CO Word of the Week #3

[Neimit]

Thanks for the feedback.

I understand that bad news should also be communicated, even if it isn't very fun to hear. But that way you manage expectations. I was a developer myself, and the general IT manager now, so I know how much stress additional sprints and releases bring to a team and the whole production pipeline.

That said, would it be possible to shed a light on which gameplay issues are being worked on short term and which long term?

Some are really massive gamebreaking bugs like postal service and cargo, import/export still not working. If these are not expected to be fixed very shortly I will leave the game and the forums behind for the time being because they are just ruining the enjoyment of every city I try. These are critital gamebreaking features everyone has been talking about for weeks.

For now we still don't know which bugs are being looked into and what is first priority. Performance is one thing, but for all of those who don't have performance issues anymore are eagerly awaiting those gameplay fixes that affect everyone.

Even big games like Call Of Duty have a public Trello board where the community can see what issues are being prioritised and worked on, and what is in the backlog.

A public Trello board to see what's being worked on, what's planned and what's already been fixed would be amazing. Actively seeing things being done would be great for transparency too.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

Yes, they're humans indeed, and humans make mistakes, that is true.
It is a mistake to overestimate how ready your game is for release. But it is not a mistake, but a conscious decision to then release it anyway.
It's not like CO and Paradox did not know that the game wasn't ready. They couldn't possibly be surprised by its state unless some astronomical level of incompetence was involved. So they knew what they were releasing.

Also, the way I see it the responsibility for this situation lies mostly with Paradox and not CO. CO made the game, yes, but it's Paradox who market it and actually make decisions on when to release it.

As such, any apologies from CO's CEO ring kind of hollow, because, unless I'm mistaken, she's not the person who's even responsible for this situation in the first place. While she might be responsible for some of the communication on the part of CO community managers(if they're even CO employees, and not paradox people), it is at the end of the day Paradox that calls the shots here.

True to many aspects but the readiness point, imho.

I personally cannot stress enough that in agile development there is no "ready for release" in general. "Ready" only goes down to feature level for each release in a fixed cycle most of the times. There are exceptions to this as agile development models like SCRUM are just frameworks but in general it works like this so from my understanding from what I saw the following thing might have happened:

1. The team defined the goals for the release and the features which have to be included for the initial release, defined epics and stories.
2. Development went on since ~2018, features were completed and tested internally.
3. A playable prototype was tested with a selected amount of players back in 2019/2020 to collect some feedback on handling, gameplay and performance. People had still 9 to 10th gen Intel processors and RTX 20 and 30 GPUs (or the equivalent AMD hardware). The Unity version was likely from 2019.
4. Development continued based on that feedback, things were changed and expanded, maybe a newer Unity version was integrated. Internal tests were performed on some virtual machines and real computers, but ofc not hundreds of combinations. Console tests were performed on development kits from XBGS and Sony. With 80% of features being complete PDX set a release date internally.
5. Release date was announced by PDX as it was getting close, featuring a render trailer by some random marketing studio. Work on marketing campaign was already started and planned in advance.
6. Second field test was performed with content creators/trusted players to get more telemetry. During time final versions of different assets were pushed into the test like citizen models → Telemetry showed first unknown problems on current gen/new gen hardware/drivers - analysis started, additional low priority animations (scaffolding, firemen...) were put on hold.
7. Patches were created to counteract, however the game still used placeholder, low resolution textures (see streams from before release). After pushing the final 4k textures performance issues increased exponentially due to additional load → performance warning was announced later accordingly
8. Despite testing on development kits for console worked well the test build pushed to the consoles through their market place for testing showed regular crashes (not a first at least on Xbox) as encapsulated consoles act different than the development kit. As that's a blocker for console the release was postponed.
9. As on paper (as initially defined) enough features were _ready/done_ and on PC there was no real blocker (performance in general is non-functional, so this alone might not have enough value to postpone a release for which the whole marketing campaign already was finished) PC release was not postponed, also to gather more feedback on performance or crashes from players and/or telemetry data.
10. As currently work on improving performance also with eyes on a console release (for which performance actually is a real blocker - specs are fixed and on current gen meet 2019s hardware) is ongoing it was decided to not release the editor right now for two reasons: 1. It's simply not ready when it comes down to features, 2. It would not help on improving performance and focusing on bugs. People would start to complain that they only got 10 FPS with having 1000 assets installed which are likely unoptimized (as seen on C:S1) or that scripts are leading to CTDs after the next hotfix (same story always, not exclusive to C:S...)

The question of "why" something like that happens might root in how Unity works. Unity provides many neat features which are great for performance improvement or fancy at first glance but which are also "beta" for them. These features are basically unsupported, so it might be they first used some features back in 2019 which worked on hardware back then. However drivers change and hardware changes by time which they likely found out during time. They started to replace some of these features with their own implementation. However, after switching to an even newer Unity version their own implementations might also have been affected (especially looking at you virtual texturing/atlas generation/atlas handling) which maybe was only found out after increasing the load on the rendering pipeline (moving from low poly C:S1 citizen models to the current ones, increasing texture detail from 512x512 to 4k with the 46GB patch...).

I personally would not say that there is incompetence in any way - if they didn't see some bugs earlier It's more like some masked defect as "we QAs" say - something not working properly but hidden behind other factors which makes it hard to impossible to find until the right conditions are met. This way bugs always slip with more or less impact.

To make the long story short from my wall of text:
* Release was continued as business managers (PDX) decided to do so (they got the last word, even if the test manager warns that the current state is inacceptable - I know such situations personally and it's always the same outcome ). Most likely because the whole campaign was already done.
* One or more masked defects in the rendering pipeline leading mainly to performance issues on GPU end, followed by shortcomings in LOD management.
* Optimizations missing due to new hardware options/drivers compared to 2019 - maybe lack of support for this hardware depending on Unity version used and/or changes in drivers/OS leading to hiccups.
* Postponing of console release likely not only because of performance but due to constant crashes which is hard to debug on these environments.
* Postponing of mods to focus on performance/existing bugs first with a rather small team of developers.
* Due to scores/sales/reactions business likely now stepped back to let CO improve the game to a point release on console will be possible including asset mods. All activities to market DLCs are also put on hold until CO commits that the game is ready → no timeline set for now.

 

[Neimit]

Don't be misled by the "performance is bad" narrative, there's a whole lot more wrong with this release than the performance issues, and unfortunately *those* problems only start to surface once you're a few hours into the game.

Focusing on performance issues, as @co_martsu has been doing, is pretty clever because that's something they can do something about (albeit slowly, seemingly). It's all the other problems the game has which she *doesn't* talk about which bothers me.

I agree with this, 'performance is bad' is what everyone is talking about, it's what you notice immidiately and maybe because of it many people don't continue playing, but if you do, there are so many issues, so many things broken.

Basically 'performance is bad' is just the tip of the iceberg...

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

A public Trello board to see what's being worked on, what's planned and what's already been fixed would be amazing. Actively seeing things being done would be great for transparency too.

While in general that seems to be a good idea someone has to maintain that board. You cannot just hook it up to some internal Jira board to show all items available as there are surely internal only discussions to be kept internal. Instead one would have to actively look into that board, adjust the status, add information and deal with feedback like "Why isn't there any progress on XYZ?! It's a bummer! That's the most important one!!! (for this person but speaking as if it's the most important thing for the whole world)".

Also there already is the official bug section with basic status applied by internal QAs - I provided my reports there and they receive the status "In Review" "Duplicate" "Confirmed" "As Designed" and "Needs Info" and "Fixed" - fixed can either be set by a QA or on your own after reviewing it on your end.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Bug Reports

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I personally would like encourage people which have something constructive to report bugs over there to help making the game the successor of C:S1 which it should be

 

[Jermayan]

Some of us are enjoying the game. I'm voting not to pull it off the market as some have suggested.

Are there fixes that need to be made? Absolutely. You can search through my post history, I have my own criticisms about things that should be fixed or improved. Am I disappointed that mods and assets are going to take longer? Sure. Still, I already have 140 hours in the game. I have got a fair amount of enjoyment out of it despite its flaws. The game isn't going anywhere. This isn't some single player rpg you play in a week and put down. The game will improve with time, and I'm excited to see where it goes. I get being upset with the state of the game. I'm not as upset as everyone else, and don't want to say that people's opinions aren't valid, but I think it would do everybody a world of good to just take a breath. Right now, it is what it is. There's nothing we can do to change the situation besides wait. If you can't play the game in its current state, then put it down and come back. CS1 was very barebones on release. It didn't have the same amount of bugs, but also, the game was much smaller and the simulation was meager. Still, I could see the bones and understand the potential. I see the same in CS2. If you can't, that's fine. Put it down. I'm going to continue to enjoy what I have and wait for improvements.

You're right we should take a collective breath. It's also too late anyway to take the game off the stores that would've happened much earlier. I myself have a little over 200 hrs but less and less since the latest patch, and I do think I should step away for a few months from the game and go back to CS:1. I agree it has potential and that CS:1 was much more barebones, but like you said CS:1 didn't have the bug issues right off the bat that this does. I could be misremembering because of how long it's been but I don't remember ever feeling this let down with CS:1 more just anxious for more content. With this it's fun up until the bugs make it unplayable right when I get to the point I love the most in growing cities. I guess I'm just having a hard time reconciling the expectations that were set by CO and the one's I allowed myself to have watching the videos and reading the dev diaries with the reality of what was released. I suppose thanks are in order for walking me back off the ledge a bit so Thank You and I hope you continue to have fun and enjoy.

 

[Jermayan]

While in general that seems to be a good idea someone has to maintain that board. You cannot just hook it up to some internal Jira board to show all items available as there are surely internal only discussions to be kept internal. Instead one would have to actively look into that board, adjust the status, add information and deal with feedback like "Why isn't there any progress on XYZ?! It's a bummer! That's the most important one!!! (for this person but speaking as if it's the most important thing for the whole world)".

Also there already is the official bug section with basic status applied by internal QAs - I provided my reports there and they receive the status "In Review" "Duplicate" "Confirmed" "As Designed" and "Needs Info" and "Fixed" - fixed can either be set by a QA or on your own after reviewing it on your end.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Bug Reports

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I personally would like encourage people which have something constructive to report bugs over there to help making the game the successor of C:S1 which it should be

I have wanted to make bug reports but haven't as I don't have access to my game files or I'm not sure where they are and google hasn't helped me so far.

I'll explain. I play on a Mac and use GeForceNow, Ultimate, and my saves go into my steam cloud but I don't know where to access if I can as I don't have a local steam file for Cities 2. So all I could give would be screenshots without any of the other data that would just allow them to reproduce and see what I see. If anyone has more information I am all ears as I would like to be more constructive than destructive with my current frustrations.

Update. I just found the files buried deep or circuitously in the support menus for steam, I missed that path the first time I checked and it didn't come up with search for me but I have them now!

 

[TheMax85]

While in general that seems to be a good idea someone has to maintain that board. You cannot just hook it up to some internal Jira board to show all items available as there are surely internal only discussions to be kept internal. Instead one would have to actively look into that board, adjust the status, add information and deal with feedback like "Why isn't there any progress on XYZ?! It's a bummer! That's the most important one!!! (for this person but speaking as if it's the most important thing for the whole world)".

Also there already is the official bug section with basic status applied by internal QAs - I provided my reports there and they receive the status "In Review" "Duplicate" "Confirmed" "As Designed" and "Needs Info" and "Fixed" - fixed can either be set by a QA or on your own after reviewing it on your end.

Cities: Skylines 2 - Bug Reports

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I personally would like encourage people which have something constructive to report bugs over there to help making the game the successor of C:S1 which it should be

But you can export a list of issues in the sprint and publish that list. It’s quite simple if they use Jira.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

I have wanted to make bug reports but haven't as I don't have access to my game files or I'm not sure where they are and google hasn't helped me so far.

I'll explain. I play on a Mac and use GeForceNow, Ultimate, and my saves go into my steam cloud but I don't know where to access if I can as I don't have a local steam file for Cities 2. So all I could give would be screenshots without any of the other data that would just allow them to reproduce and see what I see. If anyone has more information I am all ears as I would like to be more constructive than destructive with my current frustrations.

There is no urgent need to include a save if it's not related to things you don't see on a screenshot. As save is only needed if you are referring to something like commercial demand over time - If the QAs need more information they will reach out to you on that thread.

But you can export a list of issues in the sprint and publish that list. It’s quite simple if they use Jira.

They use Jira.
What I meant was not technical issues - you could also set up a bot pushing information on API level, I more meant it in regards of company policies and legal stuff, especially in Europe with CO sitting in Finnland. That's why I referred to "internal/confidential " Information.

Fun fact: In one of my projects irl externals working within the project from the US were not allowed to access the internal ALM software (application lifecycle management - the place on which all internal bug reports and requirements go for people not knowing that term) due to legal concerns regarding data security. Guess who had to create pdf files with reported bugs daily just for them to get using email? Guess how awesome that task was besides all other tasks which were more important from a test management perspective?

PS: yes, they also signed a NDA.

 

[MostBlunted]

So one more performance patch? Then silence for weeks I guees? What about all those gameplay issues? But hey, console players, no worries: You´ll get the fixed version of the game thanks due to PC early access players. That´s nice I guess?

 

[alcarcalimo2364]

You're right we should take a collective breath. It's also too late anyway to take the game off the stores that would've happened much earlier. I myself have a little over 200 hrs but less and less since the latest patch, and I do think I should step away for a few months from the game and go back to CS:1. I agree it has potential and that CS:1 was much more barebones, but like you said CS:1 didn't have the bug issues right off the bat that this does. I could be misremembering because of how long it's been but I don't remember ever feeling this let down with CS:1 more just anxious for more content. With this it's fun up until the bugs make it unplayable right when I get to the point I love the most in growing cities. I guess I'm just having a hard time reconciling the expectations that were set by CO and the one's I allowed myself to have watching the videos and reading the dev diaries with the reality of what was released. I suppose thanks are in order for walking me back off the ledge a bit so Thank You and I hope you continue to have fun and enjoy.

Well, I think the difference your feeling is there were no expectations for CS1. Except my expectation was that CS1 was probably going to be awful. CO was relatively unknown, CS1 was made with 9 people, how could it be any good or compare to something like SimCity. When it ended up being better than it expected, I was so happy that I was able to forgive some of the gameplay issues. With CS2, we have higher expectations. This always happens with a sequel. So the disappointment that it isn't perfect and that there are bugs is weighing more heavily. Nevermind the varying wants and expectations that each individual player has in order to be satisfied. The release was not stellar. No doubt. @co_martsu has acknowledged that. They're putting their nose to the ground trying to fix issues. All we can do now is try to move forward. The "what they should have done" posts are frivolous at this point. Hopefully there have been lessons learned. But the game is released. It's over and done. How do we move forward now? We all want the game to be the best it can be. The players obviously do. CO does, because it reflects on them as developers, and they're clearly passionate about city builders given the products they have made. And Paradox does for financial reasons, and it also reflects on them as a publisher. I don't think we are dealing with a soulless cash grab. There is more to it than that. CO is trying to manage our expectations and give us honest feedback about where the game is. If you can't give them the grace to rectify the issues, then you can put the game down and move on until you are ready to come back.

For me, the good news is that a lot of things on the simulation side seem to be fixable. I'm in a couple modding discords just to follow what people are doing (I don't make mods for CS myself), and a lot of people who have looked at the code are really impressed with how it all works and the ambitiousness of the project, and that there just needs to be a couple of corrections to fix certain gameplay bugs. Rumor was that the garbage bug was cause by a single typo in a single line of code (which sounds like, wow, why didn't they catch that, but when there are millions of lines of code you begin to understand. Also, that's a rumor, I haven't seen that confirmed by CO). And then a lot of other things are just balance and/or tuning when it comes to the economy or the traffic AI for example. I'm not worried about the game in the long run. The bones are there.

 

[Jermayan]

Well, I think the difference your feeling is there were no expectations for CS1. Except my expectation was that CS1 was probably going to be awful. CO was relatively unknown, CS1 was made with 9 people, how could it be any good or compare to something like SimCity. When it ended up being better than it expected, I was so happy that I was able to forgive some of the gameplay issues. With CS2, we have higher expectations. This always happens with a sequel. So the disappointment that it isn't perfect and that there are bugs is weighing more heavily. Nevermind the varying wants and expectations that each individual player has in order to be satisfied. The release was not stellar. No doubt. @co_martsu has acknowledged that. They're putting their nose to the ground trying to fix issues. All we can do now is try to move forward. The "what they should have done" posts are frivolous at this point. Hopefully there have been lessons learned. But the game is released. It's over and done. How do we move forward now? We all want the game to be the best it can be. The players obviously do. CO does, because it reflects on them as developers, and they're clearly passionate about city builders given the products they have made. And Paradox does for financial reasons, and it also reflects on them as a publisher. I don't think we are dealing with a soulless cash grab. There is more to it than that. CO is trying to manage our expectations and give us honest feedback about where the game is. If you can't give them the grace to rectify the issues, then you can put the game down and move on until you are ready to come back.

For me, the good news is that a lot of things on the simulation side seem to be fixable. I'm in a couple modding discords just to follow what people are doing (I don't make mods for CS myself), and a lot of people who have looked at the code are really impressed with how it all works and the ambitiousness of the project, and that there just needs to be a couple of corrections to fix certain gameplay bugs. Rumor was that the garbage bug was cause by a single typo in a single line of code (which sounds like, wow, why didn't they catch that, but when there are millions of lines of code you begin to understand. Also, that's a rumor, I haven't seen that confirmed by CO). And then a lot of other things are just balance and/or tuning when it comes to the economy or the traffic AI for example. I'm not worried about the game in the long run. The bones are there.

A little more grace... that got me right there, I agree, and it caused me to delete my post it's not necessary or constructive I should give them some grace and more time to fix it. Heck I'm married to a software dev, also one that's prone to typos as well, so I know a good deal of what they go through which is why I haven't blamed them but the decision makers. But, initial criticism and expectations and all that aside time to move on and help it reach its potential for everyone instead of tearing it apart. Now that I have access to my game files I'll feel better about reporting the bugs I'm seeing. Thank you again.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

I don't make mods for CS myself

Just to add something as I actually did and do create (vehicle) mods whenever time allows - I looked into the more alpha than beta version of the editor hidden from public for good reasons and I am especially impressed with this part.

As an asset creator you have basically control over everything which in before was only possible using mods which enabled certain features of the old editor, also for vehicle creators there are pretty neat shortcuts compared to C:S1 when it comes down to create train consists, lights and even animations.

I won't spoil too much here as it's all more alpha than beta (to which other trusted modders have access, not me ) but complexity and workflow changes of that editor alone will bring great creations even without the need for scripted mods down the road and most likely worth to wait for.

 

[ma2412]

That said, would it be possible to shed a light on which gameplay issues are being worked on short term and which long term?

Some are really massive gamebreaking bugs like postal service and cargo, import/export still not working. If these are not expected to be fixed very shortly I will leave the game and the forums behind for the time being because they are just ruining the enjoyment of every city I try. These are critital gamebreaking features everyone has been talking about for weeks.

For now we still don't know which bugs are being looked into and what is first priority. Performance is one thing, but for all of those who don't have performance issues anymore are eagerly awaiting those gameplay fixes that affect everyone.

this!

 

[Samson1971]

When I read back then that the console version would be delayed, I thought, hope not, that the PC version will also be delayed, then I was happy when the 24.10.2023 was there.

When the first in-game trailer was released back then, I was totally excited and just thought, oh ha, that will certainly require a new graphics card and probably a new CPU, let alone a complete PC upgrade, when the first specifications were announced, I was amazed, the minimum requirements were low and that should work? Clearly not in this quality, then about 2 weeks before the release, new specifications came, my still current graphics card, an MSI GTX 970 4G and my I7 5930K, whereby the CPU is still a bit older than the minimum requirements.

The game came out, and what can I say, yes the version 1.0.9f1 was hardly playable, I set all settings to "Very low" and everything that could be set under "Advanced" was either deactivated or set to "Very low", then it worked.

In the meantime we have version 1.0.13f1 and my still first city with almost 13,000 inhabitants runs quite smoothly, with a good 40 FPS at close range and between 25-30 FPS when zoomed out.

Thanks to the "developerMode" I was also able to take a closer look at various views, and all I can say is, no wonder the performance was so bad and is still not optimal.

The inhabitants are very detailed, not only mouth and teeth, no even eyes, trees are very detailed, trunk and branches, which is surprising, these are reduced quite early in their level of detail, but the inhabitants unfortunately not, they are even rendered when you do not see them, outside the camera field of view.

Here are a few pictures of my current city, the redder the more points or areas are rendered.

I'm totally enthusiastic about the game and it's great fun, and one thing is for sure, I can still wait with the upgrade of my PC, because my CPU copes well with the actual simulation, even with the 100,000 inhabitants city, my CPU works with about 30-40% utilization

I think your transparency is great, and that you keep the fans and players up to date.

I still have a small question, will it be possible to create your own streets again later with the editor?

Keep up the good work.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

I am a little encouraged that some of the performance issue (which is causing issues with the simulation) is due to the lack of LODs for the character models and the redraw at different views. I think that ought to help.

This game is very ambitious and I think there's a reason why nobody has attempted an agent-based simulation of cities of this scale before. Because it's actually extremely technically difficult and a ton of things can go wrong. I do think this is fixable but it's going to take a lot of time for sure. That said I am still having fun with the game and I am trying to see how far I can push my city before the simulation grinds to a halt. Pushing for a 400K city!

Very good summation of the development process for this too. I've experienced this as well in doing QA.

True to many aspects but the readiness point, imho.

I personally cannot stress enough that in agile development there is no "ready for release" in general. "Ready" only goes down to feature level for each release in a fixed cycle most of the times. There are exceptions to this as agile development models like SCRUM are just frameworks but in general it works like this so from my understanding from what I saw the following thing might have happened:

...

 

[DiNardo1910]

Thanks for all the feedback and apologies for not having time yesterday to write answers to your questions! I see some already answered so I'll just write a summary that hopefully answers at least some of the concerns raised.

You have the right to feel disappointed for the Editor not being already available. We have no intention to delay its release more than necessary. The asset import feature (where a user imports an asset created in a 3D modeling software to the game) is severely delayed due to various technical issues related to it and given it's mid November now we have zero chance of getting it ready before the Christmas break. When it comes to the map editor we'll see if it can be released before the asset import is ready. Regardless of when the Editor is released it is planned to be supported and improved upon based on the feedback from the creators and modders using it. The delay is most unfortunate but we are doing our best to getting the Editor out as soon as possible.

Gameplay issues are being actively worked on and we've been also looking into some pathfinding errors. Some bugs take longer to fix than others and it would cause added stress to try and keep a specific cadence so at no point have we committed to one. Since we've had weekly patches thus far I found it best to warn that it's not to be expected in the future, with the sole purpose of trying to manage expectations. While the patch cadence is expected to be longer going forward it doesn't mean we have stopped working on bugfixes.

We are also working on the performance not only because it's necessary for the console release but also for PC platforms to allow the creation of huge cities. I'm sensing that most are actually able to play with acceptable performance level if it starts to feel like we should be focusing on the other things more, but we are internally not satisfied with the current situation and will keep working on improving the performance until we are.

I will keep bringing you news every week, hopefully good ones but we must be able to discuss setbacks as well, if more occur. For those wanting to leave the game behind, I fully understand and respect that and I hope you will find your way back again later in time. We're not going anywhere.

Why was this game released unfinished?

 

[circuitfarmer]

Last week I promised to give you an update on where we are with the modding of Cities: Skylines II. The Editor is in the works and we shared an updated version of it with the closed Modding Beta group for a feedback round just last Friday. The Editor currently includes only maps and support for code modding and we’re looking forward to getting those ready for an initial release. I’m calling it an initial release as we will be adding to the modding tools throughout the game's lifetime, just like we did with Cities: Skylines.

We do not have the asset import feature available yet, so the creators are currently unable to import their own assets into the game. After we have the import feature in place we’ll be running it through the Modding Beta group. When the asset part of the Editor is ready, we’ll have the Paradox Mods nicely populated with the Region pack assets that the asset creators have been working on. The assets are looking amazing, and I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun choosing the ones most fitting to your cities! If you haven’t already, check out the Region Pack teaser here:

Our goal is to release the Editor as soon as possible, and we will keep you updated on the progress. We expect it will take a couple of months to get the Editor in a shape where we can release it, but we don’t have a concrete timeline yet as we don’t want to make promises we can’t keep. Once the Editor is out we will continue to work on it with your feedback and suggestions to help us prioritize the most wanted features and improvements. We’re very much looking forward to seeing your creations and mods too!

As an update on console, the game will have all the intended Editor features in place when the console versions are released, so you’ll be able to catch up to the PC players in no time. The Editor on console will be on par with the PC version in all but two features: code modding and asset importing as these are not possible within the console restrictions. However, you will be able to download user-created assets from Paradox Mods and create custom maps! The performance improvements we are currently working on also benefit the console version, and we’re actively working on the console versions so they will be ready for you in the first half of 2024.

In the last three weeks, we’ve had a very quick pace with the patches. There is one more of those landing soon, but after that, we’ll be focusing on bigger fixes that take longer to work on. The team is now focusing on LODs and improving GPU performances, and while geometric LODs are largely automated, there are a ton of tweaks and adjustments required. We are expecting a relevant performance boost with these asset fixes. The workload is significant and unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to improve the performance at once, instead, it requires several tasks completed before we are happy with it. This results in less frequent updates so we won’t have weekly patches going forward. Please check the future Word of the Weeks for more information, as I plan to keep writing one every week until further notice.

Before I go, here’s a link to last week’s patch notes if you want to check what it brought! Thanks to everyone who reported an issue and gave feedback. Your effort is most appreciated!

Sincerely,
Mariina

I was definitely saddened that the game did not get Steam Workshop support like its predecessor. While I understand that this was done to try and get parity for modding on consoles (though as stated above, this is not possible anyway), I feel like the whole modding scene will actually be smaller than C:S1.

But my big gripe with this update is: I'm confused as to why all resources aren't being put towards fixing the ton of issues the game currently has, especially with regards to gameplay, simulation difficulty (or lack thereof), feedback to the player, non-functioning systems, and, of course, performance (I put this purposefully last, since it really is nowhere near the biggest issue this game has).

I was very happy to hear that resources were being used for fixes as opposed to DLC, since the game has been released in this state, but I scratch my head as to why modding tools were not given the same treatment. Is it in the hope that modders will help fix the game?

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

But my big gripe with this update is: I'm confused as to why all resources aren't being put towards fixing the ton of issues the game currently has, especially with regards to gameplay, simulation difficulty (or lack thereof), feedback to the player, non-functioning systems, and, of course, performance (I put this purposefully last, since it really is nowhere near the biggest issue this game has).

I was very happy to hear that resources were being used for fixes as opposed to DLC, since the game has been released in this state, but I scratch my head as to why modding tools were not given the same treatment. Is it in the hope that modders will help fix the game?

That's somewhat confusing - why are you actually under the impression they didn't shift all available resources (aka developers) to fix things? Keep in mind we don't talk about 100 devs here, more like maybe 10 people with even less working on aspects like the simulation itself, Unitiy or the rendering pipeline. Not all devs working on a project like this have the same set of knowledge to work on every aspect.

Also which "non-functioning systems"? The only one I'm aware of is the post sorting building, everything else works fine currently in my cities despite some things may need tuning. Anyway my population is growing, exports are working, the city earns money and traffic can be managed with what's in place.

And about modding tools: they are not yet finished and are lower in priority than the performance itself. If you'd release the tools now be prepared for broken save games, defect maps and horribly bad performance as soon as the first person installs 1000 additional assets let them fix performance first, they will tackle the other things afterwards or whenever there is time (progress can be seen on the official bug section over here across many reports, including my own ones).

I feel like the whole modding scene will actually be smaller than C:S1.

I talked to quite a few fellow modders and basically all plan to create stuff for C:S2 again. There is basically no reason for them not to do so. I also already got plans and prepare assets. The only thing is that modding is getting more complex from an asset perspective as the editor is way more powerful by default than the old one from C:S1 was.

 

[Cities:2]

Hi. Thank you for your transparency. I am an asset maker. (Name is "The L Train" on the Steam Workshop.) I made the Mason Neck, Virginia map and some train stations.
I desperately want to make new models buildings for CS:II but do not want to needlessly create .fbx files and textures incompatible with the game. Is there a way I could get access to the workflow and/or texture methods that CS:II uses for buildings?

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

[quote of deleted post moderated out]

Hi. Thank you for your transparency. I am an asset maker. (Name is "The L Train" on the Steam Workshop.) I made the Mason Neck, Virginia map and some train stations.
I desperately want to make new models buildings for CS:II but do not want to needlessly create .fbx files and textures incompatible with the game. Is there a way I could get access to the workflow and/or texture methods that CS:II uses for buildings?

There is some basic documentation available - not much but it might help:

https://cs2.paradoxwikis.com/Asset_Creation_Guide