American Truck Simulator Update 1.33 Open Beta (1 Viewer)

When there was no announcement of a Beta for American Truck Simulator, some of you were worried that Euro Truck Simulator 2 is getting all the love. It's true that ETS2 acutely needed an update to enable us to release Beyond the Baltic Sea map expansion, but there is more to ATS taking a bit longer out of the gate. Let's check the story below. We are proud to bring you American Truck Simulator Update 1.33 Open Beta, packed with new features!


As a counterpart to HCT trailers in Europe, ATS 1.33 brings you Turnpike double trailers (up to 100 ft). These trailers are pretty difficult to handle - in reality, they are in use only on specific roads built to meet their limitations. As of now, they are only allowed in Nevada in our game. You won't find jobs involving turnpike double trailers in freight market or quick jobs. The only way to use them is is to buy them (same as with HCT in Euro Truck 2) so that new players are not exposed to a challenge beyond their skill level.


There is one unique (and temporarily exclusive) new feature in ATS 1.33 - detours. We needed some time and focus to thoroughly review it internally before a public test, and this was the very reason why we avoided doing open betas for both games at the same time.

The goal of this feature is to introduce a bit of uncertainty into planning of your routes. The world in our games tends to be very predictable, while in reality the truck driver cannot take everything for granted. We wanted our players to have to improvise occasionally, and hence the concept of detours was born.


From time to time you'll find the road ahead of you blocked, maybe with state police waving you to go a different way, forcing you to remap your route. Or to search your memory for another option to reach your destination if you're so hardcore that you do not use the GPS. There'll always be a guaranteed way to deliver your cargo. But sometimes it can take more time than you'd be comfortable with, or move you away from the gas stations where you planned to refuel and get some rest. Detours are adding some adrenaline to the driver's job.

Think of this addition as "phase one" and please do give us your feedback. We hope that you will appreciate our ambition to spice up the universe of our games to make it feel more alive and dynamic.


For those of you hungry for new tarmac, we've added the first segment of OR-140. It remained on our wish-list for Oregon, and we are now catching up. We know how important this road is (trucking-wise) and its significance as "a shortcut", allowing you to avoid the long way around via US-20, or through California. The section we open today connects Lakeview and Klamath, a future extension we are also considering should reach to Nevada.


The list of changes continues with the features that we have introduced in ETS2 1.33 already. You may have spotted them outlined in our 1.33 update video.

Steam cloud-based profiles have received very positive reaction. Saving the game to a "cloud" can prevent potential loss of your profile due to a computer malfuction, or when changing your machine. It will also allow you to play on multiple computers without the need to carry a flash drive with you.


Reusable truck and trailer configuration templates also received a pretty warm welcome, as the life of a big fleet manager became much easier. We have some ideas to take the feature even further in the future, but we believe it's going to be a great time-saver for many players in its current form already.

Minor changes include improved rain drop behavior on the windshield, music shuffling and localization for names of states (countries).

For people having issues with blinking lights, we've added a new cvar. Try different settings with writing g_disable_beacons 0/ 1/ 2 in the console. We hope that one of these will suit you well.

So enjoy all the new additions, but please remember: It's only an open beta, not a stable public version - so you may encounter bugs, instability, and kinks. It's completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you're interested in helping us to move there faster, we'll appreciate all of your feedback on our forum and your bug reports in this section.

If you wish to participate in the open beta, you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right click on American Truck Simulator → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta → 1.33 public beta. No password required.



CHANGELOG:
  • Buyable turnpike double trailers (Nevada only)
  • Detours
  • Added OR-140 road (Oregon DLC required)
  • Steam cloud based profiles
  • Reusable truck and trailer configuration templates
  • Physics improvements (suspension, damping, braking, cogs)
  • Rain drops behavior on glass improved
  • Music shuffling
  • Country/ state name localization settings
  • g_disable_beacons (0/1/2) - for people that have issue with blinking lights

MOD ALERT:
  • Due to the number of changes, most mods will need some work to catch up!
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