CO Word of the Week #3

[pablomarti354]

It worked in the past and it still works for other games, so there was a choice by someone at some point. If they said from the beginning that code mods wouldn't be supported on console, I don't see why leave GeForce Now out of this kind of communication, especially considering that "mods for everyone" was the specific reason they choose to basically make it an in-game feature. Now, you don't want to actually bring mods to everyone? Fine, I can leave with that if you fix all the current simulation issues. But the Region Packs and future assets release being tied to Paradox Mods when you know it doesn't work for GFN? That's a shitty take if you ask me.

Yes! I might add, I find weird that CO promoted the GFN free trial code knowing that it will be excluded from pdx mods and all of its content…

 

[anton95]

GeForce now isn't really a platform though, it's a way to allow people with low spec hardware to "borrow" better performing machines.

You'd have to install every mod that gets made onto the GeForce machines in order for it to work and that could cause problems.

Some games support Mods on GeForce Now (for example Planet Coaster). For those games every asset you are subscribed to on the workshop gets downloaded every time you start the game on GeForce Now.

Cities Skylines 1 officially doesn't support Mods, but with a trick (unsubscribe to one mod and then resubscribe) you can also trigger the download of mods for Cities Skylines 1 on GeForce Now (that includes code mods).

If Paradox Mods is available in the games menu on GeForce Now and the game can download and install mods while it's already launched, in theory mod support on GeForce Now is possible with the small (Edit: maybe not so small) inconvenience that mods have to be downloaded every time you start the game.

 

[CapnBludd]

Some games support Mods on GeForce Now (for example Planet Coaster). For those games every asset you are subscribed to on the workshop gets downloaded every time you start the game on GeForce Now.

Cities Skylines 1 officially doesn't support Mods, but with a trick (unsubscribe to one mod and then resubscribe) you can also trigger the download of mods for Cities Skylines 1 on GeForce Now (that includes code mods).

If Paradox Mods is available in the games menu on GeForce Now and the game can download and install mods while it's already launched, in theory mod support on GeForce Now is possible with the small inconvenience that mods have to be downloaded every time you start the game.

So it acts like you're playing a fresh install every time. It's cumbersome, but if it works, then that's better than nothing.

 

[anton95]

So it acts like you're playing a fresh install every time. It's cumbersome, but if it works, then that's better than nothing.

Exactly. However it is still possible that they'll block the usage of Paradox Mods for GeForce Now players. We'll just have to wait and hope that they don't.
Personally I would take "download mods every time" over "no mods" by a long shot.

(I play on GeForce Now Ultimate, so I've got a personal interest in mods on GFN)

 

[pablomarti354]

Exactly. However it is still possible that they'll block the usage of Paradox Mods for GeForce Now players. We'll just have to wait and hope that they don't.
Personally I would take "download mods every time" over "no mods" by a long shot.

(I play on GeForce Now Ultimate, so I've got a personal interest in mods on GFN)

If that works I would be more than satisfied.

 

[TheLazyHangman]

Cities Skylines 1 officially doesn't support Mods, but with a trick (unsubscribe to one mod and then resubscribe) you can also trigger the download of mods for Cities Skylines 1 on GeForce Now (that includes code mods).

Is it still working today? Do you have to unsubscribe and resubscribe from the in-game content manager before launching your saved game?

 

[co_martsu]

If Paradox Mods is available in the games menu on GeForce Now and the game can download and install mods while it's already launched, in theory mod support on GeForce Now is possible with the small inconvenience that mods have to be downloaded every time you start the game.

This is exactly the problem as it's not a small inconvenience having to download all the mods every time the game is started, that is no way for an official mod support to work. We will look into this later and see if the issue can be resolved.

Generally when it comes to mods we must follow the rules set by each platform. We will always support modding to the best of our abilities. We have no reason to restrict the modders and all the reasons to help them create something amazing.

 

[anton95]

that is no way for an official mod support to work. We will look into this later and see if the issue can be resolved.

Thank you for the response.

I agree that it is not a good way to officially support mods on Geforce Now. But, to me, as a player, the choice between inconveniently downloading all mods every time the game starts and no mods at all is an easy one. You don't have to officially support it, as long as it is not blocked off completely

I am currently staring at the Planet Coaster main menu for about 10 minutes every time I start a game while mods get downloaded in the background – and honestly, I am fine with that. The alternative "no mods" is much worse. I also think the solution in Planet Coaster is not all that inelegant. When you select a save file to load, the game checks if all mods used in that save are available on your machine and gives you an option to download all missing mods with the click of one button before you continue loading the game. Yes, it is inconvenient to wait. But no mods (especially as the C:S2 region packs won't be available to GFN players otherwise) would be so much more inconvenient.

What I see here is a choice between two bad options, with one –from the perspective of a player who wants mods – being worse than the other.

 

[pablomarti354]

This is exactly the problem as it's not a small inconvenience having to download all the mods every time the game is started, that is no way for an official mod support to work. We will look into this later and see if the issue can be resolved.

Generally when it comes to mods we must follow the rules set by each platform. We will always support modding to the best of our abilities. We have no reason to restrict the modders and all the reasons to help them create something amazing.

Finally an official response, thank you very much Mariina!

Yes, please be so kind to look into that, otherwise GFN players will be restricted to vanilla + dlc content, and nothing else, which would be quite disappointing imo.

PS: I get downloading mods every time is not efficient, but I think the vast majority of us prefer re-downloading each time than having no access to any non-vanilla content, including official CO asset content that will be released only from PDX Mods.

 

[TheLazyHangman]

Thank you for the response.

I agree that it is not a good way to officially support mods on Geforce Now. But, to me, as a player, the choice between inconveniently downloading all mods every time the game starts and no mods at all is an easy one. You don't have to officially support it, as long as it is not blocked off completely

I am currently staring at the Planet Coaster main menu for about 10 minutes every time I start a game while mods get downloaded in the background – and honestly, I am fine with that. The alternative "no mods" is much worse. I also think the solution in Planet Coaster is not all that inelegant. When you select a save file to load, the game checks if all mods used in that save are available on your machine and gives you an option to download all missing mods with the click of one button before you continue loading the game. Yes, it is inconvenient to wait. But no mods (especially as the C:S2 region packs won't be available to GFN players otherwise) would be so much more inconvenient.

What I see here is a choice between two bad options, with one –from the perspective of a player who wants mods – being worse than the other.

There is really no other way to put it, this is a no-brainer. As long as we have an option to use mods on GFN, we will take it.
That doesn't mean that we will stop asking for an official and 100% functional mods support on GFN even if the "download mods every time" thing becomes available at some point in the future, if there are no technical constraints preventing further development of this integration, but let's take it one step at a time. Personally I'm fine with not having any editor on GFN, but mods and especially content packs that were available in the base game on GFN for CS1 should still be considered a must-have on GFN.

 

[A lowborn Emperor]

I'm a little worried about the direction this game is going.

Some would argue the cims have a better direction, going back and forth on a random stretch of road doing U-turns multiple times, to then go right or left at the same junction they passed through N+1 times, just to go back and forth doing random U-turns and passing through car parks, only to return to their original stretch of road they were going back and forth on, rinse/repeat.

I get that you want to support all platforms, but it's not cool to sell the game for the same price on all platforms if not all platforms can get the same features.

So you're saying you wouldn't pay £3K for a computer that has i7-13700F air cooled, RTX 3050, 16GB DDR5, 512 SSD when it's sold for £3K in a city slightly north of you with i7 14700KF AIO cooling, RTX 4080, 32Gb DDR5, 2 TB NVMe, wifi, 4K monitor?
How very unreasonable and entitled of you.

Yesterday I saw a video from City Planner Plays where he deleted all external connections and the city stats kept showing people moving in even if they had no physical way of doing so, in addition to other weird behavior in balancing industry and commercial, even after leaving the game running for quite some real-life time. How can you get such a basic core mechanic wrong? It makes me wonder if anything is actually simulated at all in this game.

I've always had a different view on this.
Having citizens the moment a building is constructed, even though they can't physically reach the building, is plausible. They purchased the deeds to the property and so they effectively become citizens, but not residents until they actually move in.
The fact that they cannot actually ever get to the building just makes them idiots for not waiting until they actually saw the building and you employing excellent shady marketing to sell them less than the complete package you advertised in the brochure.
Rather like us mugs that pre-ordered CS2.

Even businesses having workers in a city neither the business premises nor the workers residence can be reached, is plausible as they have merely been given jobs by the companies and as such are employees.
Where I draw the line is the unreachable businesses producing goods in premises that cannot be reached by their workforce.

I did a full test of that isolated scenario and my results suggested that businesses are given a starting stock of resources they need to produce their deliverables, borne out by them eventually stopping trade after a little more than a year, so producing goods itself does not appear to be a case of miraculous resource delivery.
Even the number of job positions they have on their building popup compares to the jobs available report, as does the number of citizens to the number of employees.
Where the stats break is not being able to determine if the trade they are credited with is to the other businesses inside the isolated zone or external, because if it's all internal trade then it's legit even though they should not be able to produce goods due to the absent workforce, but if it's external trade then it's completely ridiculous.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

Whilst I'm not about to be so churlish as to not appreciate the work you're putting in or to not thank you for it, let's be perfectly honest and admit it has been a complete cluster of a launch were the game has clearly been rushed out before it was ready; you should have postponed release until at least the graphical issues are dealt with. We're three weeks since launch and LODs are continuing to remain loaded in even when zoomed in close. Nonetheless, thank you for the hard work in continuing to fix the problems, but in future don't be in a rush to release unfinished games.

Criticism aside, I would ask about Trees. Can you please speed their growth up? I don't live as long as a Tree and would like my leaf suburbs to be leafy before I die of old age.

 

[TripleAgent]

Whilst I'm not about to be so churlish as to not appreciate the work you're putting in or to not thank you for it, let's be perfectly honest and admit it has been a complete cluster of a launch were the game has clearly been rushed out before it was ready; you should have postponed release until at least the graphical issues are dealt with. We're three weeks since launch and LODs are continuing to remain loaded in even when zoomed in close. Nonetheless, thank you for the hard work in continuing to fix the problems, but in future don't be in a rush to release unfinished games.

Criticism aside, I would ask about Trees. Can you please speed their growth up? I don't live as long as a Tree and would like my leaf suburbs to be leafy before I die of old age.

If we had Steam Workshop support it would be much easier for us to get code mods to address these kinds of needs, even before asset importing is ready, just saying...

 

[BernyMoon]

I just bought the game because I want to support you guys and you seem to be wotking hard on the updates, but you should have never released the game in this state. Please release the big performance updated as soon as you can.

 

[zdravkodubravec]

This game should have stayed in developed for another 2 years from what i have read so far! You cut corners on every turn and released not even an MVP or MMP … nothing…. sad to see that only money is what drives you and nothing else! Sad AF!

 

[NULLYUKI]

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.

I'm happy to hear, that the current focus are the LODs and improving the GPU performances.

However due the wide variety of different players using different GPUs, I got a few question about the workflow to provide good results for the players.

• What GPUs will the QA team be using to reproduce realistic scenarios?
  
• In what different scenarios in the game, are these changes being checked?
• Will QA recreate the scenarios that were/are being reported by the players, where these issues were most noticeable?
• And will you provide the players some data about the current results that showcase the before and after changes results of the current progress?

I'm also looking forward to the performance for the console releases. It would be specially important for the console release to have a high focus on the performance part of it.

 

[Jermayan]

This is exactly the problem as it's not a small inconvenience having to download all the mods every time the game is started, that is no way for an official mod support to work. We will look into this later and see if the issue can be resolved.

Generally when it comes to mods we must follow the rules set by each platform. We will always support modding to the best of our abilities. We have no reason to restrict the modders and all the reasons to help them create something amazing.

Since you're working with Nvidia at least a bit I wonder if it would be possible for you and them to set up a local cache, kinda like how Netflix has caches all over, in their data centers that way at least the "download" time for the mods would be quick since it's inside their data center already. I know it's probably not easy but maybe it sparks an idea.

 

[anton95]

Since you're working with Nvidia at least a bit I wonder if it would be possible for you and them to set up a local cache, kinda like how Netflix has caches all over, in their data centers that way at least the "download" time for the mods would be quick since it's inside their data center already. I know it's probably not easy but maybe it sparks an idea.

I'd rather have them find a way for user specific persistent mod folders (like for save games). But personally downloading the mods every time is not a big obstacle.

The gfn rigs are connected to the internet with gigabit connections. At least for steam workshop, the download speeds are rather fast.

 

[Jermayan]

I'd rather have them find a way for user specific persistent mod folders (like for save games). But personally downloading the mods every time is not a big obstacle.

The gfn rigs are connected to the internet with gigabit connections. At least for steam workshop, the download speeds are rather fast.

I like the idea of having persistent mod folders attached to the save game or like it. I agree it's not a big obstacle but my main reasoning for having them inside the data centers was the speed of the internal server to server connections is most likely many fold higher than the internet connection to the data centers even with how robust of a connection(s) they have.