0.858 -> 0.859 – Screen space reflections deprecated. (high performance cost, for little visual improvement) – Changed trade volume effect on resource demand. This should make prices less affected by large trade volumes, especially in large cities. – Rewired controller customization asset updated. This could possibly address issues with control customization. – Upper class 3×3 third density residential buildings added.
I’ve removed the screen space reflections option, as it is both costly in terms of performance, but offers little in the way of visual fidelity. It was also not functional on all OS:es.
I’ve updated the rewired controller mapper to ensure it is up to date and bug free.
The last remaining 3×3 buildings have been added in. This is the third density upper class buildings.
Lastly, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year!
0.857 -> 0.858 – Added tool tip for how to change size of roundabouts. – Area frame fixed so that it shows the correct size of the area marked out when placing buildings. – Fixed incorrect rounding when placing multiple buildings. Selecting a 6×6 sized area with 4×4 buildings would place 4 buildings, although only one would properly fit the area. – Fixed roundabouts not working on flat worlds. – Zone planning tool added for residences and industrial buildings. Selecting (for example) 4×4 residences and framing an area of 6x times 6x will now will place one 4×4 building and fill the remaining area with 2×2.
I’ve fixed a bug preventing placement of roundabout on flat worlds. I’ve also added a proper tool tip for how to resize roundabouts when placing them.
I mentioned a while back adding in a zone planning tool. This is now live for residential buildings and industrial buildings (they have complete sets of 1×1 to 4×4 buildings).
You can now select an area to place zones into. The selected size building will be the maximum size, and all areas that don’t fit that size will be fitted with a smaller size zone.
This makes it easier to mix different size zones.
I’ve also fixed the outer frame when selecting an area, so that it correctly compensates for building size, making it easier to see what area is being selected. On top of this, a rounding error has also been fixed, preventing an amount of buildings larger than can be fitted into the selected area being placed.
0.856 -> 0.857 – Entertainment output of entertainment buildings increased. – Third tier (Middle class) 3×3 third density added. – Fourth tier (Upper middle class) 3×3 third density added. – Added click and drag functionality for roundabouts (click and drag to change the size rather than placing several).
– Changed import options for recently added textures. – Changed import options for building textures to remove alpha channel (which isn’t used but took up memory).
– Possible fix for slow shutdown of the game when cities are large (this is likely due to a thread taking a long time to quit).
– Fixed LOD settings for recently added buildings. – Fixed incorrect population requirement for buildings to grow displayed when playing on a flat world.
As mentioned, I’ve added in more of the 3×3 third density buildings. Only the upper class variants remain.
I’ve changed the way placing roundabouts work. Previously each size roundabout was a distinct item that needed to be selected before placing. You could click and drag to place several roundabouts at a time. This is usually not what you want to do (have a set of interconnected roundabouts…) so I changed it so that there is only one item to select and clicking and dragging will change the size of the roundabout. That way I can also compress the amount of items in the road group.
I’ve also done some minor optimization, changing texture import settings and some LOD settings for recently added buildings.
I’m in the process of adding in the recently mentioned “zone planner” feature and block painting. This is a bit time consuming, so I’ve opted to continue making some smaller updates on the side while this work is ongoing.
Here’s what’s new:
0.855 -> 0.856 – Updated view modes to work better with changed post processing stack. – Increased wealth requirement for commercial zones and hotel zones. – Increased traffic visibility and added it into the draw distance option. – Shrunk the large sanctuary building slightly and added props to it to make it look nicer. – Added second tier 3×3 third density – Rebalanced local area effect requirements of residential zones. Overall residences should require less culture and entertainment up until the 4th density, which require slightly more. Also fire safety requirements are lower and crime generation is also lower. Later on industry will be the primary source of fire safety demands, and industry and commerce will be the main zones that require police protection.
– Fixed blimps not spawning correctly. – Fixed there being too many conglomerates in older saves. This would cause some buildings to be incorrectly displayed in the owner view. – Fixed small wind turbine, wood burner and batteries now showing as power production buildings in the type view. – Fixed fog color in icey flat world. – Fixed shadow caster on both sanctuary buildings and 3×3 lower class residential buildings.
I’ve started reworking local area effects, starting with residential buildings. There have been so many things added into the game over time, that it’s become necessary to rebalance things. For starters, there are too few entertainment buildings and the demands for entertainment have been too high. So I’ve started tweaking this slightly. The idea is also to get more mixed areas to be required, ie not placing all commerce in one area etc. But more on that later!
Third and last density for second tier 3×3 residences added!
I’ve continued working on the post processing stack and tweaking layer render distances a bit. This makes traffic show for greater distances.
The view modes were a bit bugged since changing the post processing stack. This has now been fixed. I’ve also added greater color separation in the building type view.
0.85 -> 0.855 – Post processing stack overhauled. – Focus distance changed. – Shadow contrast changed. – Third density for lower class 3×3 added. – Fine tuned clip ramp for buildings fading at distance. – Revised nighttime lighting.
– Fixed collider issue with rounded grass tiles.
The collider issue was with the grass tile meant for the rounded block type:
I’ve refined the clip ramp to make the distance building fade out a bit more detailed (it looked blocky before).
The entire post processing stack has been changed. Some effects moved over to a new asset, while others have been tweaked in the existing asset. Pictured below is the improved depth of field which also means the calculation for focus has also been greatly improved. For those that dislike DoF, the effect can be turned off as usual.
I’ve extended the reflection probe distance so that buildings don’t “black out” so close to the camera. The distance has also been tied in with the render distance so that the reflection probe distance shrinks when a lower render distance is used. Overall, this improves visual fidelity.
I’ve also changed the shader code so that nighttime lighting has a bit more punch:
– Correctional centers now produce “correctional cells”, instead of policing like it did before. This means correctional centers become necessary over time. Police departments can hold some inmates as well. – Crime calculation changed. Criminals are now a demographic in the city and need to be handled in correctional centers or in a smaller amount of cells available in police departments. – Updated needs and output values for 3×3 residential buildings. – Reverted back to TAA (temporal anti aliasing). It adds a bit of jitter in small details, but overall looks nicer. Jitter will be fixed over time. – Changed building foot print texture import settings to lower memory use. – Changed building foot print shader to better solve pixelated edges between different texture types (grass and asphalt for example). This increases visual fidelity.
– Fixed bug where roads would not connect on tunnels placed around corners. – Fixed rotational bug on solar plant panels.
I’ve fixed a an issue with roads not connecting around corners when one side is built in a tunnel. This was an issue caused by an earlier fix of roads connecting through tunnel walls. Now it should ALL be working as intended! 😀 I’ve also addressed an issue with the solar panel rotations. The rotation would not work properly with solar panels built on the side of blocks.
I’ve also made changes to the shader used for building footprints. It used to produce some unsightly artifacts (left in image) between then mapped areas (grass, asphalt etc.). I’ve managed to get this to look nicer, while also being able to compress the textures more. This should save about 40mb in texture memory.
There were some values for the newly added 3×3 residences that were incorrect. Primarily they required way more entertainment than they should. This has now been fixed.
Police departments and Correctional centers now produce “correctional cells” or jail cells. I’ve also changed how crime is calculted to add in a “criminal” demographic. This means a city needs to have enough cells to house criminals.
A bit later than expected, the second density for the 3×3 residences are now live! Adding them in, I also fixed a few materials missing from the night time lighting cycle.
Lower class:
Low/Mid class:
Middle class:
Mid/Upper class:
Upper class:
Upcoming update with second density for 3×3 residences!
The second density for the newly added 3×3 residences is coming along well. I plan on having them added in during the week. Currently the remaining work is texturing and adding props – this should take 3 or so days so expect the update around thursday.
The 3×3 residences are coming along nicely. I will hold off on adding them into the game until I have the second density done a well. Currently the first density is almost complete. I should hopefully get most of it wrapped up and ready to go next weekend or mid week the week after.
The lower tier first density has already been added in:
The mixed lower/middle class tier first density is done:
The middle class first density tier is also done:
The mixed tier (mid/upper class) first density is also done:
The next update will also feature some minor fixes, among them a fix to the new solar farm panel rotation, which is off when farms are placed on the sides of blocks.