March 2, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
Earlier this week SCS Software shared these four images from the much anticipated Arizona DLC package from their Twitter account. I don’t know about you, but these images are truly amazing and only making me want Arizona NOW! I really only see two problems.
First, this Arizona DLC is not yet available.
Second, looking at the second image (Grand Canyon Caverns Inn) they have included another impossible intersection (similar to the one in Tonopah, NV). SCS really needs to make this a stop light controlled intersection. Either that, or another modder will need to fix it similar to how they fixed the intersection in Tonopah.
These images are the property of SCS Software and posted here as a newsworthy source. If you are interested in purchasing American Truck Simulator, please visit the American Truck Simulator Steam page.
I really can’t wait for AZ to be released.
Until next time…
Dreaming of Arizona!
J
P.S. I really hope they have modeled Winslow, Arizona on their map. I’m looking forward to hearing “Take It Easy” while driving through Winslow, Arizona
March 1, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
This was a little cartoon tweeted from the SCS Twitter account earlier this week. Yes…this very much describes ATS as well as ETS2, FS2015, CMS2015 etc. etc. etc.
I also don’t understand why I can’t stop playing either…
Until next time…
Happy Simming!!!
J
March 1, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
This week not only do we celebrate our week four progress of ATS, but we also celebrate the one month anniversary of this wonderful games release. Yes, time really does fly by when you are having fun. American Truck Simulator was released on 2 February. It’s been a great month! If you don’t own it yet, go get it now!
Our fourth week has been just as productive as all the others. After we completed our Coast-to-Coast (and back) run, we expanded our San Diego garage, purchased two new trucks and hired two new drivers. All paid for by cold, hard, cash we’ve earned. Our little trucking company now owns 13 trucks and employs 12 drivers. We have reach a point where bank loans just won’t be required. It’s a good feeling to know we have enough operating capital to purchase a new garage (or expand an existing one), purchase enough trucks to fill it and hire drivers. Of course, I’ve spent over 80 hours playing this game.
The goal for this week is to go ahead and expand our Las Vegas garage to accommodate five trucks. We’ll purchase the two trucks and hire new drivers. This will bring us to 15 owned trucks and employing 14 hard working drivers. At this point in time, I’m possibly going to hold off on opening any new garage locations until the official Arizona DLC is released by SCS Software. While I certainly don’t have any “inside” information on exactly when this new state will be released, I’m thinking it should be very soon.
This week I’ve mostly been driving the Kenworth W900 (as shown above). I purchased this truck for one of my drivers and after tricking it out with all the nice chrome and a powerful engine, I decided to drive it a bit. I’ve really enjoyed the change from the new Peterbilt.
Also, as I’m sure you read from my blog posting last week…I did upgrade my GPU to the awesome 980Ti. ATS/ETS2 performance is rock solid. I’m running with max graphic settings, not having to use any tweaking from Nvidia Inspector and get 60FPS in all areas of the game. It was money well spent and I’m very happy.
Finally, I added a new simulation based game to my Steam library. I had added Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 to my Steam watch list and when it went on sale last week, I pulled the trigger. You can read my “First Impressions” blog piece on Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 which I published last week.
Finally, Finally….I started streaming some of my game play on Twitch again. I don’t have a set schedule, but if you want to visit my Twitch page and Follow Me, you’ll be notified when I go live. I will mostly stream Car Mechanic Simulator and American Truck Simulator for now.
Here are my current stats for American Truck Simulator
Level 26
Total Driven Distance – 63,578
Total Driven Distance (On Duty) – 60,246
Total Free Roam Distance – 3,331
Roads Explored – 90.29% (No, I didn’t start over. I installed the coast-to-coast map)
Deliveries Finished – 100
Deliveries Cancelled – 0
Total Game Time Spent – 107 Days, 20 Hours
Play time – 59 Hours
Don’t forget to bookmark the site and/or subscribe to the RSS feed. Finally, please follow me on Twitter.
Until next time…
Happy Trucking!!!
J
February 29, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
I’ve got about 17 hours in the game and I’m having fun. That is what matters. I’ve sort of shifted my game play from ATS to CMS2015, but will certainly get back to ATS, ETS2, Farming Sim, Flight Sim etc. etc. very soon. Anyway, with approx. 17 hours invested in game play…I’ve managed to earn enough XP and cash to afford to unlock the external parking which allowed me access to the world of car auctions. I believe it requires 9000 XP and $50,000. So I actually waited until I had saved up about $80,000 before I actually unlocked the parking. But with parking unlocked and about $35K, I headed to the auction house to buy my first car.
My first car purchase at auction. This is the Katagiri Katsumoto (Honda Civic Coupe). A beauty, she’s not. But the price was right.
With a limited budget, I decided I would not pay over $10,000 for my first auction purchase. The first few vehicles that rolled by all went for well beyond my pre-set limit. Then this little junker rolled by. She’s not pretty to look at right now, but I’m hoping after I fully restore her to 100% she’ll fetch a nice price.
With almost 20 hours of game play (and some real world mechanic knowledge), I’m finding the teardown and rebuild of the various components to be much easier than when I first started the game play. Of course, this is my first 100% teardown but I’m up to the task. I’m hopeful with my maxed out repair tools that some parts will be repairable to 100% and the actual parts I must purchase will be minimal. But you just don’ t know until you tear into it.
The tear down went fast and I was pleasantly surprised that many parts were repairable to 100%. This is why it’s wise to dump all your XP points (1 per 1000) into the repair tools. Skip the garage redesign until you make sure you max out the repair tools.
Here’s the after picture. Not bad…
Was it all worth it?
Here’s the profit/loss breakdown…
Cost at auction $4,739
Price sold after restoration $27,319
Total Profit $5,224
My total profit would have actually been slightly more, but I accidentally purchased a few wrong parts. I clicked my mouse a few times too fast. But in the end it will balance out as these will be parts that I should be able to use on future jobs. Also, as you can see in the picture above, there’s still some rust damage on the back part of the car. I wasn’t sure how to fix that, but have since researched and figured out what I need to do next time. All-in-all I had fun on this restoration. I’ll take a few more customer jobs and then head back to the auction house real soon.
Until next time…
Happy Repairs!!!
J
February 27, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
I’ve been seeing Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 being streamed on Twitch for a while. The game itself was released in May of last year (2015). I wouldn’t say I wasn’t intrigued by it on first sight, it was just one of those things that didn’t jump right out and say “BUY ME”!!! But, I did add Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 to my Steam wishlist. Yesterday, I received an email notification from Steam that an item on my wishlist was on sale. That item was of course Car Mechanic Simulator 2015. At 55% off it’s normal $19.99 price the cost was an only $8.99 and I decided to go ahead and add yet another simulation based game to my inventory. As you can tell, with game titles like Flight Simulator (really P3D), Farming Simulator 2015, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator…I’m really a junky for the simulation based games. Oh…yea…I do occasionally play Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA5). I suppose that is a simulator for “how to be a thug”. But all I really do in GTA5 is drive around Los Santos, steal cars and sell them and occasionally knock off a store. I don’t blog about GTA5 and I don’t plan to. By the way, the Steam Sale for Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is still on. If you don’t have it yet, consider picking it up now!
My first impressions of the game are positive. Again, I’m a fan of simulation based games. It’s really all I play. However, I will say that sometimes the word “Simulation” is often over used in the gaming industry. Perhaps it is an unfair comparison, but yea…I do compare each and every simulation based game I play against Flight Sim. Simply because, Flight Simulation (FSX, P3D, XPlane) is NOT A GAME. It is a simulation and done very, very well. Yes, there are adolescent kids (and some adolescent adults) whose primary desire in Flight Sim is to crash their aircraft. If you apply the “80/20” rule to Flight Sim, you actually have more than 80% who are solid, hard-core aviation enthusiasts and take their involvement in the hobby (yes it is a hobby) very seriously. However, as much as I am enjoying American Truck Simulator at this time. ATS (while has some simulation aspects to it) is very much a game when you stack rank it against Flight Sim.
With regards to Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 (CMS2015), yes…it is a simulation based on the car mechanic profession. I purchased just the base game pack (on sale for $8.99 USD) to start with. I really didn’t want to get too far off in the weeds with add-on DLC until I could determine if this was something I would fine enjoyable. For me, (at this time at least) the game has my interest. I’ve spent almost 3 hours playing the game and during this time I’ve completed 21 jobs . (see below)
What I like about Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
Game play is fairly easy. All you need is a keyboard and mouse. No really, that is all you need! Trust me, I’m not a keyboard/mouse sort of guy. I don’t know how guys do it. I seriously don’ t know how guys (and gals…sorry about that) play games like ETS2, ATS etc. with just a keyboard and mouse. Yes I get that folks may be on a limited budget…but I recommend at the very least a controller. But I digress…really all you need to play CMS2015 is a keyboard and mouse. I don’t believe controller support is even offered in the game. But it is possible 3rd party applications will allow you to interface a controller to the game. But again, it really isn’t needed.
Just because I’ve been flying flight sims for over 30 years, I don’t believe that qualifies me to be a pilot. However, I’ve learned a lot about aviation and flying the more complex aircraft offered by PMDG, A2A etc. will teach you about the aircraft. I also believe it would be a stretch to say after spending 100’s of hours playing CMS2015 that one could go open a garage and become a successful mechanic. But CMS2015 does at the very least give you a high level functional view at how most parts fit together.
The game runs like a champ on my system. Of course, I just upgrade my GPU to the GTX 980Ti so if it didn’t I would have been disappointed.
What I dislike about Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
The first thing that bothered me about the game was something really rather basic and perhaps petty on my part. After about a half dozen jobs (mostly brake or suspension related) I had a job offered involving a replacement cylinder block. This of course required a full engine tear down and re-assembly. The fact which bothered me was after all that work, a new oil filter was not required to complete the job. The very same thing happened early today when I had a job to replace an oil pan. I don’t know about you. But I would never perform any job on an engine which required draining the oil and re-using the oil filter. Of course, I realize I could have replaced it anyway…but I believe that would have come out of my profit and not been a cost I could have passed onto the customer.
With regards to replacement parts. As you go through game play, your obvious and primary role in this game is to repair a car. In doing so, you have to go over to your computer and look and order parts. The parts are available immediately after ordering which I think should be changed. There should be some length of time between when you order parts before they are available. This would simulate the time it takes for a parts runner to go to the parts store and retrieve the parts. This would allow a better opportunity to multi-task. After you strip down all the defective/damaged parts on car 1, you place your order and then start working on car 2. The length of time can be as short as 5 minutes…but I feel this would better simulate how this process works in the real world.
One other small issue I have is not enough mixture of jobs. Meaning, while I don’t want every job offered to be a low paying air filter change, I also don’t want every job offered to be a full engine tear down. But perhaps over time more variety in jobs will be presented. Finally, why offer so many jobs which aren’t available due to XP rating? The game appears to offer you four job opportunities at a time. Two are jobs you can accept and two are jobs you can’t due to not having enough XP. Why offer those jobs at the early stage of game play?
The in-game music is terrible. It would have been nice to include a radio option (similar to ETS2 or ATS) where you could play music of your choice through the game. For me, I turn the in-game music all the way down and play other music outside of the application.
Final Thoughts
Yes, I realize my actual time spent playing CMS 2015 is only a few hours. But then again, this is a “First Impressions” blog post. I will most certainly spend much more time playing this game and may even go ahead and purchase one or more of the DLC expansions. I think the Pickup and SUV DLC will be my first DLC purchase for this game. Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 certainly fits into my “Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Farming Too!)” interests.
Until next time…
Happy Simming!!!
J
February 26, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
When I first built my current gaming machine, I purchased and installed the GTX 780Ti (3GB) GPU. At the time I believe more powerful GPU’s were available, but they were also well over $1,000. Two years ago, the 780Ti was approx. $600. My previous gaming machine had the GTX 460 (1GB) model, so I felt the 3GB model would be fine. At the time I was only using my gaming machine for Flight Sim. Both FSX (and P3D) are more CPU intensive programs and really anything over 3GB would be overkill.
But then I began to play other simulation based games such as Farming Sim 2015, Euro Truck 2 and in the past few weeks I’ve been burning up the highways in California and Nevada playing American Truck Simulator. My 780Ti began to show its age with both ETS2 and the new ATS. I really had to dial down the graphics settings to keep my frame rates high enough for the games to be playable. Things seemed to get worse with a recent update to ATS when they introduced the new Kenworth W900 DLC. I’m not the only one that noticed the loss of FPS.
Now having spent so many years flying FSX and now P3D, FPS rates in flight sim just aren’t the same thing as it relates to other games. Gamers may demand FPS rates well above 60 FPS (or even into the 100+ range) with many games. We’ve just never been able to experience that in FSX/P3D. Especially when flying the more complex, payware aircraft (like PMDG) and using add-on scenery, weather etc. etc. etc. But at times when I would drive through the city areas (like LA, SF etc.) my FPS rates would drop into the teens. It was especially noticeable when turning. It was like watching a bad slideshow.
I was able to keep FPS rates in the low 20’s with some tweaks using the Nvidia Inspector. This of course is an old trick we would need to do to get more from FSX. But it still wasn’t to my liking. Plus, when monitoring my GPU, the GPU was running constantly at 99%. The more I thought about it, the more I was leaning towards upgrading my GPU.
Well…I finally pulled the trigger and purchased the GTX 980Ti SC+. This beast of a GPU offers me 3x the performance and 3x the memory of my old 780Ti and it really shows when playing both ATS and ETS2. With max graphic settings, the GTX 980Ti SC+ works at less than 50% capacity. My FPS rates are steady at 60 FPS (even in cities). I’m very pleased.
At the moment I know I’m mostly playing ATS, ETS2 and FS2015. I will return to P3D and I’m hoping for even better performance and visuals with that application.
Until next time…
Happy Simming!!!
J
February 25, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
Hmmmm, Pizza!!! Similar to the review I posted last week for the real world branded gas stations, this mod will re-brand the in-game billboards with real brands such as Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola, Napa Auto Parts and even McDonalds.
What is the Featured Mod and what does it do?
This mod is the Real Brands Billboards mod for American Truck Simulator. It simply re-brands the in-game generic billboards with real world American brands of Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola and more.
How can I get this mod?
The Real Brands Billboards mod for American Truck Simulator is available here.
How do I install this mod?
Please see my blog post “How to Install Mods in American Truck Simulator” for complete instructions.
Until next time…
Happy Trucking!!!
J
February 24, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
No, it’s not April Fools and No, I’ve not lost my mind. It is now possible to drive from the west coast of the USA (California) all the way to the east coast in American Truck Simulator with the help of a new map mod released last week. You may remember, last week I introduced you to a mod developer named Mantrid and his Speed Limit Fixes (and more) mod. Among other things, this mod corrects two really big issues (my opinion) with the default ATS map. It adds a traffic light intersection at highways 6/95 in Tonopah and removes the traffic lights on I-80 in Reno.
Well, Mantrid also created a coast-to-coast map mod which allows ATS truckers the ability to drive from the west coast all the way to the east coast of the USA. You can download this map mod directly from the SCS Software forums. Now before I proceed, allow me to get some finer points out of the way. First, this map mod is a Work In Progress (WIP). Mantrid’s initial interest in creating the coast-to-coast map was simply to be able to drive from one side of the USA to the other. So as the map stands today, it is pretty basic. So basic that he only included a handful of cities along the way with just one primary highway route. The cities along the route are Phoenix, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. The highway route is basically I-40 all the way to OKC, then I-44 up to St. Louis, then I-70 to Pittsburgh, then I-76 etc. See map images below.
Again, I say this map mod is a work in progress. The other point I want to make, is much of the terrain areas don’t necessarily match up with the real world. Yes, you’ll probably notice palm trees in New York City. There are also a few mileage signs which appear to be in the wrong locations. An example is just out of Boston I saw a mileage sign for Bakersfield or Fresno. Anyway…just remember, this map mod is a WIP.
This blog post will be both a Trucker’s Logbook and Mod Review all rolled into one. If you are interested in downloading this new Coast-to-Coast map mod, visit the SCS Forums via this direct link. Also, as this is a WIP, make sure you check that thread for updates to the map. Oh…before I forget. You don’t need a massive amount of Long Distance skills to pickup jobs with the coast-to-coast expansion. All you need is one skill of Long Distance and the jobs should appear.
It’s just after 9:30 AM on Wednesday, and we are looking at picking up a job hauling for Walmart from LA to Pittsburgh. The load is 27,500 pounds of clothing. The expected delivery time is Sunday between the hours of 6:03 PM and 7:33 PM. The pay out isn’t the best in the world at only $22.44 per mile. The trip distance is 2,501 miles and our GPS is telling us that is a little over 65 hours of driving. A perfect delivery should earn us just over $56K. Let’s do it!
For this coast-to-coast run, we will be driving our Kenworth W900. I purchased it last week for one of my new drivers and at the time of purchase I tricked it out nicely. In the image below, we have just picked up our trailer and have 2,501 miles to go. We have approx. 300 gallons of diesel, plenty of coffee and snacks and a bladder the size of a camel.
While the amount of cities are few on this massive map expansion, the fuel and rest stops are plentiful. At least they are when you have the luxury of 300 gallon diesel capacity. I was able to drive from LA to Albuquerque on the first day. Unfortunately, the only state line sign I noticed was crossing into New Mexico (see below).
After a hot shower and wonderful New Mexico Truck Stop breakfast, we are ready to hit the road once again.
The weather on our second day of driving (Thursday), remained mostly cloudy but no rain.
Another full day of driving, we pull into another truck stop along the way. This one is somewhere between OKC and St. Louis.
Our third day (Friday) finds us hammering down I-70 as the sun rises in the distance. We are well ahead of schedule and should complete our delivery on Saturday morning.
We spend our third night in another truck stop along I-70 just near Columbus. This will set us up to make the delivery with over 24 hours to spare.
What’s this? A California Ambulance all the way out here in Pennsylvania?
Our on-time delivery of clothing items from California to Pittsburgh is appreciated
This job bumps us up to level 25.
I applied my new skill point to the “Fragile Cargo” category. The next earn point will go in “Just In Time Delivery” to level it out.
But of course, LA to Pittsburgh is not USA Coast-to-Coast. So while in Pittsburgh, we found a job hauling Lay’s Potato Chips to Boston.
Another on-time delivery from GrizzlyBear Trucking.
While I discovered a garage in Boston for purchase, I decided against buying it at this time. I’m not 100% sure how owning a garage on this un-finished map will work. I’m sure there will be upgrades to the map, so for now I’m just going to pickup a load of seeds and head all the way back to LA. This job pays over 100K. See you back in LA.
Until next time…
Happy Trucking!!!
J
February 23, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments
Can you believe it? ATS was released to the general public only three weeks ago today. It does feel longer, but here’s my American Truck Simulator – Progress Week Three blog post. Yes, it’s been another busy week for my small (but growing) trucking company. My progress report of last week I mentioned I had opened a third garage in Las Vegas. Well this week I did borrow $400,000 so that I could purchase three new trucks and hire three new drivers. During this week of activity, my drivers in my HQ garage in LA and my second garage in San Diego have really been earning some money. I was able to quickly pay off the $400K loan, I also was able to earn enough this week to upgrade the LA garage to five slots, purchase two new trucks (one a highly custom Kenworth W900) and hire two new drivers.
So as it stands today, I still have three garages (LA, SD and LV), own 11 trucks and employ 10 drivers. My next step will be to upgrade the San Diego garage, buy two new trucks and hire two new drivers. Then I’ll likely do the same with the Vegas operation. But these will all be cash transactions.
I did grow a bit bored with my Mt. Rushmore themed truck. So I had my trusty Peterbilt repainted with this nice American Bison theme. I also believe I upgraded my wheels and added the bull bar grill this week as well.
Also, as I mentioned in the first paragraph…I did purchase a highly custom Kenworth W900 a few days ago. I’ll likely alternate between the Peterbilt 579 and the Kenworth W900. The new KW900 is sweet and I’m looking forward to taking her out on a coast to coast run sometime real soon.
Finally, I’ve experienced some graphic card issues in the past few weeks. My current GPU is the GTX 780Ti (3GB model). I’ve really been suffering some frame rate (FPS) issues while driving in the cities. FPS rates can easily drop into the low 20’s and sometimes in the teens. When this happens it’s much like watching a slide show. It’s annoying and I’ve been doing my best to resolve the issues. To be honest, I don’t have any issues with Farming Simulator 2015 or GTA5. Both of these games hold a 60+ FPS rate regardless of what is going on. But both ATS and ETS2 suffer. Now I know comparing ATS/ETS2 to FS15 (or GTA5) is like comparing an apple to an orange…but I really believe my 780Ti should perform better than it does.
Having said all that, I have been looking at the GTX 980Ti for some time. I finally took the plunge and will be installing that beast of a GPU in my system early this week. I truly hope to report solid FPS rates with little to no compromise in the quality settings.
Here are my current stats for American Truck Simulator
Level 24
Total Driven Distance – 57,916
Total Driven Distance (On Duty) – 54,598
Total Free Roam Distance – 3,317
Roads Explored – 68.04% (No, I didn’t start over. I installed the coast-to-coast map)
Deliveries Finished – 97
Deliveries Cancelled – 0
Total Game Time Spent – 100 Days, 22 Hours
Play time – 56 Hours
Don’t forget to bookmark the site and/or subscribe to the RSS feed. Finally, please follow me on Twitter.
Until next time…
Happy Trucking!!!
J
February 19, 2016 / admin / 1 Comment
I realize this post comes slightly off schedule as I usually post mod reviews on Thursday. But this Mod Review – Speed Limit Fixes (and More) is so awesome and so new, that I wanted to get this out ASAP.
There may be many reasons to download, install and use this mod. But if you only do it for two reasons, I think your entire ATS game play will be better and certainly more true to life. The first reason can be seen in the image below. Do you recognize this intersection? I’ll give you a hint. It’s in Tonopah, NV and if you’ve traveled through here…you may have said a few choice words in frustration. Keep reading…
What is the Featured Mod and what does it do?
OK, the mod is titled Speed Limit Fixes. It was developed by Mantrid. As the title suggests, the mod offers a temporary fix for some of the random speed limit changes on the default ATS map. This mod also adds a few traffic lights in some of the smaller towns to help with the flow of traffic. Mantrid is also cleaning up (removing) those redundant stop signs at many traffic light intersections.
But….But…..BUT…here’s the “Jewel in the Crown” of this mod. This mod adds a traffic light at the poorly designed intersection of highways 6 and 95 in Tonopah (see image above). You may remember I wrote a blog post hoping SCS Software would read it. In this blog post I described just how painful of an intersection it was to deal with. I tweeted this blog post to the @SCSSoftware twitter account, but didn’t receive a response. While I still believe this is an issue SCS Software should address with the default map, I suppose…for now all is OK.
The second reason to use this mod is it removes the stupid stop light on Interstate 80 in Reno. As I approach my 50th year on the face of this earth, I’ve driven thousands of miles on the US Interstate Highway System. I’ve never, ever encountered a stop light in the middle of any of the interstates I’ve traveled up and down. This mod fixes this issue.
How can I get this mod?
Mantrid’s authorized version of this mod (and the one he is updating frequently) is available via a link in the SCS Forums. He released an updated version early this morning and the mod is still a work in progress. So download it, install it and use it. But keep an eye on that forum thread for future and frequent updates.
How do I install this mod?
Please see my blog post “How to Install Mods in American Truck Simulator” for complete instructions.
Final thoughts. I would really like to tip my hat to Mantrid and all the fabulous and talented mod creators for spending time away from game play to help make OUR game play more enjoyable. Games like ATS, ETS2 and even Farming Sim 2015 are super fun in their generic vanilla form. But when you begin to add mods (and especially a mod like this) to the mix….the game play becomes extraordinary.
As always, thank you for reading. Please subscribe to the blog RSS feed and/or bookmark my site and return often. Also, follow me on Twitter where I only tweet about my simulation gaming adventures.
Until next time…
Happy Trucking!!!
J
