Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters - Dev Diary 4: Tornadoes and Shelters

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Co_Karoliina

Developer
Oct 1, 2010
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www.colossalorder.fi
We’ve been discussing disasters a lot, but there are still a few left. Yesterday the new trailer showing off mostly the tornado was released, and it gives a good overview of how the environment reacts to disasters. Terrain will change, cars will be taken by water or wind, things can catch fire…


So how do you then protect your citizens from all these disasters? The answer is of course to evacuate them! Natural Disasters offers you Shelters to help keep citizens safe. A Shelter is a huge underground structure that has stockpiles of food and water, and huge batteries to generate electricity. When a disaster is coming, you can with the press of just one button set all Shelters into evacuation mode, so citizens in their range will travel to Shelters and stay there until they are told the danger has passed.

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There are two sizes of Shelters: small and large. Both have the same basic functionality. They receive electricity, goods and water and stockpile them so they can go for a while without getting any new shipments. When there are citizens in the Shelters, these stockpiles are used. When the disaster has passed, citizens can safely return to their homes. If some citizens lost their homes in the disaster, they will stay in the Shelter and try to find new housing in the city. Technically they act like young adults looking for a home, they are in line for any new residential apartments in the city. So if a residential area gets viped out, you can zone a new area and the homeless citizens will move there. Citizens in Shelters don’t pay taxes, but they can live in the Shelter for as long as they need to. If a Shelter runs out of food, water or electricity, it cannot hold citizens for a long time and must release them even if there’s still a disaster going on. So make sure to build Shelters early so they can stockpile resources.

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The latest disaster to be revealed was the awesome Tornado. It’s a column of swirling air traveling on the map, picking up things along the way and destroying buildings it passes on. Cars, cows, things out in the open that are light enough for the Tornado winds to grab won’t be where you left them once it has passed. Tornadoes are large and can wreck a lot of havoc in a city. The severity of a Tornado is based on both the size of the column of air, and the time it spends on the city area (this is the currently unlocked map area, so if you are very lucky, it can miss the city). The most severe Tornado would be huge in diameter and stay on the map for a long time. Good thing that Shelters are almost indestructible, your citizens will need them!

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Man this looks awesome, im on the edge of my seat waiting for this to release. I love the fact that the tornado will interact with the environment by pucking up cars, and cows!?!?! Awesome :p.

I love the emergency shelter and how it functions, with the need for resources and energy. I am also realy interested in those emergency busses and how they work, I hope you shed some light on those in the future. And that massive storm drain in the video, is that how we drain water from the city after a tsunami?

All in all, GREAT WORK. it looks absolutly amazing and I am dying to get my hands on it!
 
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Hi, looks great! is there any chance for locking city down while there are disasters. I mean like police blocks the entrance to the city in the main highway (barricade) and roads get cleared, public transportation in the city stop working and public transportation from other cities stop coming?

Amazing work by the way!
 
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this is sooo cool, cars and everything can get affected by disasters. what about trains, boats and planes? and trams? do they get affected too? it would be cool if we can see plane goes crazy when hitting tornadoes or tram sinks when the road get sinkhole or boat get wash up with the tsunami.

can wait for this DLC also. this is freaking awesome DLC. one more thing, is there a feature where random disaster can happen in city? like official mod or specialized option for turning on and off the random disaster?
 
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This looks awesome! I can't wait to get out and wreck my cities!

Just a question, is there a feature that you can use the district zone tool to evacuate citizens in a certain area? That would be nice to get people evacuated in the meteorite so the congestion is not as bad and then the evacuation process is faster.

Can't wait for the release! I am trying to think of my favorite disaster so far but I can't decide over tornado, tsunami or thunderstorm!
 
Now you've done it. I have a plan for a city in my mind that will incorporate these disasters. I am going to make them a feature and I'm already planning the vid I'll make of it. I have the perfect musical score for it and now all I have to do is wait for the release. I know what I'll be busy with over xmas ;)
 
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wooow!
first:
very good trailer - i love it; desasters with happy music in background ;) and the cars flying around the tornado!! awesome!

second:
tornados and tsunamis are looking great! also the falling buildings (maybe there will be more bass sound when impacting a meteor and when the buildings crashing down - just like in the movies... please...)

together with the scenario editor -> a must-have DLC!
 
Love what I am seeing, looks like some of the things I brought up in dev diary 2 have indeed been included. Tornadoes looks like the best disaster from what I've seen so far, I love how it actually leaves the city like a tornado has actually been through and not just buildings being gone and so on, also love all the cars just scattered around, I like that evac bus I see too, wonder if that is linked to the public transport system or if they belong to the shelters.
 
I recently watched the stream on twitch and the ingame trailer, and when I saw cars flooded away from the tsunami I was impressed as I haven't expected this level of detail because atm cars aren't flooded away by water so I thought this won't be affected. destruction effects look really great and finally destroyed roads were shown. I 'm also happy that you implemented a repair button for destroyed ploppable service buildings, so we don't have to bulldoze and rebuild them - usability increase is fine :)
I also like having new challenges in sandbox mode :)

The more infos you reveal - the more I get happy as I see you implemented lots of suggested features!

What will happen when a tornado hits a lake - will water be pulled into the air or is it not affected?

Will there be also a dev diary after all features have been introduced about general changes (game engine, fixes, a list of tweaks, changes, ...) ?

I also was wondering, if we can make scenarios multilingual e.g. for the chirp feature?