CO Word of the Week #9

[co_martsu]

Welcome back to the weekly update on what’s happening at Colossal Order and what to expect for Cities: Skylines II. Last week we had in-depth conversations with our publisher Paradox Interactive on the priorities and goals for Cities: Skylines II for 2024. There’s really nothing new when it comes to the previous statements: Modding support, console versions, and the Expansion Pass content are to be worked on and released during the year. From the great discussions emerged an important decision however: the modding support will roll out gradually as the features enter beta and we won’t wait for all of them to be fully completed before setting them live.

What this means in practice is that we’ll start giving the mod creators early access to the modding tools as soon as the code modding and Paradox Mods are ready for testing. If everything goes as planned a Public Beta version of the code modding and Paradox Mods will be available a couple of weeks after that. We’ll continue to work on the Map and Asset editing as they require a bit more attention still. Map editing is expected to be available sooner than the Asset editing, but at this time it comes down to iteration time and the feedback we’re getting on the usability of the tool. Asset editing is unfortunately suffering from technical issues and as long as players are unable to save and share the assets there’s no point publicly releasing the tools. We do have a plan for the fixes, but it might take months in the worst case I’m afraid.

To summarize on the priorities of the modding support:

1. Public Beta version of code modding and Paradox Mods will be available in the live build by the end of March
2. Public Beta version of Map editing available in the live build together with code modding or soon after
3. Public Beta version of Asset editing to be announced, only after the technical issues are sorted can we roll out the tool
4. Continue to work on the modding support and get out of the Beta stage during the Finnish fall.

We’ll keep resources on the modding support throughout the entire lifecycle of Cities: Skylines II as we know there are many improvements and feature requests we can work on to help the modders achieve their goals even after the initial Beta release.

The work on the console versions is ongoing and while gated by the modding support we’re making progress. We’re not committing to any timelines as there are too many unknowns at this time, but we’ll keep you updated and will communicate the moment we have something to share. For the Expansion Pass, the artists have the Beach Properties content almost ready and we’re on track for its release.

Before those bigger releases, we’ll have one more patch coming out. After this, we’ll include the bug fixes and performance improvements in the releases to reduce the amount of individual patches. Patch 1.0.19 is going through its first round in QA at the moment and will be released after it passes the checks. Full patch notes will be released on the day the patch goes live, but you can expect fixes for stuck maintenance vehicles and an additional fix for abandoned dogs, who will now be returned to their homes. While the work still continues on the land value, we have an improvement so pollution properly affects the value. And last, but definitely not least, we’re currently testing a fix for the tax bug with crazy high or negative numbers.

Keep following our social channels for news about the patch release and hope you enjoy the game in the meantime. Have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

 

[co_avanya]

So the asset mods, including the Creator Packs, aren't going to be available until sometime between March and  Fall? That's astonishing, to be honest.

We're working to fix the technical issues with the asset import, but it may take us months to resolve, which means anything that relies on the asset import will wait for it. Of course, we hope to resolve the issues sooner, but we want to be honest with you and not set too high expectations. Unfortunately, these issues are not easy to solve, but we'll get there as soon as we can.

Cool, may I ask you to fix the data visualization_ I mean graphs and stuff that are not visualized properly (e.g. the lines are starting in the middle of the plot), also the numbers don't seem to be correct at times. Please, it is important in order to know what are the trends in the city, crutial part for planning.

We're working on a bunch of fixes for statistics, but we'll have to see if they make this upcoming patch.

Thanks for the update Two questions:

- Will these public beta versions also available for Microsoft Store customers?

- Seeing the issues with the asset editor, does that mean that those creators packs teased last year with "coming soon" are also delayed massively? This is a bummer since building asset variety is abysmal in the vanilla base game.

Looking forward to the patch with fixes.

The Editor will become available in the live build as a Beta, so you'll have a button to access it. There will just be some things that are not finished and may not work, but you'll be able to experiment with what's there and provide feedback on it.

 

[co_avanya]

Cheers for the update guys. As someone who has already put out a few maps (please someone stop me, I'm supposed to be working!) I'm a little reticent to make too many more. Im worried I'll have to come back and remake the maps once the editor is officially out... - do you think this is likely to happen? Or will maps already made work fine later when the editor is out?

Also, since its you guys who are making the map editor - perhaps you could give us some advice on how to best use the water tools? I've been learning thru trial and error, I keep thinking I have it figured out, but then my current map is telling me I know nothing.

Cheers M'dears.

AncientSwan

Unfortunately, this isn't something I can answer as we just don't know exactly how the game will handle the maps you have already created. Hopefully, they will work with little to no work needed, but it isn't something we can guarantee. I would recommend not investing more time than you're willing to lose, though things like heightmaps can of course be reimported, so work there wouldn't be lost.

What about performance improvements? I have a city at 700k population that is unplayable and I am running it on a high end system. I’ve tried to submit a report but the saved game file is too large to upload on your website.

Work on performance continues and will likely continue throughout the game's lifetime. We're looking into improvements on the CPU side of things to improve performance for larger cities, but we don't have any massive patch dedicated to performance coming - the improvements will be included in regular patches as they are ready.

I didn't quite understand, will there be another patch besides 1.0.19 before bugfix patches are only released alongside major feature patches? After this next patch, will the next one only be at the end of March with the arrival of the beta version of modding?

We'll have the upcoming patch and then we expect the next one to be alongside the Public Beta for code modding and Paradox Mods. Each patch cycle takes additional time, so batching patches in larger portions allows us to spend more time on the actual fixes and improvements. We'll do our best to bring you the modding update as soon as possible, and everyone is hard at work making sure that patch includes as many bug fixes and improvements as possible.

 

[co_avanya]

Hi everyone!

Firstly I'm so sorry I didn't get a chance to respond here yesterday. I'm afraid I won't get to address all the points raised in these comments, but I've made some notes reading through all your comments, so I hopefully won't forget too many things.

Let's start with modding. I want to apologize for the miscommunication around release time that modding support was imminent. We had a disconnect in information between the community team at Paradox who handle the streams, and our development team. I completely understand that the communications at the time set expectations that we have not lived up to, and I want to apologize for not communicating the situation sooner. It took us longer than it should to realize this information was out there and to update you on the modding situation. We can't undo that, but we have discussed how we can avoid situations like that in the future and make sure that everyone on the community side, whether on our side or Paradox's side, is up-to-date on the situation so we can set expectations you can count on.

I also completely understand the frustration you feel learning that modding, and particularly asset import, are coming later than hoped. Our initial goals were for mod support to be added right after release, but these plans changed as we received your feedback and it became clear that there were other areas of the game that needed attention first. On top of that, we have encountered issues with the asset import, which has delayed the Editor. We are also frustrated by these issues as modding is important to us and we know that a lot of you are looking forward to playing with custom content. All I can say is that we're working on resolving these issues as fast as possible and that we will continue to update you on the progress. This week it means the news that it could take months to resolve, hopefully we'll have some good news to share on the situation in the future. Bad news always sucks, but being open with you about our progress means also sharing the bad news. You deserve to know what's up, and it is of course completely understandable that the news is followed by frustration. I'd like to take the chance to thank you all for remaining constructive. It means a lot to me, personally, and to us as a company, that we can continue to have constructive conversations.

Performance
We haven't reached our goals yet, so work on performance continues. As the patch before the holidays contained a bunch of performance improvements, we don't have much to share at this point, but I wanted to mention that we continue to look at what we can improve, also on the CPU side of things. And even when we reach the targets we have set for ourselves, we will continue to look at what can be improved. The work on performance never really stops, and we continue to keep an eye on feedback and bug reports to determine where improvements can be made and are mostly needed.

Bug fixes
This leads me to bug fixes, something that will never end. A bug-free game is of course the dream, but realistically, we'll probably never get rid of all bugs. That doesn't mean we'll stop trying to squash them all though! Your reports are incredibly helpful to us in determining how widespread issues are and how we can reproduce them. We have already fixed a long list of bugs thanks to your reports and saves, and we'll continue to do so. We'll have a full list of bug fixes when the patch is ready for release and the patch notes are finalized - the WoW only mentions a few - and we'll continue working on fixes for the reports we haven't been able to address yet. We prioritize bugs that have the most severe impacts on your experiences, but occasionally, we also have smaller bugs that are quick and easy to fix or relate to another severe issue that's being investigated.

The team
I just want to address the worries that our team has gotten a lot smaller or that we let people go following the release. We're still a team of 30 people. While some companies scale up and down in relation to different projects, that's now how Colossal Order works. When we hire a new employee, it isn't just for a specific short-term project, but because we see them as a valuable employee in the long run. Of course, people move on from time to time to find new challenges in their professional lives, and new people join the team. The company turns 15 years old this summer, so naturally, not everyone who has ever worked here is still with the company. But we always aim for sustainable growth because we believe people do better work when they know we aim to keep them in the long run and not just for whatever current project they're working on.

All that said, I completely understand wanting us to add people or speed up the process in other ways. We're always on the lookout for how we can improve our processes and get better at what we do, but unfortunately, some things just take the time they take, and adding more resources doesn't always speed things up. It's really great to see all the passion and thoughts on how we can improve, so thank you everyone for sharing. <3

 

[co_avanya]

@co_avanya :
Thank you very much for your response.

1. Could you please clearly confirm that end of March 2024 is the time we will see the next relevant performance improvements, as implied by the WotW?
2. Could you please inform us if you are already working on a DLSS 2/3 integration? If yes, I'm sure you have a rough target date at hand, feel free to not hold back on communicating it
3. Regarding all the simulation issues, it would be helpful to get a kind of roadmap from you to understand what can be expected next. If you are not comfortable with communicating dates (or at least months or quarters) then at a very minimum a priority list on what you are working on. Fairly managing customer's expectation is always a good way to control their emotions and frustrations. Vague statements on the other hand just accelerate the rumor mill and by that again frustration

1. The patch we're working on at the moment includes some performance improvements (assuming they make it through testing of course), though nothing major that's expected to have a huge impact on performance, hence why we haven't mentioned them. They're a part of the continued efforts to improve the performance throughout the game's lifetime.

2. We're working on DLSS integration yes, though I'm afraid we don't have a timeline for when you can expect it. When we do have an update, we'll let you know.

3. We're working on a roadmap (don't expect dates/months though), but it needs to go through a few people before we can share it. I know it's frustrating having to wait, but we need to make sure everyone is aligned on what's shared and how far into the future it reaches. Fingers crossed for next week! ^^