Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[eran0004]

I see "the Cavendish" on the market square, I think that's a fictional pub, but quite a few of the other ones by that person are in the town of Rugby, and I've (gotten) drunk in most of them . The Cavendish asset is much better than his earlier ones.

Yeah, I noticed that the earlier assets were a bit crude. Perhaps, since they are real pubs, he wasn’t entirely sober when he did those? 😅

 

[eran0004]

I've made a couple of changes to the map. Firstly, I've changed 80% of the trees in the forest areas to other types. These new ones have a much better LOD model, so you can actually see the forest from a distance now. Another benefit is that they have much fewer tris than the previous ones, so my frame rate has improved a lot while working around these parts of the map. The only drawback is that they don't look as realistic up close as the previous ones, but I can live with that.

I also tried a couple of different map themes, this one I'm using now is called SCT Homecoming.

It's not all landscape changes though, I also decorated this little roundabout in the town

 

[MatskiMonk]

I'm currently slowly chipping away at detailing at the moment. Not much to see specifically.

I've been expanding my city too rapidly; I'm ending up with a characterless mess. Some stuff doesn't look much better than the stuff I made in the first month I had the game!

Anyway, I drew up a quick schematic of my Cargo network the other day, basically just to keep things clear in my head as the map gets more congested. I disconnected my cargo airport from the main road network, and connected it to one of the hidden roads from the major Rail Freight Terminal (CIRFT).

.. and at this point, I realised I'd made a glaring error in my execution of my plan. Despite G.COLE Sea freight having two cargo ports, they're both road access only! One was always supposed to be connected directly to the rail network! I don't know why I've never noticed it before, but I've built the area up too much to be able to run a rail line in and swap one over. The result of this is the road connections between the 3 G.COLE facilities have always been heavily congested, and in turn, modifications to the roads in the area were made that I've never been happy with...

... a similar story happens on the other side too, with the two facilities at Marston Bay. There is no Barge/Rail asset, so these two will always be connected by road, but at the moment, they're kind of in series, they could do with being in parallel. They serve my fishing industry which puts out a lot of trucks (when it's not flooded).

... the short of it is, I really could do with demolishing a bunch of stuff and starting again.

Overall, my import/export ratio is about 1:7, with around half of those imports being mail, and the other half being generic goods. The city is just about making a profit at the moment. I can't really build much more industry (zero on the demand meter), until I satisfy my residential demand, and as I said up top, I'm already expanding the city too quickly. I need a few solid weeks or detailing and refining what I've got before building anything new.

 

[eran0004]

I was building a village on my island map and noticed a natural depression in the landscape nearby, so I plopped a tiny water source, sprinkled some sand and planted some vegetation to create a pond. It's not much, but I like the result.

Here's the village in the background. More pictures will be posted when I've done some detailing of it.

Across the bay from the town I built some exclusive houses along the shoreline. This one is my favourite, hidden among the trees and with an amazing view of the bay.

 

[eran0004]

Did some detailing of the village. First some pictures from the farm.

Not sure what these cows are up to...

A police car patrolling the main street.

At the other end of the main street there's a petrol station.

A view from above. I'm thinking about putting a village church on that small hill in the background when I can afford it. Not sure about the location though, perhaps it will be too far from the rest of the village.

Due to financial reasons I can't afford to create a bus line between the town and the village (the bus depot is too expensive), so instead I built a bike path next to the road.

Over in the town I did some work on the cargo port. It's a fun challenge to try to keep it small while still making it functional.

 

[eran0004]

The town centre is pretty much done. All the blocks have been filled in

The area around the fish market has been an empty spot for a long time but now it finally looks complete.

Near the village, on the spot where I thought about building a church, I decided to build a manor / country house. It's still work in progress but from this angle it looks pretty good.

A map of the town, showing the road hierarchy. Orange is arterial, yellow is collector, white is local road.

 

[eran0004]

Here's a little mini build. It's a grass airfield using a custom (invisible) version of the aviation club. I did a lot of detailing around the runway. On the picture below you can see the aiming point markers, which is basically a set of solar panel props.

These solar panels have a great trick though, because I placed some white spotlights in front of them so at night they glow in the dark.

A bit further up ahead are the go-around markers. Basically, if you haven't landed your plane by the time you reach these you should probably consider a go-around. I've got a red spotlight for these.

 

[eran0004]

I figured out how to create great looking ovalabouts. It happened almost by accident as I originally had planned to build a double roundabout, but since that design lead to too sharp corners for the tram tracks I experimented with an oval shape instead.

Here you can see how the oval is constructed. I started with two squares in a figure 8 arrangement, deleted the middle parts and connected the outer parts with two straight segments (basically just turned the 8 into a 0). Then the nodes were rounded off with the Node Controller mod.

I upgraded the lot next to the ovalabout into a proper park. It's small, but cosy.

At the other end of the town, I created some underpasses for bikes and pedestrians, so that they won't have to cross the main road.

Another change I've made is that I've trimmed the forests a bit, because they really caused a big drop in framerate. So I've deleted around 20% of the trees. The visual change is barely noticeable, but the frame rate is much better now. I can even record videos again

To celebrate that, here's a short video of the ovalabout with traffic:


I clocked the pedestrians doing 16 km/h, which is basically the kind of speeds you'd see in a marathon race. I think I'll go and get the realistic walking speed mod, and see if that improves the safety around pedestrian crossings

 

[Darla Starch]

Safety?

 

[VXR]

I'm finally having a PC built, and have gone for 32gb of RAM with a 1650 and Ryzen processor. Can't wait to make use of assets after years of frustration with the console versions.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I'm finally having a PC built, and have gone for 32gb of RAM with a 1650 and Ryzen processor. Can't wait to make use of assets after years of frustration with the console versions.

Welcome to having a ton of assets ...





... and to wishing you'd spec'd 64Gb of RAM... for MOAAR assets.

 

[VXR]

Welcome to having a ton of assets ...





... and to wishing you'd spec'd 64Gb of RAM... for MOAAR assets.

So long as i can find out of town PC Worlds, McDonalds and anything else to make a typical Devon region, I'll be happy (to start with, at least...)

 

[MatskiMonk]

So long as i can find out of town PC Worlds, McDonalds and anything else to make a typical Devon region, I'll be happy (to start with, at least...)

Aye, there's loads of that kind of thing. I need to make a bunch of such assets (MaccyD's, Homebase, Halfords, B&M, etc...) for my home town project, there's lots on the workshop though, but I'm spending most of my gaming time in GT7 at the moment - well, making decals anyway.

 

[Bealdor]

I figured out how to create great looking ovalabouts. It happened almost by accident as I originally had planned to build a double roundabout, but since that design lead to too sharp corners for the tram tracks I experimented with an oval shape instead.

...

To celebrate that, here's a short video of the ovalabout with traffic:


I clocked the pedestrians doing 16 km/h, which is basically the kind of speeds you'd see in a marathon race. I think I'll go and get the realistic walking speed mod, and see if that improves the safety around pedestrian crossings

Shouldn't those ovalabouts not consist of one-way-roads only? Looks quite irritating to me that cars can turn left into it.

 

[eran0004]

...


Shouldn't those ovalabouts not consist of one-way-roads only? Looks quite irritating to me that cars can turn left into it.

It is one-way roads I’m using left-hand side traffic in this build.

 

[eran0004]

I did some more detailing around the town centre and upgraded the roads by the fish market. Financially, the town is doing great, so I decided to build a bus depot and create some bus routes across the island.

I also made some big changes to the manor. I was searching the workshop for stately homes but didn't find anything suitable. Then I came to think of the vanilla university and decided to give that a try, and the result is pretty much perfect. And as a bonus my cims gets a bit of education as well.

Behind the manor I built a pond, using the quays from one of the content creator's packs and the node controller to make the nodes square.

 

[TheCracker]

cries in console version

Back playing it after i bought some more content that's currently on sale on the PS Store - Campus and the University City DLC. Thought i'd add some uni's and some local student village areas to my current map. Of course this boosts population which in turn increases traffic to areas of the transport network that were just about coping before.

Solution was to add some 'bypass' freeways to allow some of the commercial traffic to quickly get to and from these new areas and the established industry that feeds them. I only needed the two-way (single carriageway) road, but every time i add a freeway on-ramp, it ends up offering traffic left and right turns - which obviously causes jams.

I know there are likely to be add-ons on the PC version that get around these issues, but i feel the core game really needs some extra pre-modelled junctions (for road, rail and metro) and smaller roundabouts. Something for a potential C:S 2 maybe?

 

[eran0004]

A few more updates from the island. Here is the shoreline along the main road leading into the town. In the distance are two brand new apartment blocks with a fantastic view.

In the city center the old police station was getting too crowded so I decided to build something a bit larger and more modern. I actually ended up demolishing the entire block and in addition to the new police station I built an office tower and a brand new hotel (in the vanilla game that building is an IT office, but I changed it to a hotel with the RICO mod).

Across the main road I found a good location for a small sports complex with a football arena and a sports hall. I also re-routed the pedestrian bridge to make it connect to the sports complex instead of the industrial area.

A bit further down the main road I built a pedestrian underpass. Thanks to the BOB mod, the elevated road segments are much thinner, which makes it easier to build realistic underpasses. The path is the prop-less version of one of the parklife path (you need the FindIt mod to be able to... well... find it, since it doesn't appear in the menu).

Last but not least, some roadworks. I used the intersection marking tool to create the ruining effect in the lane and added some decals to get the cracks.

 

[eran0004]

I started working on an asset for my forest industry area. It's going to be a warehouse for planed timber, built in glued laminated timber. The building footprint is around 8x4 grid units (64x32 meters).

 

[eran0004]

The warehouse is pretty much finished. I created a couple of submeshes so that the amount of timber in the warehouse changes dynamically, but I forgot to add a colour map to the submeshes so now the timber is painted in the same colour as the warehouse 😅

It will be a pretty easy fix, I’ll probably get it done tomorrow evening.

 

[PJTierney]

Something for a potential C:S 2 maybe?

Speaking of, any hints around on the web as to whether or not this game's coming anytime soon (assuming it exists)?

 

[MatskiMonk]

The warehouse is pretty much finished. I created a couple of submeshes so that the amount of timber in the warehouse changes dynamically, but I forgot to add a colour map to the submeshes so now the timber is painted in the same colour as the warehouse 😅

It will be a pretty easy fix, I’ll probably get it done tomorrow evening.

I'm all about logging areas... I look forward to the release..


(and playing Cities again after quite a while)

 

[TheCracker]

Speaking of, any hints around on the web as to whether or not this game's coming anytime soon (assuming it exists)?

I've never heard of any real rumors of a sequel. The developers website doesn't mention one, although they did create a sequal to an earlier city-building game they developed. They also look to be a very small team so any new game will be slow in coming. I also think they've kind of left it open to the PC users to create and distribute their own content (some of which gets ported to the console versions via DLC) from which the base game evolves, which kind of means a sequel isn't entirely needed. Unfortunately.

 

[MatskiMonk]

from which the base game evolves, which kind of means a sequel isn't entirely needed. Unfortunately.

It's a tough one. The simulation could definitely do with some work, but I sense they've have some serious optimisation to do. Even with a reasonably good PC built 5 years after the game came out, it can get pretty laggy, pretty quickly.

 

[PJTierney]

I think with the newer consoles having better CPUs now there's a greater chance of a sequel coming. Skylines already runs amazingly smoothly on Series X now.


It would be nice for example if some of the most common mods people used in the first game get built in natively for example (like MoveIt, Ploppable Growables etc.), then console players can use them too

 

[eran0004]

To quote J.S. Bach: Es ist vollbracht. The warehouse can be found on the Steam workshop

Steam Workshop::Planed Timber Warehouse

steamcommunity.com

Regarding a possible sequel, they did hire MacSergey about half a year ago. He’s one of the absolute best mod creators that the community has. So they must be working on something.

 

[eran0004]

I built a logging area, with the new planed timber warehouse. Since the unemployment figures were really low I had to add some barracks around the area as well, to increase the size of the workforce.

By the entrance to the town (which is starting to look more and more like a city) I prepared for an expansion. I'm not sure what building to place in area A, I think some kind of city service would probably suit the location best. Areas B and C are going to be commercial, a supermarket and perhaps a few smaller shops as well. I'm also planning for some small roundabouts around B and C, mostly because I love building them The pedestrian bridge visible here leads to a new industrial area that's still in development.

The area around the church got a few upgrades. I added some decorations to the nearby houses (mostly hedges) and a bunch of trees around the church itself. The empty lot in front of the church was turned into a small park.

I made some upgrades of the quays in the city centre as well. Made all the corners straight (node controller mod) and added a second level to give smaller vessels some place to dock. Lastly, I connected the quays to the pedestrian network, which the cims seem to appreciate.

 

[eran0004]

The shopping centre is done. I took the Supermarket unique building and changed it to a high density commercial building, using the RICO mod. It turned out to be extremely popular, the pedestrian paths are crowded with cims walking there.

To improve the living conditions of the workforce I built a new high density residential area in the lot next to the shopping centre. That way I could demolish most of the barracks I built earlier in the logging area.

 

[eran0004]

I finished the Spitfire model, turned it into a Battle of Britain memorial and placed it by the quays. You can find the asset here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2829746636

I also noticed an update to the Intersection Marking Tool mod. Now it's possible to add props and trees along the roads, which makes detailing a lot quicker, more flexible and with better control of the end result. In the image below, the bollards, the date palms and the planters under the date palms were all created with the Intersection Marking Tool.

One of my biggest pet peeves about Cities:Skylines is that there is no tram road with trees. With this mod update that's not a problem anymore! The tram road is now a green corridor through the city

 

[eran0004]

I started developing a new, modern waterfront. High density apartment buildings with balconies facing the sea. There's also a shopping centre, a cultural centre and an office tower.

The main feature is the quay that runs along the whole district. At the far end it connects to an open-air bathhouse/sauna and at the near end it connects to a path that leads to the old town centre.

And then there was this: