UNOFFICIAL statement on the map size from Colossal

[Hiroo Onoda]

Thanks CO, good move! I applaud that your efforts to satisfy the community are not just empty words.

If I hadn't pre-ordered a few days ago already, I would have done so now surely.

 

[FourWinds]

This is an amazing level of responsiveness! I am now inspired to go and preorder, as a sort of "applause" for this spirit. I actually don't care about the tile unlocking, but the general approach bodes well

Edit: Done.

OMG, you really did it. I shall resist until post-embargo... resist.

 

[Tooms]

ps. Let's move on to waiting for the game to release? Under 2 weeks to March 10th! We are super excited to hear what you think of the game!

Also my vision. With all the information available I got a good idea of the game and now I am just waiting (which is hard) for the game to release. Somebody please give me a time machine.

 

[borschig]

Also my vision. With all the information available I got a good idea of the game and now I am just waiting (which is hard) for the game to release. Somebody please give me a time machine.

Go play CiM2, pretend it's a city builder, try to build some kick-ass interchanges, it helps.

 

[TornPr1nc3]

This is great news for those who are interested in doing this. I never imagined going that crazy with it, but even the ability to unlock another tile or two would be nice to have if I felt it necessary for a particular region. I, too, applaud CO for making everyone happy. I still wonder with the seemingly rock solid 1 million population though, how disappointed many will be with this when put into practice even if their rig can handle it in trying to make a realistic simulation. The small villages / rural setting like I and another here stated they want to attempt sounds far more possible than a megalopolis taking up 25 tiles.

 

[Dale]

First of all we apologize for this unbelievable mess in communication and misleading information that you have received on the modding of the map size. Like we have stated in the Reddit AMA and here on the forums, the map size in Cities: Skylines is 9 tiles which we know you can run with the supported hardware.

However after realizing the extent of this miscommunication and modders' expectations we sat down with the team and discussed the map size further this morning. As we are not comfortable in growing the map size due to multiple issues it will cause there is not and will not be any official support for opening all 25 tiles.

But Cities: Skylines is all about modding and player control. Therefore we will hand an olive branch and open the code so that increasing the map size to a maximum of 25 tiles is possible through the modding API at launch. This is something the team wants to do against all reason so this is not official support.

The modders who wish to increase the map size realize that they do it solely at their own risk and will not expect any support from Colossal Order with the multiple issues this may cause. We at Colossal Order will do no testing what so ever regarding the increased map size.

On behalf of the Colossal dev team,
Mariina

ps. Let's move on to waiting for the game to release? Under 2 weeks to March 10th! We are super excited to hear what you think of the game!

Thank you.

I mean that.

 

[BuckyDee]

Clearly stated. Completely understood. Very well handled on your end.

If some idiot now opens up his/her map and then complains publicly about the results, ban them for life and blow up their house.

 

[Noppius]

I'm very impressed with they way CO is handling this situation. They truly listen to the community and try to give us the answers to our questions.
1 thing i would like to say is that they are not native english speaking people. And like with any new language you learn, you sometimes don't have that "feeling" when your talking with people. It's not feeling all natural to you.
So they tried to explain us what is possible and some people got only half the message and then complained after they got corrected.

And now, CO has even tried to help them out, by giving modders the tools to try to unlock all the tiles. And i'm sure a lot of people are gonna try just that. As long as we remember that CO is not responsible for anything that happens
when you do unlock all tiles. They made the game and found that 9 tiles with the suggested hardware works well. More tiles give more stress to the computer and can screw performance. CO is not gonna help with that. And that is only fair, as i have never
seen a compagny help out modders when they "break" the game. Most mods for games are "on your own risk" when you use them.

 

[Philemon1976]

CO never fails to amaze me with their kind spirit.
I'm not into 100 km² playground that much, but I am curious about the further development of this issue.
thx again. you rock!

 

[Dyson_raf]

Increasing the map size to 25 tiles doesn't mean that it will be 25 tiles of city. For an example i like to build distant villages, some water areas, windy roads going up and down the countryside hills, etc.....

This

Also thanks to CO for doing this. They didnt have to as they always said it would be an unsupported mod anyway. This is why i preordered though. Even if game is poor which i dont think it will be i want to support this game

 

[Thalkim]

I'm not in the group that wants to unlock all tiles, I think 9 is already good enough. But I can't help being curious about one thing.

If I unlocked the maps, what king of problems can this bring to the game? Crashes, pathfinding errors, simulation bugs? What exactly makes unlocking the map dangerous?

 

[maddogmark25]

Many thanks to CO for doing this. They didn't have any need to do this pretty much, and I wouldn't blame them if they were probably annoyed over all of the hoopla, but they did it anyway. Thank you!!!

 

[Bjorn0305]

If there is an amazing modder that does a super job at this, would CO look at integrating the code into the game as standard?

Personally, I think 9 is plenty to start with. Having never played it, we do not know how difficult it would be to build up a city of this size as much would depend on the CiMs still being able to go places and there is the hard-coded population cap. However, if this game is amazing, people may play it over years and may want to play the same city over years.

 

[bjclang]

If there is an amazing modder that does a super job at this, would CO look at integrating the code into the game as standard?

Personally, I think 9 is plenty to start with. Having never played it, we do not know how difficult it would be to build up a city of this size as much would depend on the CiMs still being able to go places and there is the hard-coded population cap. However, if this game is amazing, people may play it over years and may want to play the same city over years.

NO! It's not that CO can't make this game more than 9 tiles big, CO believes that the game will not run that well beyond 9 tiles with recomended settings. And CO doesn't want to support it, so it doesnt make it available in the base game.

 

[Dizman7]

Nice, wasn't something I was concerned about at all, but now all the people who complained (without having played the game yet) can witness their cpu's melt when the simulation gets exponentially out of control past 9 tiles, ha ha.

 

[co_martsu]

I'm not in the group that wants to unlock all tiles, I think 9 is already good enough. But I can't help being curious about one thing.

If I unlocked the maps, what king of problems can this bring to the game? Crashes, pathfinding errors, simulation bugs? What exactly makes unlocking the map dangerous?

This is pure speculation but increasing the map size could lead to severe performance and memory issues causing the framerate to drop, simulation becoming so slow it's unplayable, running out of memory and crash to desktop. Also you might hit some hard coded caps like the amount of citizens and other assets that could cause severe graphical issues as well as issues in the pathfinding. There might be something else too and it's also depended on the system running the game.

We focus on making everything work in the 9 map tiles available

 

[Thalkim]

This is pure speculation but increasing the map size could lead to severe performance and memory issues causing the framerate to drop, simulation becoming so slow it's unplayable, running out of memory and crash to desktop. Also you might hit some hard coded caps like the amount of citizens and other assets that could cause severe graphical issues as well as issues in the pathfinding. There might be something else too and it's also depended on the system running the game.

We focus on making everything work in the 9 map tiles available

Thanks for answering!

 

[jimutt]

Just had to drop by and say thank you! I really appreciate that you're listening to the community and added support for larger maps through the modding API. While it might not run well on all computers I still like that you're at least giving us the possibility to try without modifying the game in a more "primitive" way than through the API.

 

[McWrisk]

Great news! Thanks CO for the Olive Branch Still waiting on Pins and Needles. Like a little kid at Christmas.

 

[Greygor69]

This is pure speculation but increasing the map size could lead to severe performance and memory issues causing the framerate to drop, simulation becoming so slow it's unplayable, running out of memory and crash to desktop. Also you might hit some hard coded caps like the amount of citizens and other assets that could cause severe graphical issues as well as issues in the pathfinding. There might be something else too and it's also depended on the system running the game.

We focus on making everything work in the 9 map tiles available

With the Understanding that no support is provided. When unlocking happens is there anything constructive (excuse the joke) that players can do to provide useful feedback to CO developers which can be used in future development?