Multiplat Cities: Skylines II

[dav3]

Been playing it the last hour or so, definitely won't be running it in high (tested it, it wasn't great) but performance seems reasonable enough.

I reckon the performance stuff is a bit of a storm in a teacup, and more of this whole "I sold a kidney to buy a Cyberpunk build, it should be able to run everything at a billion frames a second" attitude. Yeah performance isn't great but from memory the original was pretty slow on midrange kit back then too. It's perfectly playable on medium for me, which still looks pretty good, and it's one of those games that people play for ages so it shouldn't take long for the hardware to catch up.

 

[Ry009]

Ready to play on Gamepass and wouldn't launch, verify and repair for 50ish gigs, so tomorrow it is. Mildly annoyed.

 

[dwwaino]

Starting a new game and left everything default on my primary monitor which was high settings at 3440*1440 and it was definitely playable, mid 30s fps. Max GPU load was a good sign. Proof will be when the city grows though and it has more to render than just a few blocks. Apparently disabling depth of field is an easy way to pick up meaningful performance. Noticable frame hitching though so a fair bit of optimisation to go but definitely something to work with. Now to learn an all new way to play as CS1 is second nature to me.

 

[gaskin]

Proof will be when the city grows though and it has more to render than just a few blocks.

I saw a review from someone who said once their city reached a certain point (I can't remember exactly when) they completely abandoned it and started a new one as the performance drop made the game unplayable.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Been playing it the last hour or so, definitely won't be running it in high (tested it, it wasn't great) but performance seems reasonable enough.

I reckon the performance stuff is a bit of a storm in a teacup, and more of this whole "I sold a kidney to buy a Cyberpunk build, it should be able to run everything at a billion frames scond" attitude. Yeah performance isn't great but from memory the original was pretty slow on midrange kit back then too. It's perfectly playable on medium for me, which still looks pretty good, and it's one of those games that people play for ages so it shouldn't take long for the hardware to catch up.

Yeah I'm on medium with 1080p (3060ti, i5 11th gen) and just get a few sutter from a few frame drops but nothing rage worthy. Could proably push it to high but too busy trying to learn the game.

 

[dwwaino]

I saw a review from someone who said once their city reached a certain point (I can't remember exactly when) they completely abandoned it and started a new one as the performance drop made the game unplayable.

They did an AMA on Reddit yesterday and said they were doing things like addressing how many vertices were on screen and stuff, but all of these models would be fairly low poly already, I'd imagine mostly sub 20 verts. One thing I noticed on all the pre-release footage though was every window of every building had a parallax effect. Things like that would really bog performance once the city got big. There are lots of things like that which probably are pretty to look at but ultimately unnecessary. In the same AMA they also mentioned that 30fps was the target as it's a city builder but I wonder if that comment was just a bit to save face.

 

[maskmcgee]

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxlly6GZ2p0sgQVCJoGaEjpznwvxB9tc4D

Download of a 100k city, used that to test.

 

[dwwaino]

So far 4 starts trying to work out new early game. No matter how many content creators said this will be very different I'm still stubbornly trying to start with my usual CS1 couplet . Just having a squiz at the new maps too. I like the look of River Delta, it has some really organic starting connections too, but the starting square is probably a bit too uneven.

 

[cats2rise]

Honestly, some of the early patches will fix a bit too. It's not like the game will be this "bad" for 12 months.

 

[dwwaino]

After some trial and error I think Barrier Island is a really good starting map. Terrain is really flat and lots of buildable area on the first tile. My only beef is the starting tile would be my prime spot for a built up downtown. Chirper is strange. Citizens kept complaining about health care despite there being an upgraded medical clinic right in the middle of town and the overlay showing then entire zoned area as green under health.

The road tools are actually really good. Even just laying roads. No more fighting with nodes. If you can think of it you can just do it.

I like the unlock system. If you want to reach for a certain tech early then you can just spend your points in it.

My game didn't exactly start to chug but after I only dinged level 3 or 4 there was a noticeable performance hit. Night time is pretty brutal. I'm just going to treat this like early access, full optimisation will probably coincide with console release next year.

 

[sataris]

Ended up getting a refund, I'll come back to this in a year or so when it's on special.

 

[dwwaino]

Me: trying to work out a new starting meta
Egg: starts terraforming

Good to see the old couplet starting is still alive and well. That's my old faithful I think I'll go back to.

 

[Mitho]

After some trial and error I think Barrier Island is a really good starting map. Terrain is really flat and lots of buildable area on the first tile. My only beef is the starting tile would be my prime spot for a built up downtown. Chirper is strange. Citizens kept complaining about health care despite there being an upgraded medical clinic right in the middle of town and the overlay showing then entire zoned area as green under health.

The road tools are actually really good. Even just laying roads. No more fighting with nodes. If you can think of it you can just do it.

I like the unlock system. If you want to reach for a certain tech early then you can just spend your points in it.

My game didn't exactly start to chug but after I only dinged level 3 or 4 there was a noticeable performance hit. Night time is pretty brutal. I'm just going to treat this like early access, full optimisation will probably coincide with console release next year.

I noticed this too. They're complaining about too many deaths and not enough healthcare, now I have two hospitals BOTH within reaching distance of ALL of the city but still complaining.

This is my first crack at a City builder game so I'm not sure I get the point of it, I'm just randomly slapping roads and zones in willy nilly but it looks nice so far haha

 

[BallaratBulldog]

I think Chirper is pretty accurate representation of Twitter/X, bunch of nuffies complaining no matter what.

 

[gaskin]

Can you turn Chirper off? I think the mod that disabled Chirper was one of the first ones I downloaded for CS1.

 

[dwwaino]

I noticed this too. They're complaining about too many deaths and not enough healthcare, now I have two hospitals BOTH within reaching distance of ALL of the city but still complaining.

This is my first crack at a City builder game so I'm not sure I get the point of it, I'm just randomly slapping roads and zones in willy nilly but it looks nice so far haha

I think the health thing is a bug. Hopefully lol.

Re: design and stuff, one of my favourite CS content creators I follow said it during CS1 that don't think of it as just zoning a city, rather building a city. That means think about something you want to build and not just painting roads and zones. Things like when you start a city pause the game and have a zoom around, think about how different Skylines might look and what parts of the map might suit different purposes. Zoom down to the highway that connects to your city and try and imagine sight lines. Things like that make your cities feel unique and for me that's when I started to really really enjoy the game.

 

[dwwaino]

Can you turn Chirper off? I think the mod that disabled Chirper was one of the first ones I downloaded for CS1.

Was an option in CS1. I'm hoping that's eventually a feature in this one too. While it might be beneficial while learning eventually it's going to be obnoxious. Like I don't need 500 Chirps to ask where the housing is when I'm purposely not zoning residential despite demand.

Also anyone playing with the audio on? Seems like the talk back breaks are contextual. I haven't bothered with building my own power generation yet and just import it instead. Sometimes it has an interview with presumably someone from my ministry justifying why the city isn't producing its own power. I'm interested to see how much more contextual audio there is like that as I build bigger cities.

 

[maskmcgee]

Was an option in CS1. I'm hoping that's eventually a feature in this one too.

It is. Either there's a gear icon in the chirper menu or a checkbox in one of the options menu to turn off chirper, I can't remember which one. But that's irrelevant at the moment, turn out the entire economy that they showed off being so in depth and revolutionary is a complete scam and dosen't exist.

 

[dwwaino]

It is. Either there's a gear icon in the chirper menu or a checkbox in one of the options menu to turn off chirper, I can't remember which one. But that's irrelevant at the moment, turn out the entire economy that they showed off being so in depth and revolutionary is a complete scam and dosen't exist.

Oh cheers. I had a dig through the menus but mostly the graphics options, must have overlooked the gameplay options so I'll have a look next time.

Wow about the economy thing if that's in fact true! Odd though because it had it's own weekly feature and seemed to be all working and why didn't any of the streamers pick up on it? Or maybe they weren't allowed to talk about it like the performance stuff. I have no doubt these things will come but the game is just clearly still in beta and shouldn't have been released. It should have been pushed back along with the console release.

 

[dav3]

Oh cheers. I had a dig through the menus but mostly the graphics options, must have overlooked the gameplay options so I'll have a look next time.

Wow about the economy thing if that's in fact true! Odd though because it had it's own weekly feature and seemed to be all working and why didn't any of the streamers pick up on it? Or maybe they weren't allowed to talk about it like the performance stuff. I have no doubt these things will come but the game is just clearly still in beta and shouldn't have been released. It should have been pushed back along with the console release.

Streamers were probably busy banging on about performance to do anything actually in-depth like looking into resource and economy stuff.

Hopefully it's an issue that gets resolved easily, I haven't played it much but noticed the resource stuff seemed a little off. Oh well, it'll give me a chance to muck around and learn how to build a proper city like this instead of the random shit I create at the moment.

 

[gaskin]

Was an option in CS1.

You are right. I went back and had a look and the mod was for removing Chirper from the screen.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

They have already dropped a performance patch:

• Changed LOD to be independent of rendering resolution to get more consistent performance with high resolutions
• Minor optimization with fog
• Depth of field optimizations and tweaks
• Global illumination tweaks
• Optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up
• Optimized various stutters across all systems
• Fixed crash after upgrading wind turbine
• Fixed crash when car crashes into still hidden car with trailer
• Fixed crash with mesh loading (that happens with low settings mostly)

Edit: might be steam only

 

[Mitho]

Streamers were probably busy banging on about performance to do anything actually in-depth like looking into resource and economy stuff.

Hopefully it's an issue that gets resolved easily, I haven't played it much but noticed the resource stuff seemed a little off. Oh well, it'll give me a chance to muck around and learn how to build a proper city like this instead of the random s**t I create at the moment.
View attachment 1840803

Wow that looks ****en ACE. You should see my piece of unthought out shit. Haha.

Can someone answer this, does the location of the commercial districts matter?

I've got my industry way out of the way of the town and down wind, but I've been dotting commercial every dozen blocks or so.

Wondering if thats necessary, because it looks like shit - would look better a completely separate district.

 

[dwwaino]

Wow that looks *en ACE. You should see my piece of unthought out s**t. Haha.

Can someone answer this, does the location of the commercial districts matter?

I've got my industry way out of the way of the town and down wind, but I've been dotting commercial every dozen blocks or so.

Wondering if thats necessary, because it looks like s**t - would look better a completely separate district.

Think of it organically. Where does commercial typically go in real life? Plonking small 2x2 commercial in low density residential areas can make things like corner stores, but typically commercial is zoned around main roads. Also consider proper road hierarchy and don't put commercial on your arterials. Proper commercial zoning along main roads is going to create lots of traffic. That includes pedestrian traffic so be mindful of things like zebra crossings which will slow traffic so consider things like elevated foot bridges and stuff. Once you start doing things like this it will start to look more a realistic commercial zone.

edit: was trying to find something really simple about road hierarchy but they were mostly too long. Just found this which seems pretty good. It's CS1 but the same principles. Understanding road hierarchy really helps with having a better feel on what to zone and where.

 

[Ry009]

Got a 3080ti and 5800x and even with the sample 100k city the performance was playable on High.

Liking it a lot, even though I have NFI and first city builder game.

Only did up to the first milestone, but already with the city problems im a bit like this haha

If you build zoning right on shorelines, does that open you up to water damage all the time?