Cities: Skylines II News

Last week in my comments on the forum, I tried in my very (and sometimes too) direct way to say that we made different design choices with Cities: Skylines II compared to its predecessor, and we understand that some may prefer one over the other or wish we had gone in a different direction. My poor choice of words did not make it clear that this of course does not apply to any bugs or issues you’re experiencing with the game. Naturally, this led to frustration for a lot of you, and I apologize for this. We know that we still have a lot to do before Cities Skylines II meets the performance standard and polish we are aiming for and that you expect, and you can be sure we are hard at work to reach these goals.

One of the best parts of Cities: Skylines is its active community. As devs we want to be present on the forums, listening to the feedback and answering questions. Our goal is to create the best city builder ever made, and your feedback is extremely important to us in reaching that goal. All of us in the community have different personalities and cultural backgrounds, our preferences and opinions vary and priorities differ. We know as devs we can’t please everyone, but each and every one of you makes our community richer. Cities: Skylines II is about creativity that can spark interesting conversations and new ideas. The community, and modding, are what make a Colossal Order game! And I promise, we’re working as fast as possible to get the modding support into the game.

In the meantime, we released gameplay bug fixes last week. Most notably we touched upon mail service and storage transfer, and fixed bugs related to the pathfinding. You can find the full patch notes with all the fixes here. All the fixes for the simulation may require a bit of time to take effect. However, please report if you still experience the issues and we’ll take a look!

The next patch (the last one this year) is coming out next week before we start our holiday break on the 18th of December. The patch will have the performance improvements I mentioned previously and the gameplay bug fixes we can manage to squeeze in. The focus is on the characters and a dentist has been consulted. There will also be improvements in the level of detail models for selected assets, as well as geometry improvements for better performances and reduced memory usage. Asset-related work will continue next year, but we should already have a good amount of improvements ready before the holidays.

On the gameplay side, we’re looking into the airports having problems with the export and we are working to fix some statistics. We have received reports of more stray dogs, now at the train stations. I can’t believe how terrible the citizens are at taking care of their pets! While I won’t promise we’ll have all of the dog-related issues fixed before the holidays, we are aware of the poor pups being left behind and will make sure their owners learn responsibility eventually. Please keep the feedback and the bug reports coming, we’ll go through all of them!

In the next CO Word of the Week, we’ll go over the final patch of the year and what we plan to work on next year.

Sincerely,
Mariina

Hi everyone. We have a new patch for you today with a bunch of fixes and improvements for the game. Thank you for all the reports and feedback, it's very much appreciated, and thank you for your patience while we've worked on these fixes.

We'll continue to work on both performance improvements and gameplay issues, and if you run into any issues with the game following the patch, please report them on our support forum here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/cities-skylines-2-bug-reports.1162/

[h3]Gameplay fixes[/h3]

• Mail fixes:
  
  • Fixed: Citizens do not have destinations in their Selected Info Panel when Sending Mail
    
  • Fixed: Post van not delivering/collecting mail from target building if the path accesses the lot in a specific way.
    
  • Fixed: Post van failing to collect mail from building if it's also delivering mail to the same building at the same time.
    
  • Fixed: Post sorting facility is unable to export global mail
• Storage transfer fixes:
  
  • Adjusted industrial companies' production efficiency to produce more products to increase good exports.
    
  • Adjusted storage companies spawning, storage companies will spawn less than storage capacity demand to increase goods export.
    
  • Fixed vehicle state that isn't exporting showed as exporting state
    
  • Cargo Stations like harbors, and train terminals will have a low stock amount at 100t, the terminal will import around 30t each time the current amount is below 100t.
    
  • Cargo Stations like harbors, and train terminals will have an export threshold of 200t, the terminal will export around 30t each time the current amount is above 200t.
    
  • Storage companies will spawn less than the current producing capacity to increase export (does not affect existing storage companies in the city)
    
  • Improved pathfinding to include storage & cargo stations as valid import candidate targets
• 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 pathfinding penalty for illegal pedestrian crossing
  
• Fixed: Several instances of vehicles getting stuck
  
• Fixed: Roads shown as inaccessible in Build menu can be used when the player has low budget
  
• Fixed: Hydro power plant output increases with simulation speed
  
• Improved water flow update when terraforming
  
• Fixed: Progression XP is not awarded for constructing Signature Buildings
  
• Fixed: Coal power plant does not import resource from nearby harbor
  
• Fixed: Citizens are shopping in industrial zones in factories instead of commercial zones
  
• Fixed: multiple issues related to constructing multilevel roads, elevated roads over water or bridges
  
• Improved elevated road construction (Not actual bridges) to require more pillars
  

[h3]Graphics fixes[/h3]

• Improved terrain smoothing for networks and large buildings
  
• Fixed: Forward road arrows on building lots incorrect for left-hand traffic.
  
• Fixed: Trees sticking out of the river in the main background image
  
• Fixed: Dam (net-part only) facing the wrong way when using left-hand traffic
  
• Fixed: Buildings missing road arrows and some other props depending on the selected theme
  
• Fixed: International Airport missing bus stops when using the North America theme.
  

[h3]UI fixes[/h3]

• Improved Selected Info Panel and Infoview panels to scale with text scale
  
• Improved sorting of households:
  
  • Citizens sorted by age in household/single-family home Selected Info Panel sidebar
    
  • Households sorted by member count in building Selected Info Panel sidebar
• Fixed: Pressing "M" while in photo mode removes the UI permanently for that session Still happens, we'll continue to investigate this issue.
  
• Fixed: Customer Info view for low customers terrain color inconsistent to the terrain color of other RCIO Info views
  
• Fixed: UI forwardRef error which was appearing sporadically when loading a save
  

[h3]Other fixes[/h3]

• Fixed: Now They're All Ash Trees, Out For a Spin, The Size of Golf Balls, Groundskeeper, Up and Away achievements, and Four Seasons achievements
  
• Fixed: Prefabs not unlocking correctly
  
• Fixed: Cinematic camera data is not resetting when loading a save or starting a new one
  
• Fixed: Object base mesh not visible if the main object is out of camera viewport
  
• Fixed: Forestry Area's Forest Forwarder was not playing the engine sound
  
• Increased all emergency vehicle siren sound distances
  
• Improved cached progress for Achievements
  
• Added 2 new steps to Education tutorial
  
• Added missing translations
  
• Optimized XP calculations
  
• Improved error and crash reporting tools
  

It's Monday and time for an update from Mariina:

This week I’ll keep things brief and focus on what’s happening on modding. As suspected, modders wait for no-one and they have already achieved really cool stuff like maps and code mods which is amazing!

Cities: Skylines II release build included an unfinished version of the Editor and it didn’t take long for it to be found. The modders took almost no time to figure out how they could create maps and started to advance the Editor tools to their liking. Again, just like with the first Cities game I am astonished by the effort you are all putting into modding the game. I love it!

However, I must ask for caution because any work done with the hidden unfinished Editor may break since there are still going to be changes to it. This is not to discourage you from working on your mods but rather to try and openly share what to expect. Some of the most notable changes will be in how the maps are saved so we can’t guarantee the maps saved on an unfinished version of the Editor will work with the game in the long run. We’re currently testing the map Editor and there are already changes to the water placement and landscaping tools so any tools made touching upon these are also likely to break. The Editor will be released early next year, so until then don’t let that stop you, just be aware that you may need to rework some things later on.

To further help the modding community we’ve updated the wiki to include more information on asset creation. You will notice there are no instructions for the level of detail models. This is because we’re working towards an automated system where you wouldn’t have to worry about the LODs unless you actually want to make them by hand (or the complexity of the asset requires it). Any other information will be added to the wiki as it becomes available.

We would like to invite all mod, map, and asset creators to join early access to the Editor for a few weeks before its release so you can see what it is like, test out your already created mods, and share your feedback with us. I hope to see everyone there, sign up here.

I can’t wait to see all the things coming for Cities: Skylines II from the modding community!

And finally a quick update on the higher priority items mentioned last week: Performance improvements are on their way as we’re reducing the cost of rendering geometry. Bug fixing is going forward nicely and the mail and export bugs are getting sorted out. We are also working on a fix for some achievements not unlocking, statistics bugs, and a taxi getting stuck because someone left their child in it. Parenting is hard. A full list of fixes is introduced with each patch, so check the patch notes if you are interested in more details!

You may expect a bigger patch coming out in December before we go on a holiday break in three weeks. During the break, there are no patches and limited responses from the team while we take time off work. But until then, we’re working our hardest!

Sincerely,
Mariina

To our Ultimate Edition Buyers,

In light of our commitment to improve the game performance and to prioritize the mods editor availability, there have been adjustments made to the Expansion Pass post-launch content timeline.

You can find a detailed explanation in Colossal Order’s weekly Word of the Week development updates.

This decision to delay certain content releases has been made as we are focusing on improving the game's performance, in line with what has already been done over the past weeks.

Release Roadmap - Coming in 2024.

Beach Properties Asset Pack is planned for release in Q1 of 2024 along with Deluxe Relax Radio Station.

Content Creator Packs - Modern Architecture & Urban Promenades are planned to be released in Q2 of 2024 along with Radio Station Soft Rock Radio.

[h3]About the Expansion Pass[/h3]

Expansion Pass including the San Francisco Set, Beach Properties Asset Pack, two Creator Packs, the Bridges & Ports Expansion as well as 3 Radio Stations paired with each release.
It is included in the Ultimate Edition at a discounted price. The Expansion Pass will also be sold separately once the first content is released in Q1.

In the last Word of the Week, I touched upon the frequency of the expected fixes for Cities: Skylines II. For the last few weeks, we’ve been focusing on performance improvements and bug fixes at a rapid pace. As we’re continuing to work on the improvements we’ll adjust the pace of the updates slightly so we won’t see a new patch every week going forward but will have a bit longer cadence between them. We have made it through the quicker fixes and we’re now digging into the ones that require a bit more work. The next patch is not yet scheduled as it has performance improvements pending that we absolutely want to include in it.

The priorities for the team at Colossal Order are the following:

1. Performance improvements
Specifically, we are working on the level of detail models for the assets. This includes both adding missing LODs and improving the existing ones to improve the GPU performance. It might take more than one patch to address all of them, but we’ll roll out the first fixes as soon as possible. Following the asset and LOD fixes, we’ll work on improvements to CPU performance. This means focusing on the CPU stutters and simulation performance to improve simulation speed and smooth experience while scaling up the size of your cities.

2. Bug fixing
We continue to go through your bug reports and have logged around 100 reproducible issues that have been moved to the team to look into. There are another 100 reports that we are still investigating that require more information and a bunch of duplicates, some of which add valuable information so we’ll go through all of them. We are also checking suggestions for improvement or new features, but these requests are currently at a lower priority.

While the forum is the best place to report issues, our community team also keeps an eye on discussions outside of the forum so we can gather relevant information for the development team. Fixing gameplay bugs and issues is a high priority for us, and these can be anything from bigger overhauls of systems that are not functioning as intended to the smallest of annoyances.

3. Editor/Modding support
The modding Beta group is testing the map editor and we’ll improve it based on their feedback before releasing it. Especially the placement of water on the map is under review since it’s currently too complicated. The UI will also receive a bit more love as it’s really difficult to find the available assets that can be placed on the map. I’ll keep you updated on the progress of the Editor and code modding and their release schedule, but the performance and bugs need to be sorted out first.

Where we are right now
Talking about sorting, let’s talk about the Mail Service. This is a good example of a bigger overhaul caused by a few critical bugs resulting in the entire system behaving undesirably. We identified that the mail sent to the residents of the city, whether it be a citizen, a company, or a city service, is not delivered as it should. One culprit is the Post Sorting Facility as the mail is sorted in an erratic way, which makes me wonder what they are actually doing there if it’s not to sort the mail. The other issue is the Post Office vans that only seem to be collecting the mail instead of ever delivering it. Let’s see if we can get the light-fingered mail personnel under control! All jokes aside, now that these bugs have been identified and are being fixed we’ll have to test the entire system to see if it requires a rebalance. Therefore fixing the bugs takes time as we need possibly multiple QA rounds to make sure it’s working as it is supposed to.

Another issue we’re investigating on the gameplay side is the pathfinding regarding the Citizens’ ability to reserve housing even with no connection to the city. It kind of makes sense that one makes a rental agreement before moving in, so personally I wasn’t too worried about the fact that a house is assigned to a citizen when it’s being built. However, the problem appears with the companies as the citizen that has a rental agreement may also accept a job even if they have never made it to the city to begin with. So a Citizen stuck at the border of the city with no access to their house or their workplace is basically reserving those until the Citizen is deemed a lost cause and deleted from existence. We’ll look to improve this behaviour in a way that is more understandable and there’s a clear cut between the citizens that have made it to the city and those that have not.

We’re also looking at reports about export and distribution of goods in the city. Like mail, these require a deep dive to determine what is working as it should and what is not. I don’t have any details to share yet as we’re still digging into the different reports, but I wanted to let you know we haven’t missed the concerns you have raised. More on those next time!

Once the PC version is where we want it to be, we will be focusing on the console release and DLC content. We are committed to bringing the marketed DLC content to you, but it will not be landing in the originally promoted schedule. The first Asset Pack, Beach Properties, has been worked on by our artists’ and our outsourcing partner, but we’ll only implement them after the asset fix and performance work are completed to our satisfaction. I apologize for the delay, but we must not rush new content out before the base is ready for it. This also stands for the Content Creator Packs and Radio stations. Stay tuned for more information on these later!

Last Thursday we released the last weekly hotfix and it included a bunch of fixes, all of which can be found in the patch notes, but I want to highlight a few of them. The patch included a fix for the stuck “Garbage Piling Up” notifications, which didn’t clear properly after the previous fixes to the garbage collection. Now citizens will finally recognize that their bins are empty. We also took another step towards solving the issue where texture resolution drops significantly so you should see it pop up less often, though the work is still ongoing as some cases still remain. Lastly, but definitely not least, we resolved an issue that caused saves to load to a black screen when playing offline, bringing up some bad memories for some of our players. Like its predecessor, Cities: Skylines II can be played offline, so thank you for bringing this issue to light.

That’s it for this week, I’ll keep you posted!

Sincerely,
Mariina