• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

CO Word of the Week #7

It’s time for the last CO Word of the Week this year. Next week we’ll start our holidays and will be away for a few weeks. But before the holidays there’s still time for the last patch, which is planned to go out this week. We will of course have full patch notes for you when it releases, but in the meantime, I can give you a sneak peek at what’s included. On the performance side of things, the patch adds the level of detail models for characters and improves the geometry layout for all assets. This won’t be the last update to performance, it takes us one more step towards our goals.

As promised, we’ve also managed to include a bunch of gameplay fixes and improvements. The patch changes how money is calculated and shown in your city. We hear your feedback and hope these improvements make the budget more transparent and easier to determine what new services your city can afford. We’re grateful for all the feedback you have shared, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on things to understand how things feel after the patch. We’ve also improved how vehicles change lanes, fixed situations where the resource amount stored would end up as a negative value, and added the line color to ships and cargo trains so you can easily see which lines they belong to.

The patch also includes a little holiday gift in the form of two new maps that were the result of internal testing of the Map Editor. There are still a few things missing from the Map Editor for it to be fully functional, like proper preview images showing off your amazing new maps, but we’re making good progress. I can’t wait to see what kind of maps you create! In the meantime, here’s the brief I gave the designers for the new maps based on some feedback we’ve gotten:

Land of the Eternal Sun
As the name suggests this area basks in the glory of the eternal sun. With literally no rain and steady warm temperatures this is an ideal choice for those looking to build with minimal input from the seasons.

Flatland
Hills, slopes, mountains? No thanks, I'd rather stay leveled. No need for contour lines on this land!

To my great disappointment, the designers changed both the names and the descriptions of the maps to “better fit the existing style” of the game. So Sunshine Peninsula and Corral Riches are the names of the new maps when you start a new game. Let us know what you think about them!

And then, as promised, let’s go over what our plans for Cities: Skylines II in 2024 are:

Modding
Bringing the mod support to the game is a high priority. This includes the map editor, code modding support, and the asset editor. The asset editor is the part that is most behind the schedule, but we will continue to work on it in January. We’ll be releasing Development Diaries related to the modding, and run an early access program for modders to try the tools before their release. Check out the previous WoW to sign up if you haven’t already!

Consoles
The console versions of the game were delayed and we’re working hard to get the performance and the stability up to par so we can bring the game on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The console versions will also have the modding tools (minus code modding) present on release so the players on console will also be able to create maps and add custom assets.

Expansion Pass
The DLC production is currently on hold and waiting for the higher priority work to be completed, but progress has already been made on the first Asset Pack, Content Creator Packs, and Radio Stations. CCPs are of course created by some of our favorite content creators in the community and the content for the radio is produced by Paradox.

Performance and bug fixing
While we’ve progressed quite a bit on the performance and bug fixing we’re still not satisfied and will continue to improve the quality of the game based on our internal findings and your bug reports and crash logs. To be honest, this is work that we’ll continue throughout the lifetime of the game, as I believe there’s always something we can improve upon, but the biggest remaining offenders should be sorted out during the spring.

Your suggestions/feedback
We'll be taking your suggestions and feedback on board regarding new content, features, and quality-of-life improvements that are not classified as bugs. Your feedback matters and we’ll be drawing inspiration from it for the lifetime of the project, just like we did for Cities: Skylines, so let’s keep the discussions going!

That is the current list of priorities we’ll have in 2024, though we will of course continue to keep an eye on your feedback and adjust our priorities as needed, especially when it comes to performance. We hope to bring you the features and missing platforms as soon as possible, and we’ll announce timelines as we get closer to each release so keep an eye on the CO Word of the Week in the new year for the latest news.

Next week there will be something to round up the year, but this little blog is taking a break until January 15th. I wish everyone lovely holidays and I look very much forward to getting back to work in the New Year!

Sincerely,
Mariina
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 119Like
  • 28Love
  • 8
  • 3
  • 2
Reactions:
I can answer this one. Our focus has been on GPU-related improvements as that's been what was needed the most, but as we're working our way through those improvements, we'll start to focus on the CPU side of things.


We're working on support for newer versions of FSR as well as DLSS for NVIDIA users, but I'm afraid we don't have an update on when we'd be able to bring you those yet.
Thank you for your reply. I found a link for a person who reported it on the forum and it was marked as confirmed.

I have the issue where police will arrive and the criminal who is still present will not be taken by police. Sometimes the criminal will walk with the destination of the police station but it will change and they end up going elsewhere.

I look forward to this bug fix as I feel it will add a new challenge to the city with crime and jail populations.

I had to remove the link as it wouldn't let ne post it.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
May I ask what is your focus when talking about "performance"?
Shortly after the release the GPU was the bottleneck. Now it appears to be the CPU that is going to bottleneck. After a certain amount of people in your city the simulation is getting so slow that it kills all the fun. It's great that my GPU now is running at 60 rather than 100%, but now my CPU is slowly dying.
You advertised that the game is so complex, but I fear that it might be too complex. What are your plans in that regards?

Imho both were and still are bottlenecks (not counting in the currently unreleased patch ;) ).
When it comes down to the weakest upcoming part of the whole hardware chain (which ist unfortunately the Series S, as my computer is somewhere in the performance range of a Series X+ and still has many situations getting limited by GPU), so further improvements still have to be made on that side too ;)

The simulation part is also something which was uncovered by cities growing above 200k residents on different hardware/hardware combinations. It was told that this will also be tackled, especially by making use of different CPU functionalities which may now not be actively used for the simulation part (like specific operation sets defined on hardware level by Intel/AMD).
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
These are all great things to hear! I can't wait for the high priority things to be done so we can get some DLCs going. Especially if it includes bicycles.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Thank you @co_martsu (Mariina) for the pretty long word of the week, much appreciated as usual!

While I don't have many questions for most part, as it's straight forward to me, I have some specific questions about this:
Your suggestions/feedback
We'll be taking your suggestions and feedback on board regarding new content, features, and quality-of-life improvements that are not classified as bugs. Your feedback matters and we’ll be drawing inspiration from it for the lifetime of the project, just like we did for Cities: Skylines, so let’s keep the discussions going!
I know on the bug board bugs get an actual feedback status once a QA had a look at the item - is something like this going to be planned for suggestions too after the "triage phase"?

Personally I kept adding my suggestions to the official Discord channel (may I add them over here too? Is there some preference?) but I think it would be nice to visibly see some lable like "Feedback Logged" or "Under Review" to the ones added at least over here, just to have a rough overview like on bugs.

Talking about bugs: it would also be helpful to have some similar filters to the forums suggestions on bugs too, something like "Your bugs" as for now I have to search for myself to have them all listed (which unfortunately also displays all bugs I participated on, not just the ones I own ;) )

Thank you again and have some great holidays! Catch some energy for the next round in 2024 (which ofc goes out to all team members :) ).
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Love this! Sounds like this is going to b e huge patch. Keep up the great work team, we really appreciate all the hard work youre putting in. This game has been great fun playing and I love watching it get better and better.
 
  • 2Haha
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Thank you for your relentless efforts and for listening to the community. I’m most excited to see the improvement in vehicle lane switching as it currently defeats the most elaborate highway systems I’ve built
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
here’s the brief I gave the designers for the new maps based on some feedback we’ve gotten:

Flatland
Hills, slopes, mountains? No thanks, I'd rather stay leveled. No need for contour lines on this land!

What feedback could that map possibly be based on?

Building on sloped terrain has been a problem since C:S1, and instead of finding a better way, your solution is a flat map?
 
  • 16
  • 5Like
  • 2Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
I can answer this one. Our focus has been on GPU-related improvements as that's been what was needed the most, but as we're working our way through those improvements, we'll start to focus on the CPU side of things.


We're working on support for newer versions of FSR as well as DLSS for NVIDIA users, but I'm afraid we don't have an update on when we'd be able to bring you those yet.
You did not really answer anything, just gave a political reply. Do you acknowledge that after 150/200k population the simulation is so slow that the game is completely unplayable and hence a dealbreaker worth ultimately nothing?! Everyone has to start a new city at that point and, as much as I've always defended your design choices, this problem is with the codebase and the agent simulation system. Can you contradict me and say that it's not and that it's "just a fixable bug"?
 
  • 13
  • 4Like
  • 3
Reactions:
Thank you so much for all the hard work. Already have 100 hours of gameplay.

Will this patch fix the police taking criminals to jail?
I have the same issue, if this is the same issue you'rehaving. Where I would have for example 100 criminals in the city, Crime is up 60%, But only 5 arrested/in jail with police doing absolutely nothing as if they aren't taking them to jail at all. Crime icons popping up with plenty police services to take care of the issue.
 
I have the same issue, if this is the same issue you'rehaving. Where I would have for example 100 criminals in the city, Crime is up 60%, But only 5 arrested/in jail with police doing absolutely nothing as if they aren't taking them to jail at all. Crime icons popping up with plenty police services to take care of the issue.
Yes this is the same issue I'm having. I want to have a prison but it is useless to use with crime being bugged.
 
Hope that there are plans on the Suggestion/Feedback for zoning review, improvement or tools to "control" it somehow.

Also, constant slope roads when you "draw" a segment of a road.
 
I see that there are a lot of patches, and that shows a lot of consideration for your teams. However, I have 2 questions.

Do you have to start a city from scratch with each new patch for the corrections to be taken into account? I ask this because the addition of bus stops at the international airport was only carried out after its reconstruction. So I see that the updates are not done automatically on cities that have already been started?

And my other question concerns waste. Since my 250,000 inhabitants, many buildings present problems of waste recovery by garbage collectors despite the construction of multiple landfills, incinerators etc... very few garbage trucks (a third I would say) go out into the city while many buildings have an accumulation of waste...

Thank you for your reply
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Good news, the important bug will be repaired: Economy, monthly balance.
I am also curious to see the improvements of graphic performance.

Edit.- And good detail the 2 new maps. After the patch, it will be time to leave a map Tampere and go to that new sunny and scorching map, and start new city.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Great to hear that! I have question about assets, will you add more of vanilla european styled assets, and will we have possibility of assigning proper premission on the road instead of all of the roads connected on junction getting stop sign?
 
I can't wait for vehicles to stop breaking the rules so much. And is there perhaps a way for them to notice when one lane is busy with cars trying to enter a parking lot and just bypass that queue? if that's already going to be included in the patch, it would be so amazing.
If there are multiple lanes in the direction they're moving they should already do this, unless of course they also need to enter the parking lot.

Hello thanks for the update, I've a coupla questions if you dont mind... you mention the asset editor is most behind, can I ask if the map editor is the most ready then will you release this when done or must we wait for both edtors to be ready before we can access them in game?

And also, can I connect paths to the parks yet in this new patch? 'Cos I really, really, really wanna do that.

Thanks :)
We don't have a definite answer to this yet, but we're looking into whether it makes sense to release separately or stick to our original plan to release support for code modding, map making, and asset creation at the same time.

Ooh, and I forgot to ask... you'd mentioned in another update coupla weeks ago and provided a link where people could apply to beta test the map editor. Im sure there were a billion applications, have you already selected the lucky few?

Thanks again
Applications are still open. :)

Thank you Mariina! I am excited to see what comes with the patch this week (albeit a bit worried as a modder who will have to update my code)! :)

Can you shed some light on how soon we might expect code mod developers to be invited to the early access period for the modding tools?

Happy holidays to you and your team! Enjoy your break!
I can answer this one while Mariina is busy elsewhere. We're aiming for a few weeks early access before the release of modding support, but at this time we don't have a timeline or date for when it will start. And fingers crossed your mod doesn't require too much fixing after the patch.

Thank you for your reply. I found a link for a person who reported it on the forum and it was marked as confirmed.

I have the issue where police will arrive and the criminal who is still present will not be taken by police. Sometimes the criminal will walk with the destination of the police station but it will change and they end up going elsewhere.

I look forward to this bug fix as I feel it will add a new challenge to the city with crime and jail populations.

I had to remove the link as it wouldn't let ne post it.
Thanks for the additional details, I managed to find it. I'm afraid we don't have an update on the issue yet. We've been able to reproduce it, and we'll dig into it more when the higher priority issues are sorted.

Thank you @co_martsu (Mariina) for the pretty long word of the week, much appreciated as usual!

While I don't have many questions for most part, as it's straight forward to me, I have some specific questions about this:

I know on the bug board bugs get an actual feedback status once a QA had a look at the item - is something like this going to be planned for suggestions too after the "triage phase"?

Personally I kept adding my suggestions to the official Discord channel (may I add them over here too? Is there some preference?) but I think it would be nice to visibly see some lable like "Feedback Logged" or "Under Review" to the ones added at least over here, just to have a rough overview like on bugs.

Talking about bugs: it would also be helpful to have some similar filters to the forums suggestions on bugs too, something like "Your bugs" as for now I have to search for myself to have them all listed (which unfortunately also displays all bugs I participated on, not just the ones I own ;) )

Thank you again and have some great holidays! Catch some energy for the next round in 2024 (which ofc goes out to all team members :) ).
Feedback is always welcome on the forum, also if it's been posted elsewhere before. Generally, it's a good idea to add to existing threads on the same topic (if there are any) as that makes it easier for us to reference the feedback in the future.

It's an interesting idea to have labels for that forum, though as the person who notes most of the feedback we get on the forum, I think it might just end up with all threads being marked the same, as we go through everything. So perhaps it wouldn't be so useful. Am I correct in assuming that you're mostly looking for confirmation that your feedback has been noted/received?