Highrise City News

Thank you all for playing the demo! And thank you all for providing feedback (especially via Discord and via Let's Plays). We've been fixing a lot of small things people ran into and have updated the Demo:

• Fixed a loading error and optimized the load / save system
  
• Freecam speed has been speeded up a bit. Speed-Change via mousewheel has been increased
  
• Name of Mayor and Town can now be 1 sign long
  
• Feedback Menu: Added a field for respond-mail
  
• Feedback menu: Added a limit for characters (30k)
  
• Speed of camera rotation can now be adjusted in the options
  
• Option for the building menu to make the menu permanent visibile added
  
• Option added that right click closes the building menu right away
  
• Option added to automatically hide the building menu
  
• Translated the text "Feedback to Developers"
  
• Japanese and Chinese translations have been improved. Many thanks to Elektrotek and 赤いの
  
• Water Tower on mouse now shows the model
  
• Clicking on symbols of trading symbols now also opens the menus
  
• Building Farms: A hint is displayed, explaining how to build them
  
• Wind turbine: Collision is now active for it
  
• Wind turbine: improved construction animation
  
• The City Hall has been visually improved
  
• Tutorial added: Explaining how the city budget works and where it is located
  
• Tutorial: Added two missing voice overs in German
  

Tomorrow the digital version of gamescom opens its doors. And Highrise City is part of this years Indie Arena Booth Selection. Of course we have prepared something for this special opportunity: A playable demo.

The demo will stay online for a few days more after the show has ended. However, due to the early state the current playable builds have, we will take it offline a bit after gamescom comes to an end. Speaking about content: The demo includes the tutorial of the game (which is, by the way, optional) and offers you the first production chains in terms of gameplay. The demo should be fine for around 20 - 30 minutes of gameplay.

And while you are downloading it, you might want to take a look at the second feature showcase. This time we are explaining how you have to take care of your citizens as they all have needs for certain services (e.g. a police station) or products.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What will change?
A small disclaimer: The demo is still work in progress. Most of the buildings itself of the available ones in the demo have finally been reworked. However, especially the HUD / GUI is still more or less programmer art. There might be crashes. There might be other issues. Just so that you know.

As promised before, we have now started a new video series. Hopefully every month we'll be able to release a new video for Highrise City, demonstrating you different features of the gameplay. Today the spotlight is very much on the economy of the game and how ressource management works.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Keep in mind: We record these videos with an in development build. Buildings with missing textures are pretty common in that phase. On the other side we can't wait to show you how the game is visually transforming over the coming months.

It's that time again. Time to look at some details. Today: The small harbor from Highrise City. It just got finished, which is super important as it will be part of the upcoming gamescom demo as well. So you can watch it in action very soon.

A few weeks ago it was just a small grey blocked out building with no details. Our artist however finished it a few days ago. Now it is filled up with containers. Cars are parking and people are working in the harbor. Also, in case you build more than one, you will see differences as the number of containers is fully randomized. So are the cars parking on the side. And so are the people which could in theory spawn.

What's extremely cool: This does not influence the performance at all due to how the setup in engine works.

For game development there is one thing which matters. Which separates a labour of love from the rest. We hope that we are right now on the right way to not be among the rest. That is why we want to start talking about the little details which matter starting today with the first entry in the series.

For the economy in Highrise City you will need to build Warehouses from where the ressources get picked up and delievered. You will bascially build them so that they can pick up stuff at surrounding ressource generating buildings (e.g. a farm). They then will be further distributed (either to the consumers or to other prodcution buildings to create advanced goods.

Finally, we finished the small warehouse now. And that's what we wanted to show off today:


(Better resolution in the video below, GIF compression is a thing)

As you can see small workers are doing various things here. But what we are really proud of is the fact that even if you place the same building multiple times next to each other, you'll see small variations of it. In this case the trucks in front of the warehouse (and the cars of the works on the other side) are randomly placed. We just definie what type of car or truck can be spawned. We also define with what probability they spawn. That means that every warehouse will look slightly different.

We are trying to implement such variations for nearly every building in the game. From colors to balconies. The idea is that when you are zoomed out you'll think "Oh look, so, that's my city and quite a few buildings do look like each other" but that you will notice little details are completely different when you zoom in.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]