Dev Diary: Decorations Patch

[TimC340]

I'm delighted to get a new patch for the game. CPP has expressed exactly how I feel about the Decorations part - it's half-baked, and needed to include anarchy to make it truly useful. However, it's definitely an improvement and for that I'm grateful.

However, the homeless patch doesn't appear to be working for me. I understand the mechanics, as far as they've been explained, but I'm not seeing behaviour in accordance with those mechanics. My city was around 32,000 people with the 'Bye Bye Homeless' mod keeping things under control. I removed that mod, updated the game and have been running the city all day at 3x speed. I installed Cim Census to see the exact number of homeless in my city. After 8 IRL hours of play, I'd lost 4000 people, lost all demand in every category, and my homeless number was increasing from almost zero to over 800. (I already had free transportation out of the city). At the same time, my unemployment rate went from 27% to 15% yet 600 jobs (of around 7000) remained unoccupied. I just don't understand what's going on, but it isn't what I expected! I did anticipate that the algorithms would need further tweaking, but not quite as much as I now see the need for.

I will try a new city build and see what happens with that. I play with quite a few mods, so it may be that these are interacting inefficiently with the new algorithms.

 

[BoraBora]

Can you tell us if the CCPs that are due for QUARTER THREE 2024, which ends in LESS THAN A MONTH, are still coming this month, at least?

Good question. These 2 DLCs were sold with a 2024 1rst quarter delivery commitment.

 

[stoli412]

This is shambolic. Over the past year I've been pretty optimistic about CS:II, thinking that in time they'll right the ship and this game will realise its potential. But now I'm feeling really pessimistic about the game's future. I don't think CO have the resources or plan to get this game up to snuff. It's such a huge let-down from what we experienced with the original CS. So now I'm just waiting for one of those Netflix-style documentaries: "The Rise and Fall of Colossal Order".

 

[ProfessorHornbuckle]

Good question. These 2 DLCs were sold with a 2024 1rst quarter delivery commitment.

They aren't going to address this. I guarantee you they'll let September pass, and only then will they announce they are once again delayed.

Content owed to us in the first quarter of the year, and they are going to wait until Q4 starts to tell us they can't meet their existing delayed date of Q3. I guarantee it. If they were releasing in the next 2 weeks, they'd tell us now. They'd be hyping them up, they'd be riding any positive marketing they can- and they're not. So I guarantee you these are delayed, again, like everything else always is, and they're not going to be responsible and tell us upfront that there's going to be an even longer wait for content we paid for almost a year ago.

 

[BoraBora]

They aren't going to address this. I guarantee you they'll let September pass, and only then will they announce they are once again delayed.

That's what I think too. They'll be postponed for the third time. We now know what "the way forward" means: Avanya from CO isn't authorized to communicate release dates or ETAs because PDX handle them. And nobody from PDX answer any question on this official PDX forum. Nice way forward.

 

[Hubbubb17]

This is shambolic.

Everything is in the eye of the beholder. I've been playing this game vanilla since launch and have been having a blast. The economy 2.0 patch made the game a bit more challenging (but not overly so), and with the Bye Bye Homeless mod the game seems fantastic.

 

[cityrailsaints]

Awesome! But can we please get winter props too?

 

[unoace1006]

They aren't going to address this. I guarantee you they'll let September pass, and only then will they announce they are once again delayed.

Content owed to us in the first quarter of the year, and they are going to wait until Q4 starts to tell us they can't meet their existing delayed date of Q3. I guarantee it. If they were releasing in the next 2 weeks, they'd tell us now. They'd be hyping them up, they'd be riding any positive marketing they can- and they're not. So I guarantee you these are delayed, again, like everything else always is, and they're not going to be responsible and tell us upfront that there's going to be an even longer wait for content we paid for almost a year ago.

I asked this of co_avanya and they responded that they're scheduled for Q3.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/detailers-patch-1-patch-1-1-6f1.1693090/post-29816758

That being said, that's not a confirmation that they will be released. As you said, it's possible they'll be delayed yet again. Delays are becoming as predictable as the deadlines being missed to begin with. But hey, I can be flexible, delay the Ports and Bridges Expansion to 2026, but give me the CCPs I paid for, and the ones you (PDX) promised as compensation for Beach Properties. At the very least so I can at least plop them in my city even if there remain bugs to fix and performance to improve.

It's very concerning that no one has said they are coming this month. I appreciate their intent to not release paid content before fixing the game, but at the current rate of improvement (bugs, performance, etc.), the game won't be fixed until the end of 2025? If I had to guess, it'll read like this:

"We're almost finishing the implementation of Detailers Patch #2, but to make sure we address those final issues we're delaying the CCPs to Q4 2024. Assets take very little time for CO to implement, but that time is best used for this patch."

 

[ProfessorHornbuckle]

That was also a month ago. Sorry to say it, but anything this company says goes sour within 3 days unless they keep saying it. Until they're literally marketing the CCPs and showing us pictures, the safest assumption is that any estimate given has since changed.

And the whole "We actually already released our two big patches, we just forgot to tell you for two months that the second one came out already and to stop waiting for it" thing really reinforces that for me. I just can't take anything they say at face value anymore, it's proven to be a losing battle, many times. I am going to be very surprised if this isn't the same thing, once again. Another delay announced at the absolute last second.

Also, yeah, where is the Paradox communication? They really took over communication and then stopped doing it, huh?

 

[buskinthecat]

Maybe this is all a part of the simulation? "Taking money, failing to provide services in kind, prioritizing items your echo chamber considers important, ignoring your customer base, and delaying projects without explanation" kinda sounds like dealing with government IRL.

So maybe CS2 is not really a sim at all, but some kind of master-level ARG? If that's the case, then I'm definitely getting my money's worth!

 

[aortali2147]

It was never written that Asset Importing will happen with the release of the Q3 patch... maybe this thing had been written, it would be a miracle!!!...because if that were the case within 27 days at most we would have this much desired thing... but we're not even sure to receive the 2 expected CCPs...

It was said many times that the reason the ccp's are not out yet is because they need the asset importing feature to be live to actually add the ccp assets. If they do it like the beach DLC, the assets have to be coded into the game instead of just imported to a folder. I hope they do make this happen by the end of the month because a lot of good things will become possible.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Maybe this is all a part of the simulation? "Taking money, failing to provide services in kind, prioritizing items your echo chamber considers important, ignoring your customer base, and delaying projects without explanation" kinda sounds like dealing with government IRL.

So maybe CS2 is not really a sim at all, but some kind of master-level ARG? If that's the case, then I'm definitely getting my money's worth!

Not to mention as a business blaming ur own country’s welfare laws for your own incompetence and lack of planning, and pushing responsibility (and hence blame) onto a foreign based entity for everything wrong.

This definitely sounds like I’m in a simulation of how a government operates, or a capitalist bourgeoise. Ur comment would be so funny if it wasn’t me that was an idiot and fell into it

 

[:andy6752]

Hi everyone. We’re back with a development diary as patch 1.1.8, also known as Decorations Patch, is almost ready for you. Yes, it isn’t Detailer’s Patch #2 as this patch is not as big as the last one, but we hope you will still enjoy it. Since we wanted to get the homeless fix out as soon as possible and the decorations menu was ready to ship, we decided to bundle them together, along with a bunch of other bug fixes of course. Today, we’ll go through the new menu, how props work, and what has changed with homelessness. So let’s dive in!

DECORATIONS MENU​

We have been impressed by the creative use of the many props included in the game and when we first started putting Detailer’s Patch together, we knew we wanted to include an official and supported way to access them. For those who aren’t aware, it’s been possible to access and place props through developer mode, but as the name suggests, this isn’t a feature intended for everyday use, and as such can break things. So we’re excited to introduce the new Decorations Menu as part of the Landscaping options bringing you access to many props you can use to decorate your cities.

View attachment 1182501
Add a personal touch to any empty area of your city using the props in the decorations menu

Landscaping now includes 8 new categories packed full of props, from stones in Nature to benches and fountains in Park to crates and silos in Industrial Props. We looked at all the existing props in the game and selected the ones that both make sense and work when placed in game. As an example, we haven’t included props that only make sense when placed on a building, like chimneys or air condition units, as prop placement on buildings is not supported. In total, you will have access to 298 props to decorate any area of your city that needs a little something extra.

Placing a prop from one of the new categories works a lot like placing trees or buildings. They have a collision area based on the item’s size and shape, and just like trees, they can be placed on top of surface areas to create beautiful plazas or manicured gardens. Once placed, they can be selected, moved using the Relocate button in the Selected Info Panel, or removed using the Bulldozer. And perhaps best of all, props are free to place as they are decoration items that don’t impact the city - well, besides making it look cool of course!

View attachment 1182502
Create plazas, parks, gardens, back alleys, or more using props and surfaces

HOMELESSNESS​

Now, let’s talk about homelessness in the game. When citizens lose their homes, either because they cannot afford them or because they get destroyed, they become homeless. If they can afford it, they will leave the city, and if they cannot, they will find temporary shelter in your city’s parks or abandoned buildings. This is where they tended to get stuck, unable to find new homes or leave the city. Patch 1.1.8 contains a series of fixes to make sure those homeless households have a chance to get back on their feet.

Previously, we had a random check for whether homeless households would look for suitable homes in the city. This has been removed so with patch 1.1.8 homeless will always try to find a suitable home in the city. But that in itself isn’t enough, it requires homes for them to move into, and that those homes are not filled by newly created households instead of the city’s homeless population. To ensure this, homelessness now affects demand in two ways. It causes fewer new households to spawn while increasing the demand for high density residential housing.

Depending on how many homeless households your city has, it may take a while before all of them get back on their feet or find their way out of the city, but you can help the process along by fulfilling the demand for residential zoning and providing public transportation out of the city, such as intercity buses or trains.

That brings us to the end of this development diary. We hope this has given you some idea of what to expect for the next patch, and we will of course release the full patch notes when patch 1.1.8f1 goes live. We’re excited to see what you create using the Decorations Menu, so don’t hesitate to post screenshots (and tag us on social media if you do) showing off your creations!

I'm really glad we're still getting these updates! It's be cool to have homeless shelters and things like that. More policy options that could effect homelessness, and functional props so when I add a swing set to a park I made the people use it.

 

[BoraBora]

It was said many times that the reason the ccp's are not out yet is because they need the asset importing feature to be live to actually add the ccp assets. If they do it like the beach DLC, the assets have to be coded into the game instead of just imported to a folder. I hope they do make this happen by the end of the month because a lot of good things will become possible.

Absolutely not. The assets in the CCP are official, vanilla assets and they're imported into the game by CO with their dev tools, just like the beach DLC. Just because they're made by modders doesn't mean they're mods. They're marketed and sold by PDX.

The reason these CCP were postponed is the sorry state of the game. Few people will be willing to pay for them while there's so much to do to improve the game (more optimization, a lot more bug-fixing, the modding support out of beta and complete with the asset editor, the Region packs etc.). They fear the same backlash than the Beach DLC.

 

[Balatack]

Homelessness could be turned to entirely new gameplay loop for the players to experiment, manage and solve by creating systems and choices based around social responsibility and welfare. Yes, the entire homelessness systems has been experiencing bugs, however, this could be integrated so much deeper in to gameplay, what currently is.

System could include:

- Specialized assets for housing units only for homelessness citizens which have upkeep costs
- Specialized assets for supported employment (only for homelessness citizens) which have upkeep costs (such as flea markets building assets and food aid buildings)
- Much deeper and wider options to manage welfare and social responsibility such as housing benefits, social workers resources, food aid and so on
- Additional welfare buildings / upgrades which impact the system coverage
- Additional crime and social issues when homelessness is increasing which impact the land value and citizen happiness
- Info-graphics which explain the root causes for homelesness

 

[RuralConurbation]

Homelessness could be turned to entirely new gameplay loop for the players to experiment, manage and solve by creating systems and choices based around social responsibility and welfare. Yes, the entire homelessness systems has been experiencing bugs, however, this could be integrated so much deeper in to gameplay, what currently is.

System could include:

- Specialized assets for housing units only for homelessness citizens which have upkeep costs
- Specialized assets for supported employment (only for homelessness citizens) which have upkeep costs (such as flea markets building assets and food aid buildings)
- Much deeper and wider options to manage welfare and social responsibility such as housing benefits, social workers resources, food aid and so on
- Additional welfare buildings / upgrades which impact the system coverage
- Additional crime and social issues when homelessness is increasing which impact the land value and citizen happiness
- Info-graphics which explain the root causes for homelesness

I do agree. It would just be nice to see it and a host of other stuff, properly working first though !

 

[ProfessorHornbuckle]

More welfare building upgrades? For what purpose? Tell me what the welfare building actually does without looking at the code. Does anyone have any idea what it ACTUALLY does? Cuz I sure don't. It definitely doesn't assist in high rent warnings, low income housing, low income citizens, etc. It appears to do absolutely nothing.

Back when High Rent was literally every other building, I remember naively placing a welfare office, thinking "Oh, this will help these people realize it's really stupid of them to have single family homes, and assist in moving them into the low rent buildings". Nope, it does nothing. Do people even actually move between houses? Or are they trapped forever in the one they get when they rush in to be first in line for anything you build? Click your Low Rent buildings. How wealthy are the people there? I guarantee they are rich.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Love the props addition. I wanted more easy access to props in CS1. Will be happy to have them whenever I can run CS2.

 

[RuralConurbation]

Sorry to disappoint, but homelessness is not fixed. Now I have some homeless who are normal and leave when they need to. And I still have other homeless who just stand around on the sidewalks or in parks. Those abnormal homeless are occupying jobs, so the normal homeless leave the city when they can't find a job. My population has crashed 20,000 in two hours of play.

Sadly, the Bye Bye Homelessness mod is presently inactive, so the game is unplayable until homelessness is actually fixed.

I agree.

For some, it seems to work. For others, especially those with active mods, it doesn't. I have mods in my game and it works to a fashion but seems to have secondary effects:

I have added a roadway with a sidewalk so that the homeless can physically walk out of the city (from CPP suggestion). Most seem unwilling to use public transportation, even if it is free. This is a daft approach as it means that I have to buy and upkeep tiles just for a road out of the city.

Having this road does cause the homeless to leave. Many of them are wealthy and there is available housing. I still cannot get my head around why somebody with money and the possibility of renting would be homeless - but I probably live in some parallel world and that doesn't happen in real life - maybe its my grasp of economics?

The homeless reduce to a relatively low percentage in my city, perhaps a couple of percent of population, but they then remain at that level. So many of them are wealthy - perhaps they are professional beggars? - perhaps they love the lifestyle? or, heavens forbid, perhaps the game logic is flawed?

Once the homeless population reaches this low I start to see residential demand but it is very transient. It wasn't like that pre patch. Perhaps this is now a deliberate game mechanic. I lost the will trying to find out.

Checking or unchecking the "disable homeless" box in dev mode doesn't seem to make much difference to homeless behaviour while leaving the game running for many sim months. With the road, they still seem to shuffle out of town.

Ordinarily, I would be curious about how things behave as it satisfies my inquisitive side. Unfortunately, with this game being so buggy it's hard to decide if the outcomes of an action are intentional or a reflection of coding errors or suspect game logic. I have better things to do than just sit in front of a PC and ponder and I begrudge running the PC 24/7 as the game is so badly optimised and is costing me a fortune in electricity (real world electricity... not the stuff in the game).

Yes, I could run unmodded but the game is dull enough as it is. Having mods turned off kills the interest almost completely.

 

[Hubbubb17]

I agree.

For some, it seems to work. For others, especially those with active mods, it doesn't. I have mods in my game and it works to a fashion but seems to have secondary effects:

I have added a roadway with a sidewalk so that the homeless can physically walk out of the city (from CPP suggestion). Most seem unwilling to use public transportation, even if it is free. This is a daft approach as it means that I have to buy and upkeep tiles just for a road out of the city.

Having this road does cause the homeless to leave. Many of them are wealthy and there is available housing. I still cannot get my head around why somebody with money and the possibility of renting would be homeless - but I probably live in some parallel world and that doesn't happen in real life - maybe its my grasp of economics?

The homeless reduce to a relatively low percentage in my city, perhaps a couple of percent of population, but they then remain at that level. So many of them are wealthy - perhaps they are professional beggars? - perhaps they love the lifestyle? or, heavens forbid, perhaps the game logic is flawed?

Once the homeless population reaches this low I start to see residential demand but it is very transient. It wasn't like that pre patch. Perhaps this is now a deliberate game mechanic. I lost the will trying to find out.

Checking or unchecking the "disable homeless" box in dev mode doesn't seem to make much difference to homeless behaviour while leaving the game running for many sim months. With the road, they still seem to shuffle out of town.

Ordinarily, I would be curious about how things behave as it satisfies my inquisitive side. Unfortunately, with this game being so buggy it's hard to decide if the outcomes of an action are intentional or a reflection of coding errors or suspect game logic. I have better things to do than just sit in front of a PC and ponder and I begrudge running the PC 24/7 as the game is so badly optimised and is costing me a fortune in electricity (real world electricity... not the stuff in the game).

Yes, I could run unmodded but the game is dull enough as it is. Having mods turned off kills the interest almost completely.

I've been playing w/o mods. The only mod I've been running was the bye bye homelessness mod. I'd been having a blast from the git-go. And aside from the homeless question, my city had been running splendidly post-Econ2.0.

My theory about the present situation was that if someone became homeless through the simulation mechanics (high rent or unemployment), they would leave on their own.

And if someone became homeless because I demoed a building they would stand on the street doing nothing. That may be the case, but I'm not entirely convinced. I haven't seen a single high-rent indicator in ages and unemployment is at 2% or less, so why are some taking the train to leave while others aren't? And businesses ought to be able to employ people because my commercial, industrial, and office taxes are reasonably low -10%-8% across the board.

The number of households hasn't shifted but the total population has dropped significantly--which kind of makes sense because people tend to have fewer children in denser urban settings. There are fewer kids in my city (see attached pic) and the education levels have improved significantly over time. So at some point I would expect the population to stabilize, but I can't build (demo?) anything.

But these wealthy stuck homeless cims holding jobs are a conundrum. Are they homeless because I demoed a building hours ago? The cim should have passed away by now. How do I have 90%+ profitability in a business when the workers are standing on the sidewalk doing nothing?

Building a walkable road to the edge of the map sounds intriguing but that requires buying all those tiles.

I don't want to pester the mod designer (@wxdao) because I'm sure they have a life and a job--but I'll be happy as a clam once that mod is reactivated--or if CO produces a hotpatch (@co_avanya ).