ETS 2: Italia – Ring Roads
The choices that we have to make about the road network in our games are always difficult. With the scale of our virtual world being about 1:20 to reality, we have to be very selective about picking particular highways, cities, and parts of cities that should represent any given area.
We are always trying to pick locations that are characteristic for the regions and cities, but there is no way that we could squeeze in the whole pattern of a city’s roads into the game map. In some cases, we manage to venture close to the city center with a major road artery. In most cases though, we have to pick a part of a ring road (beltway, beltline, loop) encircling the city, and a few important connecting roads there. The city skyline is only there on the horizon, but we still manage to identify and recreate a bunch of interesting landmarks up close for the players to drive by and recognize, aiming for the “Aha! I know this place!” moment.
All of the above, of course, also applies to the creation of our latest map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2: Italia. Our functional road network will serve us nicely there to connect industrial zones on the city ring roads, with many touches of reality, recognizable vantage points, and ambitious highway interchanges/junctions.
