Cities: Skylines II News

Hi and welcome back to another development diary for Cities: Skylines II! We’ve talked about the people living in your cities before, their wants and needs, and how they affect the simulation, but today we focus on the models themselves, our goals for them, and the process of how they came to be.

From the very start, we had a distinct goal: we wanted a clear and definite upgrade from Cities: Skylines in all aspects. The new Photo Mode camera allows you to get pretty close, so citizens had to have a level of detail to match this. But we also wanted our citizens to have much more variation to create a more inclusive and realistic gaming world. It was essential to us that the characters in Cities: Skylines II represent a broad spectrum of humanity, including different ethnicities and body types.

Achieving this diversity required a flexible and efficient system for creating character models across all the different age groups of the game. It was clear that a tool was needed to combine all those aspects and on top of that a great variety of hair, clothes, and accessories needed to be added. Lastly, it was also a major requirement that animations should work with any type of character model regardless of the body type.

Real cities are full of diverse people and we wanted Cities: Skylines II to reflect that reality


[h2]POPUL8[/h2]
This is where Popul8 comes into play. We partnered with Didimo, who created the Popul8 character design software that perfectly addresses our design needs: Create a lot of varied characters quickly and easily. We had our own art style for the characters and for this, Didimo created a base mesh to represent that style. With this external tool groups of citizens could easily be created for different seasons, age groups, and jobs, and then these could be imported into the game.

We had a set of early placeholder characters during development, which did not have much variety, so getting the first batch of final characters into the game was quite exciting for us. Suddenly the game came alive with a myriad of people walking the streets, doing yoga in the park, or taking selfies in front of interesting buildings. It brought in both young and old, tall and short, heavy and light citizens of all different ethnicities, bringing realism and diversity to the city. And when they started to choose their clothing according to the temperature, we took another exciting step toward more realistic citizens.

A sneak peek at how characters are created in Popul8


[h2]GROUP OF CHARACTERS[/h2]
As we wanted a lot of variation in the game, this meant a lot of character models. The game has children, teens, adults, and seniors all of which need to be done separately and set up so that their physical appearance remains the same through all ages. Some might change their hairstyle or gain or lose some weight but in general, they are recognizable throughout their lifetime. When working on new characters, we usually create a group of 100 characters with similar setups at the same time. As an example, let’s say it’s a group of adult people during wintertime.

100 adults in winter gear in Popul8. Color variations for hair and clothing are not shown as these are set in-game.

HOW IT’S DONE
We have several sliders which control variables for age, tall or short, thin or fat. There are also several sliders for different ethnicities to ensure the characters look just right. As this is a group of adults the age slider is set to about middle with some allowed variance. Other sliders can have full range to give the group a good variety of height, build, and ethnicity. Next, we create sets of winter boots, jackets, trousers, headgear, and accessories from which clothing is randomly picked to form the characters in Popul8. Additionally, we have several versions of hair and tattoos for even more variety.

Once the characters are generated, they are checked to avoid any combinations that look way off. Some weirdness is okay, we want characters to reflect experimenting with different styles, but occasionally some just go a little too far from reality. Once we are happy with the group, it is exported from Popul8 and then imported into the game.

INGAME SETTINGS
The original texture assets are usually a neutral gray to allow for even more variations of color for the clothing, hair, and accessories. Once in the game, artists choose color palettes for the characters. It’s a fine balance between too garish or too dull and we have included both common and rare color choices to represent the variations you find in real life. Some people love a splash of color while others prefer more muted tones, and our character models should represent that.

Selecting a jacket for the character

Getting your hair done


[h2]CHALLENGES[/h2]
There were quite a few challenges with the character models for Cities: Skylines II. Some of these challenges were technical and expected, like what is the art style, what are the proper blend shapes, how clothes work when they are layered on top of each other, and how to compress animations. Other challenges were trickier to solve, like how different sizes of characters fit onto motorcycles or retargeting animations for children so they all look correct. Then there was just picking clothing combinations that looked realistic but interesting and not too odd - that was more of a fun challenge and it was great to see all the possibilities of the tools.

Looking to the future, we want to add more variations in character blend shapes, clothing, and pretty much all aspects of character models, so the city has a wider spectrum of citizens. This also includes animations and accessories for disabled characters and much more. While we have many ideas ourselves, we are always eager to hear from you about the kind of citizens you would like to see and which ones grow to become your favorites.

This brings us to the end of this development diary and we hope you enjoyed another peek behind the curtain. We’re back tomorrow with the last of this mini-series, where we cover the Tutorials & Advisor and how they can help you build the city of your dreams.

Hello and welcome! It’s a new day and that means a new Cities: Skylines II development diary. Today we take a look at the companies and billboards in the game. In the effort to make a more realistic city-building game, we have given companies and their billboards a significant upgrade from the original Cities: Skylines. Companies now play a role in the game mechanics, and billboards represent the companies that reside in the buildings.

Cities: Skylines II introduces companies as a working entity. They will move into the city if there is enough demand and influence the availability of jobs and the type of education needed. Companies contribute to city wealth and can import and export goods from outside the city. These features can greatly influence how you build public transportation within the city and outside connections to neighboring cities. The types of industries that are in the city also impact the types of companies that move in. Industry types will attract companies that can utilize the materials from those industries.

So let’s dive right in and start looking at all the different ways this shows up in the gameplay.


[h2]COMPANIES[/h2]
Billboards have a function and meaning beyond being static advertisements on buildings. After a location has been zoned, companies that operate in that zone type can start to move in. When a company moves into the building it will display its logo on the billboard. The amount, size, and style of billboards on a building varies and is not the same each time the building appears in the game. For the company to stay in the location it will need utilities, materials, and workers, while also being profitable. Access to the location plays a big part in this as does the level of education in the city. Cargo routes can be a great help in keeping companies in business. You can learn more about all of this in our previous development diary Economy & Production.

The company that moves into a building will have its logo on the billboards of the building

BUILDING COLORS
When a company moves in they can also paint the building in the company colors. Different buildings may take on more color from the logo than others. The color can show up as a highlight color in the details of the building or as the main wall color. Some buildings can have more than one color from the logo in different elements.

Companies have three colors picked from the company logo that are used as color variants in the buildings

COMPANY CHIRPS
Chirps inform you about what’s happening in the city. Citizens chirp about their lives and service providers about how the services are working. Companies also chirp about moving in, opening new locations, open positions, and more. They can be found in the chirper along with the other chirps. Companies show an icon of their logo next to their name, and the street address of their location is often in the chirp.

Selecting the street address highlighted with green will focus the camera on the location of the company

COMPANY PRODUCTION CHAIN
Companies are a part of the production chain, and one company can own and operate a production chain from harvesting and storing raw materials to producing and selling a final product to customers. Each company has a zone type where they can operate and a material they produce or sell.

One company can be seen in several facilities in different stages of the production chain


[h2]BILLBOARDS[/h2]
Before a company has moved into a building the billboards will advertise space available in that location. These were designed to make it easier to spot where there are still empty buildings without a company.

There are a few variations on the empty space available advertisements, but they can all be easily recognized from further away by the similar blue color scheme.

COLOR VARIETY
Creating a large amount of logos in a variety of styles to make sure no one color dominates the billboard landscape proved an interesting puzzle to solve. Our approach was to make a chart with the background colors in columns and build a logo on top. The tricky part was to add an equal amount of logos to each column while keeping the colors and logos different enough from each other. There are some old familiar names from Cities: Skylines that have gotten a makeover and plenty of new ones. The brands also include a few nods to our developers and some word plays.

Example of some of the logos for companies arranged by color, to make sure enough color variation is present.

ACCESSIBILITY
With the colors chosen, it was time to make sure that each logo was distinct and readable. That meant checking that some logos were darker, some were lighter, and that there were some bright colors and some muted tones. In this process, we also made sure that each logo was readable for the colorblind. Finding the color combinations that would fulfill all these criteria was quite challenging and a little frustrating at times, but one of the most interesting and fun things to figure out.

Here is an example of logos checked for Deuteranopia and Protanopia.

That’s it for today. We hope you enjoyed this look at what’s behind the billboards and a sneak peek at all the brands available in the game. We continue this series tomorrow where we go behind the scenes of the Citizen Characters, so stay tuned.

Dear mayors! The announcement that Cities: Skylines II will be using Paradox Mods for mods distribution has sparked a lot of discussions - and we are happy to see that you share the same passion for Mods we do! We understand this change brings about questions - This Dev Diary aims at reducing uncertainty and hopefully will make the transition of you using a new platform easier.

[h2]Background[/h2]
First and foremost - Paradox Mods is our own platform-neutral modding system. The initial version was made to allow mod support for the Cities: Skylines Xbox Edition. Since then, the platform has come a long way in terms of features and volume: We now serve mods for over a dozen games!

Paradox’s considered opinion is that mods are, and should always be, free of charge community-created content. This is not something that we will ever change. Mods have always been one of the most impactful ways a community can change their own game, and this creativity is never something we would want to hinder.

[h2]Features[/h2]
Given the extensive use of mods in Cities: Skylines and our ambition to make mods more available, we have been hard at work developing and perfecting many features that were already part of Paradox Mods, and new features that would be beneficial for the Cities: Skylines II community. Let’s show you its features!

[h3]Subscriptions[/h3]
As is normal, provided you have a Paradox account, you can subscribe to mods. Subscribing will cause the mod to be automatically downloaded and installed on your computer. When that mod later has an update, it will also be automatically kept up to date. Subscriptions are portable across platforms (Steam, Windows Store, Playstation, Xbox, etc.), meaning you can play with the same configuration of mods on any platform that you own the game on. Be aware that code mods may not be possible to enable on consoles however!

This is an example of what a mod information view would look like in-game.

[h3]Discussions[/h3]
In order to facilitate the conversations and discussions between users and creators, mods can be connected to forum topics. This means that all of the features available on the Paradox Forums can be used while discussing mods. Pins, topics, future planned features, and different active conversations can all be delegated their own thread.

[h3]Game Support[/h3]
Since a mod may have been made to support a specific version or versions of the game, Paradox Mods gives the mod creator the option to tell the players what version of the game the mod is intended to work with. Naturally, Paradox Mods won’t prevent you from playing with “incompatible” mods, but it will tell you when you are about to try!

[h3]Versioning[/h3]
Since many of our games go through quite significant changes with most big DLC releases and/or Free Updates, and some users like playing old game versions, Paradox Mods also supports downloading older versions of a mod. This will allow you to play with mods targeted at non-current game versions. That means that if you, for some reason, don’t want to play the latest version of the mod, you can revert to an earlier version. The version check discussed in the previous paragraph will also be active if you were to accidentally (or on purpose) select a version of the mod that is incompatible with your game.

[h3]Dependencies[/h3]
Mods sometimes depend on other mods for functionality (like Harmony Mod in Cities: Skylines (1), for decoration (a tree or a prop), or for memes (looking at you “Ability to Read”), and we also support this type of relationship in the Paradox Mods system. If you subscribe to a mod with dependencies, you’ll be given the option also automatically to subscribe to those mods.

As a bonus feature of this, collection mods can be created as basically empty mods containing only dependencies.

[h3]Playsets[/h3]
Users with completely different mod setups (maybe one for your east-asian style and one for your cute French cottage-core set) can use the playset feature, where entire blocks of mods can be activated as a unit. Playsets are entire setups that will ensure that dependencies are fulfilled. Playsets are, of course, cloud-synced and portable between your devices.

Each subscription will belong to a given playset - This means that you can add collection mods to different playsets and, in this way, quickly build different experiences to your liking.

For some games, the order in which mods are loaded is important. In such cases, the playset will also allow you to set the order in which you want the mods to be loaded. By default, mods with dependencies will load after the mods they depend on.

You can add up to 50 different playsets. This is a playset containing three Paradox-themed buildings.

Choosing what playset to play with is a breeze!

[h3]Tags[/h3]
In order to make searching mods easier, up to ten tags may be attached to a mod. The game team will define these - An initial set will be made for the launch of the game, and more may be added later on. Search results can be filtered on what tags you want the mod to have. Some examples would be to filter on “highrise”, “modern”, “office”, or maybe “collection”, “French”, or ”cottage”. You can then apply sort orders such as “most recent” or “highest rated”.

We will write more Developer Diaries in the future where we talk more about Search and Sorting, so if this interests you, stick around for more of these!

[h2]Mods in Cities: Skylines II[/h2]
Our intent with the mods solution is to make mods easily available on all platforms that the game is launching on. For that purpose, we have constructed an in-game interface for mods browsing, subscription, and management. In addition, there will be mod tools delivered with the game, aimed at making mod creation easier and more accessible to those new to the hobby. You can read more about these tools in one of the latest Developer Diaries from Colossal Order.

You will also be able to check out the most recent Paradox Mods additions from your browser so that you can modify your playsets and feed your mod addiction on the go.

The web interface is made for the modder on the go.

We believe that modding is a crucial part of the game experience and will be an important factor in determining the success of the game on PC as well as on consoles. Naturally, console players may face some limitations that PC players do not - primarily regarding available disk space and use of code mods - but we will do our best to accommodate as broad an audience as possible.

[h2]We are not done yet…[/h2]
…and we probably never will be. The Paradox Mods platform is under continuous development and will remain so - We are currently working on more features that focus on efficiency and convenience, and of course a whole bunch of other stuff that we are not yet ready to share. A couple of examples of this are differential updates, where only the part of the mod that actually changed is downloaded and installed, and granular search, where we enable weighted search results, aiming to deliver more precise and relevant mods.

We hope you’ll share any feedback with us so that we can make this a platform of your dreams.

Hi everyone! We are back with another development diary for Cities: Skylines II and today is all about the game balancing. We want to give you a peek behind the curtain as we discuss our guiding principles and challenges in balancing Cities: Skylines II. Striking the right balance is always a challenge, but reaching a good balance for the various features is an important part of how the game plays and feels, and we believe it is especially important in simulation games.


[h2]GENERAL PROCESS[/h2]
From the start, the vision has been to create an accessible, yet deep game, that is enjoyable for both new and experienced players. As an example, we created Government Subsidies to ensure a smooth early game progression. This mechanic helps burgeoning cities to cover running costs while there are few sources of income in the city. Once the city has grown enough and become self-sufficient, the subsidies decrease and eventually cease entirely. This means that the gameplay is easy to get into, but keeps you learning new things.

Another guiding idea has been to emphasize realism in the game. How buildings function, service budgets, trade, and citizen consumption have all been designed to be closer to how they appear in the real world. As a rule of thumb in our balancing we have kept in mind a town of roughly 10k citizens and how we would expect the game to function in a town of that size. For example, in Cities: Skylines II many of the power plants require fuel. In addition to maintaining good road connections to the power plant so it receives fuel to keep functioning, you need to keep in mind that the fuel actually costs money which is added to the base upkeep of the power plant.

A game of this size requires appropriate tools to keep all the features and their values in check. A master sheet of all the building values has been built over the course of the development to track and adjust them as needed. With the master sheet, we can easily make changes to a large selection of assets as we can use our own in-house tool to sync the values from the master sheet to the project, or vice versa allowing us to bring data and new assets from the project to the master sheet. On top of the master sheet, we have a multitude of other sheets on various other balancing aspects.


[h2]GAME PROGRESSION[/h2]
A completely new progression system was developed for Cities: Skylines II. Milestones are unlocked by earning Experience Points (XP) as opposed to the population-based progression in Cities: Skylines which made the cities very similar to each other (requiring large cities to reach the final milestones). With active and passive XP you can create different kinds of cities, big and small, and still be able to achieve all of your goals. Balancing the progression, i.e. XP rewards is an important part of adjusting the pace of the game.

The game is paced so you always have things to do. In the early game, the XP progression has been balanced to allow you to experiment with all the newly unlocked features before reaching the next milestone. This allows the game to be learned and absorbed in good-sized chunks that do not overwhelm you but instead push you gently forward.

Balancing the XP rewards for building the city, placing buildings, and constructing roads was a tricky challenge. The XP rewards should be meaningful enough but not rack up XP too quickly so that the milestones aren’t reached in too quick succession. As an example, the road building rewards XP for each segment and if the amount is high, the road building alone can quickly fulfill the required amount to unlock the next milestone.

Adjusting the passive XP rewards was a new type of challenge for Cities: Skylines II. The passive XP route to unlocking milestones is slower than actively expanding the city, but it also fits quite well with the idea of small towns progressing slower than large cities in real life. Earning passive XP still has to be rewarding, so it can be a viable option to consider and thus balancing the passive rewards was crucial to get right.

While there definitely are ways to cheese the XP gains through just building buildings, as some buildings give more XP per Construction Cost, we have deliberately allowed that to keep the XP values in some sensical and understandable format. In our mind, it comes down to how you choose to play the game.

XP requirements for milestones increase exponentially and set the pace of the game


[h2]BUILDING STATS[/h2]
Another important aspect of the game that needed balancing was the building stats, which govern the entire functionality of buildings. City services have service-specific stats and each service type has required a separate balancing cycle to make them function as intended in different-sized cities. As city services are upgradable providing more meaningful choices in the long run, we had to not only balance the buildings’ base stats but also consider the effects of the upgrades themselves. This meant looking at for example how much the upgrades increase the capacities of the buildings, how potential new functionality affects the city, whether there are any overlapping effects, and what the building and upkeep costs are compared to building the same city service building multiple times.

Zoned buildings and signature buildings fall into different categories depending on their zone type. Each zone type has balancing values that govern the entire zone type automatically. These include multipliers such as the size of the building lot and the number of floors and apartments for residential buildings. For workplaces, the size of the building affects the number of jobs and things such as storage space and production speed/capacity.

Signature buildings follow the same stats as regular zoned buildings, but to give them more meaning they also have various different effects which benefit the city. Some of these effects can give a local boost and some can even have a city-wide effect. To balance the effects the unlocking requirements have been put so that it feels like a meaningful building to achieve.

EXAMPLE CASE: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
The elementary school has a short service coverage range and a small capacity which controls how far the well-being bonus for families reaches, shown in the game as the green color on the road network when the education info view is open. Families with children receive a small boost to their well-being when live in the green area. The well-being bonus gives families a reason to relocate closer to elementary schools and this simulates the idea of families wanting to live close to schools in real life. The reason for the short service coverage range and the small capacity is that we wanted to simulate the idea of each district of the city having its own elementary schools.

The master sheet provides a quick overview of our education buildings and allows us to easily make changes and apply them to the game


[h2]ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION[/h2]
The last example of balancing we will look at today is electricity. The electricity production in Cities: Skylines II has been one of the most interesting and multifaceted things to balance in the game. In addition to the basic values for city service building and upkeep cost, we have had to think about how the availability of fuel and its price affects the functionality of the power plant and its upkeep cost (yes, this time the fuel used to keep the power plant running is part of its running cost!). We have also had to consider the building’s electricity output and fuel storage capacity as well as its pollution footprint.

One of the prevailing questions has been how to balance power plants that differ from each other quite a lot. As an example, we have the wind turbine which produces entirely clean energy, doesn’t require fuel, has a very limited pollution footprint (only noise pollution which in this case refers to it being a bit of an eyesore if placed in someone’s backyard) and is relatively cheap to build. We also have the coal power plant which in turn uses a lot of fuel, takes up a lot of space, and causes a lot of ground and air pollution, but it also has a higher energy output and, unlike the wind turbine, employs many workers.

Balancing these power plants requires a mix of mathematics and gameplay ideas. How do we compare clean energy and fossil fuel-based energy? How do we emphasize the pros and cons of the different ways to produce energy in a way that each choice you make is in itself a valid choice? And in the end, we also want to keep it grounded in realism: Coal is a more stable and high energy source compared to wind energy but on the other hand, it is far more polluting.

Balancing different sources of energy provided an interesting challenge

In addition to those considerations, we also want to keep in mind the different states of the city’s progression. Some power plants suit the different-sized cities better than others. A wind farm is an excellent and relatively cheap way to start a city but it can hardly power a growing metropolis by itself. And with the different power plants we want to provide you with the options to choose where to go from there and what fits your city’s needs and budget at any given time.

As you can tell, we put a lot more thought into balancing electricity production than just comparing the size and output stats of each building. We hope this leaves you with a lot of interesting and viable choices when you decide how to power your city, and as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback once you start building your own cities. Tomorrow, we switch topics and take a look at the technical side of Companies & Billboards.