Hi Everyone,
In the demos in January and February, we’ve shown you two trucks, which have some obvious things in common:
- Both are a version of the MAN TGS truck
- Both are driven by German teams (BFS Trucksport Team and HS-Schoch Hardox Truck Trial Team)
- Both are awesome 😉
But there’s also one easy-to-spot difference: the number of axles.
In Europa Truck Trial, the championship that inspired our game, trucks are divided into categories, within which teams compete. Three of those categories will be featured in Heavy Duty Challenge base game: Categories II, III and IV, which means teams driving 2-axle, 3-axle, or 4-axle trucks.
This is the view of a prototype menu in the game with 3 trucks from the 3 categories
Source: Nano Games
This defines the structure of the game. When you begin, you select a truck and this decision puts you in one of those categories. To compete in the other two, you will need to progress through the game and unlock trucks with a different number of axles.
Also, leaderboards will be organized into those categories, so if you want to show your friends and strangers who’s boss, you’ll have to practice driving different categories.
Racing Team Avia Future in Avia 31T on their way to victory in the 2-axle category
Source: https://www.europatrucktrial.org/team/?id=1
Coincidentally, in the last held ETT championship, both BFS and Hardox teams were the winners of their respective categories. The team that won in Cat. II was Racing Team Avia Future from the Czech Republic.
So this is how the trucks will be organized in the base game. Hope you enjoyed this devlog. Until next time!
Best,
Łukasz Pleśniarowicz, Lead Designer
Nano Games Team
P.S. Not to ignore an important fact, there’s a fourth category in ETT: Cat. PROTO. Here, the number of axles doesn’t matter. You’ll end up in this group if you modify your truck, so it is no longer considered one of the “standard or close-to-standard vehicles” (to quote the rules). We’d like to have those in the game, eventually, but their mechanics (like pneumatic suspensions, custom brakes and more than one steering axle) are a challenge we’ll face in the next step.
Team Manent-Cellier in their modified Ural 4320, French champions of Cat. PROTO 2019
Source: https://www.europatrucktrial.org/team/?id=72
Łukasz
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