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!

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

The unlimited tree mod, does have a limit of 1 million trees, so no. Yeah obviously they have limits in place so players dont blame them when things go wrong.

Yeah, I know it has a limit, but it allows to plop about eight times more trees than the vanilla game, but you get the point.

 

[Omnius1Prime]

Now this here is a "hardcore" player. I couldn't play Cities XXL as there's no real management to it, except for traffic.

Cities XXL is far better than Skylines, stuff actually works. Unlike this morning with the new free update that has screwed up my city of 895,000 Cims. As always another poorly programmed update that will cause more problems than it solves.

 

[scary_modster]

So here's a noob to CS that doesn't like something - how different.

I've been modding, playing and designing traffic sims for a considerable amount of my life. Of all the city-sims I've played, CS has been on the top of the list. The company however, has left me asking a few questions. I want to see who agrees with me.

Since March of 2015, there have been two official expansions, neither of which - upon my research - pooled what players wanted. In fact, every facet of CS that was added basically brought a sub game into it's complete build. I mean, after these two updates - the game feels complete-ish and not "expanded." But as to my question...

Why on Earth hasn't CO allowed players to buy components vs expansions. Snow is awesome, yeah and so is after dark traffic adjustments - but - what if for instance, someone has a lack luster PC? What if someone only wants a few things out of the expansion pack(s)? - Why are we all funneled into buying "X" amount things that we don't want to get what we do want? Before you answer with "that is just good marketing," I'm going to propose a different idea.

Individual - tiny - not a big projects - not lots of people or all the people working on them - OFFICIAL mods. Cheaper, Purchasable and insightful into what PLAYERS want.
for example the Theme editor alone. NO trams, snow, bug fixes etcetera besides what is needed to make themes.

Bug fixes - large scale, able to be handled by everyone and free to players. Since little things are done more often and more spread compared to how they create things now, MORE time to fix bugs.
Self explanatory...

As they build their demographic of what we like, they will create fuller games for EVERY PLAYER. That's because every player can choose their 'expansions.' We are in the age of simulations where "one size fits all" doesn't work. And, while there will be those who argue, Big expansions that funnel enjoyment and money - also do the opposite. I think this method would fix that, do you?

 

[slornie]

Unlike this morning with the new free update that has screwed up my city of 895,000 Cims. As always another poorly programmed update that will cause more problems than it solves.

Mods are used at the player's own risk; that has always been and always will be one of the core principle behind them. Honestly, IMO if you play with mods and don't take the opportunity to disable auto-updates via Steam before a patch comes out (for which the date was promoted in advance) and then find the lack of updated mods causes errors in your save there's no one to blame but yourself.

CO made no guarantee that mods would continue to work across versions/patches and in fact it's not their responsibility to do so. That they also engaged the creators of some of the more popular mods before release (so they could get a head start on updating the mods for the new version) is really just a bonus we had/have no reason to expect as a matter of course.

 

[Co_Karoliina]

Unity does have some limitations we cannot help with. Trees are a bit special in Skylines, as they are not buildings and not quite props either, so they have a different limit.

[Delta ²k5], thanks for the very easy to read list! We have all of those issues on our internal lists, so rest assured they are not forgotten. Sandbox games can be a bit tricky, because touching one thing can cause massive effects somewhere else in the game, so we are spending lots of time testing the solutions we have tried. If we do not have a fix that will clearly help, we won't publish it, because having things broken in a different way isn't any better. I apologize for the time it takes to do fixes, but we want to do them so that they work reliably and don't cause new problems.

scary_modster, I do understand where you are coming from and it's a nice idea! However, we try to create larger expansions than what modders are currently able to do, and to have things that work well with each other. For some reason many players want to get bigger packs of content and features, not hand pick them, and we try to cater to them as well. Not all players use mods, so we can't rely on people understanding the logic behind mods and taking the time to download lots of smaller packages. It's not out of the question that we would do smaller packs occasionally.

Mods are always a bit of a problem when an update is released, but I salute the active modder community, it's doesn't take long for the most popular mods to be made compatible with the new game version! I feel it's the price we have to pay to have such an open, moddable game with plenty of room for creative modders to make it their own.

 

[jmr00]

I feel it's the price we have to pay to have such an open, moddable game with plenty of room for creative modders to make it their own.

Please don't ever change this in your future games. The modding is the best part about this game, CIM2 had so much potential but was let down by lack of modding.