Why hasn't the demand bug in the UK pack been fixed yet? When will it be?

[pdx_peanut]

Hello everyone!

I hope you enjoyed some time off over the holiday period to rest, and spend time with your families!
I spent my holiday period looking into and hopefully fixing the UK pack, which I think I have successfully managed. I will not update it immediately as that would be irresponsible to do without testing, which may beg the question why did we post it in the first place without testing? and the answer to that is, we did test it, this bug just wasn't immediately evident and unfortunately got past us.

I will beg your extended patience just a little further and I will hopefully update the pack very soon, and fingers crossed it resolves the problems and we don't miss any new bug. These things always keep me up at night!
Thanks and happy new year!

 

[pdx_peanut]

Will this fix some other UK pack issues? For example, I remember that one of the school extensions added only 50 students. It looks like, for the price, it should have added 500, especially since there are 2 upgrades at about the same price (one adding 500 places, the other 50).

This will depend on what has been reported in the official bug reports forum or not. I can only fix issues I know about and no matter how much I try, I unfortunately can't be in every space looking for issues!
I won't give a detailed list of fixes here just yet though.

 

[pdx_peanut]

OK I just logged it. Hard to know if this was logged before, as the bug forum has 1,000s of items, and they no longer get marked as confirmed or fixed.

Thank you! I am still investigating one other main issue, depending on time, I will see if this fix is included or whether it could make it to a future update!

 

[pdx_peanut]

Any news on this? Interesting if this is still in the pipeline to fix or that attention moved to other items.

Hello!
I am back, sorry for some delay to replying, I've been needing to do work on the upcoming packs at the same time.

The main issue with the UK pack that I am still in the middle of working through is the Medium Density bugs - but it's more a question of how I best solve the issue. Generally speaking, I have the answer of the "why" the bug is happening, thanks to some investigation from Colossal Order. But with the information they were able to give me it looks like there is a fundamental design flaw in the UK pack where the creators assigned exact household numbers to each building, which is not recommended.
I am currently in the process of testing several ideas I have to fix the issue, while still trying to respect the original intent of the creators. There is also a little bit of backend investigation still happening too, which once complete will mean the fix will happen much easier for everybody.

I don't want to give an exact, or even inexact estimate on how long this will take so as not to disappoint if I can't hit that timeframe. I would rather update once with a good fix, than have to come back to the drawing board many times - though of course if that happens, then it happens and I will roll with it.

So that's where I am at. I know it's frustrating to wait, I am appreciative of everyone's patience.

 

[pdx_peanut]

I appreciate your extra effort during the holidays. Is there an ETA for the update? I have been pausing my UK build for a month and waiting for this to be fixed

I've answered above

 

[pdx_peanut]

If I am getting this right, you (or any other creator) shouldn't give a house which you intended to hold say 10 households max this number?
Which in turn would mean that the game somehow determines the max number of households dynamically, is that right?

That is correct. Once the asset editor releases into beta, things like the "hows" and "whys" will be put onto the wiki.

 

[pdx_peanut]

I would recommend putting it in capital letters in the wiki.

Anyway, thanks for your answer

WILL do

 

[pdx_peanut]

On a related note...

It might be good to put those informations in the wiki right now already.
I have the strong feeling that this dynamic determination of max househould numbers already is causing quite some confusion for players who are looking at their apparently not existing demand, not knowing that the game internally handles numbers they aren't aware of.
Having these informations in the wiki right now already might give some vital insight and avoid the above mentioned confusion to some degree.

Just saying...

The calculation done is not directly going to inform the general player about anything. I think it would add to more confusion with people wondering "what am I looking at and why does it affect me" because ultimately it won't make sense to anyone not creating assets.
As for anyone who are making assets at the moment, they shouldn't be because there is too much about what is in the current editor that is not meant to be used until the asset editor releases.
When the time comes, I will make sure it is on the wiki in a good enough spot that people see and understand it if they go looking to learn about asset creation.

 

[pdx_peanut]

Acknowledging that I don't have the full information about the code I nevertheless have to disagree here.

CS2 in its core like any other managerial game is a game about optimization.
You NEED the full set of information available to achieve that goal of optimization.

Keeping information hidden from the player will only cause misunderstandings, and in consequence frustration on the player side.

This may - and I am giving this as a hint - even cause the need to revise the respective parts of the code. Maybe you might want to change it or at least insert some additional functionality to display the numbers currently computed and dealt with by the code.

You really have to let players know what is going on.
Even more so as I assume similar calculations going on for all other kinds of assets like commercial, industrial, special buildings, you name it.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the information we are talking about here.
The information is only and specifically "how to set up a custom asset so it works with the game" not "how does the game calculate demand". You may want the latter information, but that's not what we are talking about here.

I am just making this clear so you know that what I am not going to put on the wiki right now, is something specifically about how to get custom assets working, and the specific reason it's not going on the wiki right now is because it's only to do with asset creation and nothing to do with how to play the game.
It would be something like "make sure you don't do X on the asset you are making otherwise you will break the game" which out of any context of asset creation, will make zero sense to anyone else.

 

[pdx_peanut]

Thanks for clarification. Much appreciated.

Nevertheless, I think my former statement is still valid but I acknowledge I may not have made it clear enough.
It was more meant as a general remark as I am seeing you as a part of the CO/PDX conglomerate we as players are dealing with. And I for my person have the strong feeling that players are lacking all kind of information regarding the game.
That's the reason why I emphasized the need for having access to all relevant information.

As you are literally the only one still communicating with the player base (thanks for that, btw) I wanted to "misuse" you as a means to transport my view about said informations into your companies.

But yes, I agree that there is a difference between informing people what to do and what not to make assets work in general and the ingame information about the currently processed numbers.

Thanks again for your responses and information given.

I appreciate your sentiments!
I would still encourage you to put any suggestions as a post in the Suggestions Forum and bugs in the Bug Reports Forum. Both are still looked at and used by us. While I can have a conversation with you, there are still limits to my own personal workload and responsibilities that prevent me spending time making reports myself, especially when I know there are other people dedicated to recording those things in the appropriate channels.

I'll be back in this particular thread if I have any meaningful updates about the UK pack issues, or if not hopefully just have it fixed and updated soon!

 

[pdx_peanut]

If anyone is curious about my role in the creator packs, you can read about me and how I helped manage the creation of the packs in my Dev Diary that was shared at the start of the releases of the packs:

Dev Diary: Region Packs from a Content Creator Manager’s Perspective​

And just one point to make as a person who came from the modding scene in CS1 to the modding scene in CSII - CS1's editor was vastly superior to any other game's modding capabilities at the time. I remember another game at the time (back in 2015 era) that you had to write code to inject your asset into the game and it would break every update. CO came up with an elegant and easy to use asset editor. It had its own limitations and the game itself was limited by the technology of the time as you'd expect, but it was a fantastic piece of software.
CSII is vastly superior to CS1's editor - there is so much you can do without needing to write a code mod, that I don't even know how I will write about it all in detail on a wiki. That seriously keeps me up at night. I don't even have the words to express how powerful and how frankly cutting edge the abilities CO gave the in game editor is. Once it is in a more stable state (ie once we get VT and serialisation sorted) it's going to be an incredible tool to use, doing things you could only dream about in CS1.

And sure, in these early times, I have need to be around to help guide creators through the new editor, and even then there are some things we will try that may not work out and cause these demand issues in the UK pack, but there will be a fix.

I appreciate everyone who looks on these teething issues in kindness and not in anger. It makes my job more fun when I can interact with excited and interested people, and balances out any negative interactions I may be on the receiving end of.