Overview
This guide lists a few modding sites that are still “open for business” when it comes to the first Euro Truck Simulator game. It also provides a basic tutorial for how to install mods in the game.
Welcome!
Due to this, it’s become quite difficult to find reliable sources of mods for ETS1, and there certainly aren’t many new mods being produced for the game! Regardless, ETS1 is still a fun game and I’m sure there are people about like me that enjoy fiddling around with it.
To that end, I’ve put my extraordinary powers of Google-fu to work, and come up with the following list of mod sites that are still hosting working, downloadable ETS1 mods. I hope someone finds it useful!
Active Mod SItes
Truck Games Community[www.18wos.org] hosts quite a lot of truck, trailer and vehicle mods, and all the downloads I tried were working.The site also has mods for SCS games going all the way back to Haulin’ (2006) and Pedal to the Metal (2004) – ack, the nostagia!
[link] has a reasonable collection of ETS1 mods categorised by type for easy browsing. I typically go for “Other” type mods, and there’s a small but useful collection here alongside a larger clutch of the usual trucks and trailers.
Simulator Mods[simulatormods.com] hosts a good number of ETS1 mods, and while there’s a fair amount of cross-over with GameModing,com, there’s some unique mods too. Lots of parts mods here, like wheels and tyres, and even the odd “real world replacer” mod that swaps in real world brand names and logos.
Truck Simulator Mods[trucksimulatormods.blogspot.com.au] is a Portugese language site offering lots of ETS mods including many new maps and map expansions, along with sections for ETS2 and older games American Long Haul and Haulin’. Worth opening a Google Translate tab for!
[link] offers over 250 ETS mods (mostly trucks, but also a good number of maps) and covers a wide range of other trucking and simulator games, right up to ETS2
[link] lists a huge selection of ETS mods, many of which I’ve not seen anywhere else. On the downside, downloads are hit-and-miss, with many turning up ye olde 404 error.
[link] has a large number of mods across seven categories, including a category for skins, which makes it easier to find the actual truck replacers vs simple reskins.
SimulatorGameMods[www.simulatorgamemods.com] cover a lot of simulator games and offers over 500 mods in seven categories for ETS alone.
TruckSimulator24[trucksimulator24.de] – you may need your favourite online translator in this largely German language subforum, but it’s worthwhile since there’s a number of unique ETS mods on offer here that I haven’t found elsewhere, such as physics improvements, a delivery marker replacer, environmental mods, even a mod that replaces the Renault C class truck with a human! Many mods are locally hosted too.
Oyun Modulari[www.oyunmodlari.com] is a Turkish language site hosting a huge number of mods, mainly trucks and trailers and actually a good number of busses, with a dusting of other categories as well.
How To Install Mods
Note that this section applies to Windows only. I have no knowledge of how/whether this works in any other OS.
ETS1 doesn’t offer any kind of in-game mod manager. Instead it will simply load mods from a folder as the game starts. This folder is inside your My Documents folder, at DocumentsEuro Truck Simulatormod. If you find the mod folder does not exist yet, go ahead and create it.
After downloading a mod, you will probably need to extract it from its ZIP or RAR container using a free archive tool like 7-zip[www.7-zip.org] or WinRAR[www.win-rar.com].
Once the file is extracted, you will find one or more SCS files inside, and perhaps some other extras, like a readme document (which you should definitely read for more details!), some pictures or screenshots, etc. All you will need to install the mod itself is the SCS file(s) however.
To install, simply copy the SCS file(s) into your mod folder at DocumentsEuro Truck Simulatormod. That’s it. When you next start the game, the newly added mod will be loaded, along with all other mods in the folder. Simples!
Load order is important, especially when you have two or more mods that do similar things and could possibly change similar settings and features in the game. In such cases, mods that are higher up in the load order take priority, and it’s their changes that make it through into the game.
ETS loads mods from the Mod folder in alphabetical order, such that mods with filenames starting with “A” loading before mods with names starting with “B”, and so on. Knowing this, you can control the load order by renaming the files such that they sort alphabetically into the order you want them loaded.
For example, you could add a whole string of “zzz”s to the filename of a mod that absolutely must load last and take priority over other mods. Or, you could add a number to the start of each mod’s filename and control the load order precisely for each file.
Inevitably as you add more mods, you’ll find one or more that conflict with each other and cause unwanted effects in-game, like missing textures and assets, or that outright crash the game and send you back to the desktop.
It’s good strategy to add just one mod at a time, and test run the game at least to the point of actually driving your truck with each successive addition. In this way you can be sure that the game is working properly with each mod added, and you can also check out the effects of that one mod in isolation. Also, only use mods written for the latest game version as version conflicts can cause issues.
Of course, if you encounter a problem, you’ll know exactly what mod caused the issue and you can then decide how best to tackle it – either by removing the last mod added, or doing some trial-and-error testing to see whether it’s conflicting with another mod you have installed.
Thanks!
Welp, that’s about all I had. Thanks for taking the time to read through and I really hope you’ve found something here that’s been helpful, or a bit interesting. If not, well, ask for a refund. 🙂
Cheers, GeeTee
