Last week we were in awe of the creativity and imagination of our fans winning in the Chirper contest. This week it's back to normal, I myself watching funny panda videos and the team working hard to improve the game.

Currently the focus is on localization issues and we will have bunch of fixes for cut-off issues in the UI for multiple languages as well as fixing errors in the translations. We'll also add categories for the new props added with Landscaping update in the map editor and this should make it slightly more usable. From community reported issues we are looking into the water normal issue and that should be fixed in the next patch as well. We'll have this patch ready for QA to have a look at it shortly and after they verify the fixes we'll be ready to release it in the upcoming weeks. So like I promised last time, we'll have something for you later this year

When it come to patching the game we naturally want to get as many issues fixed and general improvements implemented as possible. Every patch is tested and verified by the QA and this takes some time and effort to go through. Therefore we try to bundle most fixes with the releases of expansions, like we did with After Dark and Snowfall or with the free updates like Landscaping. This also mitigates the pain felt by the modders as we know that each update we make for the game can, or most likely, will interfere with one or more of the mods. It's unfortunate, but will keep happening in the future and should not be reason for us to not patch the game. I'm sure we can all agree on that. However we will do our best to making sure the updates come as smoothly as possible and for modders it should be nicer to have less frequent updates, but more substantial ones. Next patch will be an exception to the rule, as we don't have anything substantial coming anytime soon and we really feel this patch should not wait for too long.

Besides the bugfixing we have started to discuss with Paradox to what is it that we should focus on next. I know we will be working on the game for long time to come, but having a more concrete plan is never a bad thing. We will definitely take some time to work on an expansion of some sorts later this year and the modding will not be forgotten either!

Cheers,
Mariina

 

[Largo89]

Is it possible for the Asset Editor to add stuff from the "More Beautification" Mod? ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=505480567 )
For Example the white Fence. It would be awesome to add it in the Asset Editor so we can make little 'Community Gardens' or "Schrebergärten" like we have in Germany

 

[Gothamer]

It would be nice to have more text tips explaining some of the new tools, especially in the theme editor. Things like Rayleigh scattering and anisotropy sound cool but I have no clue what effect is supposed to happen if I jigger the values one way or another. Maybe some text describing them is a small thing that you could work on including in a new patch?

 

[Dolans]

I'd like to add my two cents here and point out the one thing that bugs me. It's not important nor a biggie but since the tree planting tool has been relocated to the landscaping tools, the icon for the park tools doesn't make sense anymore. The icon is still a tree and I sometimes find myself clicking on it when I want to plant some trees, only to find out again, there's no trees there anymore, despite the icon still being a tree. I'm just saying, it's a bit misleading and you need to get used to it.

Thanks

 

[ghostbirdofprey]

Speaking of updates.
How much would you have to poke Valve to update the workshop to reflect the new additions? it still doesn't even have categories for anything added in After Dark, much less Snowfall and the Quays patch

 

[grizzycz]

Is there a fix for "crash on exit to main menu" still on your radar? It seems to be happening over certain amount of assets being downloaded.
Also the login session to paradox account is expiring every 3-4 days and it is very annoying to log in again and again.

 

[JimmiG]

Is there a fix for "crash on exit to main menu" still on your radar? It seems to be happening over certain amount of assets being downloaded.
Also the login session to paradox account is expiring every 3-4 days and it is very annoying to log in again and again.

In general we need improvements to the stability of the game when many assets are subscribed. I've even had freezes/crashes when saving which can be a total nightmare. It's not a particular mod or asset that's causing problems, just the accumulated load of a large city and many assets, regardless of system specs (I have a 4.5 GHz CPU, 16 GB RAM and SSD).

 

[Ryno917]

One thing that I really, really want to see: Better colour variation selection in the asset editor.

I want to be able to enter RGB values, and I want to be able to toggle through the 4 variations in the editor so I know exactly what each one will look like. I want to know exactly what RGB colour I've used so that I can use it again on similar assets (it's one of the reasons I haven't released the two smaller sizes of my light pylons yet - I want them to be the same colours).

That's something that, in theory, should be pretty easy to implement. The RGB value entry at least should be a doddle.

 

[Finwickle]

Thanks for the update, Mariina. It's good to see your continuous involvement with the community and your open communication about what you girls and guys and working on, and for instance the thoughts about patching and modding. Keep up the good work.

 

[co_martsu]

Is it possible for the Asset Editor to add stuff from the "More Beautification" Mod? ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=505480567 )
For Example the white Fence. It would be awesome to add it in the Asset Editor so we can make little 'Community Gardens' or "Schrebergärten" like we have in Germany

I'll ask the artists to look into this one. I'm not sure if it's feasible or not at this time I'm afraid.

It would be nice to have more text tips explaining some of the new tools, especially in the theme editor. Things like Rayleigh scattering and anisotropy sound cool but I have no clue what effect is supposed to happen if I jigger the values one way or another. Maybe some text describing them is a small thing that you could work on including in a new patch?

I checked with the person responsible for the theme editor and he said the effects are best seen when tweaking the values. Adding bunch of text in the game (those are rather complex to explain) might not be the best approach, but we could certainly look into a tutorial or a wiki entry of some sorts if we have the time!

I'd like to add my two cents here and point out the one thing that bugs me. It's not important nor a biggie but since the tree planting tool has been relocated to the landscaping tools, the icon for the park tools doesn't make sense anymore. The icon is still a tree and I sometimes find myself clicking on it when I want to plant some trees, only to find out again, there's no trees there anymore, despite the icon still being a tree. I'm just saying, it's a bit misleading and you need to get used to it.

Thanks

Changing the icon at this time might be overall slightly confusing, but I'll take this feedback forward!

Speaking of updates.
How much would you have to poke Valve to update the workshop to reflect the new additions? it still doesn't even have categories for anything added in After Dark, much less Snowfall and the Quays patch

Which categories are you after specifically? Do you mean a category for each expansion or something more defined?

Is there a fix for "crash on exit to main menu" still on your radar? It seems to be happening over certain amount of assets being downloaded.
Also the login session to paradox account is expiring every 3-4 days and it is very annoying to log in again and again.

In general we need improvements to the stability of the game when many assets are subscribed. I've even had freezes/crashes when saving which can be a total nightmare. It's not a particular mod or asset that's causing problems, just the accumulated load of a large city and many assets, regardless of system specs (I have a 4.5 GHz CPU, 16 GB RAM and SSD).

Unfortunately there is no quick fix for how many assets can be handled and this is very specific to the assets and system in question. I highly recommend subscribing to a reasonable amount of assets and picking well optimized ones to avoid unnecessary memory consumption. However we are constantly improving the stability and performances of the game, especially when the underlying technology gets upgrades.

For the Paradox account login I'll forward your feedback to the publisher online services.

One thing that I really, really want to see: Better colour variation selection in the asset editor.

I want to be able to enter RGB values, and I want to be able to toggle through the 4 variations in the editor so I know exactly what each one will look like. I want to know exactly what RGB colour I've used so that I can use it again on similar assets (it's one of the reasons I haven't released the two smaller sizes of my light pylons yet - I want them to be the same colours).

That's something that, in theory, should be pretty easy to implement. The RGB value entry at least should be a doddle.

I have learned not to estimate if something is easy or difficult to implement since I'm usually wrong anyway without consulting with the team I will take this feedback forward and discuss with the guys about it! (You have no idea how many times I have requested something that sounds simple and easy to me and the guys are looking at me like I just shot a panda... Reminds me that I better get them some cake soon, it's been a while.)

Thanks for the update, Mariina. It's good to see your continuous involvement with the community and your open communication about what you girls and guys and working on, and for instance the thoughts about patching and modding. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for reading!

 

[vukica]

Which categories are you after specifically? Do you mean a category for each expansion or something more defined?

Transport Tram, Road Services, Heating, Leisure, Tourism. There really aren't that many of them...

 

[co_martsu]

Transport Tram, Road Services, Heating, Leisure, Tourism. There really aren't that many of them...

I believe those might be slightly confusing for players who don't own the DLCs. I'll let the designers figure this out and forward the request for them

 

[ghostbirdofprey]

Which categories are you after specifically? Do you mean a category for each expansion or something more defined?

Well a category for required mods might be useful in the case something requires that mod, but I was mainly thinking of categories for each specific addition.
For example, categories for taxi and tram transportation (right now they are just stuck in the non-specific transit category, which can make finding assets in those categories more challenging), from AD and SF respectively, as well as a separate plaza category for the recent changes from the quays and terrain update.

Ploppables like trees and rocks might also benefit since those got shuffled around.

 

[co_martsu]

Well a category for required mods might be useful in the case something requires that mod, but I was mainly thinking of categories for each specific addition.
For example, categories for taxi and tram transportation (right now they are just stuck in the non-specific transit category, which can make finding assets in those categories more challenging), from AD and SF respectively, as well as a separate plaza category for the recent changes from the quays and terrain update.

Ploppables like trees and rocks might also benefit since those got shuffled around.

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Enzo]

I highly recommend subscribing to a reasonable amount of assets and picking well optimized ones to avoid unnecessary memory consumption.

how can we know if a given asset is well optimized or not ?

 

[co_martsu]

how can we know if a given asset is well optimized or not ?

Well that is an excellent question! The assets should first of all have a mention how many triangles they have, for spawnable buildings it should be 1000-5000 and slightly bigger amount for bigger buildings, naturally. However one major thing regarding performance is the triangle count for the LODs. For smaller buildings the LOD size should be less than 100 triangles and for bigger buildings less than 300. If the LOD is too detailed it takes too much memory unnecessarily.

I actually discussed this with the team and we'll be looking into improving the warning messages. The following issue report has been submitted: "Content manager could show warning for badly optimized assets". No ETA yet I'm afraid, but we'll get to it as soon as possible.

I hope this helps!

 

[BadPeanut]

Can we have a bit more clarification on how the snow textures on assets works with vertex colours? It's not very detailed/clear how it needs to be done on the wiki (i can't figure out how to removed snow from certain parts of my models)

 

[Sohryu_l]

Will we get expanded transit options? I mean we've got trams but trolleybuses, metro stations with pedestrian tunnels to connect them and stuff like that would be fun too.

Also I think quite a lot of people are partial to ferries.

 

[Enzo]

Thank you for your answer Mariina, it helps and congrats to you and your team, you have a very nice jewel in your hand continue to polish.

 

[lexAsaP]

The new tabs in some of the menu items are handy. A lot of assets are easier to find now. Thanks for that and for a lot of other functions that are implemented lately. I have not played a lot with it, but this weekend I'm planning on spending hours on the game. But back to the tabs...

I am wondering if that could be extended a bit? I have a lot of schools now for instance and at a certain point I want to build an elementary school. Now they can all be found under education, but I have to check a lot of buildings to see what kind of education they have have to offer. I would love to have different tabs under education to separate the different types of schools. So a tab Elementary, High School and University.

It would also be great if healthcare could have tabs to separate healthcare and death care.

Regards,

Alex