Creating Custom Bus Lines


Last update: 02 Feb 15:13 UTC
Short link to this article: https://truckersmp.com/kb/1573



This article provides all of the essential steps needed to learn how to create your own routes to travel on TruckersMP, along with providing lots of useful tips and resources to ensure that this process is as straightforward as possible! By the point of looking at this article, you have probably installed the DBus World Client and tried out some of our preset lines to get a feel for how buses are integrated into TruckersMP. If not, you can find more information about the introduction of buses here, and also details on how to use the DBus World Client alongside TruckersMP here.

Whilst in-house our team has created many preset lines for you to enjoy, with routes varying across the entire map, we understand that you may want to create your own routes, perhaps going to your favourite area or visiting multiple bus stops in a convoy with friends. That’s why we have provided this guide for you, to make the process of adding your own custom route as easy as possible!

Before we start, it is important to mention a few key points that you will need to be aware of. Firstly, you cannot collect passengers anywhere you like on the map. You can only stop at cities on SCS’ map that contain a bus station, that is a non-collision zone. Unfortunately any other areas, such as bus stops on the edge of a road, are not able to be used. A full list of the available cities will be available below, so don’t worry about this for now. Secondly, whilst you may detour from your route at any stage, when the game programs your navigation, it will choose the most direct route and mark this with waypoints. These will auto-update during your route, so any changes you make to your route on the map will be reset. In short, you are free to detour, but be aware that you cannot use your navigation to do this. Finally, it is important that you follow the steps outlined here carefully, otherwise it is most likely that your custom line will not work, or be visible at all.


Step One

The first thing you will need to do is decide upon a route that you wish to create. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be creating a line in the UK from Liverpool to London, stopping at Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield along the way. Again, keep in mind that you can only stop in places with a dedicated bus station!

Once you have decided upon a route, you will need to plot it on your map, so that you can drive the route and work out the timings. These will be very important later on. Once you have created your line, our system will automatically program your navigation in future, so please make sure you mark your route with waypoints (if there are multiple stops) to the bus stations, and not anywhere else! Here is an example below:

Map of the Route


Step Two

Now that you have plotted your route, make a note of the total number of kilometres and also the current time in-game. Now you simply need to drive your route, in order to work out the timings that will be used when adding your custom line. If your route is simply point A to point B, then you can just record the time in-game (in minutes) it takes you to get from the start to the end. However if, like my example route, you have multiple stops, you must record the time it takes to get to the next stop, so that you can add this later!

It is important to record this information somewhere so that you can use it later when adding your line to DBus World. An example of a good way to do this would be the following:

Total Route Length = 831 km

  • Liverpool to Manchester = 33 minutes
  • Manchester to Sheffield = 51 minutes
  • Sheffield to Birmingham = 72 minutes
  • Birmingham to London = 84 minutes

Step Three

Now that you have all your timings and have tested your route out, we are ready to go! For this next stage we will be learning how to add your line to the DBus World Client, so that you can travel this route on TruckersMP. First of all, we will need to find your ‘DBus Client’ folder on your computer. This is normally located in your Documents folder, along with your ‘Euro Truck Simulator 2’ and ‘ETS2MP’ folders, just like below:

Image1

Once inside this folder, you next need to locate the ‘lines’ folder. This should be at the top of your file and straightforward to find. This folder is where you can find all of the lines that are selectable through the DBus World Client. Again, the image below should help:

Image2

Now that you are here, you will see a number of text files that have different names. All of these contain lines for different maps that can be used with the DBus World Client. In order to make this as straightforward as possible, we will be using ‘truckersmp’ as a base to create our own new file, which we can then add our custom lines to, just like below: Image3

You will therefore need to copy and paste this file, either by right-clicking or by using ‘Ctrl + C’ and ‘Ctrl + V’ on your keyboard. Your folder should now look like this:

Image4

Great, this looks great! Now you may rename this file to something that will let you know what this does. I would recommend selecting a name such as ‘customroutes’ like I have done. Now, this is what you should see in your folder:

Image5


Step Four

You have now successfully created a new file that allows you to select a new ‘map’ in-game, that will contain your custom routes. However, at the moment, this is exactly the same as the TruckersMP preset bus routes. That’s why now, we will learn how to add your custom route into the text file! To start, please open your ‘customlines’ text file, which should look like the image below:

Image6

First of all you will need to decide what to call your set of custom lines. This will be the name that you select in the map category of the DBus World Client. To do this, you can edit the first line of the text file, where it currently says “TruckersMP Bus Routes”. For this example scenario, I will call my set of routes “Stan’s Bus Jobs”. However, this name can be anything that you like.

Image7

The next line below, that says “truckersmp”, determines the map you will be playing on. As we are using these lines on TruckersMP, it is important that we DO NOT change this line, otherwise we will be creating lines for a different map.

Now we have named the file correctly, we can remove the routes that we do not need. To do this, simply delete everything including and after ‘2: London > Liverpool (831 km)’. Your text file should now look like this:

Image8

As you can see, you are now left with one line, which we can use as a template. To make this even more straightforward, you will see that this remaining line is the Liverpool to London line that I created earlier. The top line of this line is the name that is displayed in the DBus World Client. Again, you may change this to anything that you wish. For this example, I will name it ‘Northern Tour (831 km)’, but this can be anything that you wish! Image9

Below this, you will see the names of the stops along your route, followed by a set of coordinates. These coordinates are the location on the map of the bus station in the aforementioned city. The last number on each line is the time in minutes it takes to get to the next stop. This is why the timings we recorded earlier are very important! Fortunately, we have provided a forum topic that contains all of the coordinates for you to use, so that you do not have to find these yourself. You can access this topic by clicking here or going directly to the sheet here.

Looking at this sheet, you are able to see that there is a list of all the coordinates you may need to make use of, sorted by their country in alphabetical order. The next part is pretty self explanatory, as you will need to find the cities you plan on picking up passengers from and add the coordinates to the text file, under the name of the route. In my example, I will need to find the coordinates for Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and London. You then need to copy these to the text file in the order that you will stop at them, like I have done here:

Image10

And now there is only one thing left to do! You will see that at the end of each set of coordinates, there is a placeholder piece of text that says “TIME (MINS)”. We will now add the values we recorded earlier when we drove the route, in order to replace this text. By doing this, the client will know how long it should take you to get from each bus station.

The time from each station to the next one will need to be added at the end of the coordinates that you began from. For example, the time it took for me to get from Liverpool to Manchester was 33 minutes, so I will add this at the end of the ‘Liverpool’ line of text. The time taken to get from Manchester to Sheffield was 51 minutes, so I will add this at the end of the ‘Manchester’ coordinates. When you get to the final location (in this case London), you can signify the end of the route by adding “0” to the last section, as you will not be travelling to another station on this line. You can see all of this in the image below:

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And that is it…you have added your first line! Crucially, please make sure to save this file by either pressing ‘Ctrl+S’ on your keyboard, or by pressing ‘File’ and then ‘Save’.

You will notice that your route is contained between two underscores (_). If you wish to create more custom routes, you follow the exact same process, making sure to add your additional lines between two underscores, as seen here:

Image12


Step Five

Now that you have successfully created your custom line, you will be able to select it from the DBus World Client to drive in TruckersMP! To do this, first open your DBus World Client and then launch TruckersMP normally. Once you are in-game and ready to take your passengers, use ‘Alt+Tab’ to tab out of game and interact with the DBus World Client. The first thing you need to do is select your map, which will display the name you gave it in the text file. In this case, I called mine “Stan’s Bus Jobs”. It should look like this:

Image13

You can then move to the line selection dropdown below, and find the name of your line that you just created. In this example I named my line “Northern Tour (831km)”.

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Once you have done this, you can then press “Start” in order to finalise the selection of your custom line, and spawn your passengers in-game, along with allowing for your route to be automatically programmed in-game. At the same time, you will hear an audible announcement and your client will change, to show the following:

Image15

You can also press “Show Timetable”, which will display the timings for your route that you should aim to try and keep with. You will see that these reflect the timings that you recorded in-game yourself, and added to the text file.

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And there you go! Everything is now ready and you can proceed to board your passengers onto your bus. After working to create your custom route, it will be really enjoyable to hit the road and take in the scenery. Additionally, now that you have created a custom line once, next time you wish to create another route it will be much more straight-forward for you!


Step Six (Optional)

This final step is completely optional, and shows you how to share your route with other people, so that they can also enjoy your custom route, or even join you on the road for a convoy. Essentially, in order to share your custom line, you simply need to provide the other party with the “customroutes” text file that you created. How you share this is up to you, but the text file could be given to your friend over Discord, email or even via a link to an online storage platform, such as Google Drive or OneDrive, where they can download it.

If you are instead receiving a file from someone else, the process couldn’t be more simple! You simply download the text file, and add this to your ‘lines’ folder, within your DBus Client folder. As before, this is usually located in your Documents folder, along with your ‘Euro Truck Simulator 2’ and ‘ETS2MP’ folders. If you already have some custom routes that you do not want to lose by replacing your text file, you can simply change the name of the downloaded text file, to not cause a file conflict. The name can be changed to anything, such as “customroutes2” or “downloadedroutes”.


And that is absolutely everything that you need to know in order to create and share custom lines for DBus World on TruckersMP! I hope that this guide was helpful and has allowed you to learn how to use custom lines.

We hope that you enjoy using buses to their full capabilities on TruckersMP, as a result of our partnership with DBus World. If you struggle with anything in this guide, feel free to ask for help in our Discord support channel where hopefully someone will be able to assist you. If you have any feedback at all regarding this guide, feel free to create a feedback ticket to contact Community Management, where you can provide this to us and let us know your thoughts.

Take care, and happy bus driving!