Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters - Dev Diary 6: Tsunamis and Waiting for the Release

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Co_Karoliina

Developer
Oct 1, 2010
548
755
www.colossalorder.fi
Last but not the least, let me introduce to you the Tsunami. It’s one of my personal favourites. A Tsunami disaster starts with a wave in the sea, outside the map area. That wave then travels towards the city. Tsunamis are greatly affected by the map topography. If there’s a line of mountains or steep hills between the sea and the city, the Tsunami might not do any damage in the city. Also valleys and other low areas can make the wave just stay and not be able to travel further. Tsunamis do the most damage on terrain that’s fairly even, when the huge wave can freely travel into the city.

KilyxAK.png

A Tsunami hitting the city

When the wave is in the city, things get interesting. Just like the Tornado picks up cars and other small things, the mighty Tsunami wave can take things with it. If the Tsunami is very mild, it might not do other damage than leave some excess water in your city. For this, there’s many options to handle it. You could add a canal in the affected area and allow the water to flow into it. You could landscape the area and add a pit where the water would flow, creating a little pond until the water evaporates. Because of the evaporation, you can also just wait and the problem will solve itself. Or you can build the brand new Pumping Service! The service sends out tank trucks that suck in water to fill their tanks and then return to the service building where the water is fed into the sewer system. If there’s a big flood, you might need an extra water outlet to handle the extra sewage in the system. All of these techniques also work with regular floods, so you can prepare better for landscaping accidents and other ways of water getting into your city.

boaDyga.png

A Fresh Water Outlet creates a new river

So the Pumping Service takes water away, but to make things more interesting, you can also build Fresh Water Outlets. They work like sewage outlets, except that they pump out excess fresh water in the system. This allows you to create ponds and even rivers. Or just fill out a meteor crater and give a disaster-stricken neighbourhood a new, lovely lake. The Fresh Water Outlet only pumps out water if it is on and there’s excess water produced. If everything the pumps and water towers produce is needed by buildings, the outlet will not let any water out.

N0p534u.png

A Tank Reservoir

Another system that helps handle water are the Tank Reservoirs. They act as an extra water source when full if the city needs more water. This way you can have a small buffer for water, so if a pump fails or a water tower is destroyed, things can be fixed before the lack of water affects the citizens and businesses.

If a severe Tsunami hits your city (or you delete the wrong dam, whoops!) buildings can get destroyed by water. Basically if the water rises higher than the building, the structures are lost. The normal warnings of buildings and roads flooded still exist, but now flooding can have a more powerful effect.

I hope these development diaries have been as nice for you to read as they are for me to write! It’s not too long until Natural Disasters is released and I will admit I’m quite excited. The scenario editor adds a whole new game mode, a new way to play, and I’m looking forward to seeing all the wonderful, wild and weird scenarios people come up with. The disaster look and feel awesome, and they add much to the game when instead of just growing the city, you now have challenges to overcome. Of the new services, my absolute favourite is the Pumping Service. I always tend to spill some water somewhere in my city, and the service makes it so much easier to get rid of the mess!


Anxiously awaiting release,

Karoliina
 
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Last but not the least, let me introduce to you the Tsunami. It’s one of my personal favourites. A Tsunami disaster starts with a wave in the sea, outside the map area. That wave then travels towards the city. Tsunamis are greatly affected by the map topography. If there’s a line of mountains or steep hills between the sea and the city, the Tsunami might not do any damage in the city. Also valleys and other low areas can make the wave just stay and not be able to travel further. Tsunamis do the most damage on terrain that’s fairly even, when the huge wave can freely travel into the city.

KilyxAK.png

A Tsunami hitting the city

When the wave is in the city, things get interesting. Just like the Tornado picks up cars and other small things, the mighty Tsunami wave can take things with it. If the Tsunami is very mild, it might not do other damage than leave some excess water in your city. For this, there’s many options to handle it. You could add a canal in the affected area and allow the water to flow into it. You could landscape the area and add a pit where the water would flow, creating a little pond until the water evaporates. Because of the evaporation, you can also just wait and the problem will solve itself. Or you can build the brand new Pumping Service! The service sends out tank trucks that suck in water to fill their tanks and then return to the service building where the water is fed into the sewer system. If there’s a big flood, you might need an extra water outlet to handle the extra sewage in the system. All of these techniques also work with regular floods, so you can prepare better for landscaping accidents and other ways of water getting into your city.

boaDyga.png

A Fresh Water Outlet creates a new river

So the Pumping Service takes water away, but to make things more interesting, you can also build Fresh Water Outlets. They work like sewage outlets, except that they pump out excess fresh water in the system. This allows you to create ponds and even rivers. Or just fill out a meteor crater and give a disaster-stricken neighbourhood a new, lovely lake. The Fresh Water Outlet only pumps out water if it is on and there’s excess water produced. If everything the pumps and water towers produce is needed by buildings, the outlet will not let any water out.

N0p534u.png

A Tank Reservoir

Another system that helps handle water are the Tank Reservoirs. They act as an extra water source when full if the city needs more water. This way you can have a small buffer for water, so if a pump fails or a water tower is destroyed, things can be fixed before the lack of water affects the citizens and businesses.

If a severe Tsunami hits your city (or you delete the wrong dam, whoops!) buildings can get destroyed by water. Basically if the water rises higher than the building, the structures are lost. The normal warnings of buildings and roads flooded still exist, but now flooding can have a more powerful effect.

I hope these development diaries have been as nice for you to read as they are for me to write! It’s not too long until Natural Disasters is released and I will admit I’m quite excited. The scenario editor adds a whole new game mode, a new way to play, and I’m looking forward to seeing all the wonderful, wild and weird scenarios people come up with. The disaster look and feel awesome, and they add much to the game when instead of just growing the city, you now have challenges to overcome. Of the new services, my absolute favourite is the Pumping Service. I always tend to spill some water somewhere in my city, and the service makes it so much easier to get rid of the mess!


Anxiously awaiting release,

Karoliina
it all looks fantastic :) well done!
 
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i just realized something.... does the traffic not react to the disaster. i mean surely driving along you can see the tsunami or tornado coming. will we see cars turning around and high tailing it outta there? or will they naively drive happily into the disaster and get sucked up?

"oh look honey....we're playing chicken with a tornado!"
 
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Loved the diaries. Almost sad this is the last:(

Me too. I was waiting for time to pass the 2 week rhytm the last months so I could read what's going on. Each dev diary day, I finished work earlier as usual so I could read the diarys and "study" the images to analyze what was added. The sad thing is, until the next DLC announcement there won't be any dev diary.
The good thing: the upcoming winter season is saved, and I'm looking forward on demolishing and repairing cities in another 100 gameplay hours :)
 
And that now are the sales on steam, will Natural Disasters be included in the sale?
of course not. why would they put on sale something newly released? if things automatically got added to the sale they would just put off release until after the sale was finished.
 
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Just a few days ago I built "water tanks" in my city as part of a water treatment facility. Used oil tanks from the workshop. Soon I can change them out for "real" ones.
 
yey!! finally, I save my money now lol

hope soon there will be a volcano LAVA!!! flowing into your city hahaha!!! (bad person laugh)

can't wait to have this DLC :D
 
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i just realized something.... does the traffic not react to the disaster. i mean surely driving along you can see the tsunami or tornado coming. will we see cars turning around and high tailing it outta there? or will they naively drive happily into the disaster and get sucked up?

"oh look honey....we're playing chicken with a tornado!"
yeah. it would be nice to see people's reaction on disasters like in Tropico 4, where people running and screaming and trying to escape)
 
I love those disasters you are going to add, but I'm not that satisfied with this statement:

"The service sends out tank trucks that suck in water to fill their tanks and then return to the service building where the water is fed into the sewer system. If there’s a big flood, you might need an extra water outlet to handle the extra sewage in the system."

Well, I think a better solution to this would have been the addition of a new game policy called "storm drains" which would have the same effect without tank trucks. Maybe that policy could have add visual storm drains as props to existing streets. ;)

Anyway nice job :)
 
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I hope these development diaries have been as nice for you to read as they are for me to write!
Karoliina
Many thanks for these dev diaries Karoliina! It is so refreshing to see such transparency from a developer and this does wonders in reducing the usual hordes of speculation posts that we have to deal with in the forums, both here and especially over at Steam.

Uhm just one thing... did I miss it? We haven't heard anything regarding the radio station. I don't think that was just the early warning system. It seemed to be something more, or perhaps I was wishful thinking ;)

Edit: I just found it lol! But this is the only place you have talked about it. It's in the last 10 seconds of this...