Cities: Skylines 2 Developer Diary Updates
| Author: | Brian Powell Jr |
| Date: | June 19, 2023 8:03:00 pm EDT |
| Last Updated: | June 1, 2024 9:01:59 pm EDT |
| Read Time: | 2 min read |
| Tags: |
Last Updated: 2023-07-08
Overview
Ahead of the launch for the upcoming Cities: Skylines 2, the developer team has taken time to show off some new and improved features in Dev Diary videos. This builds upon some of the features showcased in their pre-order launch trailer and what we covered in our article. Below is a planned schedule for these ongoing Dev Diaries. We will do our best to continually update this article with new information as we get it so be sure to check back often over the next 3 months.
Dev Diary 1 - Road Tools
The first Dev Diary video showcased for Cities: Skylines 2 is on improvements made to the road systems. We covered a lot of the showcased changes in our original piece, but this video goes into more depth and provides a better explanation of the changes. Some of these changes are QoL changes that save players have having to do tedious or not-as-fun tasks like connecting utilities. My personal favorite are the changes made to make more realistic looking highways/freeways. An article they put together on this Dev Diary can be found here.
Dev Diary 2 - Traffic AI
The second Dev Diary video goes over the improvement made to the traffic AI. To briefly summarize it, traffic routing is now based on a series of conditions that mimic real-life traffic. These conditions are: Time, Comfort, Parking, Money. Time is the most obvious condition in that the fastest route is preferred. Comfort relates to difficult intersections. Parking includes the availability of parking spaces. This coincides with parking lots and decks. Parking lots also have adjustable prices so you could charge more for a premium location versus a lot that’s more out of the way.
Another set of features they showed off is how traffic can now have accidents. Inclement weather can cause cars to hydroplane and spin out. They also added more utility to the road works department.
Dev Diary 3 - Public & Cargo Transportation
In the third Dev Diary video, we get a look at the various transportation options available to us in the game. These options include: Taxi, Bus, Tram, Subway/Metro, Train, Freighter, and Plane. If you’ve played Cities: Skylines you should be pretty familiar with how all of this works as the systems look fairly similar. One of the biggest changes they mention is the ability of cargo terminals to act as goods storage. Kind of like how a cargo terminal is in real-life where the goods are unloaded and waiting to be delivered. This is possibly a significant change to the underlying logistics systems.