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antrachton

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Oct 9, 2018
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Referring back to that latest interview with Colossal Order CEO - Mariina Hallikainen - I would like to see what you think they may have in plans, not what your wishes are (we all know them, and they are various :) ).
So here is the interview that dj97 was kind enough to post a link to (interview in GameInformer - https://www.gameinformer.com/interv...ks-development-mod-community-and-six-years-of).

Couple of take-outs:

"We had some serious SimCity fans in the dev team and wanted to achieve a spiritual successor to SimCity 4. Naturally, the ambition was much greater than our resources at the time, so we had to prioritize on the amount of content and different features." on starting development on Cities:Skylines and its inspiration.

"This was the dream from the start! (that's about current game - Cities:Skylines) We founded Colossal Order with the intent that one day “Colossal Cities” would see the light of day. This was back in 2009 and we were five people with limited funding, so we decided to start with something smaller to build toward greater challenges. (...) I’d say the most important learning from the CIM (Cities In Motion) games was getting to know the community and the meaning of modding for our games. We really see it as an integral part of the player experience we want to offer not only now but in the future."

"Our target at Colossal for copies sold was 300,000, so more than our previous games and enough to allow us to work on the game for a couple of expansions before starting something new. Now, six years later, it’s still quite difficult to understand what actually happened, but we have been so happy to have kept it going so long." - they did quite a few millions of copies, didn't they? Is it over 5 or 6 millions now?

On their biggest success:
"It has been absolutely fantastic, challenging, tiring, and yet always so rewarding to work on Cities: Skylines. I’m a big believer in continuous improvement and it's at the core of our development process at Colossal Order. I think we all regret our failure to get proper seasons in the game, but it was simply not feasible at the time and we decided to live with the winter maps feature in the Snowfall expansion. The game has evolved immensely over the years with improvements and new content and features, but the absolute biggest success is our relationship with the community, our endless source for inspiration. "

And the very end of the interview:
"What does the future hold for Cities: Skylines? Do you have plans for a follow-up game, or are you looking to continue developing upon the existing base?
Cities: Skylines, with its community, is the most important game Colossal Order has created. Beyond that, there isn’t much further we can say at the moment."


I think these are the most important bits telling us that something most important for companies is and should be - their customers, in C:S case, its community built around the game and the ability to adapt to different needs - they, as they said here ("We focused on the very basic building blocks: roads, houses, jobs. City services to support the needs of the citizens: health, education, recreation. We wanted there to be as much freedom as possible, ability to create something from the real world."), gave us "templates", very basic staff to play with, manipulate and mod, so each one of us can enjoy the game in their way. And I think it's pretty safe to say, that's the experience many of us (if not all) were looking for and are enjoying it. CO obviously can see that and it looks like they want to provide that to us. For as long as they can.

When creating C:S, after their Cities In Motions games, they had a bit of money, a lot more experience than when they started in 2009, and - I suppose - plenty of ideas. And I think that this game, C:S, was meant to be another stepping stone in their game development. To get some more room (especially financially) to create something even better later in future.
Their target of 300 000 copies has been reached very quickly (was it few months or weeks?) and it's pretty safe to say - they have resources now, alongside the experience.

Was it a tiny suggestion then, when dropping the name “Colossal Cities”, and not just reference to the company name, that one day there would be “Colossal Cities”? I remember a bit of a rumour at the end of 2019, when last DLC didn't turn up when expected (Sunset Harbour was delayed due to working on trolleybuses and plenty of issues they had with them), that they are working on something giving us much larger maps, to possibly build multi-cities on one map and have plenty of room to do that.
Maybe, that's a possibility, and a very pleasant one.

There was also news about a planned meeting between CO and major game community contributors, back in 2019, that I suppose took place and no one talks about its outcome - I could imagine that event as a meeting to exchange ideas, problems and issues with current game platform (which, as most of us experienced, is not very suitable for running even a small town with all DLCs on and no mods or workshop assets - which is not what CO would have wanted). What happened with it... well...

I am getting the impression that, when they stopped issuing DLCs - nothing for over a year now - but they keep us engaged on their community channel and - I suppose it's CO doing it as well - organizing global build-off competitions, that is all to keep us with them for their next... I'd say product and game.

Colossal Cities? :) Maybe.
Although they were successful in replacing SimCity, there is always that limitation - not enough room to let your ideas run free across a map.

But as at the same time the game community is very important to them (that's their life line enabling them their as well as ours dreams come true), I'm starting to believe tiny bit more (although it still sounds impossible) that if it is the next game that CO is working on and polishing for us (remember? they have money and time now) , maybe whole workshop and all those assets (I guess excluding mods) would be "transferable" to that new game too.

"Do you have plans for a follow-up game, or are you looking to continue developing upon the existing base?" was the last question, and I'm sure they are very aware of it since years ago now. And do you think, they wouldn't splash few details on what they are working on if it was yet another DLC?
"Cities: Skylines, with its community, is the most important game Colossal Order has created. Beyond that, there isn’t much further we can say at the moment" was the answer, which screams a lot, although it's still just guessing.

What are your thoughts on this interview?
 
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I think they are working on City Skylines 2.
With next Gen arriving and PC becoming more capable it is the logical step.
They could do so much more with fewer technical limitations.
I personally would love a VR mode. I could see the benefits of motion controls, especially on consoles.
Just looking at you're tiny city to your feet and then with a click of a button looking up to a Skyscraper you just put there.
Not very likely but that would be my dream :-D
 
I'd personally get into a vertigo mode if there was VR mode ;)
standing on top of the construction crane??? noooooooooo :D:D:D

I'm falling!

I already have plenty of sensation when driving up a hill and all of the sudden dropping down a slope on the other side of the hill - same sensation as in real life in a car! - and while i love that sensation, I don't want to experience anything else :)

What i think they may do though, to meet such requests, is to firs of all an game engine that wouldn't cause too much stuttering when getting in VR mode; and secondly - they would give a template somewhere in their game codes, to create a VR mod :) To some extend there are camera views in the current game but obviously... well all depends on map themes too, some create some really real picturesque views :D
 
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You don't have the mod to remove that effect?
This mod should do the job for you :)
I've been using this mod for soooo long that i already forgot about that camera collision thing with objects :)
 
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I haven't been using any mods or assets. Nothing against them, just that it starts with one, and then two, and the next thing I know my poor laptop nearly croaks.

That mod sounds pretty tempting though. I really hate the up and down when following stuff around.
 
I know what you mean... Said Whinnie the assets collector who has subscribed to 7k assets and 180 mods

The most funny thing I discovered recently is that you may have even more assets then I have but a lot less mods ( I have unsubscribed all mods, left assets only) and your loading time is down from 22 minutes to just below 4. Or the other way around, mods only and no assets, and you will end up with max loading time of 5 minutes.

But them together... brings a unnatural disaster! I'm not complaining, I just go to take a shower while the game starts
 
I haven't been using any mods or assets. Nothing against them, just that it starts with one, and then two, and the next thing I know my poor laptop nearly croaks.

That mod sounds pretty tempting though. I really hate the up and down when following stuff around.
It will also allow you entering the buildings, assets, and see if there is anything done inside. Ive done bit of internal decoration to some of my assets... but some creators have done amazing interiors... And I think file size was not so amazing
 
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It looks as if Cities Skylines 2/Colossal Cities is in development. I predict a Q1 2023 launch date. Exciting to see what they come up with given their experience with CS, hardware advances a larger dev team and all that money! You can bet whatever it is some folks will still be unhappy!
 
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You can bet whatever it is some folks will still be unhappy!
I'm pretty sure they will give us again a "template" on which we can make our own things... If only we were, including myself, skilled in coding language to create useful mods
I'm not complaining though, I'm making assets instead
 
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And now we have this interview with Cities Skylines CEO Mariina Hallikainen talking about the game and how they got to this game, how they see their competition.
Not so much about the plans, that stays secret, and they are trying to deflate some of our hopes for the new version of Cities Skylines, but on the other hand she is confirming that if they want to move on to the next level, they need to have some stronger foundations - I'd assume it's the game engine mainly and maybe that there isn't anything better available to them than the Unity , and as far as I remember their opinion about Unity is not a flattering one. They most likely need a good game engine that would support creating this, as Mariina has put it, game platform (and I have called it before a template ) for the community, so they could most likely add whatever mechanics they can come up with to give us more and more fun with each expansion or DLC. Maybe Unreal Engine 5 will do... but that would most likely mean starting their work from scratch... which I wouldn't mind. The more it can handle the better :)
But also... we still have no expansion pack since Sunset Harbour. Bridges and Piers and Train Stations are Content Creator Packs only, and they were called a sort of a temporary surprise for us while CO is still working on something else.

They obviously must have got to some point in its development that they allowed themselves to say something ("we are working on something" is fine, it's all what I have asked for ;)) but as some mentioned here, it may be even another 2 years before its release (i wouldn't be that pessimistic though... maybe 1.5 year).

So here is that interview, it's a podcast something around 20 minutes or so - I don't think it was shared on here on that news feed yet:

Enjoy!

And about the Unreal Engine 5 (not released as yet) -
 
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For me the main parts that really stood out to me is that there’s big SimCity fans on their team which means we could hopefully see more simulation aspects in the sequel.

Also their budget limited them on previous games but I’m hoping with the Success of Cities Skylines they can really go all out when designing the sequel!
 
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I hope that whenever the sequel, more focus would be on making the city more alive. Like random events happening, seasons, environment changes, day night cycle having real time changes on traffic, commercial and industrial markets and others. The simulation side of things was quite on the low in the current game.
 
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I have to admit - I wouldn't mind waiting another 2 -3 years for new C:S if they could make it as nice and well working as it seems to be with some games using Unreal Engine 4. And there is Unreal Engine 5 coming out soon.
I just watched on youtube few games made for UE4 such as:
- Bus Simulator 18 and 21 (the latter is a demo only as it is not out yet) - seems to have a world full of fine details... meaning plenty of tris.
- Tropico 6 (both 6 and 5 not very moddable judging by the amount of assets or mods on Steam's workshop)
- Satisfactory
- Project Wingman - nothing on the workshop but it seems to have a huge world full of tris...
- Train Sim World - again as the Bus Simulator - the world built in there... nice :)

To name just a few games, the list above focuses on games around cities and simulations. Watching some random youtube gameplay videos was a ... well... experience that elevated my expectations towards C:S :)
Yes, C:S is a completely different game, that has, even in its current form, a lot more detailed world to create....

And yes, UE4 or even 5, would allow on plenty of seasons (well, there is 4 seasons only) as well as... and I hope that wouldn't require too much from gamers - at least 500K agents, 600K buildings, more networks, more vehicles....
Just 10 fold increase in any limits would make me happy (I know, I'm demanding b*** now - I mean a spoilt brat ;) )
Maybe 10 fold increase in those game limits is just a shy request though... ;)

Whatever CO is working on, let them make it, polish it, no rush... but don't make us wait a decade though ;)
 
Unity and Unreal engines are only responsible for graphics in these games.... they have nothing to do with the simulation performance. The agent-based simulation is done in custom code by game developers. UE5 will give you better graphics but it won't make the simulation runs faster or allow more agents. It really depends on the technical skills of the developers, not the rendering engine
 
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Unity and Unreal engines are only responsible for graphics in these games.... they have nothing to do with the simulation performance. The agent-based simulation is done in custom code by game developers. UE5 will give you better graphics but it won't make the simulation runs faster or allow more agents. It really depends on the technical skills of the developers, not the rendering engine
I can only disagree after watching videos about it. And also after that being said many times before that it's game engine and not the game code. Or at least not just the game code. If it was the game code, that obviously would be improved a lot more by now - but we still have agent limits for example, which only limits the game experience.
Sorry.

But whether "UE5 will give (us) better graphics but it won't make the simulation runs faster or allow more agents" or not... well i hope that anything will do. Doesn't need to be UE5 - i'm just counting on anything a lot better. And my expectations are now a lot higher.

This video seems to dispute what you just said and explains it a bit. It says clearly that UE5 feature Nanite enables having such high poly counts in scenes. And the counts are... insane I'd say.

 
"If it was the game code, that obviously would be improved a lot more by now - but we still have agent limits for example, which only limits the game experience."

Use ILSpy to decompile the game code and people with moderate programming background will easily see that the Unity Engine part is separated from the game's simulation code. The game only uses Unity to render objects. The agent limit is caused by the dev choosing to use short int variable type for agent IDs for the simulation, not related to Unity. To change this you will need to rewrite most of the simulation code because the limit is bounded by variable type, so it is not going to happen. This is why it is not possible, because it is almost like coding a new game. I encourage you to actually decompile the game and read the code.
 
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