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Cities: Skylines II [video]
- milliams 3y agoI notices that all the cities were quite small in the trailer. Except that very last one in the last few seconds with the zoom out from car-level which looked very box-arty. I hope the engine scales well.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoI wonder if its going to be ram bound like the old game. Every asset had to be loaded into memory with the old game. There were even mods that let you know how much ram the game was consuming on load. On xbox cloud gaming version however the game runs with zero lag, no matter population size, right up to the point you build too many network nodes and the game doesn’t let you build more.
- Someone1234 3y agoIt looks nice, but I'll wait for information about system improvements before I get too excited. The original really needs several mods for traffic to work correctly.
- jnsie 3y agoI used to love this genre but the older I get the more it feels like....work. Am I the only one?
- brink 3y agoNah, there's probably a dozen or so people like you.
- paxys 3y agoWelcome to old age. Back in the day games that I could sink hundreds of hours into were a steal. Today I won't even touch them, because who the hell has the time?
- zokier 3y agoSame kind of people that pour endless hours to scale models and model trains etc? Hobbies take time, and many people make them a priority in life.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIf I were to theorize, it's because you try to min / max it and build the most efficient city. I'm guilty of that too, building everything in neat grids and then I got bored. But look up some designs; people build chaos, people build things that look good or quirky instead of what works the best. The style you play at determines how much fun you have with it. For some, that's doing it organized and efficient, for others, it's whatever makes them the happiest.
- slothtrop 3y agoEven if you don't min/max, I can see it feeling too much like work. There's also more overhead to get into the game, a fair amount of information to absorb at the outset to get the most out of it. After which there's the sandbox potential, but I never understood sandbox games. The closest thing that appeals is the simulated chaos of dwarf fortress.
- Encrypt-Keeper 3y agoYeah city builders are kinda designed to be like work. Same goes for simulators. Some people WANT to do work that’s different from the actual work they do every day.
- colechristensen 3y agoThe older you get the more you… turn them into work. If you approach it like work it’ll feel like work and it’s hard to not have that mindset.
- slothtrop 3y agoThe conceit being that people approach some games "like work", but not others. I don't think that's true. No matter "the mindset" some games will feel more like work than others, in the eye of the beholder.
- jnsie 3y agoFunny you mention that. A few years back I tried one of the Far Cry games (no idea which one) on recommendation from an in-law. Almost immediately I was sent on a side quest to gather some items to craft some other item and it was hugely off-putting. Nothing like finishing a days work, sitting in front of a video game to unwind, then being given a honey-do list. Isolated incident and completely anecdotal, needless to say...
- BlakeSimpson 3y agoI just hope they intergrate QOL features so you aren't forced to use a ton of mods to be able to build out cities efficiently.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI'm not sure what more game designers could ask for than a rich modding community for a previous title that gives you the best user research you could ask for. They've already done the hard work discovering what players want. Take the best ideas, refine them, plug them into the next game, give a hat tip to the modders and community.
- apocalyptic0n3 3y agoIf I recall correctly, macsergey, the developer behind many of the top traffic-centric mods including Node Controller, Intersection Marking Tool, and a few vehicle spawning and mass transit stop mods, was hired by Colossal Order. The road and traffic management tools seen so far seem vastly improved from this trailer so fingers crossed CO saw the QoL fixes the community needed and tried to include at least some of them.
- candiddevmike 3y agoIt's a paradox game, expect it to be missing a ton of content only available post-launch in 20+ expensive DLCs. Get a better business model Paradox, please consider condensing your DLCs into the base game eventually.
- zokier 3y ago* * *
- developerDan 3y agoIt looks like this is all of CS1 rolled into one base game with an engine upgrade plus QoL improvements, for only $50 I might add. I saw numerous features added by DLC in this trailer. Examples include: day/night cycle (After dark), industrial zoning (Industries), mixed transit hubs (Mass Transit), dynamic seasons (building on Snowfall), college campuses (Campus). I’m sure I missed some other details as well.
- vxNsr 3y agoWill this just include all the dlc from cs1? Aside from the qol mods the community created c:s feels like basically a complete game. I’m interested to know what they’re adding.
- ozarker 3y agoThis is a paradox published game sooo I’d guess it’ll include some stuff, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before they release a game with everything included
- kjkjadksj 3y agoTheir brilliant strategy just forces me to wait until dlc is like a buck on sale. Seems like exactly what you don’t want from customer behavior but what do I know.
- robinhood 3y agoWhat you want as a customer is to have a great game, that generates enough money so the studio can continue working on it for years to come.
- db48x 3y agoYea, I think people forget how much each update to the game has added to the "base" game. Because off the DLC, Cities Skylines has had 17 major updates over the last 10 years. Each of those updates fixed bugs and added new features to the game. They were funded by the DLC, but you don't even have to buy the DLC to benefit!
- paavohtl 3y agoThis is a an unrealistic thing to expect or ask for. The new game uses a different art style, significantly alters the mechanics and uses the latest version of Unity, as opposed to Unity 5 from 2015. If they included every single DLC, they'd have to: - Recreate or significantly update all of the assets they've created over the past 8 years. This would be a huge amount of work. - Not alter any game mechanics, because otherwise the content from the DLC wouldn't work. OR alternatively re-design a dozen expansion packs at the same time for the new game. If they couldn't change the game in any way, why would they make a sequel? They'll certainly include mechanics that they previously added in expansion packs and updates, but expecting them to just bundle all of the stuff from the expansions doesn't make sense from game design or business point of view.
- alex3305 3y agoI bought the first Cities: Skylines because I'm a massive SimCity fan. Ever since SimCity 2000 that I received for my birthday as a child (in a bundle with Theme Hospital). But the text and UI were way too small for me. So I couldn't play the game. I even created my own (very simple) mod [1], but I never got around to playing the game. I hope the developers will address this issue and implement proper UI / text scaling. 1. https://github.com/alex3305/CitiesSkylinesTextScaleMod https://github.com/alex3305/CitiesSkylinesTextScaleMod
- 0x138d5 3y agoMy main gripe with city builders like C:S is that you start off in the modern age. Bam. Highways, utilities, concrete. I'd like to go from dirt tracks and outhouses to fully automated luxury gay space communism.
- zokier 3y agoWorkers & Resources: Soviet Republic has afaik some degree of time progression and development. Overall its a game with surprisingly deep mechanics underlying a zany surface layer.
- potmat 3y agoFor anyone who read that last sentence and thought "What?": https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/fully-automated-luxu...
- leononame 3y agoI would loooove for a C:S like city builder where you start in something like a medieval age and then you progress through time. It would be amazing to have nice historical city centers like in Italy or Spain, and this could be heavily changed for different regions (make DLCs for different country styles, like Japan or even USA where you would get to build wild west cities before going into themodern age). Then your city would really feel as if it grew more organically. One can dream...
- kjkjadksj 3y agoTo be fair you cant build a highway until your city is a certain size. You are free to build “rurally” with railroads and dirt roads too.
- myself248 3y agoYou might want to check out the mods that this youtuber uses for his history-of-the-east-coast series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkSQD3vqK1Q4BP-itzN6gMpJBTsfPucy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkSQD3vqK1Q4BP-itzN6... It starts with the indigenous Americans in wigwams, and goes from there. Pretty cool. (Watch at 1.25x.)
- nevir 3y agoAs poorly received as the SimCity remake was—it has really left a lasting mark on the look and feel of city builders (it's nice to see that continue!)
- alex_duf 3y agoMy main gripe with the original game was that it wasn't possible to create walkable or cyclable cities. The only way to build anything is to have a road (as in, a road with lots of cars). So mechanically your cities are car centric, which isn't qui the cities I'd like to build. As far as I can tell, there are no bicycles in that trailer which leaves me little hope. I'm sure someone will reply about whatever mod that might help, but no I'd like the main game to include the possibility of building other types of cities. Anyhow, I still lost 100s of hours on the original game, it's just lovely.
- innocenat 3y agoPure walkable city is the feature of Plaza and Promenade DLC. It allow you to create a pedestrian-only district.
- spookthesunset 3y agoThere a now a DLC that lets you have pedestrian only zones with no cars beyond some service vehicles.
- r0bbbo 3y agoBicycles exist in the current game—they were brought in as part of a free update. Roads with dedicated cycle lanes were introduced with an official add-on, but by default pedestrians and bikes will share sidewalks. I imagine the new game will roll a lot of their official add-ons into the base game. I also heard that they hired some of the community mod creators which is exciting news.
- 3y ago
- toastal 3y agoIs this going to be an always-online game?
- shakow 3y agoCS1 was not, and none of the other Paradox games are either, so I guess not.
- nodesocket 3y agoRandom aside... I'd love to see a SimTower remake. I played that game so much as a child.
- TACD 3y agoProject Highrise is very much a spiritual successor to SimTower. https://store.steampowered.com/app/423580/Project_Highrise/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/423580/Project_Highrise/
- swozey 3y agoI had really high hopes for this but IIRC at a certain point all you really wind up doing is juggling/optimizing elevators. Which, ironically, is similar to Skylines 1 where all you wind up doing is juggling/optimizing traffic..
- leononame 3y agoI'm a bit underwhelmed. There are tons of QoL changes, but afaict there is little innovation. I would've expected at least a not grid-based zoning so that buildings on curves look more natural. All these empty pieces of land in between buildings look really bad and kind of force us to make grid cities. And that is not even an innovation, it was already present in the SimCity series. But some procedurally generated buildings for smooth corners and connecting buildings would be nice.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoIts hard to make assets that would work with every curve. When you see screenshots of nice cities like this, people are using mods to hand place assets with them clipping into each other to make a unified wall of buildings along the curve or corner.
- leononame 3y agoThe houses themselves don't have to be curved - but if the zoning around a curve (or non 90 degree angle) could be filled in completely, that'd be nice. Triangular buildings or similar shapes could help. For detached housing, it still might look OK (although a bit weird), but for buildings that are supposed to connect with each other (which is something you see a lot at least in European cities), placing these on a curve and having empty spaces between them just looks bad. The building itself could still have straight walls - with angles other than 90 degrees and then a little bit of auto-filling plaza this could work. I know it's a hard problem to solve. Personally, this is what makes C:S 1 unable to create natural looking cities. Cities aren't all grids or detached housing.
- q_andrew 3y agoAgreed. I made this as a personal experiment and it was not all that hard to make form-fitting buildings for straight road networks: https://andrewq.myportfolio.com/procedural-city-generator https://andrewq.myportfolio.com/procedural-city-generator Curved roads are a bit more difficult, but definitely possible.
- distances 3y ago
- prmoustache 3y agoShouldn't that game be called How to ruin beautiful landscapes with concrete instead ?
- Ksienrzycowy 3y agoIf it's still unity, then fuck them. Not buying.
- doctorpangloss 3y agoThere's so much to learn from how CS1 was built and supported mods. But it's hard to tell from the trailer what kind of technical changes have been made. The rendering looks really nice. Is it URP, HDRP, their own pipeline? Unity has had an ECS framework under development for almost 5 years now, which could be a great fit for what this game is. Or maybe Colossal Order has engineered something similar, like Photon did. VR Chat created Udon to better support untrusted scripting. Epic made Verse for Unreal Engine for Fortnite. Ahead of time compiled stuff doesn't vibe with the Unity modding ecosystem. In my opinion, CS1 from an engineering point of view was a triumph for middlewares.
- kroltan 3y ago"Under development" is the operating word here, DOTS is very much still strongly experimental. The development workflow is chaotic and best practices unclear, somehow even more so than the regular workflow. And even more errors now crash the editor.
- gamblor956 3y agoDOTS is no longer experimental as of 2023; it is now a version 1.0 that can be used in production, though it is still under active development. Best practices are still being figured out, but since ECS is all about performance, best practices can be measured objectively.
- kroltan 3y agoI mean, it is indeed labeled as not experimental, but even the documentation does not show the up-to-date usage of the ECS APIs.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agofor clarity, change title to "Cities: Skylines II Gameplay Trailer"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robertoandred 3y agoNo Mac version, what a shame.
- billfruit 3y agoDoes it have the concepts slums, shantytowns and such organic urban sprawl or is it all perfectly maintained blocks?
- wry_discontent 3y agoI routinely built slums in CS. It's mostly decorative, but you can add some functional slum elements like nearby pollution, bad/no schools, etc.
- wnevets 3y agoI really hope this won't be DLC-ed to hell, the last time I checked it cost about $300 for the first one and all of its DLC.
- eatsyourtacos 3y agoI just hope they don't DLC it to death. I didn't get into the first one early on, and I would have loved to try it later.. but when you sit there and see like hundreds of dollars of DLC, it makes it not appealing. Sure I could just buy the original, but you just get the feeling you are missing out on so much.
- Encrypt-Keeper 3y agoIt’s published by Paradox Interactive, of course they are. We’ll be lucky if we even have that day/night cycle on release.
- spacemadness 3y agoIt’s part of the Paradox business model. There will be lots of DLC.
- db48x 3y agoWith Paradox games, I recommend starting with just the base game with no DLC. Most of the features in the DLC actually get added to the base game, so it gets better over time even if you don't buy the DLC. For example, the After Dark DLC for Cities: Skylines added a day/night cycle along with lit-up night time versions of all of the game's assets. Except all of that is actually part of the base game. The only thing that is unique to the DLC are the nightlife and tourist districts, and the new buildings that can grow in them.
- Imnimo 3y agoI definitely enjoyed Cities: Skylines when it first released, but seeing it devolve into a stream of half-baked DLC really dampened my enthusiasm for the franchise. Hard to imagine this version isn't just a platform to support going down the same road again.
- q_andrew 3y agoObservations from a long time fan and game developer: 1. Early on in the trailer, it shows a road segment being drawn across an existing road, with the intersection getting automatically added. This is a big step up from the original road system where every intersection must be placed at the end of a road segment. I imagine this will make it easier to create nice geometric patterns. 2. Some cities shown have surface parking taking up a whole plot. I hope this isn't just cosmetic - allowing more/less parking should really influence the economics and transport methods of each citizen. 3. In the data view mode, bright colors bleed onto the white building models. I suspect there's some dynamic ambient light bounce rendering going on here! 4. It looks like the old method of plot zoning is still around, showing as grid squares along the side of the roads. I would have liked to see non-square parcels that fill up the availible space, but I also understand why square plots would make it easier to fill with pre-made assets. 5. Speaking of pre-made assets, those skyscrapers look really similar and boring. Walk around any modern city with glass towers and you'll see a lot more variation and interesting nuances, while still being relatively performant to render in a game like this. I'm worried they will introduce actual variety via drip-fed dlc assets. Yes, mods can fix that, but you can't beat the visual consistency and performance of decent vanilla resources. 6. Looks like the town hall starts off as a huge parking lot with a small office in the middle, and can be expanded into multiple departments. Looks like a handy mechanic, and especially believable for North American development since a lot of government buildings are like 75% pavement.
- mjh2539 3y agoWhen I first got Cities: Skylines, I had expected it to scratch the same SimCity itch. It didn't. I'm still waiting for the true spiritual successor to SimCity.
- tail_exchange 3y agoWhat do you think is missing? I love Cities Skylines, but I wish it was a bit less car-centric. It's fun to solve traffic problems, but having micromanage intersections gets old fast.
- singularity2001 3y agoDystopia building simulator starting with autobahns.
- amai 3y agoNo bicycling lanes? No bus lanes? No pedestrian zones? No electric vehicles? No solar cells on the roofs? No windfarms? No public transport? No subways? And of course no simulation of the traffic noise caused by cars and factories for inhabitants... It seems like in this game you can only repeat all the city building problems of the past. If you want to build a city of the future, this unfortunately is not your game.