Cities: Skylines II News

As you may have noticed we had a couple of weeks off for the end of the year, but now everyone is back to working on Cities: Skylines II. Thanks for all the holiday wishes, it was lovely to receive them!

It will be a busy time of the year for us so I’ll quickly go over some highlights for the upcoming months. As we have stated earlier, there is no higher priority than releasing the modding support for the game. The Editor UI is expected to be ready enough for the closed beta in a few weeks. There is an issue with the asset import still that we are hard at work solving. If the issue is not resolved in a reasonable time we’ll consider releasing the editor without the ability to import custom assets and just have the maps and code modding present. Whichever the resolution for the modding support is, we can’t wait to see your creations!

The console versions of the game will also have the Editor (minus code modding) so therefore the Editor is the highest priority but in parallel, we’re also working on the stability and performance on console to make the game available for the console players as soon as possible.
The schedule for the upcoming months and the early access program for modders will be available later.

Before the Editor release, we’ll have a bug fixing patch that will include fixes for issues that have been resolved while the work above is ongoing. You can expect fixes for simulation and visual bugs, both based on internal findings and issues reported by you. The patch notes will be available when the patch is released. Thanks for all the reports!

Last but not least, we have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before. Not only directed towards our devs but also our fellow community members - resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community. In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see.

We have always treasured having the devs present on the different social platforms and having direct communication with the community, but our biggest responsibility will always be protecting the team and making sure they work in a safe environment so they are allowed to do their best staying motivated and productive. So we hope we can all work together for our devs to be able to stay and be continuously active.

As the mentions of this in previous entries do not seem to have moved the needle, perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other. Should we add more moderation or is the only option to pull back our engagement on our end? How can we make sure the community is a safe place for you to share your thoughts and hopes for the game?

Here are a few ideas to start with:

• Give feedback and disagree, but do it constructively! Be specific and detailed, and don't worry about what others think. We have a diverse community so opinions and experiences will always vary.
  
• Assume people mean well and remember that tone can be hard to convey in writing.
  
• Help us make the community a nice place for everyone by showing your fellow mayors how to give constructive feedback.
  
• Always be kind :)
  

And we wish everyone happiness and success in 2024!

Sincerely,
Mariina

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Last week was the last written Word of the Week of the year, and we instead wanted to share a short film we're been working on from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive.

Listen in on our thoughts, hopes, and dreams about the development, the lead-up to release, and finally pushing the button. What goes into all the decisions that come with making a sequel of such magnitude and size?

[h2]Thanks for watching, and Happy Holidays![/h2]

Hello everyone. It’s time for the last patch of the year, and as Mariina mentioned in CO Word of the Week, this one includes both performance improvements and gameplay fixes. We expect that you’ll see the biggest improvements when looking at areas with a lot of pedestrians - yes, they now have level of detail (LOD) models.

Thank you for all the great feedback and the bug reports. We appreciate you taking the time to share them with us, and as always, if you run into any new issues, they can be reported here.

Update 15:35 CET: The patch is now live. Please note it's being rolled out in batches so if you don't get it yet, it's on the way.

[h3]Winter Treat - 2 New Maps[/h3]

• Sunshine Peninsula
  
• Corral Riches

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• Added LODs for characters and selected assets
  
• Optimized geometry layout for all assets
  
• Decreased Virtual Texturing pressure with assets that don't use emissive maps
  
• Disabled VSync for default settings
  
• Disabled volumetric lighting calculations where it was mostly invisible
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Improved lane-changing behavior for vehicles
  
• Fixed: Traffic accidents that last forever (and improved resolution of the accidents)
  
• Improved cargo air transport by:
  
  • Increasing airplane cargo capacity from 50t to 100t
    
  • Increasing airport cargo terminal capacity from 100t to 720t
    
  • Adding all resource types to Airplane Outside Connections
    
  • Not allowing cargo terminals to store garbage resource
• Storage fixes:
  
  • Improved storage buildings to consider both current storage and future storage (to include cargo already on its way)
    
  • Fixed: Cargo terminals import garbage
    
  • Fixed: Companies can buy the input resource from commercial companies
    
  • Fixed: Export can happen when output resource amount is below 0
    
  • Fixed: Resource amount might become negative when transport vehicle loading a large amount of resource (negative amounts reset to 0 in existing saves)
    
  • Fixed: Airport can import goods from Road Outside Connection when there is no air cargo route
• Economy fixes & improvements:
  
  • Replaced money buffering system with a new system that directly deducts the money (city’s income should be more predictable now)
    
  • Fixed: Income awarded twice
    
  • Fixed: Unknown profit during storage transfer
• Fixed: Pedestrian navigation issues with train station’s subway upgrade (requires the building to be rebuilt to take effect)
  
• Fixed: Pedestrian walking through the air between elevated/lowered/raised/tunnel networks and buildings
  
• Fixed: Options search text can overlap with the delete symbol
  
• Fixed: Sometimes pathfinding for resources does not include cargo loading locations
  
• Fixed: Saving and rebooting the game gives extra XP based on the number of residential buildings in the city
  
• Fixed: Four Seasons and Spiderwebbing achievements cannot be earned
  
• Fixed: Pressing "M" while in photo mode removes the UI permanently for that session
  
• Added missing localization for Photo Mode and Options menu
  

[h3]Graphics[/h3]

• Added line color to passenger ships, cargo ships, and cargo train engines
  
• Improved quality of character model variations
  
• Fixed: Visual glitches with metallic/smoothness maps on character clothes
  
• Fixed: Light props on Grand Bridge float in the air after connecting a road
  
• Improved lights on forest machinery
  
• Improved propping for several buildings
  
• Fixed: Spawn point for cargo trucks is not inside the warehouse as expected
  
• Fixed: International Aiport roads are not inverted with left-hand traffic
  
• Fixed: Crosswalk looks broken when pedestrian path bridge is connected to ground pedestrian path through a road
  

It’s time for the last CO Word of the Week this year. Next week we’ll start our holidays and will be away for a few weeks. But before the holidays there’s still time for the last patch, which is planned to go out this week. We will of course have full patch notes for you when it releases, but in the meantime, I can give you a sneak peek at what’s included. On the performance side of things, the patch adds the level of detail models for characters and improves the geometry layout for all assets. This won’t be the last update to performance, it takes us one more step towards our goals.

As promised, we’ve also managed to include a bunch of gameplay fixes and improvements. The patch changes how money is calculated and shown in your city. We hear your feedback and hope these improvements make the budget more transparent and easier to determine what new services your city can afford. We’re grateful for all the feedback you have shared, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on things to understand how things feel after the patch. We’ve also improved how vehicles change lanes, fixed situations where the resource amount stored would end up as a negative value, and added the line color to ships and cargo trains so you can easily see which lines they belong to.

The patch also includes a little holiday gift in the form of two new maps that were the result of internal testing of the Map Editor. There are still a few things missing from the Map Editor for it to be fully functional, like proper preview images showing off your amazing new maps, but we’re making good progress. I can’t wait to see what kind of maps you create! In the meantime, here’s the brief I gave the designers for the new maps based on some feedback we’ve gotten:

Land of the Eternal Sun
As the name suggests this area basks in the glory of the eternal sun. With literally no rain and steady warm temperatures this is an ideal choice for those looking to build with minimal input from the seasons.

Flatland
Hills, slopes, mountains? No thanks, I'd rather stay leveled. No need for contour lines on this land!

To my great disappointment, the designers changed both the names and the descriptions of the maps to “better fit the existing style” of the game. So Sunshine Peninsula and Corral Riches are the names of the new maps when you start a new game. Let us know what you think about them!

And then, as promised, let’s go over what our plans for Cities: Skylines II in 2024 are:

Modding
Bringing the mod support to the game is a high priority. This includes the map editor, code modding support, and the asset editor. The asset editor is the part that is most behind the schedule, but we will continue to work on it in January. We’ll be releasing Development Diaries related to the modding, and run an early access program for modders to try the tools before their release. Check out the previous WoW to sign up if you haven’t already!

Consoles
The console versions of the game were delayed and we’re working hard to get the performance and the stability up to par so we can bring the game on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The console versions will also have the modding tools (minus code modding) present on release so the players on console will also be able to create maps and add custom assets.

Expansion Pass
The DLC production is currently on hold and waiting for the higher priority work to be completed, but progress has already been made on the first Asset Pack, Content Creator Packs, and Radio Stations. CCPs are of course created by some of our favorite content creators in the community and the content for the radio is produced by Paradox.

Performance and bug fixing
While we’ve progressed quite a bit on the performance and bug fixing we’re still not satisfied and will continue to improve the quality of the game based on our internal findings and your bug reports and crash logs. To be honest, this is work that we’ll continue throughout the lifetime of the game, as I believe there’s always something we can improve upon, but the biggest remaining offenders should be sorted out during the spring.

Your suggestions/feedback
We'll be taking your suggestions and feedback on board regarding new content, features, and quality-of-life improvements that are not classified as bugs. Your feedback matters and we’ll be drawing inspiration from it for the lifetime of the project, just like we did for Cities: Skylines, so let’s keep the discussions going!

That is the current list of priorities we’ll have in 2024, though we will of course continue to keep an eye on your feedback and adjust our priorities as needed, especially when it comes to performance. We hope to bring you the features and missing platforms as soon as possible, and we’ll announce timelines as we get closer to each release so keep an eye on the CO Word of the Week in the new year for the latest news.

Next week there will be something to round up the year, but this little blog is taking a break until January 15th. I wish everyone lovely holidays and I look very much forward to getting back to work in the New Year!

Sincerely,
Mariina