> The engine lacked occlusion culling and relied on high-resolution shadow maps, causing “an innumerable number of draw calls”.
The engine does not lack or cause these things. The fact that the developers chose the HDRP pipeline for this game should be the most obvious dead bird in the entire coal mine. These games should be running on URP without question. We don't need advanced lighting systems in a top down city builder.
If we want an art workflow that allows artists to shit arbitrary content into the editor without thinking, we should probably reach for Unreal and flip on TAA like everyone else is doing.
> We don't need advanced lighting systems in a top down city builder.
You don't need a lot of things. The developers wanted the game to look better than the first, so went with HDRP because it claims to be a production ready pipeline that helps them achieve that.
But it was not and the developers did not have the time, or perhaps skill, to work around it's issues.
> we should probably reach for Unreal and flip on TAA like everyone else is doing.
First of all: "Just ask the entire studio to throw out all existing work and retrain staff to change their engine."
Second of all: Do you mean DLSS? TAA is an AA technique, it does not improve performance.
Third of all: Unreal? The engine notoriously ragged on as dragging down the performance of countless games in the last 2 years because it too has features that are easy to turn on and look good, but require skill and knowledge to fine-tune to be reasonably performant? That Unreal?
Cities skyline is not top down. It’s a fully three d environment
But you are rarely looking at it from street level, you spend most of your time in a birds-eye view
I guess you could argue that top down should be defined narrower than that, but the steam tag Top Down is full of games like this [1]
Detailers spend a lot of time in 3D perspectives and zoomed in close so I don't think that this is generally true.
Honestly the gameplay is so shallow I'd spend my time zoomed in too. Talk about a series where every release went down hill. The original Cities in Motion was the best of the 4.
The story is familiar: small team nails a niche, publisher scales expectations, sequel inherits AAA scope without AAA staff. Ten years later we call it "mismanagement", but really it's the same incentive loop that breaks most creative partnerships once success hits Excel.
Yep. It's the curse of too much money.
Just because you hit on something and gamers threw their money at you because you deserved it, it doesn't mean the next iteration has to have MORE OF EVERYTHING.
Even some series that have maintained quality have got a bit too big for their own good if you ask me. Did Horizon Forbidden West need to be that big? Zero Dawn was the perfect length if you ask me.
Even Witcher 3 has a faint whiff of 'it could have been a bit shorter and still brilliant'.
I'm not sure it's always the publisher's fault though. Success and the worldwide obsession for cancerous business growth can go to your head even without outside pressure.
It's also strange to do with with a city builder.
Now Skylines certainly uped the game game in graphics, but honestly I would pay good money for an updated Sim City 4 or ... Sim City 3000.
A city builder doesn't have to LOOK amazing to be great.
I still don't know why we needed a sequel... Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved? I had similar feelings about kerbal space program, but at least there it's somewhat understandable, given the jank that crept in over time
KSP2 made some degree of sense: the game had outgrown its engine and architecture, so you start fresh with a bigger dream.
But before that had a chance to fail from second system syndrome it was doomed to fail by insane demands from Take 2. News of work on KSP2 could harm sales of KSP1, so when hiring people to work on KSP2 they couldn't mention what they were hiring for. So you had a team who didn't know KSP1, and due to budget constraints were mostly juniors. Then to "save time" they were not allowed to only pick the good parts of the old source code or to even switch engine, they were supposed to just expand the janky KSP1 code base. Obviously without being allowed to talk to the developers of that code base, because secrecy. And no talking to fans about what they would want from a KSP2 either, because, you guessed it, secrecy.
So an inexperienced team disconnected from the fan base was supposed to fix a code base they were not familiar with, without speaking to the people who wrote it, add some cool features to it that the original team never tackled due to engine limitations, and release it to massive fanfare. Surprisingly this did not work. As the project was failing went back on many of those decisions, but it's hard to fix a project that starts off so wrong
Compare to Kitten Space Agency: hire KSP1 devs and KSP1 modders so you have people who can judge what worked and what didn't, start with a home-grown engine that fits the unique demands of a KSP-like game, talk with the community during development. Obviously they aren't far enough along yet to call it a success, but I give them much better chances
I'm really excited for KSA, hoping this is finally the sequel KSP1 deserves!
Ironically, the KSP 2 studio in all their secrecy couldn't help but post multiple videos as early access approached, praising themselves for how innovative and smart they were - how they're so inspired and it's gonna be amazing.
You can only sell a game once. Once you have your customers' money, you've achieved your goal. What else is there to do? DLC has a hard cap on your possible sales...
You could work on a totally new game, but, I think companies are looking to cut costs by reusing content.
Factorio 2.0 seemed to pull it off. I think that as long as users don’t feel misled by a DLC that only adds a few skins, they generally appreciate larger updates to a game.
or you go "online" and milk customers for decade? yeah that is done by Rockstar.
Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.
And releasing a sequel gets you hype and press coverage - potentially expanding your customer base - in a way that releasing updates won’t.
There are some exceptions (No Man’s Sky?) but they are very few and far between.
Well ok, I know "value to shareholders" is a good enough reason for some people... I guess I'm not thinking capitalistically enough about stuff
The point above wasn’t about value to shareholders but rather about being able to pay the people doing the actual work.
Even before you get to "value to shareholders" you have to actually pay your developer salaries to update the game. Where does that money come from when you're updating a game that's been on the market for 10 years and sales of new copies have tapered off?
Free major updates make your existing customers happy but don't pay salaries. This is why so many games have moved to some kind of ongoing revenue model with Battle Passes, cosmetics, item marketplaces, etc.
This is one reason why we should either cut back copyright to more like 10-15 years and require source escrow (so public domain materials can come with source) to obtain copyright, or just require all computer programs come with source code as part of consumer protection laws. Then people can fix the engine themselves, or find a way to fund someone to do it.
Or just eliminate copyright entirely and focus on economic models that are based on funding creation. You raise money to build the thing, and once it's built, it's there for all.
- [deleted]
I don’t want to harp on as you had a couple answers on this already but if you need to pay your devs, what is your suggested alternative to “having money in the bank”? The latter only happens with more sales, and that only happens if you have something to sell.
In most cases I would agree with you but ultimately games get older and can’t be sustained forever without people being compensated. People don’t pay for DLC like they pay for sequels, as the other person said.
It’s not about shareholders necessarily. It’s also about sustainability and people paying bills - they live in a capitalist society and can’t choose not to participate at the end of the day. You can’t ask a dozen or more developers to keep working on a game for free for a decade or more. They have to eat too.
The only other option is keep playing the exact same game with little to no changes. Which you can! The original is still available. But if you want it to improve and change over time or receive substantial DLC’s, somebody has to get paid at some point.
People will pay for DLC what the DLC is worth, which should in theory be directly proportional to how much effort it makes to produce the DLC. 4 small $20 expansions could be much more lucrative than an $80 new game which needs to not only include those changes but also make the rest of a functional (and presumably higher quality than the original) game.
> will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.
I'm not sure this is true, see Factorio as an example. They released Space Age as a "DLC" but for full price and with clear messaging that it's version 2.0 of the game.
To claim Factorio Space Age as counter example would require to show that it was as successful as DLC as it would have been as a new game. Probably not easy to show...
I think that's impossible to prove and I don't see how it's relevant. The OP claimed that people aren't willing to pay full price unless it's a clear, separate sequel with hype around it. The devs of Factorio proved otherwise with 400k copies being sold in the first week of Space Age's release[0].
Rust (not the language) is another good exception that is mostly powered by DLCs and skins today. Continuous updates with balance changes keep the game fresh, ensuring you maintain your playerbase that will in turn buy DLCs.
> Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.
So, you never fall in the trap of Paradox Games and the eternal launch of DLCs for Stellaris/Victoria/Hearths Of Iron/etc?
Both could definitely have used a completely updated engine at the very least (not just graphics, but scaling/capabilities around the core gameplay had grown quite a bit beyond what made sense originally), which would enable a lot of things which weren't as feasible in the original games, but it's hard to do that kind of reset and match 10 years of building and tweaking on the original. Hopefully KSA (Kitten Space Agency) can have better luck.
As far as I remember, KSP did keep pretty on top of engine updates. And I never thought the graphics were that bad, TBH. Sure, its not raytraced to hell and back, but I thought it looked just fine. However, there was a lot of physics jankery that never really got fixed (the kraken likes to eat complicated ships), and it did have performance issues in some areas. I think the community kinda wanted multiplayer and colonisation too, and the codebase was probably getting quite mangled and convoluted, making that hard. It would have been nice to see Squad get some time to be able to rework their systems over the course of a few updates, not really adding many features but focusing on performance and de-spaghettification, but I'm guessing Take-Two wouldn't see it the same way and just wanted MORE CONTENT, MORE SALES, MORE PROFIT
> As far as I remember, KSP did keep pretty on top of engine updates. And I never thought the graphics were that bad, TBH. Sure, its not raytraced to hell and back, but I thought it looked just fine. However, there was a lot of physics jankery that never really got fixed
This is what I mean by engine updates that aren't just about graphics but the scaling/capabilities around the core gameplay. Updating Unity again or adding raytracing graphics wouldn't have fixed the actual problems with the rest of the engine.
There isn't much of a business model in paying developers for a year for updates that won't generate more revenue.
If I told my boss that I wanted to spend 12 months refactoring our entire system in ways that would benefit our existing customers (who have paid once and won't ever pay again) but likely result in no additional revenue being generated, I doubt that project would be green-lit.
> Couldn't they just keep working on the original game, which already worked really well and lots of people loved?
Of course. If history (and "IME") is any guide, this was all marketing and product manager driven. Creators of all stripes now create the thing THEY want, not the thing paying CUSTOMERS want.
That's perhaps overly cynical and sometimes this is not the case if some new set of features can't be easily done in the architecture of the original, of course.
The interesting part about Cities 2 is that the simulation is much more in-depth: pops have a real job where they commute to (versus taking any available one in the first game), they don't just teleport around, companies have to import&export resources and make profit based on that, etc.
Also the graphics/lighting seems much improved with a more realistic art style.
Both things which you cannot really retrofit into Cities 1.
> I still don't know why we needed a sequel...
$$$. I think they need to design a long-term monetization strategy that does not require new major releases, but rather just more DLC, seasons, etc.
- [deleted]
There definitely were improvements to be made in both KSP (physics of large vessels) and CS (FPS in large cities).
Instead we get this... 0/2
Kitten Space Agency is looking like it will be the KSP2 we deserved but didn't get
He mentions Prison Architect 2, which like Kerbal switched studios for the sequel and ended up an unfinished mess that's objectively worse than the original. Meanwhile, Rimworld is raking in the cash (presumably) by continuing to make popular DLCs for a 12-year-old game! But it sounds like they wanted to go big, and I kind of get it since graphics matter a lot more for a city builder than a lot of other simulation games.
> The Paradox Mods platform will remain the only officially supported mod hub, so deep code mods akin to CS1’s may never return.
I've written a mod to CS2 and CS1 (granted not a big mods but few small ones), Paradox mod store doesn't limit you in depth of the code mods. What you are limited by is churn in the internals of the game engine, as most mods use monkey patching techniques that then break.
What I wished CS2 modding had some official way to monkey patch, so they could somehow try to detect incompatible monkey patching when people have 100s of mods installed. Suppose two mods modify WaterSystem, it would show the user both mods and locations they've attached at. It would help debug things down.
Many gamers blame original game devs for broken game even though it was fault of the mods they've installed. For us who knows programming, that is ridiculous because these mods are monkey patching at so deep level... but that is probably reason many games don't have official modding as it weighs down their reputation.
The funny thing is that CS1 probably wouldn't have been as successful had EA not dropped the ball on the SimCity franchise. There was a decade between SimCity 4 and SimCity (2013/5), and when it finally came out it was a completely underwhelming.
On the bright side, maybe another developer can pick up the reins and release the next generation's city builder game.
It does feel like they bet on Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline and it locked them into a specific way of development that was hard to escape from once it proved problematic.
City simulation games (Sim City, Factorio, etc.) are sort of a unique beast in that they have a ton of small scale detail that is animated and and dynamic.
The choice of engine here matters a lot, because engines are often highly optimized for specific assumptions and the assumptions of standard games (mostly static worlds with just a few dynamic entities - a platformer, a first-personal shooter) do not hold.
The studio taking this over should ensure they have some really good low level 3D devs guys on the team and a flexible engine.
I think that a home built engine could work in these cases, but only if you have the right guys for the job.
Unity can definitely support scenarios involving 100k+ scene elements. The problem is that you cannot place the art team any meaningful distance away from the development team when using something like ECS. Game objects + components allow for a high degree of decoupling between the art & technology teams, assuming the total # of scene elements is well bounded (<10k).
A custom engine is probably not a bad idea for a city builder. I feel like ECS is a good middle ground because you would need some pattern like this anyways and it would serve as a good reference if you decided to go fully custom.
I would challenge the notion that we couldn't develop an effective city builder within the constraints of a reasonable # of game objects. Players may be compelled to accept an experience that has a significantly smaller world size if the richness within each unit of world space is much higher.
"Developed by the Helsinki-based Colossal Order" -> Tampere-based? (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Order)
You'll have to excuse Claude, it must've missed that.
They're both Tampere-based, in fact they're like 500 meters away from each other. Unlike CO, Iceflake is owned by Paradox. CO has no public projects outside Cities Skylines, so the question is will they fail and will their employees simply be poached by Iceflake.
I don't know how labor and employment law works there but it's more likely they've all been given notice by CO at this point
it went Nokia way and Nokia city is not far from there.
This article is fully written by an LLM, correct? It's just summarizes random forum threads and press releases. Or am I just paranoid?
I'm pretty sure you're right. Stinks of something.
The collapse of AAA is a parallel sim game-narrative.
> The Paradox Mods platform will remain the only officially supported mod hub, so deep code mods akin to CS1’s may never return.
As someone else pointed out, this is false. I have also created mods for both CS2/CS1 and I would even say it's the opposite. In my opinion, CS2 allows for even deeper code mods because they have mod tooling built right into the game unlike CS1. The host of the mods (Steam Workshop vs Paradox Mods) doesn't change anything related to mod capabilities.
> ...its long-time partner Colossal Order announced a quiet but monumental shift.
Ah yes, "quiet", like how it's been posted on every CS2 social media account, and blasted in every possible space of CS2. Haha Absolutely nothing "quiet" about it.
Yeah something strange is going on with Paradox lately. Enshittification shenanigans has gotten them too :( Same or similar disaster is in the making with Europa Universalis V and Surviving Mars Relaunched. So sad to see this happening to them.
I find it hilarious how everyone here easily recognises ChatGPTisms but so far nobody caught on all of the Claudeisms in this post.
Bit of a tangent: Not sure if it's because I grew up with other games, but somehow the aesthetics of modern games just seems off to me. That being said, I didn't manage to get back into SimCity gameplay.