Wiki updated with modding info + video developer diary

[taylorb]

I got very confused by this as well with the wording that was used. It appears the CEO was trying to say you won't be able to mod it any further than that, but the question was "beyond the 9 through mods".

That makes me feel better that I wasn't the only one.

 

[Xannepan]

Looking forward to start modding


Two questions

1: azurespecter stated on simtropolis q&a that
"Collosal Order is leaving road texture variety up to the community. We've aimed to make it an easy task for you though."

How will that work then? Via de modding API? Doesn't seem to be supported via the asset editor.

2: if i would create .. Let’s say a paris building set... Will i be able to set a district policy in such a way that only paris buildings will grow?

 

[AmericanoMonst]

Yahs great video :laugh: I'm lovin' it :wub:

 

[SimonJM]

Incredible work guys. Great foresight and vision to make this a deeply mod-able game because that's where the longevity in games often lies and a city builder especially requires it! Big communities always develop around mod-able games and I think that's a big part of CSL's amazing success so far. I see this game as like a tool that people will customise and modify as they see fit

I love that the devs have a clear vision of what they want CSL to be but are happy to hand a lot of it over to modders as well. Everything looks great already so I think only the best maps, mods and buildings (and any balance correction mods) will be good enough for me!

PS I really want cherry trees! #savethelot

 

[Klinn]

I couldn't find this on the wiki page. How many LOD models do we have to have for our selfmade buildings? And how many triangles should they have? Hope someone can tell me this

From the AMA today, OtterBon asked about LOD's and got this response from Damien:

You have your normal model (let's call it the "high poly version") which is called "model.fbx", "model_c.png" is the color map, "model_d.png" is the diffuse etc... When you select your model in the importer panel, the game will load the fbx, triangulate, consolidate and do more things of the kind such as calculating tangents/normals if unavailable for your model. It will then load the textures and map them to the preview model. At this stage, if you are pleased with this model and press continue, you will get to the Decoration part of the asset editor and a little task notification in the top corner will notify you it is Compressing the textures and Generating LOD. During that process you can freely start propping and editing value, though you cannot save the new asset until those tasks are finished. In this scenario, the game will create a LOD automatically. Our algorithm does not perform great for every possible shape of buildings, even though most of the time, the LODs are so small when you see them in-game, it is not even that big of a deal. In the case it does not, or in the case you want to do a better job with your own hands. You can model a lod and place it along side the model and call it model_lod.fbx. If you do this, you need to UV map the model but no need to texture it as the game will bake the LOD textures out of the high poly version of the mesh. If you are a purist and you want both the LOD and the LOD textures done by yourself, then just add the model_lod_d.png along side and the game will simply load them.

So it appears there's only one LOD, which you do not have to create yourself, but can if you wish more control over how it looks.

 

[gsxdsm]

Modding the 25 tile limit:

A dev just responded in the AMA:
[–]co_damsku PROGRAMMER AT COLOSSAL ORDER - CITIES SKYLINES[F] 1 point a minute ago Long answer short: very. Short answer less short: unlocking additional map tiles is not just about increasing the number of tiles available. There is need to deal with the unlocking logic, the indexing, the area limitations, calculating the available resources and most likely many other things I am not thinking about right now. Some of these systems are part of the core foundation of the game and rely on very specific data structures, many of which are not intuitive nor logical in favour of performances. So unlocking more tiles would require to hijack some of those systems to replace them by your own which will deal with the criterias above. So while theoretically possible, in practise it will require some reverse engineering, a bulletproof patience and some pretty intense modding swag.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2x4mf9/we_are_colossal_order_the_team_behind_cities/coxbbgm

 

[jimmy_lam]

I put a proof read version of the guides in the wiki and the pictures should work now, so everything should be easier to read, I hope you enjoy it!

I love the twitter bird with helmet.

 

[cRAGGLE]

So many hours shall be destroyed.

 

[Hapydude101]

Is there a limit on the wildlife spawners because I have a feeling I'm going to go a little overboard with them.

 

[Lord_P]

So many hours shall be enriched.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Hinforta]

Completely forgot to ask. How functionable is scripting based on C#? I mean, can one use cycles, manipulate memory, threading or for instance use LINQ functions or even for that matter go as far as set the code to be unsafe to use pointers in order to make the code more flexible? I'm not saying I need all of that, just want to know, how flexible overall scripting would be.

up

 

[Inge Jones]

Completely forgot to ask. How functionable is scripting based on C#? I mean, can one use cycles, manipulate memory, threading or for instance use LINQ functions or even for that matter go as far as set the code to be unsafe to use pointers in order to make the code more flexible? I'm not saying I need all of that, just want to know, how flexible overall scripting would be.

As specced I don't think we'll be able to do these things. I think they are exposing only some of the library calls to us. Now, in sims modding we took no notice of that as we had community tools to unprivatise all the methods and properties in the game library and compile against them. At runtime the game didn't care about that, but all the same the game space did stop certain things happening like accessing memory outside the space. Now I believe I have read somewhere that CS will compile our scripts at runtime rather than expecting precompiled dlls from modders like The Sims did. If this is the case, I think we'll be pretty well forced to comply with the limits of the members they have chosen to expose, unless we go against their policies.

 

[Annothek]

Hiho,

German Translation for the WIKI Modding here: Cities Skylines Modding deutsch

 

[CRusko]

And here is our version: Cities Skylines Modding! It was made from different forum members of us. We love to work on your content!

We are so excited for your game and can't wait to get our hands on it!
Germany sends warm wishes to the developer and publisher team!