Highrise City News

Greetings Builders,

the last patch brought you new production chains and more variety to the gameplay of Highrise City. This time around, we tackled the graphics. You will notice a lot of upgrades to the visuals of the game with this patch. We are definitely proud of the more colorful look the game got. In addition to the new color palette, the post processing got a complete rework. The mission was to improve the overall quality and give the game a more vibrant look - we hope you enjoy the new look!









In general this patch focuses on quality of life improvements. You can now again easily enable DirectX 12 in the video options. This can improve the performance by 70%, which we know some of you asked eagerly for. The camera movement has been improved once more and the light radiating from your cursor is now dynamic to the camera distance.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• Graphics massively improved
  
• Improved visual buildings (9+): Lumberjack, Water Tower, Fisherman, Semiconductor Factory, Electronics Manufacturing, Toy Factory, Research Centre, Simple Fire Station, Mayor's Villa
  
• Demolishing of bigger city parts is now faster
  
• English and German texts got reworked
  
• DirectX 12 can now be enabled in the video options more easy, this can improve your performance by 70%
  
• Light source emitting from your cursor is reacting dynamically to the camera distance
  
• when the game is paused, buildings are no longer highlighted on the cursor
  
• Tool Wrought no longer needs tools to be build
  
• Camera movement got improved
  
• Subsidy menu now got ressource icons
  
• A mistake got corrected, that appeared in the overview of the loading screen

Greetings Builders,

The time for a new update has come. The new patch brings quite a few changes to the world of Highrise City. First of all, we have introduced new product chains. This also means that new buildings have been added to the game. You will now need to build Sawmills, Hemp Insulation Farms, Cement-Concrete Factories and more! They have also been filled up with tons of smaller details you might enjoy.



Next to the new buildings, we've also introduced a new feature for you: You can now subsidize whole industry parts. It will cost you quite a bit but it will boost the productivity of buildings. And this can also be combined with other boosters for your production as well. You can, of course, just play the game as you did before but we wanted to give you more options, especially if you want to save space and don't want to have so many production buildings anymore. You now have four options to boost the productivity of your production:

1. Improved Versions
   Specific buildings have improved versions you can unlock. Such as the deep mines for example. More of these improved buildings will follow over time.
   
   
2. Booster Buildings
   You can place certain buildings next to your producing buildings. Within a certain radius they will increase the productivity of these buildings.
   
   
3. Research & Development
   You can also invest your research points into certain product chains or specific buildings to increase their productivity. Or you can boost your booster buildings.
   
   
4. Subsidize
   You can subsidize specific industries to increase their productivity.
   

We have also reworked the menu a bit. Multiple buildings can also be found in more than just one area now. This is a comfort function so that you can quickly find buildings which belong to one specific product chain. We have also merged the zones now.



The third focus for this update has been the performance of the game and some small quality of life improvements. The zoom is now bound slightly to the mouse cursor, for example. In terms of performance we've lowered the loading times of huge cities quite a bit. We also improved the performance of landscape textures and reduced the memory usage of the game in general. Also the saving of the game is now fully asynchronical which means that saving is much faster and doesn't interrupt your game anymore.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• New product chains added
  
• Subsidize
  
• Cleaned up the builder menu
  
• New Buildings for new product chains (Cement Concrete Factory, Ferroconcrete Manufactory, Sawmill & Hemp Insulation Farm)
  
• Zoom to mousecursor implemented
  
• Improved camera handling
  
• Workshop buildings are now in an extra category for special buildings
  
• Fixed a crashbug in the save-menu
  
• Fixed a freeze when building roads
  
• Fixed a crashbug while loading or saving a game
  
• Saving is now asychnronus (game saves much faster)
  
• Reduced Memory usage
  
• Adjusted milestones slightly
  
• In the builder menu is a new button which makes the menu stay always on
  
• If a street is being demolished, vehicles now despawn correctly
  
• Fixed calculations in the city budget
  
• Improved performance of landscape textures
  
• Fixed a bug which caused display errors in buy-land menu
  
• Improved loading times for bigger cities
  
• Improved loading times when creating a new game
  
• Demolishing farms now removes the grass on streets correctly
  
• Increased productivity of the clay pit by 50%
  
• Increased the productivity of furniture factories by 33%
  
• Fusion Powerplant can now be unlocked slightly different the research menu
  
• Incrased storage of trucks
  
• Reduced building costs of the highest levels
  

P.S.: The next update won't take so long as we've been working on it already as well. Let's say you'll get a visual update soon.

Greetings Builders,

The last update introduced a lot of changes to Highrise City. Changes, which required to re-write quite a few systems. Re-writes which also had a negative impact on the overall performance of the game. So while working on additional content for the next bigger patches, we've took some time to work on the performance again. Now the game should run way smoother on your machines.



Another thing we'd like to announce today is the release of Naples as a map. Some of you already found it to be live with the previous patch - and that was a mistake on our side. The map wasn't fully polished just yet. But we kept it in as some of you already started playing. We've fixed some smaller things now and from today on, Naples is offically a part of the game. And yes, your savegames should still work without further tweaking.

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

• Added Naples as a playable region
  
• Buildings use the street grid more efficiently so that more often bigger buildings will be build
  
• Improved landscape textures for close by buildings
  
• Added very low vidoe quality option
  
• Updating the game on Steam is now faster (Take that, negative review guy!)
  
• Removed lane marking on crossroads for now
  
• Improved performance when building streets and buildings heavily
  
• Lags removed while moving the camera
  
• Waterpipes have a new animation
  
• Increased performance when displaying zones
  
• Increased the performance on GPU and CPU in general
  
• Fixed microlags in the menus
  
• Adjusted colors from zones slightly
  
• Fixed the crashbug which happend while building roads
  
• Fixed a crashbug which happened when the mouse cursor was outside the map
  
• Added new models for certain buildings
  
  • Building Renovation
    
  • Paper Mill
    
  • Agricultural Machinery Factory
    
  • Printing House
    
  • Tax Office
    
  • Planning Office
    
  • Bakery
    
  • Mill
    
  • Textiles Factory
    
  • Biogas Plant
    
  • Small Glass Melt
    
  • Big Glass Melt

Greetings Builders!

Finally, the time has come. The biggest Update so far for 8 Highrise City is out now! We’ve named it ComMutation - City Flow as this is exactly what this update is all about. We have changed a lot underneath which will make cities way more realistic.

The biggest change is that now indeed every citizen gets simulated correctly. That means that every citizen, as long as he or she has a job, will keep this job and get there from his home. The clue: Your citizens won’t take any job available anymore if the distance is too far. For you that means that you need to reconsider how you build your cities and an industry district far away from your main city is not possible anymore. That makes the game itself slightly more challenging, but also way more realistic.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

But no worries, you won’t lose oversight. We’ve taken care of that. We have added multiple new filters and systems which will give you detailed information about your citizens. No matter if you want to know if the distances are fine, the water supply, how crowded your zones are - we’ve got you covered. We have put a lot of time into making the game easier to understand and think that with the new filters and info systems you should be able to overcome every challenge.



Tons of buildings have been visually improved and received a lot of new details. A new highlight - if we are allowed to give you a hint here - is the new nuclear power plant and the animated ads on office buildings. It is our vision that the cities get more and more details so that you can discover something new around every color. That means we’ll keep updating the details on the buildings even further, the animations and the landscapes as well.


These are the biggest systems we’ve touched for this update. But there are more. Way more. Especially in the details. Street lamps now glow during dusk and dawn, the game saves a lot quicker, tons of small UI adjustments were made and we even found the time to fix some smaller bugs and issues.

[h2]The Changelog:[/h2]

• New Pathfinding for people (Influenced by the Difficulty Option ”Satisfaction Population”)
  
• Saving the game has been speeded up (improved Multithread Support)
  
• New filters allow to check needs and wishes of your citizens (No Work, No Workers, Way costs Work, Satisfaction Flats, Density of Homes, Trash Factor, Electricity Factor, Water Supply Factor, Office Factor, Storage Space)
  
• Street Lamps glow in dusk and dawn
  
• Additional infos on resources being displayed in the construction menu (Stay longer with the mouse over a button to activate these)
  
• Costs of Streets and Buildings are displayed on the cursor now
  
• Improved cursor for more direct input
  
• If a building gets wrecked, all stored resources will be transferred back to the town
  
• Latest news regarding the game are displayed in the main menu
  
• Buy Land Button is now on the top left side in the HUD
  
• During the construction of a farm, it is displayed how much the farm will be producing
  
• If a filter is active, additional infos are displayed at the mouse cursor
  
• Different additional buttons (e.g. in the building information menu) ease the way to display filters
  
• Icon-Buttons have a hovering and a press-animation
  
• Research can be reset
  
• Sizes of certain windows can be scaled (resource-list, research menu)
  
• New research “clever traffic lights” has been added: Traffic lights are adjusted to actual traffic which reduces traffic jams
  
• Cars reduce their speed in curves
  
• Improved pathfinding for cars
  
• Changing lanes is now more realistic at high speeds
  
• In the Buy Land Menu resources can now be made visible
  
• In the options, all changes can now be reset with the Reset Button
  
• RAM and VRAM optimized
  
• Wrecking a building is now possible when the building has been picked
  
• The Save Game folder has been improved and is not influenced by other files anymore
  
• HRC now works on 2 core CPUs as well (at least for small / middle sized towns)
  
• Video Option Texture Quality influences water quality. For Texture Quality Low a simple ocean shader will be used (useful for weaker machines)
  
• Video Option "Foliage Density" reduces the amount of grass
  
• Performance during the construction of a building has been improved
  
• A warning gets displayed in the main menu if the machine does not fulfill the minimum requirements
  
• Adjusted the fonts
  
• New buildings for Stage 1 added
  
• Improved office buildings Stage 1
  
• Buff-buildings need access to streets
  
• Increased reach of buff buildings
  
• New law "More Relaxed Road Users" added
  
• Fixed some smaller bugs and issues
  
• UI improved
  
• The “Milestones” Tool Tip now also shows what is to be achieved
  
• Color corrections of people and cars
  
• Textures and color corrections for Landscape and grass
  
• Trees move better when wind is active
  
• Color corrections for Office Buildings and Houses on Stage 1
  
• Plants on farms spawn with a bigger gap to the buildings and the fence
  
• Reduced loudness level for music slightly
  
• Increased loudness for chinese voice over
  
• After loading a savegame the player can already take actions during the transition
  
• Improved loading times for savegames (fixed some load processes for Voxel Landscape and 3D Assets)
  
• Zones create less open gaps close to crossroads
  
• Buildings do not spawn on streets anymore
  
• Charcoal Burning productivity increased
  
• Police, Fire Station and costs for the School have been slightly increased
  
• Reduced need for water in the beginning of the game
  
• Small water towers produce more water
  
• Around the farm a little bit of space has been left free to spawn farm mesehs
  
• Increased construction costs for a fruit farm slightly
  
• Increased number of employees for the Brick Factory
  
• Increased building times for bigger buildings

In a few hours, gamescom 2022 will begin. And Highrise City is playable at the Indie Arena Booth. So feel free to come by and say hello, we're there, waiting for people to chat with. If you can't make it to Cologne this year (or attend the show), no worries. The demo is available on Steam as well. Right now. We've just unlocked it.

It already contains a bunch of features which will soon be introduced to the game itself as well. Which brings us an important question: When will the next big patch be released for Highrise City? The answer is rather simple: Very soon. We're currently targeting the 7th September. And we'd like to discuss a few changes. Especially since this will be the biggest update we've been working on so far.



Street lights will start shining soon. When you change the time of the day and go into the night, street lights will have a light source soon. This is, obviously, a cosmetic feature, but one we wanted to include right from the very beginning. And we finally were able to do so without killing the performance. And it looks gorgeous.



Filters. Quite a bunch of them. And you will need them, as we have reworked a few systems underneath. And these systems will also influence the way you will build your cities. As you know, people will only move to your cities if you can offer them jobs. However your citizens won't take any job - there is now a maximum distance they are willing to take. And the filters will enable you to see which industries are too far away from your citizens. They will also allow you to scan for other issues, such as overall happiness or if water supply is running low.

Soon, every way to work will be calculated correctly. That means, traffic management will become more and more important. If a city for example gets more than one million citizens, everyone of them will be correctly simulated - the code underneath allows to do that now.

Other changes which will soon be introduced:
In the main menu, you will see the latest news regarding the game. When building a farm, you will be able to see how much the farm will produce. Countless performance optimizations have been made. Saving the game has been optimized A LOT. Also for savegames. Saving the game won't freeze your computer anymore for a long time. A lot of new buildings (visual variations) have been added. The landscape ground level textures have been reworked. Buff buildings will require access to roads now. Balancing adjustments, UI improvements and pathfinding have been improved and many, many more. Full patch notes will release with the patch.