Traffic trailer skin mod

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  • Dealing with issues
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  • Simple engine mod
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  • Traffic trailer skin mod

Mods Studio 2 version: 2019.09 or newer

Written on: May 4th, 2020

Introduction

Traffic trailers are the ones that you see being hauled around the game world by AI (traffic) drivers. Usually they are decorated with logos of default in-game companies. With our mod, we'll simply add another skin to the pool of AI trailer skins that the game can use. It's worth noting, that we will not add a trailer to the game, we'll use the ones made by SCS Software.

Let's get creative!

Start up your Mods Studio 2, and as always - start a new project (#1). We offer traffic trailer mods for both ATS and ETS2. If you want, fill out your Mod Manifest (#2). Click here if you want to learn more about the Mod Manifest. If you already didn't paint your traffic skin, we have some templates that you can use as guide. Please note, since these templates are intended to be used on a wide variety of trailer types, everything might not fit perfectly. Try to keep your artwork centered and not stretched to the edges. You can find our template by clicking on the "Open MS2 directory" (#3), and than navigating to the mod templates folder \Data\ModProjects\ETS2\Templates\TrafficTrailer. In this specific case, the template is apparently the same for ATS and ETS. The file you want is Traffic trailer template.png. (You can also right-click on the templates in this article and save them to your hard-drive)

To give you a better understanding of how these templates are applied to the trailers and where to put your graphics, you can also help yourself with the template made by Reef (moderator on SCS Forums). Here it is:

Almost there!

Now it's time to add the MS2 traffic trailer template to your MS2 project. Click the "Add Template" button in the main toolbar (#4). It will open a dropdown - scroll the dropdown down, until you find the "Traffic trailer skin" template. (#5) Click it to add it to the project.

Navigate to your newly added traffic skin template by clicking on it in the project list. (#6)

You will be presented with the "Basic" tab in the main section of the MS2 interface. There is three fields you need to fill in: Skin Internal Name, Spawn ratio and Cargo mass.

Skin Internal Name

Fill in the skin internal name. To find out more about internal names, a common concept in Mods Studio 2, click here or on the little question mark icon next to the field in MS2.

Skin internal name can be anything - just make sure to use lowercase letters, numbers and underscore. When you fill in a valid internal name, the field background will turn white and the exclamation mark (right of the field) will disappear.

Spawn ratio

Spawn ratio, as the name suggests, will determine how often will this skin appear in game traffic. Higher the number, more trucks will be pulling a trailer with this skin applied.

Default value is 1. This is used by most other default game traffic trailers. Set your spawn ratio accordingly.

Cargo mass

Mass of the cargo transported in the trailer that uses this skin. Value is in kilos.

Image

To add your skin image to a traffic trailer, switch from the "Basic" to the "Image" tab. Use the "Browse" button to load your image. You can use DDS or PNG images for this purpose. Some users experience difficulties with some of the available formats. If you're one of them, please first try using the other available image format. Also, keep in mind that the sides of your image (width and height) have to be in the power of two (use numbers like 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, ... for width and/or height.) The width and height do not have to be the same as long as they're in the power of two.

Exporting the mod

The last step is to export the mod. To do so, go to the "File" menu (top left corner of the MS2 window). Once the 'backstage' menu is open, select the "Export Mod" option from the left-side menu. Click the "Export" button on the bottom of the page. If everything is correct, you will be presented with the Save file dialog. Save your mod to your hard drive - place the mod file into your game mod folder, start the game, enable the mod in your mod manager and load your profile.  Congratulations! You're done. Go ahead and enjoy seeing your traffic trailer skin being pulled by AI truckers.

Possible export problems

During mod export, there's a couple of issues that you may encounter:

• First possible issue is simply getting a list of problems presented to you when you click Export. This means you have to go back and fix the issues in your mod settings. This list is handy, since for each error it shows you what mod template, tab, and field is the one with the problem. It also displays the problem and what to do about it. Please click the back arrow (top left of MS2 interface) and correct the errors. After you do, follow the above instructions for mod export again.
• Second most common issue is that your system is missing necessary .Net Core runtime files. You can see this by getting an "Export failed" message and a disabled (gray) button "Show log". Please click on the blue "Dealing with issues" link below the "Export failed" message for information where to download required files.
• A common problem can be that the export started, but you still get the "Export failed" message, yet this time you can click the "Show Log" button. If one of the first log lines say something like DirectXTex failed for some reason please install Visual C++ Redistributable.

That's all I have for now. :) Thank you for reading! If you have any problems, I recommend you join our Discord server. Plenty of very friendly people there that are very helpful!