It's been almost a year, and we're excited to bring you another Under the Hood blog about Custom Depots. In the previous blog post, we discussed the topic more broadly, but today, we're diving deeper to give you an inside look at the detailed work that goes into creating one specific type of custom depot - timber harvest sites!
We first introduced custom depots in the Kansas DLC for American Truck Simulator starting with farming and agricultural sites. The custom timber harvest sites debuted in our newest map expansion for ATS, the Arkansas DLC. In this blog, we interviewed some of our colleagues who have put a lot of effort into bringing these depots to life. One of them is our Depot Producer, Veronika.
Veronika - Depot & Asset Producer
"Not all depots are custom-made by the map design team, but certain types are perfect candidates for something truly unique. You might wonder, 'Why timber harvest sites?' The answer is simple. These depots handle fewer types of cargo but accommodate various trailer types, and, most importantly, they're located far from cities and surrounded by breathtaking natural scenery. Map designers can create beautiful terrain with elevated forest roads, winding streams, and rugged rocks - all of which become part of the depot's core area. Don't believe me? Check out our first timber harvest sites in the latest ATS map expansion Arkansas," Veronika shared with us.
As players may have noticed, we strive to include custom depots in new DLCs for both games. During the development of the Kansas DLC, we were already planning unique timber harvest sites for the forestry-focused state of Arkansas, with input from Eliška, our Map Economy Research Designer. Once we decided to move forward with this, we faced an important question: How do we communicate the specifics of the depot's design so that map designers can accurately create it?
To tackle this, Veronika, Eliška, and the research team collaborated to create a detailed guideline based on both real-world examples and game mechanics.
Eliška - Map Economy Research Designer
As Eliška explains: "The key elements are the loading and unloading spots. Timber harvest sites feature four main areas tailored to trailer types in the game - logs loading, wood chips loading, a fuel unloading area, and spots for loading and unloading machinery and equipment on platform trailers. Additionally, our updated guidelines for future DLCs provides map designers with information on suitable assets, such as machinery from our Forest Machinery DLC or design inspiration from real timber harvesting sites."
Our colleague Jiří from the research department told us about other areas that are important for the immersive effect we wanted to give the players hauling into these depots and thus needed a lot of background information for the map designers to work with.
Jiří - Researcher
"We put great emphasis on the correct use of forestry techniques and realistic representation of trees and ground surfaces. We try to make the players feel as if they have visited the forest in real life. So you can count on finding just the right kind of trees or shrubs in a given location. My colleague Petr and his team have also analyzed the surfaces of forest paths and types of forest structures such as bridges to make the journey to the forest depot interesting. The list of forest equipment in our game is already extensive. However, we try to keep it as close to real life as possible and are constantly adding new machines and upgrading old models. It is essential to teach fellow map designers working on the depot what the machine is used for and how to use it in the map. For each machine, a description including photos and videos from real operations was created," says our colleague Jiří.
The author of the custom depot logic is our programmer Max who also told us a little bit about his work on this project.
Max - Programmer
"The most interesting task was the creation of a custom depot system itself. It is a system that allows using more flexible points and can stand in the game side by side with classical prefab-defined company depots and has its own logic and connection to game economy subsystems. But there will always be some minor tasks to improve and tweak - like adding new specific trailer types or other rules we might need in the future," Max told us.
Map designers create the customs depots with separate models made by our assets team. We spoke with Rown, our 3D Artist, about his work on this project. You can read for yourself just how much effort went into creating the wooden piles alone. Apart from that, Rown also designed the workflow, created the logs' texture designs, produced most of the close-up textures, communicated with the materials department for successful texture completion, and did some bug fixing as well.
Rown - 3D Artist
Paul - 3D Artist
"While we had models from our previous map expansions, the scale of the tree harvesting industry in Arkansas required us to make a completely new set of models. These models are designed for players to drive around, deliver to the depots in their trucks, and watch the dynamic (un)loading feature. In total we've made over 11 unique piles of wood, each accompanied by different looks and variants resulting in over 84 possible combinations that the Map Designers and Animators could use to make our game world feel alive and unique. Since we had to do every model from scratch, it was a great opportunity to increase the visual fidelity of our wood industry-related assets in our effort to reimagine some of the game's more dated-looking assets," says Rown, who collaborated on this task with his colleague Paul. Paul also created single logs for the vehicles, and low-detail log backdrop models seen from a distance, addressed bug fixes, and provided feedback.
The asset department also incorporated the dynamic cargo (un)loading feature by preparing the animated cargo loading space itself, as Lacky who worked on this specific task describes here: "I have prepared a small exported map for the map designers to ensure they don’t overlook any functional details, like maintaining the correct distance between the loader and the parking space. Map designers have placed this exported map directly at the specific parking spot where they want to load the wood, making it appear as a single asset for simplicity. Although it looks straightforward, it actually includes an animated loader, with the wood being loaded highlighted, and linked. This setup clearly indicates that it's an animated loading scene," he says.
As we told you before, map designers then put these pieces together to create the final product. Our colleague Vopi gave us an in-depth description of the final creation of these timber harvest depots on which he had worked.
Vopi - Map Designer
"Designing custom timber harvests is a little different than working on other, more "rigid", custom depots where we usually have stricter rules based on a lot of research. With timber harvests, I could unleash my creativity a bit more, because I was working with natural features, and the sites themselves are not strictly defined. On the other hand, the lack of references about such places can make things difficult sometimes. That's where the guidelines from our economy research department comes in very handy," he says.
"The creation process starts with choosing locations for the sites. I wanted to make each site distinctive and unique to drive through while respecting the local geography. Based on that, some sites are more hilly with challenging switchbacks, while others are more grid-like with long straight sections of dirt roads. A big part of these depots is the road layout, where I tried to implement a lot of elevation changes, switchbacks, and small bridges. The other crucial part is landscaping where I wanted to recreate various natural features like rocks, creeks, rivers, or far distant hills, which in the end make the whole scene unique."
"Meanwhile, there is constant communication with the asset department and other relevant people. There are not many man-made structures in the forest, but these sites required a lot of natural assets, mainly a completely new set of log piles and other wooden debris, which would correspond with our new cargo as well as surrounding vegetation. We also needed a new road set with complementary materials, and quite a bit of harvesting machinery. Without all of this, the depot wouldn't be complete," Vopi shares with us.
As with everything in our games, the last part before release is testing. We asked Michal, our ATS QA Lead about how he perceives this feature.
Michal - ATS QA Lead
"I enjoy working with my colleagues on the difficulty of delivering orders during the prototype phase so that more experienced drivers can enjoy the challenge too. I personally try out and give feedback on every new depot. In my opinion, custom depots is the best feature implemented and maintained in the game recently. Thanks to the very skilled map designers who put these areas together and the detailed information that our research team processes for them, we have managed to greatly enhance the experience of the backbone feature of our game, freight delivery. Custom depots differ from standard depots not only in size and number of load and unload points, but mainly in their uniqueness, which breaks the stereotype of standard depots. I would also like to highlight the excellent work of the asset team who refreshed the old log models to better match both the environment and the loads," says Michal.
No detail is overlooked when planning the new DLC economy. Loading timber marks the start of the forestry industry chain in our game. For the Arkansas DLC, we've also introduced two brand-new depots: a paper mill and a sawmill, each available in multiple locations. Both are enhanced by our dynamic cargo (un)loading feature, supporting chip vans and log trailers for an even more immersive experience.
"I hope players can now see how challenging it is to create even one of these new custom depots. It's hard work, but seeing our players' reactions to the final results and knowing our impact on the game as a whole is incredibly rewarding. Do you enjoy exploring these unique depot sites with us, too?" Veronika asks the community. So let us know below!
We hope you have enjoyed and appreciated this look behind the scenes of our game development. If you like reading our blogs, make sure to stay updated by following us on X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube where we always share the latest news and updates. Drive safe!