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!

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[Funny mayor]

Ok for the transport UI like the "Improved Public Transport" mod, but it seems that it won't be anything that could really suggest us what kind of transport would be better for each line we have (either bus, tram, metro or rail system). In my opinion, the best way would be to have data like an average of the commuters for each line. Would be the best to have an average for each stop or station. In this way every line would be better optimized, and we could understand what kind a system we shoud use, thinking for the total numer in a bus (30 passengers), in a tram (90), in a metro (180) and in a train (240). In the last dev diary I saw only the total number for each line, and this is not enough. Sorry for my English.

 

[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!

 

[Keltia_Vikinga]

I agree for the limited tiles (i understand their choice tho), but 6 lanes road is useful sometimes...

However, CO needs to fix issues and to produce new stuff at the same time...

Regarding transport UI, they said the following :"the passenger numbers are visible for all lines ".

I wish they (@Co_Karoliina) could decrease that pollution effect (indus, trash, water) making the map less nice... but CS is still one great game I enjoy pretty much at last.

 

[JohnA45]

I agree for the imited tiles (i understand their choice tho), but 6 lanes road is useful sometimes...

However, CO needs to fix issues and to produce new stuff at the same time...

Regarding transport UI, they said the following :"the passenger numbers are visible for all lines ".

I wish they (@Co_Karoliina) could decrease that pollution effect (indus, trash, water) making the map less nice... but CS is still one great game I enjoy pretty much at last.

Yes, the 6 lane roads help sometimes, but I find that the cars don't often use them efficiently enough, as in real life. Sometimes the one-way, two lane roads actually work far better in this game for moving traffic. I also wish they'd do a few more American style buildings and monuments, especially since a large portion of their sales are in the U.S., plus we have some beautiful architecture and great sky-scrapers here!
I also wonder if they will have the temperature option of Fahrenheit? We ignorant Americans are not used to Celsius, we even refuse to switch to the metric system.
By the way, I really enjoy the game too, I just wish they'd listen to it's fans a bit more.

 

[Keltia_Vikinga]

Fahrenheit :

Just quick comments to couple of the questions:

You can choose to show the temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit. Even if the math behind it was very confusing and makes little sense to us

The temperature and likelihood of rain depends on the map, but we can get to that in next week's dev diary.

Regarding the 6 lanes, you have to understand that is needless to spend money in it when 2 lanes are enough, sometimes... Its not a problem, its gaming....

 

[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.

 

[Dolans]

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.

Thank you

 

[guillec87]

all the new stuff is nice, and I'm buying it no doubt, but there is a need of more interaction about street construction: bus line streets with trees, bike lane streets with trees, now tram lane streets... we need to be able to create them with trees, which help a lot with noise and props value... besides, more lanes avenues should also be allowed.. I think that can be easily done: first step, select if the street has a bus/bike/tram lane, second, trees or no trees, third, one way or two, last but not least, how many lanes? and voila

 

[raf8655]

Will you add new residential, commercial and office buildings in this new expansion? Will you release a video or a pic that show us how will be the rain effect in the game?

 

[ghostbirdofprey]

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.

That would be appreciated.
Much of the annoyance from the community is that sometimes it seems like bugs just pile up. I know that just sort of happens in software development, but it can be annoying to have some of the bugs linger for a while.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

Will you add new residential, commercial and office buildings in this new expansion? Will you release a video or a pic that show us how will be the rain effect in the game?

The rain effect was featured in the live stream on twitch some days ago. It looks really great, especially at night (Lights are illuminating the raindrops too!). Also the streets are reflecting lights during and after rain.

There seem to be no new growable building. Modded and stock buildings are modified using code in winter maps (some kind of 3D modeled snow ontop of the roof).

 

[Co_Karoliina]

It is absolutely annoying, I agree ;D But rest assured, we have long lists of bugs we want to fix, when there's time, and we go through them often to try and fix at least a few for every patch. It is slow, but currently the best way for our team to handle this. I hope you bear with us!

 

[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.

 

[raf8655]

The rain effect was featured in the live stream on twitch some days ago. It looks really great, especially at night (Lights are illuminating the raindrops too!). Also the streets are reflecting lights during and after rain.

There seem to be no new growable building. Modded and stock buildings are modified using code in winter maps (some kind of 3D modeled snow ontop of the roof).

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.

Ok, many thanks for the answers!

 

[[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.

 

[Sanny]

- 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.

The agent limits and whatnot are due to the limitations of the Unity engine not the game.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

The agent limits and whatnot are due to the limitations of the Unity engine not the game.

That is not quiet right. If you take a look at the workshop mods by typing "tree" in you'll find a unlimit tree mod. Also, as you can read in the patch notes for patch 1.2.2-f2 you'll see that the limits are on purpose and not an engine thing. Sure the engine also has limits, but as a programmer I'm sure that the team around CO has set limits manually cause otherwise the game would probably simply crash on every event that hits the engines limit. It's about good and bad programming styles - and setting a limit manually is just like avoiding a dividing zero error: a good programming style. I don't know what unitys limit on agents is, but it should be way more than 1,5M agents on a state of the art gaming rig as the min specs (on which is the focus of such limits to provide a still playable game) mention a dual core 3GHz processor (which has to handle the agents cause it's no physical simulation so the RISC GPU of the graphics card dosn't count)

Ergo the problem is to find the point on which the game would crash on a min spec system and avoid that by setting up a limit. That's one reason CO cannot simply rise a limit without to be sure it'll work for everyone - and that is the reason I wrote that list down and mentioning the warning text, as then nobody can complain about a crash caused by the engines limit:

1. you have to toggle it by reason.
2. you have been warned.

cheers.

 

[Sanny]

That is not quiet right. If you take a look at the workshop mods by typing "tree" in you'll find a unlimit tree mod. Also, as you can read in the patch notes for patch 1.2.2-f2 you'll see that the limits are on purpose and not an engine thing. Sure the engine also has limits, but as a programmer I'm sure that the team around CO has set limits manually cause otherwise the game would probably simply crash on every event that hits the engines limit. It's about good and bad programming styles - and setting a limit manually is just like avoiding a dividing zero error: a good programming style. I don't know what unitys limit on agents is, but it should be way more than 1,5M agents on a state of the art gaming rig as the min specs (on which is the focus of such limits to provide a still playable game) mention a dual core 3GHz processor (which has to handle the agents cause it's no physical simulation so the RISC GPU of the graphics card dosn't count)

Ergo the problem is to find the point on which the game would crash on a min spec system and avoid that by setting up a limit. That's one reason CO cannot simply rise a limit without to be sure it'll work for everyone - and that is the reason I wrote that list down and mentioning the warning text, as then nobody can complain about a crash caused by the engines limit:

1. you have to toggle it by reason.
2. you have been warned.

cheers.

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.