Cities:Skylines

[Solmyr]

I think getting European cities "right" is a bit difficult, anyways, since very few modern cities here were built on empty fields but rather grew over centuries (still waiting for a game to cover that ... heck, even a US city from 1700s frontier settlement to modern metropolis would be cool).

I mean, even just being able to put commercial and residential areas into the same building would go a long way.

[Josquius]

:

Unfortunately for Josq it still seems to create mostly North American looking cities.

I think getting European cities "right" is a bit difficult, anyways, since very few modern cities here were built on empty fields but rather grew over centuries (still waiting for a game to cover that ... heck, even a US city from 1700s frontier settlement to modern metropolis would be cool).

This would masssively improve the game imo and add the right amount of realism. You don't just have a silly empty field to start with. Instead you start at 1950 and have your historic core and 18th and 19th century new towns, victorian slums, early 20th century proto sprawl and must grow out from there. Maybe some villages to swallow as you go.

To change the game radically have an element of change vs preservation to balance Nd consider too. Introduce neighbourhood communities and you have to do stuff to get them to agree to you building there.
Rather than just population milestone =here's another empty field, it's you have a university, that village and it's surrounding land agrees to join.

But even without the historic angle being able to make proper city centres would be nice. The game actively punishes you for putting shops next to housing which is silly.

[Syt]

Dev Diary - Road Tools:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/development-diary-1-road-tools.1590300/

- many new convenience features (some previously available in mods) like easy parallel roads, creating grids in a few clicks, creating better highways (acceleration lanes, more & less restrictive intersections), roundabouts (which can be placed on existing intersections), easier road upgrading, utilities integrated into roads, placing traffic lights/turn signs, pedestrian crossings, automatic intersection creation if you run a new road across multiple existing streets etc.
- elevated roads
- road peripherals (trees, sound barriers) can be added to existing roads rather than being distinct road options in the menu
- parking lots that tie into the transport logistics (some citizens willing to pay more parking fees to walk less), I guess you could create park & ride setups?
- road maintenance building/crews (including snow plows) - badly maintained roads can lead to traffic slow down and accidents























Getting unreasonably excited by the road options.

[Solmyr]

Traffic accidents!

[Syt]

But even without the historic angle being able to make proper city centres would be nice. The game actively punishes you for putting shops next to housing which is silly.

The guy who made the city in the trailer (he's a C:S YouTuber) said in a video that there will be mixed zoning in C:S, i.e. buildings with both businesses and residential units as you would see in many European cities.

[Zanza]

 

[Sheilbh]

Very much looking forward to the public transport update

Edit: I hate planning roads and have never built a highway so hopefully this will make things easier.

[Syt]

DD about the new traffic AI. Sounds promising if they can pull it off.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/development-diary-2-traffic-ai.1591141/

Video summary:

[Zanza]

The last two dev diaries were really good. Looking forward to this.

[Syt]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modding-and-performance-for-cities-skylines-ii.1601865/

Mods will only live on Paradox's mod thingy, not the Steam Workshop. Official explanation is that this way mods will be available to both console and PC players.

[garbon]

Oh and they are just going to release the game now though it hasn't met their targeted benchmark for performance.

Starting to sound like a mess.

[garbon]

Maybe they should not have decided to go down route of game generating details for each of the citizens.

[Josquius]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modding-and-performance-for-cities-skylines-ii.1601865/

Mods will only live on Paradox's mod thingy, not the Steam Workshop. Official explanation is that this way mods will be available to both console and PC players.

My prediction, this does not last long.
The convenience of steam worshop is something people have grown used to.

[Jacob]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modding-and-performance-for-cities-skylines-ii.1601865/

Mods will only live on Paradox's mod thingy, not the Steam Workshop. Official explanation is that this way mods will be available to both console and PC players.

That makes sense. I don't believe there's a way for consoles to interact with steam workshop.

I think the trend of leaning into UGC is gathering steam (ahem) at the moment, including making it available on consoles. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out with regard to Steam (and the Windows and Epic stores too, for that matter).

[Jacob]

My prediction, this does not last long.
The convenience of steam worshop is something people have grown used to.

I find the Steam Workshop pretty terrible compared to Nexus mods. It's impossible to find things or find out what's new (though if I'm missing any tricks, please let me know).

The challenge for devs/ publishers is that you really want mods to available on all platforms. Meanwhile, platform owners are not going to want to give up any control (or their revenue cut) to facilitate easy interoperability; they'll also have different standards for curation (I don't know if Nintendo is cool with mods on their hardware, for example). And mod-authors, of course, are generally not going to want to bother with jumping through hoops to upload their mods to multiple different platforms.

It's not an insurmountable problem. Minecraft and Roblox UGC is available on all platforms for example, but there UGC generates revenue which justifies building out and maintaining the game specific mod-sharing platform (aka "the store").

Depending on a game's priorities and strategy (i.e. what audience it's trying to grow), publishers are going to have different solutions to the problem. IMO if Paradox is trying to grow the console side of their business, then it makes sense to going after a mod distribution model that gives equal access across all platforms even if it's annoyingly unfamiliar to PC users on Steam.