Cities: Skylines II News

[h2]Introduction​[/h2]
Right! So the time has come to lift the lid off of the modding interface and its backing service.

As many of you know, Paradox has been running our own mods backend for years, inventively named Paradox Mods. As a matter of fact, the first game that we hosted mods for was the Xbox version of Cities: Skylines I.

In order to give players on all platforms the same possibilities, PC and console alike, the Cities: Skylines II team has chosen to use Paradox Mods to officially host mods for the game. Now, the discerning reader might be wondering what that means for players and how they interact with mods. Read on!
The player experience​
As we have seen in other titles, primarily Surviving Mars, offering access to mods from inside the game itself means that many more players interact with them and more people discover the fun that comes with modding a game.

In Cities: Skylines II, the interface to Paradox Mods will be found in the game’s main menu. Have a look:

The Paradox Mods interface will allow you to discover, search and just plain browse through mods from inside the game. Additionally, our staff will highlight especially interesting, popular or unique mods for your consideration.


In common with other games that use Paradox Mods, the interface will allow you to create and manage playsets. If you have played other Paradox titles, the concept might be familiar, but if it’s new to you, playsets are basically “playlists for mods that form easily togglable experiences.” If you place a mod that has a dependency in a playset, you’ll be automatically asked if you want to add all dependencies (yes, we do resolve the entire tree of dependencies).



Of course, the in-game interface is not the only way to manage your mods: Playsets can be constructed from the Paradox Mods website as well. There, mods can be added, removed and toggled - and all of this will then be synced to your game automatically. Likewise, playsets are stored in our backend and will be replicated to all devices you happen to play the game on. And consequently: No, your carefully constructed playsets will not disappear if your computer lets out the magic smoke inside.

Mods discussions are also available directly from in-game - but the same discussions are also present on our forums, if you would rather post from a web interface. You can also find links to other (SoMe) platforms related to the mod, if pointed out by the creator.


Naturally, there are other ways to get mods than from Paradox Mods; creating them yourself for instance. Of course, the game will allow you to add local mods of any source to your playsets - Be aware that these will not be cloud-synced and will indeed be lost on catastrophic system failure.

[h2]The creator experience​[/h2]
Now, in order to have actual mods to play with there needs to be ways of submitting mods to the game.
You can find instructions on how to upload your map and code mods here.
And how to create them to begin with, which we’ll leave to our friends at Colossal Order to share more information about, starting tomorrow!

We can mention that, as a mod creator you can add metadata to your mod such as description, screenshots, dependencies, release notes, supported game version etc. This information can be changed at any time through the Paradox Mods website as well. If you so wish, you can also add a discussion section to your mod.


This wraps up our little teaser from the Paradox Mods team, and we're buzzing with excitement to get this out to you as soon as we’re allowed. We're all ears for your feedback because, let's face it, we're on a mission to create something of value across all platforms, blemishes and all.

Tomorrow Colossal Order is back, they will go into detail about the in-game editor where you create the actual mods that will in turn populate the Paradox Mods library!

Paradox Mods releases on the 25th of March, together with the Beach Properties Asset Pack!

Bring life to your city’s waterfronts with Beach Properties. Specializing in residential buildings that kiss the water's edge, this Asset Pack brings the tranquility and beauty of coastal living to your city.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427740/Cities_Skylines_II__Beach_Properties/

[h3]Waterfront Zone[/h3]
A new residential zoning option dedicated to waterfront buildings allows you to redefine your city's coastline.

[h3]Beach Properties[/h3]
Each theme adds growable residential buildings waiting to populate your new waterfront zone, from luxurious waterfront mansions to charming beachside cottages.

[h3]Signature Waterfront Buildings[/h3]
Tailored to fit into European or North American architectural themes, these signature buildings are crafted to highlight your city’s beachfront.



Beach Properties features 70 new assets, including:

• 10 North American residential buildings with three levels (30 assets)
  
• 10 European residential buildings with three levels (30 assets)
  
• Six signature buildings
  
• AND Four New trees
  

Beach Properties is also available as part of the Expansion Pass: Waterfronts, which is included in the Ultimate Edition. As our expansion pass journey has begun a bit later than we set out for during the fall, here is our updated roadmap.


​

[h2]Modding[/h2]

With Mods (short for modifications), you can tailor your gaming experience to your unique preferences. Uploaded by creators all over the world, you can pick between anything to create the city of your dreams. Along with Beach Properties, the first wave of Cities: Skylines II Modding will be available. The Beta release of Modding will initially support Map and Code mods.

With the Map Editor, you can make maps with the Terraforming Tools you’re used to, import hightmaps to create highly accurate depictions of your hometown, and upload your creations to Paradox Mods.

With the Code Tools, you can show off your coding skills and create Code Mods to meet your heart's desire!

Future updates will improve on these tools and come to include support for Asset Mods. As we’ve talked about before, there will be updates to these tools that we are currently working on, and we will see some updates before the 1.0 release. We will be taking your opinion into consideration when we continue to work on the editor and are looking forward to seeing the feedback that you might have.

If you’re curious on what the process of Modding will look like you can already check it out on the Cities: Skylines II Wiki here: https://cs2.paradoxwikis.com/Modding

This also means that Paradox Mods will also open for you to upload your own creations and download the creations of your favorite Map and Code Mod creators! We’re excited to see it fill up!



[h2]Updates and Fixes[/h2]

Along with Beach Properties, there will also be a substantial amount of Performance updates and General Fixes & Improvements. We hope to see much improvement to performance, especially on lower-end spec computers. The full Patch Notes will be posted along with the release of Beach Properties on the 25th.

[h3]This week we will also release three Developer Diaries on the topic of Modding;
19th of March: Dev Diary #1: Paradox Mods in Cities: Skylines II
20th of March: Dev Diary #2: Map Editor
21st of March: Dev Diary #3: Code Modding[/h3]

Beach Properties, Map Editor, Code Mod Tools, and Paradox Mods are washing up on your shore on March 25th, 2024.

Let’s discuss the status of the modding support today. The Editor has been in the works and we have shared versions of it with a closed group of a few selected modders for feedback. We are very fortunate to have this dedicated group of people eager to try experimental solutions and voice their opinions on them. Their feedback helps us understand how tools are used and how we can improve them. We have been surprised by the modders so many times in Cities in Motion and Cities: Skylines that we have stopped trying to guess what you might want to do or achieve. It’s much more helpful for us to just ask directly how to support those efforts instead.

Collaboration with the closed group has been going on behind the scenes for months now. Together, we have put a lot of effort towards the beta version of the modding tools, and we really can’t wait to share them with you! We believe modding is a pivotal part of the experience with a Cities: Skylines game and we want to encourage everyone to be as creative as possible.

As we’re preparing for the public release with support for Code Modding and the Map Editor, Paradox is running a broader Early Access for modders and creators chosen from the sign-up earlier this year. This gives creators the early opportunity to give the team direct feedback on using Paradox Mods, the new Modding Toolchain, and the Map Editor. We’re looking forward to seeing their feedback, and having the first Code Mods, Maps, and Savegames uploaded to the platform and ready for you on its release! This is all to support the quest of making sure we have a robust start when the tools are released, and this is a good opportunity to test Paradox Mods as well. We’ll be sharing more information on each part: Paradox Mods, Code Modding, and Map Editing later on so you’ll know what to expect.

I would like to emphasize again that there is still a lot of work still to be done: Asset editing is not in a shape or form to be used as-is. We’ll still need more time to make importing the assets work. The Region Packs teased at the end of last year are bundles of assets of varying sizes and content made by some of your favorite creators from the community. These assets rely on us finalizing the asset editor to a point where we are happy that the import pipeline and saving will be in a future-proof state. This is an ongoing effort, alongside improving the Code Modding and Map Editing based on the feedback we’ll receive from the Early Access and eventually from all of you. We have dedicated devs working on the modding support, eager to tackle bugs and implement improvements, so we’ll keep patching the tools throughout the public Beta phase until we have Modding 1.0 available. Naturally, the work will continue even past that as we receive more feedback and suggestions from you.

The creators and modders of Cities: Skylines brought so much cool and innovative content to the game, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with for Cities: Skylines II. There are already some exciting mods and beautiful maps out there (yes, we see you!) and it will be very exciting to see what you create with the added support!

Sincerely,
Mariina

While we’re receiving plenty of questions about Cities: Skylines II features, we have also received a ton of questions on topics surrounding the game. Today we’ll go over some of the difficult ones.

Are you going to address the content creators’ concerns and criticisms?
All constructive feedback that we receive is valued and very much appreciated. Thank you to those of you who tagged us and shared the content creators' videos that highlight feedback you agree with and to everyone who took part in the constructive discussions that followed. For example, Biffa and City Planner Plays released videos with useful and constructive criticism that we have gone over with the team. We’ll be addressing the feedback according to the process described below.



Here are some examples of the smaller changes we have made since release based on your feedback:

• Added line color to passenger ships, cargo ships, and cargo train engines.
  
• Improved moving in pathfinding. This prevents citizens from reserving homes from disconnected buildings (Or moving into the city at all if it's not connected to an outside connection).
  
• Increased all emergency vehicle siren sound distances.
  

And I believe the more interesting part is the larger changes that we are looking into now, based on the community feedback:

• Land Value and Zone Suitability
  
• Education system, specifically kids and teens
  
• More transparency in the economic system
  
• Balancing subsidies and service importing
  
• Balancing negative happiness modifiers with lack of basic utilities (water, sewage, electricity)
  

How do you plan to get out of this mess? / What is in the works to fix Cities: Skylines II? / What will you do to set things right for the disaster launch of CS2?
We’d much rather be in a different position than we are in at the moment, but we cannot change the past. We’re working very hard to catch up on the missing modding support, missing platforms, the content for the Ultimate Edition, and improving the performance and fixing bugs this year. The team is divided to work on different tasks so that we’re seeing progress on all fronts and while it might not feel that it’s fast enough I can assure you we are all doing the best we can. Only time will tell if this is enough to turn things around.

There have also been many questions about the patch cadence and why we moved away from weekly patches. Weekly patches are too heavy for us to keep up with and the issues we are working on need more time than just a few hours or days to fix. We’re a small team of 30 developers and we have to plan the work in a way that creates the fastest results. So instead of spending a big part of the week working on the build deliveries and QA rounds, we can use that time to work on the fixes themselves. For the Ultimate Edition, the DLCs already have a rough schedule so we’ll have good opportunities to patch the game at the same time. This doesn’t mean that we never patch the game between the DLC releases. The goal is to improve the game as quickly as possible and when we have a solid patch ready and tested it will be released.

We are aware we have a mountain to climb when it comes to delivering on the expectations but we have our ice picks ready and we are surely used to the cold. We're going to keep on climbing and you'll continue to see that progress in the game.

Why wasn’t modding support available at release?
The biggest regret we have is that modding support is not yet available for the game. We have been working on it since the beginning of the project and the intent was to have it fully ready at release. Code modding support, map, and asset editing were all planned to be fully usable and mods shareable in one place. We still believe that offering modding support makes any game better and that the tools and mods should be available for all players to enjoy at no additional cost.

During the project we faced, and still continue to face, technical difficulties that affect the speed and quality of the development, especially performance. We simply ran out of time as the focus had to shift from modding support to all hands on deck to fix the performance. All this work is still ongoing.

We’ll be communicating more on the status of the modding soon. It’s not an ideal situation but we are committed to keep working on this part of the game because it means so much to you and to us. “A Colossal Order game is a moddable one” is a promise we have made to ourselves years ago and work very hard to keep.

And we’ll top off today’s WotW with a few quick ones:
Q: More animations to come? Construction, firemen, etc
A: Yes, in the future we’ll be adding more animations to bring details and life to the cities!
Q: When will we have cycle paths on CSII?
A: I don’t know when we’ll get around to them, but Cities: Skylines II will have bikes and bike paths.
Q: Will you add more types of buildings or special buildings?
A: Yes, there will be more buildings both free and paid for the game in the future. If there is something specific you hope to see, we’d love to hear it!
Q: Will we get actual quays like the ones in CS1?
A: This sounds like it would fit great with the harbor-themed Bridges & Ports DLC coming later this year!
Q: When will we get props?
A: Adding the props to the menus for free placement in the game has come up as a request quite often. This is not something we are actively looking into at the moment, but will be added to the wishlist!
Q: When will the land value issue finally be fixed?
A: In the next update we’ll have part of it fixed, but the issues that are tied to the economy will take a bit longer to be resolved still.
Q: Will there be more biomes like wetlands/jungle or more desert like Texas?
A: Yes, we plan to add more maps with different biomes and also assets for you to create your own.

Thank you for all the questions, as well as the constructive criticism and feedback, it is valued and appreciated. Keep it coming! We’ll be back next week with something different: words from the art team!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Last week we touched upon the economy in Cities: Skylines II, how it works now, and how it might be subject to change based on your feedback. This time around we’ll answer some of your questions about the citizens, education, and public transport.

Could you talk about how citizens are simulated in the game?
You have noticed that sometimes citizens don’t behave the way you might expect. Sometimes citizens vanish or they might stay at home for a day. So let’s talk about when that can happen and why. A citizen can despawn in some circumstances: for example, when there is a dead-lock with other agents, such as an overly long queue of cars, or there is no reasonable path to their destination. There is still the rule that a citizen cannot teleport to their destination. If they despawn, they teleport to their previous destination so they can’t just skip bad traffic by teleporting. Some of you have also noticed that when the city grows bigger there is a probability for whether or not an agent will travel to work or school. This is intended, and citizens become a bit more passive to reduce traffic, but there is no limit to the number of moving agents. This choice was made to keep traffic manageable because reducing private car ownership didn't help as city centers were filled with pedestrians. Performance gain from the reduced pathfind load was just an extra benefit.

How do citizens choose which products to buy?
When a citizen goes shopping for their household, the game picks the type of goods through a weighted random check. Products that citizens should need more of or more often have a heavier weight and are roughly based on real-world consumption statistics. Additionally, each age group has certain products they “prefer” which affects the weighted check. As an example, citizens are more likely to purchase food over media, and a household of seniors is even less interested in media than the other age groups. Once the products have been purchased, they’re added to the household’s resources and eventually consumed.

How did you balance the education system?
The citizen Education system closely follows the same system we had in the original Cities: Skylines. When a citizen is educated, they will get a job with a better salary which gives them more opportunities to live in different places. While we have made some improvements to it to encourage more High School students, the Education system still needs some balancing, as we feel it’s currently not working as well as it could. For example, the number of Elementary Schools needed in the city is quite huge because the percentage of the population that goes to Elementary School is big.

The children don't have a choice between studying and working so that also raises the number of students compared to other education levels, where a portion of the eligible students will choose to work instead. The Elementary School’s student capacity has been balanced around how many students the building could reasonably hold, and while it might improve the situation, a small school building with 1000 students is quite unrealistic. Currently, we are checking the factors that need to be considered to balance this issue. This includes, for example, how long it takes to graduate from different types of schools. Additionally, each school type has its own Graduation check curve that determines the probability of graduating. Elementary School has the highest probability and University has the lowest probability.

Is there a system to “unbunch” public transportation vehicles?
Public transportation vehicles can get “bunched up” due to traffic or most often when a new line is created and the vehicles spawn. We have a system that spreads out the vehicles on a singular line by extending stopping times when necessary. This helps the vehicles to move at regular intervals, so your citizens can get where they need to go and you don’t have all buses arriving in one long line, but it may take a little while for vehicles to spread out properly on a brand new line. We have received reports of public transportation vehicles getting stuck for too long at a stop and we are investigating what are the reasons behind this.

Feel free to send more questions our way and we’ll be answering them in future Words of the Week!

Sincerely,
Mariina