We have been busy little bees working on something completely new for Cities: Skylines and now we finally get to talk about it!

Cities: Skylines Snowfall is inspired by the Finnish winter that just seems to last forever. It's all about what we see and feel around us: Snow, ice and cold weather. You get to experience the snowfall, so make sure your citizens stay warm by offering heating, and tackling the challenges of slippery roads slowing down traffic.

People have been asking us to add seasons to the game. However we felt that winter should have it's own theme with unique challenges. This means that winter maps have eternal snow and new features tied to it. You can create your own winter maps in the map editor or play the three maps that are available in Snowfall.

The snow is naturally a very visual feature and we have created quite a few new buildings for the theme. Many of the base game buildings have been varied to fit winter conditions better, so you won’t have flowerbeds or palm trees in your winter wonderland. For modders we'll have more information how to prepare their assets for the snow coming later, but what we can say at this point is that the snow is generated by code and the assets should work with minor tweaks. Roads are also covered by snow and citizens wear winter clothing. Just like in European maps, winter maps have special buildings only available in them. We have also added some weather effects for all the other map themes.

Not only is the winter map about the visuals but there are special services that are available only in this theme. So make sure you clear the roads of the snow and heat up the citizen's home because the temperature is dropping. We'll be talking about these new features and more in a weekly developer diary until the release, so stay tuned!

Are you ready for a gorgeous winter wonderland?

 

[Michaelschort]

So will the snow plow need to be refilled with thawing salt at the road maintenance depot, a bit like the Garbage trucks? Also it would be nice if i could produce Salt at the mining facility to deliver it to the road maintenance depot.

 

[petufo]

Thanks for the info. So the snow will work on custom roads from the Workshop? I would like to know more about tram tracks - could we lay them like in CiM 2, or tram rails will be included in special road type?
And did I understand well that we will have to take care of the roads even on "forever summer" maps? I mean repairing them etc.

 

[nuclearmissile]

So will the snow plow need to be refilled with thawing salt at the road maintenance depot, a bit like the Garbage trucks? Also it would be nice if i could produce Salt at the mining facility to deliver it to the road maintenance depot.

Well since the police system in After Dark was exactly that, just police cars going around filling up their load like garbage trucks, so about snowplows...

 

[grizzycz]

Well, there are some very good marketers working in CO. But sorry, you got me with AD, but you will not fool my again with Snowfall.

if you fix bugs introduced by AD and add more depth to the game (real challenges, not just plopping another service depo) you will have me back on board. Untill then I am not spending a single euro on you anymore. And I have to say that it makes me sad rather than happy.

 

[Cymsdale]

Really wish they did changing seasons, don't like having it static per map.

 

[MysticMTL]

I live in a city that actually experiences 6 months of snow every year. We spend most of this time wishing for the snow to go away. But there can be some interesting options in the game to simulate a real winter experience. While I'm not crazy about the stuff in real life, it might be fun to simulate. My main concern is that the options may be quite limited for a full fledged DLC addon.

Here we used to burn garbage to melt the snow and produce electricity. But environmentalists felt it caused too much pollution. The same thing when our cities would dump the snow directly into the river. So now we let the snow pile up, several hundred feet high, which usually finally melts by June or July.

As for new industry, I could see a road salt factory, or heavy vehicle manufacturer move into our virtual city. We could budget snow removal costs, and watch our little Cims get stuck in the snow and slide around the streets of our virtual city.

Then there are the positives of a winter biome. Watching children play in the snow, making snow forts, sliding down hills on toboggans and skating on the rivers and lakes in the town. And ski resorts with snow hills and hotels in the mountains.

Just thinking about frozen lakes and rivers. Would they be frozen in this biome? And perhaps we could employ ice-breaker boats, or spend money on dynamite to blow up the ice dams so that boats could safely pass through? Or leave the lakes and rivers frozen and watch our cim citizens build little fishing shanties all over the ice?

I look forward to more info on this upcoming DLC.

 

[slimpig-porkune]

Banished has fully fledged seasons and a minimal development team… And yes, seasons would need to be quite long to be meaningful. Coupled with manual player control (switch seasons on/off, stay in one forever, choose which one should be on now etc.) that shouldn’t be a problem.

As I wrote here, if it takes too much time, do a Traffic DLC first, add seasons later.

Also, no fully fledged seasons are only part of the problem. There is a backlog of important issues that still are not fixed, nor any information available if / when they might be fixed. And there are tons of cool opportunities out there, that could be done as well, if the focus wouldn’t be so much on aesthetics.

Actually I don't mind the 4 seasons too much cause I love playing on tropical maps. and it only has 2 possible weather. Sunny / Rainy. I'm happy with the addition of rain and fog. It's a good start I guess. This DLC, I think, is not for everyone. It's either you pick it up or not. As for me, It depends on the price. If it's cheap, I guess I'll grab it as a sign of support to CO for creating an awesome game.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I had a thought earlier today before seeing this... ( due to the large amount of snow where I live right now ).

How cool wouldn't it be if a city-builder had snow and snowplowing... Dismissed it as a crazy thought mostly.


And now you show me this!

 

[Keltia_Vikinga]

Translated to French here.

Btw, when I think to the trouble still not fixed regarding daytime/cycle making mess with economy, industry, school and all - I think that's better the seasons aren't added or winter theme is fine in this case. However, I hope this will be fixed ASAP since that is painful.

 

[Baro]

It's ok to not do something if you can't do it right. If implementing seasons on existing maps is too much work, don't do it, invest your time into something else you can do a good job on. Permanent-winter maps with their own stock of buildings doesn't really sound like the best solution.

I'd suggest focusing more on a single well developed feature per DLC. I only bought afterdark for bike lanes, and even that was a very lightly developed feature. The commercial specializations do nothing, and the day/night lighting is ok, but buildings light up during the day in a way that looks very strange. And what do bike lanes have to do with night and day?

Paradox generally makes DLC set to themes. So for Skylines what could have been done is made some weather/night day mod that had really well done night and day, cool weather effects and even seasons, and some actual gameplay mechancis that go along with it all. Then as another DLC, have a "transit and transport" themed DLC. Bike lanes, trams, better control over transit, maybe a road-designer.

I don't know if the strategy is to always hide one sort of cool feature in a pile of fluff to hope people buy every DLC, but that's not the paradox model, and I think eventually people will just start passing up the DLC. "I don't want to have to buy 5 pieces of DLC just to get a single feature from each one". Let people buy DLC that focuses on certain things so they can buy the ones they want (say transit stuff) and ignore things they don't care about (weather, night/day). This lets you specialize your DLC and really focus on getting each thing right, and lets the players be very happy with their purchases, not feel like they had to buy 5 things they don't care about to get 1 thing they want.

 

[Tvarog]

I can't see any picture of tram going between avenues or on the side of the road, are they trolleybusses and will stuck in jams exactly like busses or are they real improvment for Cims to commute?

 

[slimpig-porkune]

Thanks for the new DLC but I feel like posting this because almost everyone is requesting and talking about it. (Some of them have their mod equivalent but as much as possible we want it to be vanilla)

I do hope that CO can release better DLC's after 2-3 months. What people really want (not in order):
1. Trams (given. Thanks!)
2. Ferries
3. Deeper tourism system
4. drawable double deck road / highway systems. Where we can set what the upper layer is (if it's a highway or a train line), and what's beneath it. Then draw it like a boss.
5. Concretes on sunken road.. so we don't need to plop those sunken walls.
6. Built-in seawalls. Enough of the seawall park plopping.
7. City fillers. like what CXL did.
8. Cars occupying all the lanes when driving on roads.
9. Ability to restrict RCI's levels, and proper implementation of high-rise ban. ban building height, not level
10. Another class of smaller paths that can connect parks or buildings to main roads like what Sim City has. This types of paths can also be used to make modular parks without needing road connections.
11. Ability to temporarily close segments of roads and implementing No Left Turn, No Right Turn, No U-Turn, etc.
12. Higher / Larger building footprints. so we can create huge buildings.
13. Disasters (it's overly requested, but I think, it's not a priority)
14. Elevated Stations and Multitrack systems.
15. Better commercial spawning ( Do not spawn 2 burger restaurants right next to each other, That would ruin their franchise XD)
16. Clean types of General Industries, Lvl 4? ( in real life, clean industrial zones have green trees, not orange, and we haven't seen a violet soil surrounding the area )
17. Patch followup for the improvement of After Dark DLC
18. Improve the UI. probably display more items at a time. It hurts when you scroll a thousand times just to locate your item.. Search mechanism
19. New set of roads and freedom to customize road lighting and road-side trees.
(EDITED*) 20. Deeper functionality of Sports Complex, Stadiums, etc. So we can start events like concerts, sports events, etc.

As much as possible, lots of CS players wanted not to resort on using mods to do complex stuffs in game because it does not guarantee that our city will survive after a patch or DLC. Elevated Stations and Multitrack stations for example, can be easily done by CO. It's a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness to see modders do Elevated stations only during their freetime, while CO has all the codes and the resources to create those great stuffs in just a matter of weeks or months. I am aware of the agreement that we can't blame CO for broken cities because of mod usage but I think it's better if these features were vanilla.

I am not ranting here. I do love the new patch and very appreciative of it (yey! Trams!). I can somehow relate to the people who gave some not-so-good feedback because they are just expecting more from this coming patch. Watching the trailer and seeing the new screenshots made me feel that the devs really want to make this game special. I just want to express my feelings because I love this game and I want to wish better DLC's in the future. I do hope that the next DLC will focus more on Infrastructures and other basic stuff in-game. Thanks CO.

 

[Omru]

All four season cycle would have to be quite long for it to make any sense having different services in different seasons. Four seasons is much more work than working on one, and we didn't want to spend a year developing a feature that would in fact be in the end mostly cosmetic. So adding a winter theme + rain to other themes made more sense to us and allowed us to have something non-weather features in this expansion as well.

Ensinnäkin todella mahtavaa päästä rakentamaan talvista kaupunkia! Innolla odotan tätä lisäosaa.

Mutta täytyy kuitenkin sanoa, että loputonta talvea olisi hieman tylsä pelatta. Pitkän kylmän talven jälkeen on ihana saada taas nauttia lämpimästä kesästä, kuten kokemuksesta tiedämmekin.

Ehdotankin samaa, mitä joku oli jo aikaisemmin ehdottanut: talvi mappien lisäksi annetaan pelaajille mahdollisuus valita nykyisiin karttoihin talvi ja/tai kesä. Näiden kahden vuodenajan välillä riittäisi vain, että lehdet putoaisivat/kasvaisivat puihin. Eli ei erillistä syksyä tai kevättä, vain siirtymävaihe talveen tai kesään. Tämä ei kuulosta mielestäni kovin työläältä toteuttaa. Lisäksi nämä aura-auto "depotit" voitaisiin muutta huoltoajoneuvo depoteiksi, jolloin kesällä aura-autojen tilalla kulkisi muita huoltoautoja, ja näin voitaisiin hyödyntää muita uusia palveluita myöskin kesällä. On toki ihan ymmärrettävää, että esim. kaukolämpösysteemille ei ole paljon käyttöä kesällä.

Mutta vaikka emme näkisi vuodenaikoja tässä pelissä (mikä olisi tietenkin harmillista), toivotan kuitenkin paljon tsemppiä tämän lisäosan kanssa. Paljon arvostusta siitä, että olette kokoajan kuunnelleet pelaajien toiveita ja toteuttaneet niitä!

ps. Sorry English users. I just said a few words about seasons.

 

[Tvarog]

8. Cars occupying all the lanes when driving on roads.

Sorry but that means You are only bad traffic manager.

 

[slimpig-porkune]

I can't imagine why anybody would be making negative comments. The attitude of so many people online just gets me down. However, Karoliina, just remember that the dissatisfied minority are usually the most vocal. The vast majority of us are very happy with Cities: Skylines, AD and now Snowfall and very grateful for all the effort you continue to put in, even if we don't always take to social media to tell you so as readily as the people with a problem!

Negative comments doesn't mean that they hate the patch or are very ungrateful to the devs. It means, that they are just very concerned of the game. Like how your mom tells bad stuff about you to improve you. In the CS community, everybody loves everybody. No hard feelings, if someone gave a constructive criticism.

 

[slimpig-porkune]

Paradox generally makes DLC set to themes. So for Skylines what could have been done is made some weather/night day mod that had really well done night and day, cool weather effects and even seasons, and some actual gameplay mechancis that go along with it all. Then as another DLC, have a "transit and transport" themed DLC. Bike lanes, trams, better control over transit, maybe a road-designer.
.

I completely agree with you man. They should be categorized so we can choose what really suits our taste. As for me, who lives in a tropical country, I can't relate that much on the winter thing. I'll buy the DLC because I just mainly wanted the tram.. I'm still excited for the rain and fog. My city needs some rain. I hope it comes with some flooding too

 

[slimpig-porkune]

Sorry but that means You are only bad traffic manager.

Sorry man, but I'm not having bad traffic in my city and I'm not using a Traffic Manager or T++ mod at all. I use oneways if viable, prevent X-Intersections and do pre-planning before I build my cities. The concern of people here is for cars to occupy all lanes so that cars wouldn't line up, up to the entrance of the map, itself (exaggeration). In real life, there is no such thing as 'all of us occupying 1 lane even if there are tons of free lanes'. If we see a vacant lane, we'll use it. Of course you will use the proper lane if you're exiting a road segment or see a signage that says keep left or keep right. The use of road density is not solely to separate the motorists who wants to turn left, turn right or go straight, the main use of it is to handle huge amounts of vehicles in one single segment.

 

[Tvarog]

Sorry man, but I'm not having bad traffic in my city and I'm not using a Traffic Manager or T++ mod at all. I use oneways if viable, prevent X-Intersections and do pre-planning before I build my cities. The concern of people here is for cars to occupy all lanes so that cars wouldn't line up, up to the entrance of the map, itself (exaggeration). In real life, there is no such thing as 'all of us occupying 1 lane even if there are tons of free lanes'. If we see a vacant lane, we'll use it. Of course you will use the proper lane if you're exiting a road segment or see a signage that says keep left or keep right. The use of road density is not solely to separate the motorists who wants to turn left, turn right or go straight, the main use of it is to handle huge amounts of vehicles in one single segment.

Ok and that's how it should work, maybe there are possible some improvements but we all know that game will not simulate all the real life situations. Game need to have same frames, concept. And this kind of traffic is concept and design matter fully and changing it in this state of game development will completely remove last part of challenge, not big challenge but still.

EDIT: stage, not state

 

[dagu]

You have made an wonderful game and no city builder since SimCity4 have been better. Thank you for that!

I would like to see regular free updates that fixes problems and smaller features were the game is underdeveloped. This could come once per month for example. Lots of things can be approved and that is your job not the moders. Moders should do nice to have bonus features not fix core game mechanics.

And maybe two bigger DLCs per year.

Seasons is absolutely the way to go. Who wants eternal winter? Different map types should have different length and severity of the different seasons. Of course modable and configureable.

You should have good possibilities to hire more people, if that is needed, because of the success of the game.

Let's make this the best game ever!

 

[slimpig-porkune]

Ok and that's how it should work, maybe there are possible some improvements but we all know that game will not simulate all the real life situations. Game need to have same frames, concept. And this kind of traffic is concept and design matter fully and changing it in this state of game development will completely remove last part of challenge, not big challenge but still.

EDIT: stage, not state

well, I guess your right and it's more of the pathfinding.. In theory, it may occupy more virtual memory if cars can swap lanes. I think we'll just wait. Every problem has their solution anyway...