetation and textures that will give the terrain a whole new look.

Another important change that will happen in Phase 2 with this project is that we say goodbye to the city of San Rafael. Due to the scale of the map, we had to make the difficult decision to remove the city from the in-game economy. To compensate for this, we will introduce an entirely new city that will be larger and more significant in the California road network in Phase 3 of our current project! Any suggestions what this might be?

So, you might be wondering why we decided to start over completely from scratch at this stage? When we first started working on Phase 2, we quickly realized that renovating and making some minor changes to the area would not be enough. When we first built California, our teams followed a different set of rules and paradigms and did not have the experience we have now when it comes to building urban areas and large cities in American Truck Simulator.

We’ve learned a lot over the past few years and we’ve made significant improvements to city planning and more, which is evident in some of our latest and future DLCs. So we decided that it would be better to completely rebuild the area, so it took longer than expected. Our California knowledge and experience with the tools we use to create these built-up areas has also expanded significantly since our humble beginnings.

We are planning to bring California to the current DLC standard, as this is usually the first location for the player when American Truck Simulator starts. We believe that revisiting these areas will be beneficial for both us the developers and you our players, so we are excited to continue the California redevelopment along with plans to continue redeveloping other US states in the future.

Plans for the future

So what are our future plans for the California Revamp project? What cities are we planning to focus on after phase 2? Before we tell you what’s in the store, we’d like to make a small disclaimer …

Please be aware that everything we are going to mention here is subject to change. While this is our current plan at the time of writing, this roadmap may change in the future depending on a number of development factors.

With that said, here’s just a quick overview of our roadmap for the California Revamp project in American Truck Simulator. We plan to continue redeveloping a number of cities with our next focus on the San Francisco Bay Area. This place alone is a challenge to our abilities and will undergo huge changes from the original version.

However, depending on the size of the team, we hope to add even more content to Phrase 3 and beyond! We have many projects that were started by our new map designers but never completed. We hope that in the future we will have the opportunity to give them more time and attention so that they are completed and ready for release.

As for our long-term plan, we will continue to improve and rehabilitate portions of the road network throughout the state of California. Since it is the third largest state in the United States after Texas, California will take quite a long time due to road density, number of cities and size, but we hope the end result is worth it! Looking even further into the future, we plan to revisit several states once again and maybe even bring something special (which is so secret that they don’t even tell me about it!).