The holiday season is upon us, but work on the year’s last update is still ongoing! 0.76 is expected to go live sometime around the middle of the week and will feature the full set of mansion textures:
Upper class citizens living in a mansion will provide additional tax income if wealth tax is enabled – if not they pay the regular upper class tax.
The remaining quarter type, upper class, is underway.
This is a sort of parisian style building that, like the lower class and middle class quarter, has 3 densities.
I’m hoping to get a bunch of other goodies in for the next update as my ordinary work is (almost) done for the year. 🙂
0.75 will be live in a bit, adding in some new stuff and fixing some bugs.
0.74 -> 0.75 – Added (yet another) block type (now it’s the last one!). Matching roads etc. to come. – Night lighting for quarters added. – Mansions added. Some currently missing textures, but they be in soon 🙂
– Added redundancy if resolutions are not loaded properly.
– Fixed car movement on 45 degree road. – Fixed issue where placement on special blocks would be prioritised to non-flat surfaces. – Fixed incorrect difficulty settings on templates and campaign levels. – Fixed quarters not spawning vehicles. – Fixed campaign menu header title in main menu. – Fixed autoplaced road tiles in tunnels not adjusting to surrounding roads properly. – Fixed middle class quarter density 3 growth bug.
Mansions have been added. These are bigger residential lots for upper class citizens, they are costly to plop and have fairly high demands, but once fully implemented (which will be in 0.76), will be able to be used for wealth tax income etc.
I decided to add in 4 variations, but two are still untextured. It was better to do it this way, so that there is more variation even initially. The remaining textures will be in for the next version!.
A flatter type of slanted block has been added. I’m still working on the grass variation and roads to be placed on them.
Lighting has been added for the recently included quarter building types! The remaining upper class quarter is slated for 0.76.
Lastly, the change in difficulties recently made the difficulty level of the campaign levels and the templates skewed towards easy, this has now been fixed, as have a couple of other annoyances I’ve found.
0.74 will be live in a bit and add in some new buildings and fix a few issues:
0.73 -> 0.74 – Lower class quarters density 2 and 3 added. – Middle class quarters density 1-3 added. – New block type added. – Sandbox mode added. Cities built in what was formerly the easy mode with infinite money, will no longer have infinite money, but will still be easier. Sandbox mode also unlocks all buildings. – Tweaked population count etc. for lower class quarters.
– Fixed being able to place roads over grass tiles on sloped blocks. – Fixed block end cap decoration not working on some of the special blocks. – Fixed not being able to build (for example grass) decorations on both the rounded and flat side of a special block at the same time. – Fixed not being able to place (for example grass) decorations on the rounded corner block. – Fixed grass tile (without trees) not saving properly. – Fixed missing sound for Quarters when clicked.
First off, the second and third density for the lower class quarter has been added in! There have also been some tweaks to the first density’s values. I’ve also fixed the missing doorbell sound when placing the building or when clicking it.
The middle class quarters are now also in, density one through three! These won’t house quite as many citizens as the lower class quarter buildings do, but also do not come with quite as many requirements for policing and fire department coverage etc.
A sandbox mode has been added! That means that the infinite money that was previously available in the easy mode is no more. If you had a city going in easy mode, you will have a tonne of cash, but it will no longer be infinite! Easy mode has a slightly better global economy and a more generous happiness calculation. There are also no disasters.
The sandbox mode has infinite money, and all buildings are unlocked from the start.
A new special block has been added – a 45 degree angled block. This is the last block type to be added before version 1 of the game. There is a small issue with traffic on the 45 degree angled road, but connections work properly otherwise.
I’ve also fixed some issues where grass tiles could not be placed properly on some of the special blocks. There are a few edge cases left to adress, but overall it should all work much better now.
I’ve continued work on the new residential building type – quarters.
There’s now a full three-density set for lower class citizens inspired by eastern european type module housing. The first density houses 80 people, the second 210 and the third 480. The third density is therefore almost equal to the third density for a 4×4 sized residential building. Given a size of 2×2 tiles, these can potentially house a lot of people. The downside is that they have a slightly higher resource use and require a lot of police and fire department coverage.
This week I will be moving on to the middle class quarter building. This will, however, not be quite as focused on packing in lots of citizens as the lower class one.
I’ll also be adding in a last block type – a 45 degree angled piece with inner and outer corner pieces.
I’m finishing up on the remaining work for the upcoming update. This update will be fairly small as it introduces a whole new type of residential building which has taken quite a bit of work to get working properly – the quarter.
There will be three tiers for these, lower class, middle class and upper class and they will be able to reach three densities (heights). First one out of the gate is the lower class, first density.
Quarters are will allow for denser cities and for more customization as they adapt to surrounding buildings. The lower class quarter building has a high population density and so will allow for building a large lower class population without using up too much space.
Of course, packing many citizens into a small space means police and fire department coverage must be good, as well as education and health care coverage.
Another new addition is a new type of cereal and legume farm. These are costly but highly space efficient farms with high output (higher than greenhouses on less space).
These farms can also be built in middle to upper class neighborhoods without incurring a penalty.
Work on the next update is going well. A sort of unoticable change that has been in the work for a while is a new localization system. Instead of using hard coded files in game, the “official” translations are now read from files in the game folder and the game also checks a localization folder in the save file folder for custom translations. This system will make it easier to not only maintain and update the current translations, but also make it easier to add new languages and will improve quality.
On the subject of translations, if you come across something that isn’t translated in your language and you know what it is supposed to be, feel free to send a message on Discord – over time the official languages should be complete again. 🙂
I’ve continued QoL work, adding the ability to quickly switch from placing a building/road to the demolition mode using the shift key. When placing buildings, currently placed buildings will light up red or green depending on whether the prospective building is liked or disliked. This should make it easier to plan cities, especially if you are new to the game.
Ideology building work is still ongoing, with the University of Liberal Philosophy building being more or less finished. I should be able to finish the Center of Tradition building this week as well.
I’ve found some minor issues with mesh merging – specifically with palm tree avenues and pre placed grass tiles (like in tutorials). These issues have been resolved. An issue with roads connecting through tunnel walls has also been fixed.
Prospectively being added in the upcoming version is a new type of residential building that adapts to neighboring buildings of the same type. I’ll be added three densities of 2×2 adaptable residential buildings. These will come in lower, middle and upper class (ie. no mixed types). For 0.72 I’m hoping to have the complete lower class type finished.
The update (0.71) will be live in a bit. Main new addition is the last, long delayed 4×4 hotel buildings. But there are also some minor fixes included.
0.7 -> 0.71 – Hotel density 4 for 4×4 size added. – Population requirements for hotel densities tweaked. – Fixed merge issue with palm tree avenues and regular avenues on slopes. – Fixed two building colliders where center was too high and allowed roads to be built under the building.
Midbarriers, new destruct hologram and moving buildings – 0.7 goes live
I missed the previous devlog due to being downed by vaccination. But here’s the latest in Atmocity development!
It seems like good timing to round off the latest dev stretch with an update, so 0.7 is here!
0.69 -> 0.7 – Hard mode added. More tweaks to come to this over time. – New destruction hologram added. This one looks nicer and has no Z-fighting issues. – Added ability to move buildings – Made happiness related to pollution more closely relative to population levels (higher population, higher tolerance). – Avenues can now be placed on sloped blocks. – Added roads into material merger. – Building a tunnel now automatically adds a road. – Destroying tunnels removes existing road inside. – Busstop destruct hologram added. – Road now reverts as expected when removing busstop. – Added a midbarrier object that can be used to prevent roads from automerging.
– Fixed roads with street lights spawning inconcistently around inner city buildings. – Fixed efficient recycling research item – cost reduction was incorrectly cost increase. – Fixed year cycle translations in options menu. – Fixed year cycle options sticking in dropdown menu. – Fixed building hologram displaying blue, but not being able to be placed when hovering over special buildings blocks are placed to not allow being built on. – Fixed school shadowcaster producing odd shadowing on the building itself.
– ZoneType enumerator deprecated and replaced with a Vector. This means that footprints on buildings now is done a bit differently. If you come across a building that can’t be placed properly (for example looks as if it is placed between grids) give me a shout!
– Known issues: If you previously had a city in a flat level. Resources required per research item is a bit jumbled up. Research still works properly, except some items will be less costly than they should be.
Hard mode has been added in! This is still not fully tweaked, so more work will be done on this mode. An achievement will be added later on, but only after the mode seems fairly stable and finished.
This version wraps up some previous work on, for example, roads on sloped building blocks etc. Avenues have now been added into this system and should work as expected.
A midbarrier has been added as well! This prevents roads from automatically merging (as illustrated in the images below).
This update fixes a bunch of smaller issues – among them the building hologram not showing red despite trying to place over a block type that doesn’t support buildings.
Roads and trams have been added into the material/mesh merger, to improve performance further. I’ve also fixed roads not automatically adapting when buildings are placed around them (they’re supposed to get street lights and pavements when residential, commercial or hotel buildings are placed nearby).
The destruction hologram has been updated to look nicer and to avoid z-fighting. This new system will later on also be used to display buildings red or green depending on whether they like or dislike a nearby building. This will make it easier to know beforehand if a building will be disliked.
Buildings can now also be moved. The exception is stations buildings, as they have a slightly different function. Moving buildings is rather pricey, and depend on building size and density.
I’m pushing an update to fix some minor issues and to add some overall polish in building placement etc.
0.68 -> 0.69 – Pumpkins are back! – Lowered concrete cost for foundations. – Tweaked tax income from RCI and H. Early tax income bonus time increased. – Increased emergency loan size. – Lab credit upkeep cost reduced. – Added difficulty slider in world creation screen. Hard mode coming in 0.7. – Atlantis mode deprecated – cities made in this mode will be converted to the newly added easy mode (same thing). – Ensured camera is returned to source position after camera shake. – Lowered screenshake when placing buildings. – Updated 2×1 sized decorations to match plaza type decorations and plazas. – Increased culture output of upgraded mayoral house. – Added slight culture output from mayoral house and city hall. – Added busstops to public transport view so they are easier to spot. – Adjusted destruct particles to get recycled quicker.
– Tidied up object placement hologram so that it doesn’t “fly in” when selected. – Tidied up code for placing grass and roads on newly added blocks.
– Fixed (most likely) demand calculation for buildings unaffected by the global economy. This issue usually showed itself as production buildings having 0 labour for example. – Fixed placement hologram not disappearing when switching from building to bull dozer. – Fixed park footprint to work with world textures. – Fixed not being able to place tram tracks on road tile after busstop has been placed on the same tile. – Fixed roads connecting via the side of busstops. – Fixed missing tunnel face icon. – (Prospective) fix for resetting controls to default. – Fixed UI color and shadow/texture quality resetting when resetting to defaults.
There was an issue where factory and building output would sometimes “cut off”. This was due to a calculation error for buildings unaffected by the global economy. This is hopefully fixed, or at the very least much less common now.
I’ve tweaked tax income from RCIH and some building upkeep costs as well as lowered concrete costs for foundations (making city expansion a bit cheaper in that regard).
I’ve also added a slight culture output from mayor’s house and city hall buildings.
I’ve also cleaned up building placement code and made it smoother.
I was notified that Atlantis mode wasn’t displaying the blocks properly (due to the object merger missing the initial blocks there) – SO! Game has been updated to fix this issue, and a bunch of other minor changes!
0.67 -> 0.68 – New block icons added. – Added being able to build trams on new block types. – Added missing night time lighting for fourth tier highest density commercial building. – Grid now follows pointer when placing blocks – Lowered volume of police and fire department vehicles as well as ambulances. – Park footprints adapted to be surrounded by grass to better match with park-like decorations. – Adjusted school footprint to better match surroundings. – Improved vehicle performance. – Improved car intersection behavior.
– Fixed cars not moving properly on the outer rounded block type. – Fixed road tunnels not saving properly. – Fixed tram movement issues. – Fixed trams not spawning. – Fixed roads connecting through the side of a tunnel if there is a road directly outside and the road in the tunnel was placed after the other road. – Fixed shadow caster in tunnels. – Fixed bug where Atlantis level blocks would not be sent to block merger and thus become invisible. – Fixed destruct sound for demolishing buildings. – Fixed placement frame not being removed when placing decorations on items (as click and drag isn’t available).
There were some issues relating to the newly added block types, tunnels not saving for example or cars not being able to move properly over the certain road types. These have now been addressed.
Trams can now be built over the new road types on sloped or slanted blocks. In working with trams I also noticed a few issues that have been addressed – among them trams not spawning properly when placing a tram station.
I’ve started cleaning up building, block and road placement code and fixed some minor bugs there. For example, the click and drag frame would display even for decorations that can only be placed individually.
Some of the park textures have been cleaned up so they don’t have paths leading to the edge of the footprint in order to make it easier to build large park areas that blend together well.
This update was a bit rushed to fix the Atlantis mode bug, but I should have another build up fairly soon to cover the remainder of hotels for example.
