Hobo’s Hollow

Hobo’s Hollow is a recent mod map for Farming Simulator 22. As the name suggests, it is a US map. To give myself some variety in my farming, I’ve decided to have a play on this map. Unlike Ferme du Vieux Chêne, this will not be a story series – just occasional posts of screenshots with basic commentary.

To set the scene, let me quote from the map mod homepage – “Welcome to Hobo’s Hollow 4x – enter the land that time forgot, where the weeds grow thick and the hobos roam free.” Clearly it is intended that we should have fun on this map 🙂 The 4x is an indication that the map is very large and therefore some of the fields will be very large too. However, there are lots of sensibly sized fields as well. Here’s a screenshot of the map…

…You can see that many of the places where you sell your crops are located in the upper centre of the map. The default farm is located to the south in the lower right centre – you can see a tractor icon there. On New Farmer (Easy) mode, the default farm has 2 fields…

…At the farm itself apart from the farmhouse you get a large modern metal shed in which there is a Deutz-Fahr harvester with cutter head and trailer…

…There’s also a Bredal spreader. On the opposite side of the yard from the farmhouse is a large double silo and here there is a Massey-Ferguson 3670 Tractor and a Welger trailer…

…In the centre of the yard is a large old wooden barn in which you’ll find a Fendt 511 tractor with front loader and pallet forks. There is also a Nordsten HK 25 + NS 3030 seeder and a Pöttinger Servo plough…

…On the other side there is a John Deere 4755 tractor and a Rabe cultivator…

The equipment supplied is adequate for starting work on your 2 fields, but they are the smallest fields on the map. If you want to work the larger fields around then you’ll probably be hiring equipment. I decided to change out a lot of the equipment straight away, partly because I wanted to use my own equipment where possible from the start and partly because I really wanted to stamp an American feel on the tractors I own for this game. In fact, I sold everything except the John Deere, the Pallet Forks and the Nordsten seeder. Meet our new tractor team, posing in front of the barn…

…John Deere 4755 at 190HP, Case IH 1455 XL at 145HP and Ford 7810 with 105HP. The Ford is equipped for a front loader. I replaced the Deutz-Fahr with a Case 2144 harvester. The Welger trailer was replaced by a more robust Reisch model that can take twice the weight of crops. An Amazone ZG-B 6001 spreader replaced the Bredal and another Amazone product, the Cayron 200 plough replaced the Pöttinger. Finally, I replaced the small Rabe cultivator with their larger Sturmvogel which covers 6m at a time.

In addition to the equipment changes I added a washer and a basic maintenance facility to the farm. I intend to add a fuel tank as well when funds permit. I chose to try and make the farm self-sufficient in this respect because, although it may not be apparent from the map, it’s a very long way up the road to get to the dealer and garage.

Having started on New Farmer mode to keep the buildings in place at the farm I have now set the difficulty level to normal. I also deactivated the Precision Farming mod before starting as this will be farming in the traditional style. All of the changes I made to the equipment mean that I started the game with just 13000 in the bank rather than the usual 100000 – I guess I’d better get working then 😉

To finish, here are some shots of the tractors doing typical duties…

In the next farming post, we will probably be back on Ferme du Vieux Chêne where something other than seed has recently been sown. We will have to take up the story once more to find out what we reap.

Trucking Digest

With my profiles in American Truck Simulator and Euro truck Simulator 2 having reached level 8, lets take a short break from game tips and take a look at the maps of where I’ve been while driving Quick Jobs.

This is the European map…

…Just trips in the south of France, eastern Spain, Corsica. Sardinia and central Italy. Meanwhile, in the US we have this map…

…Here’s a list of the states we’ve passed through, starting from Oregon: Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and we finished up in California. The bit of my travels you can’t see off the bottom of the map is a delivery from Socorro to Yuma, and then from Yuma to Fresno.

From the way the maps have played out, it’s clear that the two games offer quick jobs differently. In ETS2 I’m more likely to do the same route more than once in order to get the best earning job than I am in America. I have used skill points in the same way in both games and with 2 levels in the distance line, I know that I have jobs of the maximum distance I can complete in a single driving shift. There’s an interesting symmetry between the games here; I can expect to do around 500km per shift in ETS2 and 500mi per shift in ATS. In one way, that is sort of what I would expect – I can remember an American trucker saying that 500mi was a good day’s work, suggesting that it is the distance he would expect to work as close to max distance before running out of driving hours.

Here’s a couple of ‘on the road’ shots to close out the post: Madrid to Almeria…

…on the Autovia Sierra Nevada-Costa Tropical near Mengibar. And Yuma to Fresno…

…on the I5, grinding our way over The Grapevine 😎👍

Share Your Desktop – May 2022

Well, it’s the middle of May and that means it’s time to Share my Desktop for Clare 😎

I’m, once more, using a screenshot from a Truck Simulator game but this time it’s American Truck Simulator. The makers of the Truck Simulator Games, SCS Software, have taken many big steps forward over the last couple of years. They have upgraded the sounds and the lighting of the game while going back to older parts of the map system and improving the level of detail. Every change takes both games forward in terms of realism 😎

In some ways this was driven by the original release of American Truck Simulator in 2016. As the new kid on the block, it had to show it was up to what Euro Truck Simulator 2 was offering – it failed… SCS Software released ATS at a smaller map scale than ETS2 – a disappointing option that didn’t go down well with the fans of the original series.

Now it’s time to give credit where credit is due – they went back and resized the maps to the same scale as a free upgrade. I don’t know of many software development companies that would even consider that, let alone, carry it out! We got some beautifully scenic maps with some great details. But, ETS2 was now looking a little tired as a result. Cue an upgrade and remaking of the maps in Europe. These improvements are ongoing – Austria has just been updated and released as a free update last Thursday. Not to mention the free upgrades to the US maps – California is being rebuilt currently too! That has been the story throughout and explains why most of us who play these games take pride in supporting SCS when they are releasing new maps and other DLC’s.

So, back to the lighting. Last year, SCS updated this to show much more realistic sky effects. Now we get some beautiful sunsets and sunrises as a direct result and in general the days and nights look much more true to life. I think my Desktop this month illustrates that pretty well…

…It’s dawn and the sky is threatening rain as I turn Smoky Bennett’s nose northwards on our way to Boise (ID) with Hay from Riverton (WY). We’ve just passed through the DoT station at Echo and we’re climbing away from the I84/I80 intersection heading towards Ogden. It’s a long grind ahead but we’re up to the job👍 And, yes, I can recognise this location on the real-world map 😀

You can catch Clare’s Share Your Desktop Challenge here. I know she’d love you to take part 😎👍