Modders Info Thread

[TotalyMoo]

This is a to-be information thread containing all the information modders need.

Work in progress, though, so very little info so far. Please ask questions in here that you would like a response on and I'll try to add them, just like the FAQ.

What 3D model filetypes are supported?
FBX

 

[Stagua]

Any way to convert/add existing Simcity 4 models into new game if people who made models are unavailable?

 

[Bipin]

1. Right now, I think many of us would like some information on acceptable poly counts and what textures can be supported (e.g. bump, diffuse, displacement, specular, etc.). I think that would be general information we could all benefit from. That said, as you had claimed TotalyMoo, it is quite early on development. Would it be possible for us to download, say, a building from the game and examine it first-hand, by ourselves?

2. It might be too early to ask, but it is worth a try. Much like how trees can be placed in many games; not restricted to a grid and with a footprint smaller than the actual model (think of SC4's MMP mode) can the same be done with other assets. I'm thinking of retaining walls in particular:

On the other hand, would it be possible to add code which dictates that X model appears along a highway after every Y meters. Essentially, something like the T21 mods of SC4?

Any way to convert/add existing Simcity 4 models into new game if people who made models are unavailable?

Not unless you have the actual 3D files. This was explored during the release of SC2013, but to no avail. One of the moderators/content creators on a certain SC4 fan site made a "mod" which purportedly converted SC4 models into SC2013 ones, which turned out to be a hoax (although I think it was an April Fools joke). :wacko: Either way, a lot of people did, and some still think it allows SC4 models to be imported. The fact of the matter is that you need a true 3D model to work with, and SC4 "models" are by no means 3D models. SC4 is actually a "2.5D" orthographic projection game, as opposed to truly 3D. Models (except for automata and some transit items) are all created as 3D models, but exported as a series of textures; pictures, which are applied to a box (I'm under the assumption it is a LOD) that appears as a three dimensional object, due to the orthographic perspective of the camera/user which mimics the perspective the model was exported as. I just woke up, and am frankly still quite sleepy, so I'm sure I missed some details, but this is the basic idea of how SC4's graphics work in contrast to a true 3D application. Fun note, since the models are just exported as "pictures", there is no concern with poly count, since you aren't using the original 3D model in the game.

 

[SlyEcho]

Is there a way to add code to your mods, via scripting/DLLs etc?

 

[Monty84]

My questions:

1.The modding tools will work as plugins for one or more 3d modelling software or they will be standalone applications able to open and export FBX files? In case they are plugins, which 3d modelling software they will support?

2.Will the modding tools only provide 3d model export support (for buildings and objects) or they will also allow other kind of modding, like GUI, gameplay, road and transport mods, etc?

3. About the assets, can you provide some info about its characteristics? Number of LODs, triangle count limit or average triangle count, types of maps supported, etc?

4. Will modding tools provide support for custom or in-game animations and particle effects?

 

[co_martsu]

It's a little bit early to nail down anything regarding the modding tools at this point, but we'll release more information in a couple of months. So please be patient and we'll keep you updated

What I can say at this point for sure is that the asset importer is not a plugin to any 3d modelling software and that we will create guidelines for the custom made assets!

We are actually really interested in your ideas on what should be moddable. Tell us your suggestions!

 

[jmr00]

We are actually really interested in your ideas on what should be moddable. Tell us your suggestions!

The correct answer is everything.

 

[Monty84]

Well, everything has to be moddeable! :rofl:

*Exporting buildings and objects (street furniture, decoration, etc) is a must, I think. Also, possibility of creating custom roads/highways or other types of mass transportation.

*Custom vehicles would be nice too. I love making vehicles for CXL :happy:

*The ability to use/modify/create animations and particles would be nice too, for example to create fountains or animated signs/objects.

*Support for UV animated textures for billboards and other stuff.

And obviously the possibility to edit game files to modify stuff like simulation, GUI, etc. I'm not that kind of modder so I can't be really specific on that matter.


Do you use 3DS max?

*A script or plugin to directly export the model from 3DS Max (CXL Viewer style) would be nice.

*A Game-to-3d Software importer for easy retexturing and modification of existent assests.

 

[Goldiva]

Nice thread

It's a little bit early to nail down anything regarding the modding tools at this point, but we'll release more information in a couple of months. So please be patient and we'll keep you updated

What I can say at this point for sure is that the asset importer is not a plugin to any 3d modelling software and that we will create guidelines for the custom made assets!

We are actually really interested in your ideas on what should be moddable. Tell us your suggestions!

Love this approach. So enlightened and progressive.

I "speak" SC4 and CXL modding lingo, am new to the CO world, so bear with me. It seems to me there are 3 mod angles in Cities:Skylines:

1. In game on-the-fly modifiction (beautification tool) - great idea btw. Sounds like it's for parks, but it would be wonderful to be able to spray a few shrubs here and a custom prop in the backyard without launching any map editor.

2. Map Editor features - great to have custom textures to paint ground or replace plaza/pavement looks, place custom posters/billboards or paint "stencils" (graffiti with trans channel) on building walls, tree-style brushes for ANY props (animals, rocks, boats, single/group of animated sims). Brushes should come with randomised facing and single/multi-row-making options (for aligning greenery in farms).

3. 3D Model importation tool - graphical preview and user-pose auto-thumbnail snapshot, auto-LOD and map compression, animation loop import possible, seamless integration with map editor

Coming from SimCity and The Sims experience, soon custom content download frenzy will create crazy amount of clutter. To prevent menu bloat: Allow easy in-game (or via Windows Explorer) creations of submenus and unlimited sub-sub-menus. Allow flexible sorting submenu folders - by modder name/ price/ function/ file size.

Other SC4/ CXL modders do sound out your ideas on naming tradition and menu design...

Hosting of content: new content could get drown out by first generation content that floated to the top by rating or initial frenzy. To ensure new goodies continue to become visible, long-term meritocratic management of custom content inventory needs to be thought through. Reddit-style time-decay vs rating sorting mechanism may help. Consider Simtropolis style C:SL exchange with clear data and graphics.

That's all for now... Cheers.

 

[Stagua]

CiM2 had rule sets... implement them in CiS too, but add some more parameters in it, i.e. how many citizens are owning private cars, radius of police/fire depts etc.

 

[co_martsu]

Thanks to all the suggestions! Making everything moddable is a bit tricky with Unity, since we actually have to make the tool for everything. So more specific feedback is appreciated

The decoration tool is one of the cooler things in my opinion, since it's then easy to make the city really beautiful (I like nice things) without knowing much about modding. And I'm really looking forward to seeing cool custom made assets imported to the game.

CiM2 had rule sets... implement them in CiS too, but add some more parameters in it, i.e. how many citizens are owning private cars, radius of police/fire depts etc.

We're looking into more powerful tool than the ruleset. Any other specific values you would like to be able to adjust?

 

[Inge Jones]

Well if you can leave some of the tunable variables in plain text or xml files that unity can read, and we can edit, then that will deal with stuff like rulesets.

 

[RHKINC]

For values to adjust (just brainstorming, no clue if this has been done before/is being done) and when I mention city services impact I mean everything related to education, healthcare, crime, and fire values (or further values if they are in the game e.g. garbage; basically if it is a city service with a budget in the ledger its a city service) :

Individual building values: 1. Population effects (pollution, population tally, job market, RCI demand relationship, city services impact)
Grid/Region values (the 2kmx2km unlocking region sets): unlock requirements, size (large or smaller), resource pools/um lacking better term resources in the ground (trees for lumber, oil, natural gas, coal, farmland, etc, I know the resources may be part of the terrain editor but how much 1 spot of oil provides as a resource is a value we might want to mod, so that we can have one oil well with more oil than Saudi Arabia and North Dakota combined)

Casinos. Not a value, just something the game would be awesome to have. And a gambling policy. Viva Las... erm... Macau! Stupid copyright...

 

[Xannepan]

*Exporting buildings and objects (street furniture, decoration, etc) is a must, I think. Also, possibility of creating custom roads/highways or other types of mass transportation.

*Custom vehicles would be nice too. I love making vehicles for CXL :happy:

*The ability to use/modify/create animations and particles would be nice too, for example to create fountains or animated signs/objects.

*Support for UV animated textures for billboards and other stuff.

I second Monty's list. Maybe i can be a bit more specific as to my suggestions / wishes:

- adding buildings would be on the top of my wishlist. With the possibility to add buildings to user definable theme sets (modern, european, parisian, london, medieval, chinatown) that control in game zoning. I repeat I think it will be a good idea to post three of four buildings as examples eventually, to get us modders started.

- decoration models (benches, customized lampposts, traffic signs) and animations, particle models etc is a fantastic idea too.

- as far as adding / modding transportation networks goes, it doesn't take much imagination to assume you have DLCs planned in this area. So the number transportation networks will hopefully be pretty complete eventually. It would be great though to allow for transit texture modding (not as replacements, but as additions) from the start.

- maps (via map editor) is also something high on my wishlist obviously.

- customized skies is cool.... (If not moddable than maybe as a suggestion for a weather/climate DLC, likewise for a DLC with celestial events and day/night cycle... You can count on my euros

I also like the options for in game "modding or customizátion" you guys talked about

- The possibility to create customized parks etc is really nice.

- i would really like the possibility for terrain editing during gameplay. WOuldn't mind if it would take switching to an editor mode on a save game, as long as you can make some changes (canals, waterfalls, (mountain) lakes afterwards and not only before you start a city

- I really would like the option to upgrade/change existing roads.... (Double lane to single lane and v.v. With and without parked cars on a curbs Etc). What also would be cool is if clicking on a road-stretch would cycle through different lamppost styles, etc)

Well just sharing my dreams of an ideal city simulator...

 

[Stagua]

We're looking into more powerful tool than the ruleset. Any other specific values you would like to be able to adjust?

Same kind of ratios like in CiM2 but about economy too. Also ability to edit range of buildings and bus stops, probably.

 

[mntoes]

I second Monty's list. Maybe i can be a bit more specific as to my suggestions / wishes:

- adding buildings would be on the top of my wishlist. With the possibility to add buildings to user definable theme sets (modern, european, parisian, london, medieval, chinatown) that control in game zoning. I repeat I think it will be a good idea to post three of four buildings as examples eventually, to get us modders started.

...

An absolute must IMO

 

[Bipin]

Control over definable theme sets would indeed be an important asset! Aside from adding buildings though, I'd also like to see more utilitarian structures found within the urban landscape. In my opinion, props such as highway signs, VMS signs (it would be awesome if we could write our own messages), retaining walls, barriers, guardrails, high-mast lights etc. that can be plopped outside the constraints of a grid, akin to SC4's MMP ploppables, would be equally important. One big complaint about Cities XL is the lack of vibrancy and "depth" within a city, little props and items like this might help rectify that.

 

[Bixel]

as co_martsu, had mentioned the Asset Importer > I am pretty sure this is a CO tool that simply adds FBX and additional assets to the Unity Project pipeline. I have experience with Unity and working on any game inside Unity, Unity needs to know how and what to do with the assets, additionally asset properties can be attached to more metadata within the Unity project that the asset does not have (alone). I have a project that can load a database of files + textures from folders OUTSIDE of the Unity project (this allows mod-ability on the files themselves, like modding CK2), but 3D Models may need to be handled differently.. as of yet I don't know how to do this, which is why I presume CO has made the Asset Importer tool.

This allows people WITHOUT access to the Unity Project to add 3D models to the asset pipeline....

Honestly, I don't really see any reasons to Export anything... Instead have an example Building + texture example, metadata example, possible building script example. And simply import as new building. Why do we need to export anything in the game? If you want a new Post Office, make a new Post Office and import it. Maybe CO can offer 1 professional asset in its raw form so we can follow it as a guide for everything else.

 

[RHKINC]

Theme sets and controlling which districts they appear in is top of my list now that I think about it. Xannepan hit the nail on the head.

 

[Goldiva]

The decoration tool is one of the cooler things in my opinion, since it's then easy to make the city really beautiful (I like nice things) without knowing much about modding. And I'm really looking forward to seeing cool custom made assets imported to the game.

We're looking into more powerful tool than the ruleset. Any other specific values you would like to be able to adjust?

Thanks again for being so open to suggestions. The decoration/ beautification/ park tool sounds really cool indeed. Can it be used citywide beyond "park making"?

I'm not familiar with CiM2 rule sets but here are the value/parameter adjustments I'd like to have:

In-game - vehicle spawn density for cars/ trains/ water, sims/pedestrian spawn density, visibility distance for buildings (and separate one for vegetations), shadow type/opacity/angle, hospital/ fire dept capacity. Ticket price adjustment for all transport depts (and toll booths/ gates if applicable). Bridges/ road over/underpasses height limitation lock on/off.

One other visual-functional thing: the gray plaza/pavement width between a building and road/ neighbour building, nice if the plaza/pavement spread size could be assigned globally or per zoning stroke or per building plop. Subjected to building's respective props sizes of course.

Map editor or decoration tool - tree brush variables (mix different trees per brush spray, tree facings), wind speed (CiM trees looked too "windy"), water speed/ colour/ opacity. Would be supercool if we could deform cliff sides horizontally, as in cave-making Cryengine style!

Thanks again for listening!