Once again we are back with yet another development diary for Cities: Skylines. This time we are going to get a glimpse of the public transport options in your future cities.

If you want to refresh your memory about the previous dev diaries, check here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?802652-Cities-Skylines-dev-diary-archive

Working on public transport in Cities: Skylines we wanted to offer a variety of choices for the players to set up their public transport network while still keeping in mind that Cities: Skylines is first and foremost a city builder game rather than a transport simulator. Our goal was to implement the feature in so that it would be easy to use, following in suit with the rest of the features while still being robust enough to make it interesting and strategically sound. The fans of Cities in Motion games had always wanted to build rail networks and airports to control the intercity traffic but the scope of those games was always within the city limits. However, with Cities: Skylines' goods transport and citizens moving in and out of the city, we felt that it was a good time to bring in the intercity traffic possibilities to public transport.

Public transport types
Cities: Skylines features several modes of public transport. You can set up a bus network, dig metro tunnels, lay down tracks for passenger and cargo trains, build both passenger and cargo terminals for ships and build an airpot. Bus and metro network is for inner city transport while train network can service both inner city and intercity needs (both, passenger and cargo trains!). The harbors and the airport service intercity connections.

Bus transport
The bus transport is the first, low-cost choice for public transport. There are two structures required for it to work: the bus depot and bus stops. The bus depot works as the storage space for the buses in the city and when setting up new bus routes you can see the buses leaving the depot for their designated routes. Adjusting the budget for buses causes more (or less) buses to appear on the routes. One bus depot can service the whole city but a placing more than one in strategic places around the city can shorten the time when new buses reach their routes since they don't have to drive through the whole city to get there.

The bus depot.

A bus stop in the suburbs.

Metro
Metro is an efficient transport mode to move a lot of people fast. However, its downside is the high building cost since the player needs to build both the metro entrances (stations) as well as the underground tracks. Underground track building is done in a special view mode where the tracks and stations are highlighted. This mode also highlights the other public transport buildings, tracks and routes which makes planning of the network easier.

A metro entrance near the center of the city.

Inspecting the metro line in the special public transport info view mode.

Trains
Trains are divided into passenger and cargo trains. Both trains have their own terminals that the player can build in the city. The player can use the train network in two different ways:
1) If they only build the terminals and connect the train tracks to the outside connecting train tracks found on the map, the terminals will service intercity traffic, importing and exporting cargo and passengers (tourists).
2) The player is also able to use the train line tool to create train routes within the city limits i.e. the player is able to build inner city train lines servicing the different parts of the city.
Train tracks are cheaper to build compared to underground metro tracks but train tracks require room to be built hence they must be fitted within the city next to all the buildings and roads. However, the player can build elevated train tracks to navigate over some of the obstacles a city can present.

The passenger train terminal. Tourists are boarding the train.

Cargo train terminal located in an industrial area of the city.

Cargo train has left the terminal and is heading outside of the city.

Cities: Skylines features elevated train tracks as well.

Railway bridge next to the highway.

Harbors
Harbors are divided into a passenger harbor and a cargo harbor. Both service intercity traffic, bringing in tourists and shipping goods to and from the city. Due to the huge capacity of the ships harbors are one of the largest entry points into the city by means of public transport.

Passenger ship arriving to the passenger terminal.

A Cargo ship and a cargo terminal.

Airport
Airport services mostly passengers and is the most expensive public transport investment. It brings in a lot of tourists and can really boost the economy. While the airport increases tourism into the city it also causes quite a lot of noise pollution which means that it is wise to build the airport far from residential zones.

The airport.

- Henkka also known as an artist, designer and level designer at Colossal Order

 

[Alex_brunius]

yeah, even painted red it still looks like a coach ..

What makes you think it's a coach is the big mirrors coming down from the roof, the front window curved all the way up and the lack of doors.

It's clear it's not actually a coach though since it is a low floor bus ( windows are too low to be a coach ).

 

[Darkath]

The only thing that makes you think it's a coach is the big mirrors coming down from the roof and the lack of 3 doors.

It's clear it's not actually a coach since it is a low floor bus ( windows are to low to be a coach bus ).

I would say the lack of doors is confusing too, especially the middle exit door you find on most city bus models (unless it's a british one, then the doors would be on the other side). But that's nitpicking. Metro stations are a much bigger issue xD

 

[tyteen4a03]

The metro entrances in Hong Kong look like this:

It is elevated a bit to prevent water from flooding in.

Also: Please, please please allow us to build our own railroad junctions.

 

[Thomas-Belgium]

Regarding the elevated railroad tracks, I was wondering if it will also be possible to lower the track into the ground, kindof like here but with railroad tracks in the middle?


This is a very common thing on important lines, partly due to the fact that this system will result in less noise pollution (the sound does not carry as far) and partly because the maximum slope on railroad tracks is very limited (here in Belgium I believe it's 12%). In general a railroad track will be as flat as possible and intersecting roads will go either over it or under it, or there will be a crossroads.

 

[artml]

Trams/trolleybuses please please please please. Since the cities will be kinda small in size (1M or less) it makes much more sense to build tram systems instead of more heavy metro.

A DLC would be fine though. I'd gladly pay additional dollars to have trams in the city.

 

[Woody Red]

That rail station looks okay... but I would like a variety in types of stations - that one looks very modern. I would like something more traditional also -

also - I would be interested in how the footprint of the station compares to that of medium or high density buildings - it would be good if stations were the right depth from road to rail to be able to put high density buildings right next to the stations on either side - and the railway tracks would not be in the way to place them there.

in terms of the amount of rolling stock on the rail at any one time - perhaps a railway depot would be a good building to have. much like the bus depot, this is where trains would start and finish their routes. and where they rest after a hard days work -

they also look pretty cool - and would add some realism.

 

[unmerged(76198)]

Traffic usage visualization

Really great work everybody! Really great to see so many options of transportation! For a 1.0 game, this is already amazing, would love to play this today.

Some questions and feedback:
- airport looks tiny related to plane, maybe you guys could use small planes and call it a regional airport for now? On 2.0 then you could add an international one for bigger planes.
- metro entrance as it's own tile, instead of on the street really is not great, but we will all survive this for now! Modders could always try to take this forward anyway
- any idea on traffic usage visualizations for each of these transport methods? I always loved seeing the routing view in SimCity to try to understand where people move from/to in the city, to try to improve traffic

Keep the amazing work going guys!

Thank you so much to revive the hope of city builders’ fans with this new game!

"Traffic usage visualization for each of these transport methods" would be absolutely necessary! Airport, harbor, metro/train station will certainly be upgradeable according to the traffic.

Wish list:

- Transport planning tool (sketching lines and create “reserved area” – something similar would be great for roads)
- Small, medium, large multimodal transport hub (railway station, metro, bus, parking) – with commercial areas
- Ferry-boat
- Bus rapid transit (BRT) with different types of dedicated lines and stations, trolley bus option
- Different types of train and bus
- Tram!!!! Please…please…

 

[slornie]

The passenger train terminal. Tourists are boarding the train.

The airport.

Not a huge fan of the expanse of wasted space on both the passenger rail station and either side of the terminal building at the airport. How about putting working car parking there for commuters travelling from the station (rather than have them park along the roadside)? Another good use would be for us to be able to use the space for transport interchanges - e.g. add a bus station with 3-4 bus bays on the concrete apron to the left of the railway station, or a metro station entrance on the smaller apron on the right.

 

[Woody Red]

Real airports are HUGE. if this game is comprised of squares, of which we can only play 9 - perhaps have the airport as a whole square - so we would not be able to edit that square, but it would be a .. fairly to scale representation of a real airport - with to scale runways, taxiways and terminals. we can then connect our cities to it via motorway, rail, underground etc. it would function, I guess, somewhat like a great work in simcity 2013.

just a thought..

 

[Eurofighter1200]

I dont like the Metro Station needs so much space i like it in cim they have the entrance on the sidewalk. In Simcity4 it was really annoying to let space free for the Metro Stations please do Metro Stations entance on the Sidewalk. I like the Train but i think the Airport ist just to small or the Plane is to big

 

[Bapadox]

Thanks henkka & CO devs for the nice update. There are nice and varied options for transportations.

As others here stated, I would also like to stress that the airport seems too small to be realistic, while the A380 plane is too big for the tiny size of the landing strip. Perhaps having the option of at least three sizes (small airfield, regional and international airports) together with planes of the adequate size for each choice would make it more realistic and appealing.

I have some additional questions:
(1) if we build bus routes up to the city map edge will it carry cims to work on the outside world and/or bring cims from the outside world to work in our cities? (I am basically asking if we can use buses to make intercity connections). The bus coach model would be pretty good for these kind of bus routes. And the bus garage could be modded into an intercity bus terminal.

(2) Can we make one bus stop serve multiple bus routes? This is quite common in city centres. Or, can we include an already plopped bus stop into those of a newly made bus route? If yes, how is this done? Do we simply clic on the already existing bus stop while building the bus route?

(3) Is it possible to have multi-purpose stations? Could it be modded later? i.e., could we have a matro/train combined, transfer station?

(4) Is it possible to bring cargo by train to a cargo ship terminal (to bring the outcome of the industries to the harbor instead of directly to the outside world by train)? How the game engine decides which way cargo goes away (by truck, by cargo train, or by cargo ship)? Is the decision based on the time it takes for the goody to reach the edge of the map?

(5) Can we build/add multiple passenger & cargo ship terminals aside of each other or is there a limitation in the maximum number of such terminals in a given city?

Thanks in advance for reading & considering our comments, suggestions and criticism!

 

[Taghan]

Please lower the saturation. I am reminded in a bad way of SimCity Societies.

 

[slornie]

(4) Is it possible to bring cargo by train to a cargo ship terminal (to bring the outcome of the industries to the harbor instead of directly to the outside world by train)? How the game engine decides which way cargo goes away (by truck, by cargo train, or by cargo ship)? Is the decision based on the time it takes for the goody to reach the edge of the map?

+1 to this idea! It would be great to be able to build the industrial zone away from the river/sea front yet still have it connected to the harbour via an efficient non-road transit route.

 

[Woody Red]

Please lower the saturation. I am reminded in a bad way of SimCity Societies.

lol - I bought that game when it came out .... I dont remember much about it - my mind must have blanked it out. too much trauma

 

[Sparky66]

I know they may not be final textures but these screens look way too bright and cartoonish.

The building roofs and cars need toning down a lot. I live on a hillside and can see the town below. The rooftops are all grey slate or brown earth coloured tiles, with a few brighter terra cotta coloured roofs and one house with dark green glazed tiles to brighten it up a bit. Even then they are all heavily weathered to tone them down further. There certainly aren't bright blue, red and green roofs like the screens. Looking at cars IRL, the dominant colours are whites, silvers and blacks, with a fair amount of dark blue, a few red cars and a couple inbrighter colours like yellow and mint green. The cars in the screenshots are all very bright shades of red, blue, yellow, green and pink. I don't think I can see any silver, black or white cars.

CIM had a really nice, realistic, gritty look to it. Don't give cities skylines a horrible cartoonish look just to try and be like simcity.

On another note, can we change the public transport vehicles to different colours rather than bright orange? The option to choose different capacity vehicles would be nice too. And those green shipping container trains could do with some texture variety. Also, perhaps subway stops could be place on sidewalks like bus stops?

 

[BrunoDerKaiser]

CIM had a really nice, realistic, gritty look to it. Don't give cities skylines a horrible cartoonish look just to try and be like simcity.

I second this. The first CIM had a wonderful look and feel to it. A masterpiece.

 

[borstalbob]

I am so looking forward to this game. My only objection being that it looks very cartoony in it's present state.

 

[IceTytanFang]

While not related to the diary itself, I think this really important to the game itself: will we be able to terraform the city/ region before we officially found it, much like in SimCity 4?

 

[Funny mayor]

I am so looking forward to this game. My only objection being that it looks very cartoony in it's present state.

I agree, the colours are too strong, maybe we need more roof and wall colours, variations of red, and many other colours of the environment. In general, what can I say? The developers are working very hard, I see, and they are welcoming our demands. This is good, the transportation system is well developing. I'm happy to see that there are elevated rail tracks, but not only that. Beyond the problem of strong colours there are two other problems: 1) the pavement of the metro entrance: it's very unreal. Please, can you change that colour with a normal white or grey pavement, like a normal sidewalk? 2) I hope that there will be almost 2 kinds of airport, the second one larger than the one we saw, and with an outer fence for protection, in any case. Now I'm waiting for a good highway product. Don't let us down, guys, and keep on working like that. Maybe you're doing the right game, after 10 years.

 

[Thud]

For those saying the Metro stations should be smaller... You're thinking purely in terms of realism without any consideration given to the fact that this is a game and needs to be playable. It would be very frustrating from a user experience perspective to have to search for tiny metro stations and click precisely on a small (but significant from a gameplay perspective) structure every time you want to see details\make changes to the structure.