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Highrise City News

"If You Build It" Update Released

Greetings Builders!

The first major update has arrived. The first iteration of the building editor is here. The tool became a little more complex and has more options than originally planned as well. We're looking for feedback from Users now.

With the Editor we have also released the first custom building you can now download via the Steam Workshop and via Nexus. It should be noted that this specific building, which is literally the Willis Tower from Chicago, is way bigger than any other building in Highrise City and that it comes with a custom 3D Model. Something, which the editor does not allow for Users just yet.



We are working on an update that will release after the next bigger content update that will allow users to implement their own 3D models, too. In this first iteration of the editor, you will have to use assets already provided with the game. The custom 3D models will be taken care of once we have finished the next bigger content update. We will also write a documentation on how to set up the 3D models so that everyone can include them easily.

By the way, you can also share savegames via the Workshop!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
  • Building Editor
  • Steam Workshop integration
  • Savegames in Steam Workshop
  • Improved collisions for the decoration tool
  • Small comfort functions from the Editor added to the decoration tool
  • Streets can become one way roads again - sorry for the hiccup


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What's next? Well. At the end of the month we would like to release the second major update. With that we will also introduce Achievements. They will come with a twist however: Achievements will be linked to research points, which means that if you achieve them, you will get some points.

In addition to that the Nuclear Powerplant will be introduced and Milestone 11 will get added. And new product chains will be added as well!

Patch 1.0.1 Apr 22. 2022 Released

Greetings Builders!

Just a small update today. We've touched the balancing a bit, fixed a few bugs and wanted to share the progress with you. What you can't see is that the update includes way more than the changes. Underneath we've been preparing the game for the upcoming editor, giving every building a unique ID and allowing the editor to create new unqiue IDs as well.

The sad news however is that it is unlikely that we'll be able to ship the editor in April. It will most likely hit early May. But we're getting there.

[h2]Todays Changelog:[/h2]
  • Reduced the number of people on the streets near industry buildings
  • Milestone Rebalancing
  • Improved Melters now need less production resources
  • Powerplants produce 50 - 100% more energy
  • Fixed overlapping texts in the milestone menu
  • Improved various buildings
  • Massive improvements for the japanese texts
  • Improved street textures
  • Added quite a bunch of new sounds
  • Reduced the noise of doves
  • Performence improved
  • Tutorial will be continued after loading a game
  • Trade menu: When setting up the sliders, the tooltip will fade out


In other news, the next big update which will include the first iteration of the building editor, will also include steam achievements. Since we've been implementing the APIs anyways for the Editor, we've taken the chance to work on these as well:

Thank you! And: What's next?

Greetings Builders!

So, two weeks in Early Access. And it has been quite a wild ride so far. While we cannot go into details, we can confirm that the game is doing pretty well so far and above our expectations. And oh god, all that feedback - that's pretty amazing. We were able to fix quite a few issues you reported. And also found quite a bunch of interesting ideas we'd like to implement in the game. Thank you all. Thank you all so much. Like, seriously, we can't thank you enough.

Having that said, let's take a look at what we are working on right now. Of course, we are tweaking a lot of balancing things and are fixing some bugs in the background. But we're also working on some new content for Highrise City. Also, keep an eye on the Roadmap to make sure to stay updated.

While we will rework the streets at some point, our artists have been working a bit on the textures recently. It will make them look a bit more realistic for now (You probably won't notice the change on the screenshot but in a big city it feels and looks much better now):

Old


New


Detail


We're also adding more animations for the citizens and buildings so that the miniature world feeling will improve a bit as this is definitely one of our cornerstones. We're not yet sure if these will be made available already in the update planned for April though. But we're working on that. What definitely will be in that update is the first iteration of the building editor.

We already had to make quite some adjustments for the game underneath. Every object in the game now has a unique ID and when you create new buildings with the editor, Steamworks will give it a unique ID as well. That basically means that you can add infinite additional buildings if you want to. The first version of the editor will be filled with the assets we already have in the game. So you will be able to use these to modify them or create new buildings out of them and adjust everything with parameters. From colors to lights to basically everything.





The next iteration will then allow to implement external assets. Although we will have to write a documentation about how the game exactly reads the files. But we'll get there.

We are still positive that the editor will be available by the end of April. But it might be early / mid May as well, depending on how fast we can make progress. We will most likely ask a few Discord users to test out an earlier build soon.

Patch 1.0.1 Apr 04 2022 Released

Greetings Builders,

Thank you all for your feedback. We're working hard on improving the game and adding new content. The building editor is making quite some progress and we're quite positive that April is still realistic for the release. We've got tons of other things on our list as well, from improving the landscaping tool to adding shopping malls to improving the traffic system (and yes, also working on the streets itself). These things will take some time. In the meantime we plan to update the game itself with regular patches every one or two weeks.

A new update has just been released. The full changelog is here:
  • Most industry buildings can now be moved (Button is located in the building menu)
  • When removing waterpipes, the system with the most knots will stay active
  • Resource-Icons on vehicles scale with the camera distance
  • Two more buyable areas have been added to certain milestones
  • Heavily improved the Unreal Garbage Collection (this should also reduce the number of crashes*)
  • Fixed a crashbug in the trading system
  • Fixed a crashbug in the loading system
  • Resource Statistics now calculate deactivated buildings correctly
  • Production increased for Mill and Backery
  • Winepress now needs glas instead of iron
  • Removed noise from parks for now
  • Some later unlocked production buildings now need more workers and offices
  • In the options you can now activate that audio continues while you have tabbed out of the game
  • Fixed multiple translation errors in various languages (Japanese update incoming soon, other languages in the future as well)
  • Unreal Engine 4 Logo now doesn't do that white flash at the beginning
  • Trading menu has a new tooltip
  • Harbor must be activated to work
  • Buying a new area doesn't open an empty menu anymore when clicking on that area


*On the crashing: You can share crashreports and savegames with us. We hope that with fixing the garbage collection most of the crashes should be gone for now (We have the game now running without a crash since 6 hours on various machines with previously crashing savegames). But you never know. So we're really thankful for the reports as they help us improving the game a lot.

Also, did you know there is a screenshot mode?

Patch V1.0.1 March 28 2022

Greetings Builders,

A small update today. Furhter ones will take a bit longer, especially new content. For that, please also take a look at the Roadmap.

Changelog
  • Added a Button to open the folder with Savegames in the Load & Save Menu
  • Autosave-timing deactivated if the frame is less than 5 minutes
  • DirectX12 hidden in Advanced Options for now due to crashbugs related to it. If DirectX12 is selected, it won't be hidden anymore however
  • Waterpipes can be placed correctly in Water
  • If a game gets saved manually, autosave counter gets reset
  • Calculation of people in the population menu is now displayed correctly