With Snowfall, all players get a free update to spice up the game. We wanted to make improvements to many things, and make sure there’s something completely new for everyone.


Weather you have already read about, and of the different weather phenomenons, all players get rain and fog on existing maps. While these weathers are almost purely cosmetic, we have put lots of effort into making them look good, so you can really see your city engulfed in rain or under a mattress of fog. For users with Snowfall, weather affects temperatures on all maps, but for people who only want the free update, weather is just a visual effect.

My personal favourite of the free stuff is the new public transport interface. It’s inspired by the very popular mod by the name of “Extended public transport UI”, made by user AcidF!re. Our take on the issue is to add more control for the user over public transport, as cities with a large number of lines can become a bit hard to understand. With the new interface, you can change line colours, name lines and see more detailed information about your lines. Seeing trips saved on all lines makes it easy to see if a line is performing badly compared to the others ones, and the passenger numbers are visible for all lines of the chosen type at the same time.

I know people feel strongly about Chirper, so this might be something that you either love or hate. Chirpy would have gotten a cold in the winter weather with no hat on, so we created the Chirpy Hats! Depending on your game version (deluxe edition, regular base game, or base game with Snowfall) you get a collection of gorgeous hats Chirpy can wear. You can choose the hat to wear, or keep your Chirpy as is, just as you like.

And the best thing: a modding tools update to allow creation of new map themes! This means that you can change the map textures and save them as a new theme that can be shared with other users. Not only can you make things like new tropical themes and themes resembling your home area, but you can also change how the moon looks and go for completely alien looking maps. The sky is not the limit! These new tools are very powerful and open up lots of new possibilities. You can now mod the game to look like a space colony or a dark fantasy world. What will your theme look like?


More detailed, technical information about the map themes is coming soon, so you can start planning your new worlds!

 

[IsaacHeron]

I'd love to know if anyone complaining about the DLC's price ever had a job you wanted to be paid for. It's a few bucks. Less than a cinema visit or a burger and beer and it'll last way longer. An added bonus is the DLC doesn't turn into sh*t after one use (big bonus compared to a hamburger!)
CO and PDX have bills and people to pay. It also takes way more time and effort to develop something than writing some half-baked suggestions on a forum. Anyone who has ever developed any piece of software professionally knows this. "The button needs to do X, should be simple." Well, guess what, it'll take three people several weeks to implement and all you ever see is a stupid button. Software is hard.
All the man-hours modders spend on their mods combined no company could pay for. I, too, would love to see many mods integrated into the base game. The sad reality is, with prices this low, this isn't economically feasible. There's a limited market for every game and once every interested person has bought it, you no longer make any money. That's why there are subscription models, in-app purchases and optional DLC. I prefere the last option by a mile.

Sorry for this rant. I'm looking forward to the DLC's release and all this negativity was simply to much. Now "respectfully disagree" if you must but unless you've worked professionally in the software business or something similar I don't think you fully get what it takes to develop a large application or add features to it. (Which is ok, I don't know what it takes to run a large restaurant kitchen and still get annoyed when my order takes, what I perceive as, too long.)

Thanks for your continued development CO and PDX!

 

[Co_Karoliina]

Thanks for all the feedback! We have been quite busy lately, and thus less active at the forums. Developing smaller things than a full fledged game means much less time available for the team to be on the forums, which is a sad thing. I like reading feedback and seeing what you guys think, but I'm the lead designer, so I have divide my time so that you actually get some new content and bug fixes too.

Now that I think of it, having a dev diary about bug fixes would have been a very good idea. We will definitely look into having one for future content. We are interested in fixing bugs and do our best to take in constructive criticism and continue to tweak the game based on it.

 

[DarkImpaler]

Why you tell us that "you really like the new transportation UI" without showing it to us ?? that's called "torture"!!!!

 

[Kain2K]

With all due respect, but all the Snowfall dev diaries that I have seen so far, aren't worth reading since they absolutely had no new information neither about the expansion nor the free patch. The dev diaries only put into sentences what was previously shown as a list, together with a few screenshots that show us nothing of said features.

I am really sorry to say this, but even EA has shown better PR regarding SC13 than CO in regard to Snowfall.

Granted, EA lied us into the face, but at least they gave us something. CO doesn't answer questions, they do not show us anything of worth regarding the new features or the free patch, nor do they show any interest in our critics. All they do is ignoring us and giving us the occasional "You are great and all modders do awesome work"-mantra. But nothing of substance, nothing that is of value or has meaning.

To be honest, after all that CO has shown us, or rather what they haven't shown us, since the announcement of Snowfall, I am through with them. I have better things to do than talking with a wall. There are other games out there, from developers whose words are worth something.

My words sound harsh? No wonder, I am frustrated and angry. Frustrated that no one of the official side, and this includes Pdox, seems to show any interest to address our critics. Angry that a game that has shown so much promise is driven into a wall because of poor choices and utter ignorance of how to implement new features. I may not have a professional programming background, but I am playing video games long enough to know how a good game works and to know how to distinguish a game that has a future from one that does not.
And at least with the current developing strategy, CSL has no future. Maybe if there is a change in strategy, but not if things stay as they are. Not if CO offers us nothing more than worthless eye candy. In game development it is substance and well developed features that fit into the game as a whole over atmospheric eye candy and features that only give us additional chores in a special game mode. That is especially the case, when the things you're developing are for an expansion.

So I, for myself, came to the conclusion that CO either does not know what they are doing, or they know exactly what they do, since what they do, is either that they show us utter incompetence in regards of game design, or all they want is, to grab our money without doing any notable work.

So, dear CO, just so that you understand: I am through with you and your games. I won't ever again buy any game of your company. The feature list of Snowfall is a sad joke. After Dark had so many poorly implemented features that the whole DLC isn't worth anything. You did not show any interest in fixing bugs that you have introduced with your last DLC, you did not show any interest in balancing literally broken features, such as crime. Instead you announced a new expansion which brings nothing of worth. Instead you ignore your critics. If we are of no worth for you, I decide for myself that you are of no worth for me.

To qoute a famous trainer of the FC Bayern Munich: "Ich habe fertig!"

 

[Disclaimer]

What about any fixes to existing problems? Any news here?

 

[draqsko]

Why do people expect the developers to talk about bug fixes in a developer blog about a DLC?

 

[CaptRobau]

Your argument doesn't work, because A. this dev diary we're in right now is all about the free patch and B. those links are the release announcements of the patches. Not the same as a dev diary released in advance. My point is just that even in the communication about the free patch, they've only focused on the new features, even though a lot of fans have been clamoring about news on the status of older features.

 

[Disclaimer]

You need to reread the title: Cities: Skylines - Snowfall - Dev Diary 4: New and Free

Bug fixes aren't new content, the DD is titled NEW AND FREE, not Bug fixes and errata.

What you really want is more communication about potential bug fixes they have coming or planned for the future but again that shouldn't be in these particular DDs they are writing right now, that should be in its own topic. So expecting them to answer those questions here makes little sense, perhaps if you felt so passionately about said fixes you should create a topic to try to engage them instead of trying to take a topic off the subject matter it was created for.

Yes, I want them to talk about the bug fixes. Like current info, not something months old. But they don't. Not anywhere. Nor do they tend to answer critical posts. Instead they talk about funny hats for their bird. Bug fixes, if there will be any, would be part of the free patch, and if they were any good, they'd even be among the most important free features. So here is absolutely the place to talk about that.

Little question : if i understand, trams will not be free ? That's a shame imo, because transport is not really the theme of this expansion...

If trams were free, sales figures for their paid DLC would be atrocious... But no, trams have nothing to do with snow, it's just a commercial consideration.

 

[muttonnoir]

With all due respect, but all the Snowfall dev diaries that I have seen so far, aren't worth reading since they absolutely had no new information neither about the expansion nor the free patch. The dev diaries only put into sentences what was previously shown as a list, together with a few screenshots that show us nothing of said features.

I am really sorry to say this, but even EA has shown better PR regarding SC13 than CO in regard to Snowfall.

Granted, EA lied us into the face, but at least they gave us something. CO doesn't answer questions, they do not show us anything of worth regarding the new features or the free patch, nor do they show any interest in our critics. All they do is ignoring us and giving us the occasional "You are great and all modders do awesome work"-mantra. But nothing of substance, nothing that is of value or has meaning.

To be honest, after all that CO has shown us, or rather what they haven't shown us, since the announcement of Snowfall, I am through with them. I have better things to do than talking with a wall. There are other games out there, from developers whose words are worth something.

My words sound harsh? No wonder, I am frustrated and angry. Frustrated that no one of the official side, and this includes Pdox, seems to show any interest to address our critics. Angry that a game that has shown so much promise is driven into a wall because of poor choices and utter ignorance of how to implement new features. I may not have a professional programming background, but I am playing video games long enough to know how a good game works and to know how to distinguish a game that has a future from one that does not.
And at least with the current developing strategy, CSL has no future. Maybe if there is a change in strategy, but not if things stay as they are. Not if CO offers us nothing more than worthless eye candy. In game development it is substance and well developed features that fit into the game as a whole over atmospheric eye candy and features that only give us additional chores in a special game mode. That is especially the case, when the things you're developing are for an expansion.

So I, for myself, came to the conclusion that CO either does not know what they are doing, or they know exactly what they do, since what they do, is either that they show us utter incompetence in regards of game design, or all they want is, to grab our money without doing any notable work.

So, dear CO, just so that you understand: I am through with you and your games. I won't ever again buy any game of your company. The feature list of Snowfall is a sad joke. After Dark had so many poorly implemented features that the whole DLC isn't worth anything. You did not show any interest in fixing bugs that you have introduced with your last DLC, you did not show any interest in balancing literally broken features, such as crime. Instead you announced a new expansion which brings nothing of worth. Instead you ignore your critics. If we are of no worth for you, I decide for myself that you are of no worth for me.

To qoute a famous trainer of the FC Bayern Munich: "Ich habe fertig!"

Have to agree with your comments regarding poor almost amateurish PR by CO. The garbled mashed up English (even considering its not their 1st language) in the dev diaries is frustrating. The entire operation seems to me to be a cottage industry that has expanded too fast and is struggling to cope. There seems to be no real focus or clear road map regarding the company's way forward. Its all seems a bit home made & like a rabbit caught in the headlamps to me. The game is good, warts and all. It has been great value- I have over 1000 hours clocked up so far. Having seen theinitial amateurish "lets play" vids Snowfall looks so much better than I expected from the info posted to date by CO.

 

[Sotrax]

No new screenshots.
What about the popular mods that build on the transport UI like the "Improved Public Transport" mod. Are you working together with the modders? Will the mod break? Or, even better, will it get updated right with the DLC because you worked together and wanted to provide a great start for the tramlines! (Like vehicle unbunching .. select how many cars and so on ....)

 

[LeeDub]

You know, I think people would like Chirpy more if we could change the sound he makes in the settings menu. Like an actual bird chirping! Or mute, if you have no soul.

Apart from that, he can be a great way to convey information to the player, this is probably one aspect that could be improved upon as well.

 

[casssnider]

With all due respect, but all the Snowfall dev diaries that I have seen so far, aren't worth reading since they absolutely had no new information neither about the expansion nor the free patch. The dev diaries only put into sentences what was previously shown as a list, together with a few screenshots that show us nothing of said features.

I am really sorry to say this, but even EA has shown better PR regarding SC13 than CO in regard to Snowfall.

Granted, EA lied us into the face, but at least they gave us something. CO doesn't answer questions, they do not show us anything of worth regarding the new features or the free patch, nor do they show any interest in our critics. All they do is ignoring us and giving us the occasional "You are great and all modders do awesome work"-mantra. But nothing of substance, nothing that is of value or has meaning.

To be honest, after all that CO has shown us, or rather what they haven't shown us, since the announcement of Snowfall, I am through with them. I have better things to do than talking with a wall. There are other games out there, from developers whose words are worth something.

My words sound harsh? No wonder, I am frustrated and angry. Frustrated that no one of the official side, and this includes Pdox, seems to show any interest to address our critics. Angry that a game that has shown so much promise is driven into a wall because of poor choices and utter ignorance of how to implement new features. I may not have a professional programming background, but I am playing video games long enough to know how a good game works and to know how to distinguish a game that has a future from one that does not.
And at least with the current developing strategy, CSL has no future. Maybe if there is a change in strategy, but not if things stay as they are. Not if CO offers us nothing more than worthless eye candy. In game development it is substance and well developed features that fit into the game as a whole over atmospheric eye candy and features that only give us additional chores in a special game mode. That is especially the case, when the things you're developing are for an expansion.

So I, for myself, came to the conclusion that CO either does not know what they are doing, or they know exactly what they do, since what they do, is either that they show us utter incompetence in regards of game design, or all they want is, to grab our money without doing any notable work.

So, dear CO, just so that you understand: I am through with you and your games. I won't ever again buy any game of your company. The feature list of Snowfall is a sad joke. After Dark had so many poorly implemented features that the whole DLC isn't worth anything. You did not show any interest in fixing bugs that you have introduced with your last DLC, you did not show any interest in balancing literally broken features, such as crime. Instead you announced a new expansion which brings nothing of worth. Instead you ignore your critics. If we are of no worth for you, I decide for myself that you are of no worth for me.

To qoute a famous trainer of the FC Bayern Munich: "Ich habe fertig!"

Totally agree. I was very excited about CS when it came out. The simulation was lacking but surely, I thought, it will be expanded on in future DLCs. And I was right, when AD was announced I was thrilled that it was going to expand on the tourism, crime and economic mechanics. What a let down I experienced when AD was released. But still, I thought, this is Paradox, my favorite publisher, there will be a patch for this buggy DLC. So I waited and waited. Well, I thought, looks like I've been had but let's see what the next DLC has to offer before giving up on CS. And now I see, without any doubt, that CS is a city painting game and that CO has no intention of further developing it into a city builder/simulation game.

I must say that while I still respect Paradox as a publisher I have lost all faith in them as a distributor. While they don't develop games for the lowest common denominator, they obviously have no problem distributing them.

 

[Cymsdale]

My personal favourite of the free stuff is the new public transport interface. It’s inspired by the very popular mod by the name of “Extended public transport UI”, made by user AcidF!re. Our take on the issue is to add more control for the user over public transport, as cities with a large number of lines can become a bit hard to understand. With the new interface, you can change line colours, name lines and see more detailed information about your lines. Seeing trips saved on all lines makes it easy to see if a line is performing badly compared to the others ones, and the passenger numbers are visible for all lines of the chosen type at the same time.

This is screaming for a screenshot...

 

[CaptRobau]

Why do people expect the developers to talk about bug fixes in a developer blog about a DLC?

This is a developer blog about the free features in the patch accompanying Snowfall. PDS does this all the time for CK2 and EU4, but they go into more detail about the patch features than CO seems to do. And every thread has people asking about info on any bug fixes, so people really want to know.

 

[muttonnoir]

I'd love to know if anyone complaining about the DLC's price ever had a job you wanted to be paid for. It's a few bucks. Less than a cinema visit or a burger and beer and it'll last way longer. An added bonus is the DLC doesn't turn into sh*t after one use (big bonus compared to a hamburger!)
CO and PDX have bills and people to pay. It also takes way more time and effort to develop something than writing some half-baked suggestions on a forum. Anyone who has ever developed any piece of software professionally knows this. "The button needs to do X, should be simple." Well, guess what, it'll take three people several weeks to implement and all you ever see is a stupid button. Software is hard.
All the man-hours modders spend on their mods combined no company could pay for. I, too, would love to see many mods integrated into the base game. The sad reality is, with prices this low, this isn't economically feasible. There's a limited market for every game and once every interested person has bought it, you no longer make any money. That's why there are subscription models, in-app purchases and optional DLC. I prefere the last option by a mile.

Sorry for this rant. I'm looking forward to the DLC's release and all this negativity was simply to much. Now "respectfully disagree" if you must but unless you've worked professionally in the software business or something similar I don't think you fully get what it takes to develop a large application or add features to it. (Which is ok, I don't know what it takes to run a large restaurant kitchen and still get annoyed when my order takes, what I perceive as, too long.)

Thanks for your continued development CO and PDX!

Well said! I've over 1000 hours clocked up in the game- that is real value for money. So many of the vocal minority have such unrealistically high expectations for what is a reasonably priced GAME (pls note the capital letters). The game has to appeal to a wide audience, be playable on a wide range of pcs and generate income etc etc. City Skylines is a work in progress and a pretty good one too. Some folks really need a reality check- but many of the millennial generation struggle with reality

 

[Co_Karoliina]

Oh and yes, no new growables in this expansion, sorry! We put all the effort into making the existing ones look gorgeous in any weather. There are some slight modifications to some existing buildings in the winter theme, so that you won't have open swimming pools and flowers growing in the snow, but these are not new buildings but variations of the old ones.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

I well understand the points you @Co_Karoliina mentioned, especially the statement about time (since time is money for sure!)

I just want now to write down my - not mainly - bug list to maybe give some hints and (possible) fixes [Still, I don't know the mechanics behind unity, so those are guesses ;D ]

- "Deathwaves":

As many players know death waves appear in the game. Most people blame the hearse AI for those to happen. I think it's caused by three factors:

1. Cims who move in have all the same age, so if we have a high residential demand and masses of cims move in they got the same initial age.
2. Every cims lifespan is the same when the health systems works best, so every cim gets to the same age and then "dies".

Fix: Randomizing the age of incoming cims - some seniors, some jung adults, adults and families. Add the possibility of dying early (due to all day accidents and diseases like in reality)


- Crematoriums:

There is a kinda high demand for those. If I look at some large and medium cities over here (Germany) I don't see a hearse often on the street for a good reason: Most people don't die at home, they die in a hospital. So it would be good that senior cims have a high chance to get ill even if the medical system is "the best" - They than have to be transported by ambulance to the next hospital (as it already happens to ill cims) over there they have a chance to survive their disease or to die. The older the cim is, the more likely is the die-case. Still the dead cims have to be transported via hearses from the hospital to the crematory oder cemetery. The hospital can also get a functionality like the added one for criminals in police stations: dead bodies are collected and the hearses can pick them up by time


- Time:

I think there are too many "time zones" in this game. The day/night cycle takes (ingame) "weeks". Cars also need weeks to arrive at their destination. Cims need only a few "years" to get old and die. Personally I have the feeling that the simulation should run on the same speed as the day/night cycle. It would be fine if it's slowed down to that level. The tourists counter would also look more realistic as "tourists this week" would not count "2" on a majestic building as a week would no longer be 7 seconds long


- Emergency vehicle behaviour

It's annoying to see a building burning down cause the fire truck ist stuck in traffic. This does not happen once in a large city. In reality emergency vehicles can drive "face on" to other traffic if a intersection is completely blocked. Also other cars make room for emergency vehicles while on straight sections. As I don't know unity I don't know if something like the first part is possible.


- Limits:

Hell no, not this again!

I thought about that problem and I know your point. You'd like to not disappoint people with computer systems that only reach the minimum specs for this game. But I think a simple solution to add a new properties panel in the options called "Limits":

There you can add a text on top reading: "Warning: ignoring Limits may cause your game to perform not well. Only do so on your own risk!"
Next you have simple check-boxes for:

"Ignore agent limit"
"Ignore building limit"
"ignore prop limit"
"ignore lane limit"
"ignore vehicle limit"
[...]
"ignore all limits"

So everybody can do so on his/her own risk and check out what his system can handle by simply set a Boolean value.

- Minor cosmetic things:

1. Car indicators are useless - they are ingame, but most time they only flash once while turning. They should also flash while on the turning lane in front of the intersection node
2. Rail lines could need some signals like the traffic lights on streets. Simple signals could turn red when one train goes by and turn green 200m behind this train. Other trains then have to hold a certain distance to the one in front of them.
3. Tail lights for rail and road vehicles would be neat! just small corona effects for them which are visible at night like the headlights - the current setup is simply too dim.
4. Apropos lights: I don't understand why the headlights on trains are using the diffuse color and the cabin lights are using solid white? The other way around would make more sense to me, especially because colored lights on the front (like red) don't fit (they only would fit on the back).
5. Trucks and other slow vehicles should use the outer right lane on highways (or left if you are English, Australian, or Japanese). Even without mods it looks kinda silly when they are on the inner lanes and no other traffic is around. Residental cars should use all 3 lanes, emergency vehicles should use the inner lanes while driving through an emergency.
6. All emergency vehicles should left their emergency lights on during service, not only fire trucks. Ambulances should also rush back to hospital with emergency lights and siren turned on - cause it's still an emergency on the way back

So, that's it! I have not more to say by now - Still I hope I was able to give you some hints and ideas for future updates / fixes

PS.: I bear with you! Still I think Cities Skylines is the best city builder by now! Cheers.

 

[JohnA45]

So this all looks okay, but do we really need fog? Some of the maps are so hazy anyway it's annoying. Also, I am SO disappointed there are no new bridge styles...same ole boring crap bridges!

Okay, I complain about this a lot, but it would really add some uniqueness to our cities and I'm really annoyed with the lack of style in that respect, especially since you can rarely build a city in this game without using bridges. Would varied bridge styles really be so hard to develop? SimCity did it in every version they had, and this game is so much better than SimCity in many other ways! You come up with hats for that stupid, annoying bird but we get bland and boring bridges to span our cities rivers, something that actually matters to the game. Come on developers! What do you have against pretty bridges? I'm not trying to hate on ya, but pleease! I'd actually pay for some better bridge styles...and before anyone suggest it, I'm not talking about using some mod that will possibly crash or mess up my game! Also, a better choice in college's would be cool too. The University you have for the Boreal, Temperate and Tropical maps is kinda ugly....why isn't there a campus? It's funny to me that the European High School is takes up more area than the main University...WTF? At least the University in the European maps is a bit better. And why no Football Fields (American and European) or Baseball parks?

I'm starting to agree with some of the haters here too, it seems the time and effort would have been better spent fixing the issues people had with the Regular and After Dark expansions. Honestly...why the hell have 6 lane roads if the cars all only use one lane? I spend way too much time on this game, and I'm losing interest due to the limitations...like only 9 tiles...why the hell have this huge map if you can only unlock 9? I tried the mod and it didn't work right for me...at the very least we should have 12 tiles. Anyway, I hope to god the developers listen to it's fans more in the future instead of being stubborn and dismissive...if they want to sell a lot of games, they need to listen to those of us who actually love to play!

 

[Sanny]

Love the fact that a popular mod is now becoming an official part of the game. It's one of my favourites.

I have a question regarding rain though, will this alter assets meaning new textures are needed? or is this coded in globally so that the change happens automatically? As I'm guessing we'll see shiny wet buildings?