Paradox Interactive delayed jail management simulator Prison Architect 2 indefinitely this August, commenting at the time that the game had notable performance issues, and that its system-led design was proving tricky to tinker with. This came a couple of months after the Crusader Kings publisher washed their hands of the sequel's original developers, Double Eleven.
Speaking to me at Paradox's Media Day last week, deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja offered a shade more insight on the decision, suggesting that hard-up players have "higher expectations" at present and are less trusting that developers will fix problems. Chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus also offered thoughts on what Paradox have learned from the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2 in late 2023. Specifically, he said they need to give actual players access to the game early on, not just testers.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.
]]>While Cities: Skylines 2 has made progress on the performance front, not everything about the troubled citybuilder is on the up. In fact, player reception to the recently released Beach Properties DLC has proven so un-sunny that both developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive have issued a joint statement apologising for the state it launched in.
The letter, addressed to Cities fans and signed by Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen and Paradox Interactive deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, also promises refunds for anyone who bought Beach Properties. Or, in the case of those who got it through snapping up Skylines 2’s Ultimate Edition, compensation in the form of three Creator Packs and three radio stations. The contentious DLC is also going free to anyone who’s yet to put money down.
]]>Six months is a long time. In that half-year you could fully grow a patch of delicious strawberries, plant the seeds, then grow another. Or you could squirm through three and a half successive Liz Truss premierships. Or, as Cities: Skylines 2 developers Colossal Order have done, you could take the technical mess of your long-awaited citybuilding game and reconstruct it into something that performs... okay, not well, but better.
]]>Troubled city building game Cities: Skylines 2 is getting a little less troubled, as new patch 1.1.0f1 adds various performance and bug fixes alongside the main event: much requested mod support and tools in the form a nifty editor. We got a first look at the new editor tools last October, which looks to simplify the process by combining what was previously several different separate editors into a single application. It was later available only to some closed beta testers, but is now released for everyone. Emphasis on everyone, actually, since the tool looks refreshingly approachable, even for those with basically no modding experience.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 came out last month, and while a sequel to a mega-poplar citybuilder should have been cause for concrete celebration, the reviews were sadly mixed. Most of the criticism was directed at the game’s performance woes (not teeth-related, apparently) and bugs (which are always a problem in cities, no?) In an effort to iron out the game’s technical problems and implement the mod editor, Paradox and developers Colossal Order have now delayed post-launch content included in the Expansion Pass.
]]>A huge part of Cities: Skylines appeal lay in its modding community, which expanded on the citybuilder's robust foundations with new maps, assets and more for years post-release. Cities: Skylines 2 is still waiting on its own official mod support, but Paradox have offered a new update on progress, saying that the editor is "a couple of months" from being in a releasable state, with no concrete timeline as yet.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 devs Colossal Order have said that the game known as the Builder of Cities and Destroyer of Framerates (at least, known as of me typing this) won’t get any paid expansions while they’re still getting its performance up to scratch.
]]>While reviewing Cities Colon Skylines 2, I didn't actually go in that hard on public transport (beyond providing it and making it free), despite the urge. Since then though, it's become a game where I don't so much build a single mega-city as a series of experiments.
Naturally, those experiments devolved from a noble effort to remove the stain of cars into a sadistic urge to drive thousands of my own people on a never-ending hell march.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 launched last week and Colossal Order have spent the time since combatting performance issues and teeth conspiracies. Today they released a first video of its upcoming editor tool, however, and it looks neat.
]]>The psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl posited that humans are motivated, above almost all else, to search for meaning in their lives. He would probably be unsurprised, if more than slightly confused, to see that spirit manifest in a rumour that the rubbish performance of Cities: Skylines 2 is being caused by excessive teeth.
A widely-shared reddit post suggests that rendering the highly detailed chompers of Skylines 2’s citizenry, who lack the LOD (level of detail) implementation that would reduce their model quality at a distance, is a major cause behind the game’s inability to pump out frames per second. Developers Colossal Order disagree, and have put out a statement denying this "bizarre story."
]]>Every road network I ever constructed in Cities: Skylines had deep-rooted performance issues I'd then spend dozens more happy hours trying to unravel. I hope Colossal Order are having a similarly fun time trying to fix the performance issues present in Cities: Skylines 2, which launched earlier this week. The first patch is out now and it includes optimisations for rendering, fog, depth-of-field and more designed to make the citybuilder's framerates less gridlocked.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 is, much like the wonkily roaded, pollution-choked helltown I’ve built within it, a work in progress. Developers Colossal Order upped the citybuilding sequel’s system requirements well in advance of launch, and more recently admitted to have "not achieved the benchmark we targeted" for PC performance. Instead, future improvements are promised, to patch Skylines 2 into better shape.
I wish I could say that this is all just pessimism, born from an overabundance of caution and expectation management. But no, it is just a bit of a mess, one capable of putting freshly mixed concrete shoes on even the fastest graphics cards. I’ve worked out a best settings guide that, compared to the available graphics presets, can better balance performance and visuals – though be warned that this will feel more like urgent repair work than a dream remodel.
]]>Cities: Skylines the game that defined the city building genre in the wake of Sim City's self-destruction never truly grabbed me. It’s important to say that, because it helps with the context, and it’s context that I’m struggling with. For a follow-up, Cities: Skylines 2 is basically good. I’ll even continue playing it, which isn’t that common after a review, especially for such a timesink. This time around, it has grabbed me, and yet it's such a small step forward that I don't feel entirely comfortable recommending it outright.
]]>Confession time: if you've been keeping up to date with Colossal Order's feature highlight video series for Cities: Skylines 2 over the last couple of months, you're probably not going to learn a huge amount from my experience of playing it at Gamescom a couple of weeks ago. I spent most of my hour-long demo session steadily working my way through its extensive tutorial, as I have not, in fact, played Cities: Skylines before now - although I can at least confirm that its tutorial is very newbie-friendly, and that I now feel more prepared to give it a go properly when it comes out in full on October 24th.
But the thing that really impressed me was just the sheer scope of its playable spaces. We've known since the end of July that its maps are roughly 5x bigger than those in the first game, and when I saw Colossal Order's Maps & Themes video, I thought, 'Yes, those sure look enormous!' But actually seeing them in person really put things into perspective for me, especially when I tried zooming the camera out and it just kept going and going and going and…
]]>Paradox have posted a Cities: Skylines 2 developer diary in which the studio discusses the new game's rather elaborate-sounding economy simulation. This follows equally knotty breakdowns of its zoning tools, which allow you to mix architectural styles, and its road traffic system, which will hopefully dispense with some of the pathfinding issues from the original Cities: Skylines. In unravelling how individual agents - households, businesses or city services - function within the simulation, the post also touches on the topic of homelessness, a subject the 2014 game left unaddressed.
]]>Developers Colossal Order have been explaining the nitty gritty inner workings of Cities: Skylines 2 during their weekly development diaries, and this week’s update boasts about how massive the urban management sequel really is. The newest video (embedded below) says the sequel’s playable area is “five times bigger than before,” and it also details how map tiles and themes work this time around as well.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 developers Colossal Order already explained how traffic simulation was changing in their citybuilding sequel. They've now followed up with a similarly detailed description of their new zoning tools, which includes a much increased variety of zone types, the ability to switch architectural styles, and new "signature buildings".
]]>Cities: Skylines often felt more like a traffic management sim than a city simulator, as I spent hours tinkering with my road networks to try to clear jams. Cities: Skylines 2 looks like it's going to support an even deeper level of tinkering, judging by two feature spotlight videos released on roads and traffic AI.
Among the new additions: car crashes, much improved pathfinding, and car parks. I find all of these as exciting as each other.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 was revealed a few months ago, but with only a CG trailer and not many details. Now there's a new in-game trailer and at least a vague sense of what the citybuilding sequel will do differently than its venerable, many DLC'd predecessor. Mainly: bigger cities, more simulated cities, prettier cities.
It also brought news of a release date: October 24th.
]]>Cities: Skylines 2 was announced yesterday, with a CG trailer and scant details aside from it being in some way "revolutionary". If you hunger for something more concrete about how it might differ from its predecessor, as I do, then you might be interested in an apparently leaked list of achievements that contains details of disasters, weather, embiggened map sizes and more.
]]>Cities: Skylines turns 8 years old next week, so Paradox are celebrating with a special announcement: a new Cities: Skylines. As part of today’s Paradox Announcement Show, the publisher revealed their urban management sequel Cities: Skylines 2, coming from the studio behind the first game, Colossal Order, is coming later this year.
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