Hey Cyberpunkers! I just released this month's update. I'm working on a bigger one that will introduce two new organizations from the world of Skid Cities. In the meantime: New art I've added more variations to level 1 factories, so you should see fewer repetitive areas when zoning factories of level 1. By the way, I've modeled and textured live on my Twitch! Building and loading effects I've added some subtle particle effect when placing down the buildings. I've also added some cool VCR-like effect when switching between levels. Loading bug I've fixed a loading bug where some cities stopped loading and/or refused to show some buildings. Minor performance gains I've tweaked the code and the art a bit and the game should run slightly faster (1 or 2 FPS compared to the previous version) Bonus:Skid Cities OST is now on Spotify! I've published the official Skid Cities soundtrack on Spotify, Apple Music and the other music services. You can check it out on Spotify here.
Hey cyberpunkers! A quick release that I actually developed last weekend live on Twitch. This release: Fixes some issues with the new level spawn systems. Some roads would not show up properly on upper levels, plus some performance gains were nerfed. Fixed now! Added some a new variation to wealthy commercial buildings of level 4 This release was prepared live on Twitch! Check out and follow the channel to catch me live
Hey cyberpunkers! I know you've been waiting for this for a long, long time. And it's finally here! A huge update entirely focused on performance. Plus, a much-needed fix for Apple silicon players. Let's get into it!
Performance boost
This is huge. In order to improve the frame rate of huge cities, I had to rewrite all of the inner workings of how the buildings of your city are spawned for each level of your city. As you probably already know, Skid Cities allows you to build your city on multiple levels: in the skies, on the ground, and in the depths of the earth. You can go almost infinite with the number of levels! And people have done it of course. It's easy to say in retrospect but levels are oh-so hard to keep in check in terms of performance. Before this release, I was using Unity's built-in hierarchy and tree to keep track of them. But it turned out, Unity would use up to 40% of your resources just to do that! Ouch. So I rewrote the whole level system, and now it's all custom written by me in C#, no Unity involved. Bottom line: You should see a 40% improvement in performance with this update, on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Talking about Mac...
Mac (Apple Silicon) fix
A lot of Mac users started reporting seeing the screen "Can't find your Steam account" after launching the game, even if Steam was open. This bug prevented Mac users from enjoying the game. Ouch! That is now fixed. Thanks to all of the folks in the Discord community for bringing this up and for their patience. As a solo developer, seeing the love and care from the community means the world to me.
What now?
Now that this huge performance update is out of the way, I'm excited to go back to adding new things to the game. I want to focus on balancing events and crime, as well as adding new missions and organizations. If you are curious and want to see some previews before I release them, join our Discord here! ps. I've released this last update in 3 or 4 patches, so you may have seen a bunch of small updates in the last 3 weeks. This is because this update was so complicated that I had to release it gradually to make sure that I was not breaking stuff.
Hey cyberpunkers! After a long period of inactivity due to personal issues, I'm finally back to working at Skid Cities. I'm very excited to finally be back in this world. I'm a solo developer, so every time something pops into my life, you will notice it. Anyway, I'm back and fully committed to keep working on this cyberpunk city builder until it's finished! I've worked on a small but almighty release, mainly starting from the feedback of the Discord community. This update includes: Opening Cinematic: Dive into the cyberpunk world of Skid Cities with an all-new opening cinematic, complete with voiceover! It sets the stage for your urban empire like never before. Voiceovers: We've brought life to tutorials and missions through original voiceovers, enhancing your gameplay experience with engaging narrative and instructions. Desirability Dynamics: As your city levels up, the desirability for locations changes! Wealthy citizens now seek to live amongst the clouds, while factories delve into the underground. Watch your city evolve dynamically with its growth. Sound Revisions: We've tuned into your feedback about some city sounds being too repetitive and slightly annoying. So, we've improved a variety of them for a more pleasant auditory experience. Building Information Panel: Ever wonder why a building isn't influenced by its neighbors? The updated building information panel now explains the ins and outs, making your urban planning smoother. Tooltip Stability: No more crashes after using drone mode. We've squashed the bug that was causing tooltips to malfunction. Canal Loading Issue: Cities with a canal at position 0 not loading correctly? Fixed that too. Your waterfronts are ready to dazzle once again. I'm already working on the next update, which will be focused solely on (drum roll) performance!
A quick update to fix a number of typos in the text content of the game. It's crazy how big the game got, for a solo developer: More than 1.600 unique text entries. Thanks to Kid Charlemagne in our Discord community for helping me spot some typos!
Hey cyberpunk city builders! It's been a while since I was this excited about an update. With this release, your cities will now face 2 new organizations: KoKola and McSoynald's. Each of them may decide to join your city, opening structures and influencing its development. These organizations will be available on top of the 4 organizations already present in your cities: the criminal syndacate Yakuza, the social media conglomerate Bonfire, the muscle-augmentation world leader Theta Corporation, the eye augmentation research company Wajima. But let's take a look at the new organizations! Please note that, due to geopolitical history and trade limitations, some organizations will not be present in all of the regions of the world. Try out different Trade Authorities regions to try different organizations!
KoKola
The KoKola Company is the biggest manufacturer of carbonated drinks in the world. Its secret receipe has been the subject of debate, but it has been proven not to be have addictive capabilities (drink responsibly). KoKola may open flagship stores in your city if your poor population is big enough to warrant enough demand for its (amazing) carbonated drinks. Once established in your city, KoKola flagship stores will stimulate even more demand for low-income commercial activities and shops.
McSoynald's
The McSoynald's corporation is the world leader in soy-based meat replacements. Its factories span all over the globe, and its soy-based patties and lab-grown chicken tenders are widely accepted as the most popular options for not-wealthy citizens in every trade authority. The McSoynald's corp. real advantage is its manufacturing process. You can attract McSoynald's by providing enough low-income workforce, and enough space for factories to grow. Once McSoynald's steps in, your low-income citizens will receive a huge wage boost, bringing in even more manifacturing capabilities to your city.
Also included in this update
Fixed a bug where some cities that had canals intersecting with roads were not loading after save City sounds should be easier to hear and slightly more prominent This update brings me one step closer to completing the full vision of what Skid Cities will be. I hope to be able to complete the game before the end of the year. I hope you will enjoy this update! If you like the game, please leave a review on Steam.
Hey cyberpunnkers! A quick bug fixing and adjustment update this week: Fixed a bug where some cities in the Low Lands of Great Florida were not loading after save Fixed a bug where some cities that had canals intersecting with natural canals were not loading after save Improved the sunset and daylight appearance for icy lands (Greenland Autonomous Zone for example), cold lands (Canada Trade Authority for example) and tropical lands (Low Lands of Great Florida, Arhuaco, and more)
The last few months have been challenging personally, so the updates have been scarce, I know. Hopefully, I will keep up a more regular stream of updates from now on. Let's start with this one! A very beefy update, lots of new art, performance improvements, and Quality of Life adjustments!
Art
I've added more than 50 new variations for wealthy structures. You will now see a greater variety of wealthy residential, corporate offices, and rich commercial areas. I had a lot of fun creating these - I created more than 20+ new companies, logos, and advertisements that will populate your cities. To give you a sense, this is my city in the East America Trade Authority before the update:
This is after it:
It may be subtle, but with this latest update, it's much harder to see the same buildings over and over!
Improvements and bugfixes
I've added some Quality of Life adjustments that were requested by the Discord community, in particular: Right-clicking anywhere will now unselect the building choice Zooming in will slow down as you get closer to the city, allowing for a more refined zooming and admiration runs The sunset light of tropical cities (Low Lands of Great Florida for example) is improved, now less crude and more pleasant The "Continue" button did not work properly for cities created in the real world. Fixed! Thanks to Legdig and Willy from our Discord community for bringing this to my attention Performance improvements. I identified a performance bottleneck in the way that cars were animated and squished it. It will make the game run a lot smoother if you have the option to have cars visible (it is on by default). I'm excited about this improvement because it will allow me to add even more types of cars and vehicles to the game! I've also optimized more than 20 building models to have them run faster. So if your city slowed down after your corporate offices reached level 4, no more!
Hi cyberpunkers! A quick update while I prepare a bigger one.
A bunch of new art
I've been exploring the thousands of cities that you all created in our persistent, global Skid Cities world. And I wanted to add more variety to them. So I went ahead and spent a bunch of time creating a lot of new variations of the residential buildings, as well as the factories and the commercial areas. This update involves only the poor areas. I'm working on doing another update dedicated to the wealthy part of your city soon. This new update brings the total amount of models in Skid Cities to over 300 - all modeled and painted by me! To enjoy it just update your game and load your existing city or load a new one. To give a sense, this is the same city before:
And after:
I hope that you will like and explore the new structures, as well as the new, cyberpunk companies that will populate your poor commercial zoning.
Event end bugfix
Thanks to the bug reporting of some players (Caesar, Willy, and others, you the MVP) I realized that the portion of the code that removed the squatters and the criminal buildings was bugged! Sorry to all of the players who were frustrated by the dissidents and terrorists not leaving the city. They will now! Just load up your city Improvements Better lighting during the evening for cities built in desertic areas (like the Island of California) More video advertising on buildings More buildings have dedicated, unique names The UI now follows the new color scheme, including the RCI bars and the building ghosts when underground Bugfixes Cars would not respawn properly if the player destroys the building they originated from. Fixed! The building info panel would sometimes not show up. Fixed!
A huge update this week! You can now build your city in the rest of the 2092 world - Asia, Africa, and Oceania are now available. Plus, a new organization will join your cities: Wajima, the eye augmentation corporation. To top it all off, a lot of improvements and bug fixes. Thanks to all of the players for the feedback, it has been amazing!
Whole world update
The Skid Cities's 2092 world is very different from our own. You can now build in 40 different regions in the world, from the coasts of Africa to the Australia Trade Authority.
Due to the ocean rise events of the 2050s, the coastline is of course different. The national state is, well, obsolete. Every political entity now also sports a unique coat of arms. Every region has its own unique characteristics and - if you choose multiplayer - set of cities already built in it.
I'm very excited about this update as it brings the game one step closer to the final vision I had when I started it - a global, alternative, future world where you can build new cities.
New Organization: Wajima
Wajma Corporation is one of the biggest corporations in the world of Skid Cities. It provides high-quality eye augmentation technologies, foundational to any augmented reality and other information-retrieval eye-implanted devices. To have Wajima join your city, you will need a good amount of high-level corporation offices (level 3 or better). Once Wajima joins, it will bring a lot of demand for even more corpo offices in your city.
Improvements
You can quickly pick up the latest city you played from the main menu by clicking 'Continue' The world map now shows the coat of arms of the state selected The region view was improved in order to accommodate more cities in the multiplayer map Automatic roads are now placed every 8 tiles instead of every 4. Your cities will look a lot cleaner! Improved the 'Wealthy Citizens' tutorials The new cars were draining the performance a bit. Now they are hidden from the player if seen from afar
Bug fixes
When an organization (like Bonfire or Wajima) left the city, the player was not able to build on the empty spot left. Fixed!.Thanks to komrad for the report! The terrain details (such as trees, stones) would make the building cursor move strangely. Fixed. Thanks to BrownBread for the report! Some cities were failing to load due to an error in the network calculation function. Fixed! When paused, it was difficult to switch from the underground level to the sky levels and such. Fixed! Bulldozing a building while in pause did not work properly. Fixed! A residential building of level 4 had the advertising video upside down. Fixed! Some bridges would not orient themself properly when nearby sewers. Fixed! A wealthy commercial building of level 2 was missing its texture on high-detail level, fixed! One corporate office model of level 4 was not allowing the upper to be built. Fixed!
Hey cyberpunkers! A small update to address some bugs and remodel some buildings so that they look better and run faster. Every time you see me updating a building 3D model, know that I'm not only doing that for esthetic purposes: In the process, I also optimize the model so that it runs faster and does not slow down in big cities. Let's start!
New model for the Camera nest
The camera nest is the smallest police building you can set up. It will detect crimes and tag the perpetrators as criminals. It can be placed on top or instead of a stretch of road, making it useful at any level of your city. Of course, if the crime in your city is very high, it may not be enough. This is how it used to look:
I really did not like it. The proportions were off, plus it was just not looking very good. But how to improve it? I came up with another concept for the camera nest, where the camera nest is a floating, donut-like device full of security cameras in every direction. This is how it looks:
Same shot but during the night:
Plus, if you zoom in, you will see it floating and turning around, checking your citizens out. I really like it now! Especially during the night, it makes it way more recognizable.
New model for the Wiretap front
The model for the wiretap front was very elaborate, but off in terms of proportions. Plus, it was very poorly optimized! This is how it looked:
Why don't I like that? Well, this is the second tier of secret service control buildings, used to decrease dissidents. The previous tier is also a wiretap-like building:
So I concluded that this building was not memorable enough to be interesting. I then changed it to something else: A dissident honeypot. A fake dissident political center, run by your secret service. This new concept is unique and I felt it made the whole process easier. I came up with this model:
I like it, but I'm still not 100% satisfied. I may adjust it later. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Bugfixing
I fixed a bunch of bugs and adjustments that were badly needed. In particular: It was not possible to build in the Salam Trade Authority. Fixed! Thanks to CA7GTR for bringing it up In certain conditions, you could see other players' saves in the savegame section. Fixed. Thanks to xWolfxGangx for bringing it up! Sometimes, when creating a new city and picking where, the game would get stuck. This should not happen anymore, please let me know if it's not the case! The wealthy office tutorial was getting people stuck and needed to be updated. Thanks to xWolfxGangx and Madagar for bringing it up! Some cities were not loading after save, in certain conditions. I may not have found all of the instances were this used to happen, please let me know if it keeps happening! The button in the news panel was not making a sound
Small bug fixing release! Some cities were not loading anymore if Bonfire entered the city. Fixed! Thanks to Legdig for the bug report Some cities were not loading anymore if the canals had a particular conformation, next to upwards roads. Fixed! Thanks to Legdig for the bug report The physical map was not loading in certain situations. Fixed! Thanks to NotAUsername for the bug report Exiting the drone mode gave problems while observing someone else's city. Fixed! Thanks to viroX for the bug report!
The graphics overhaul has finally arrived! I've reworked around 3000 textures and hundreds of models, but the game now has a cohesive, pleasant, and cyberpunk palette behind it. Before we dive into a recap of all of the changes, let's take a look at some before and after, should we?
The evening view is warmer, more balanced, and dustier.
The day view has been heavily reworked as you see. I went for a gray, well-lit, cloudy feeling.
The night-time was already ok, but now it's extremely gritty, cyberpunky, and wet. I really love the night view!
Another big change: New countries! You can now build your city anywhere in the Americas and in Europe. Africa and Asia are being worked on and will be coming up soon!
Top all of that with a nice sprinkle of bug fixing and multiplayer customization, and you have this update. Now that the graphics overhaul is out of the way, I plan to get back to release the game more often and hopefully get it out of Early Access at some point in early 22. Stay tuned!
Textures overhaul
Almost any model in the game has either been re-textured or remodeled completely. Skid Cities contains around 500 models, and each model uses from 5 to 10 textures. So yeah, a lot of colors, shapes, grainy dust and neon lights have been re-colored and re-modeled based on a consistent color palette. As you probably know, I'm a solo developer working on this game, so this has been quite the feat. I think that the final result makes the game more pleasant to look at - less saturated, more realistic, and in general higher quality.
Terrain overhaul
One of the consistent feedback from the playtesters was how the terrain looked. And for good reasons: I was not excited about spending time on the terrain when I started working on the game, as the procedural terrain generation was still in infancy. Now that we have mountains, lakes, and rivers, it's a different story. I reworked all of the 3D models and details for any terrain type, as well as the main terrain textures. There is still work to do, but the result is already ten times better. Keep in mind that the terrain look will depend on where you start your city. The Greenland Autonomous Zone will not look like the United States of Brazil!
Advertising Overhaul
I've also created new advertising videos from scratch, as now I'm a better cyberpunk propagandist. On top of that, the new advertising videos all sport the new color palette. Let me know what you think - your citizens seem very happy already to have giant screens that blast your message YOU ARE VALUED.
New cars
If you've been following previous blog posts, I've also added a lot of new, shiny car models that will roam around your city. The speedy ones are owned by your wealthy citizens and the others, well, you know.
New countries
I've added a ton of new countries! Now the whole European continent is available, as well as the rest of the Americas.
As always, this update is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Another part of the complete art overhaul also involves the re-creation of the advertising and propaganda screen videos.
The world of Skid Cities has a lot of huge video screens scattered across high-level skyscrapers. They are used for advertising purposes.
The problem with these is that - as with anything before the art overhaul - I was using the colors that I felt looked good for that particular element (in this case, the advertising art). Problem is, once you put everything together, the result is a bunch of colors that do not look good next to each other Also - for some reason - if I proceed in that way, I tend to over-saturate all of the colors of the game. The way to solve this problem is to define a set of colors - a palette - and work out from that.
This issue affected also the advertising art that I created. So I spent some time this weekend re-working the advertising art. So I went from this for example:
To this:
The way that I create the advertising art may be interesting for other developers so I thought I'd share it.
First step: The shader
One of the problems when creating a city builder game is that buildings tend not to move. This is an issue because a static image of a city may get un-interesting very fast. So, from an art perspective, you need to always look for ways to put movement into the city. One way is, of course, adding cars and traffic. But I'm not satisfied with it, because traffic does not look good from afar. And since this is a cyberpunk city builder, giant advertising video screens are needed. When I approached this topic, I wrote down how I wanted the screens to be: - Big and visible - Very frequent - which means, lightweight from a performance standpoint - Detailed if the user zoomed in The lightweight requirement meant that I could not use video files. I started to think: What if I used one big image and looped through it? The framerate would suffer, and it would mean that each advertising needs to be a short loop, but keeping an image on memory is way better than keeping video files. So I went ahead and wrote a shader that takes the texture image, splits it up into rectangles, and loops through the rectangles. I then figured that a screen also needs an emission map - as in, parts of the screen that emit more light than others. So I added that too. This is how the shader looks in the inspector:
It allows me to add the main texture and an emission texture. I can then define the number of rows and columns that compose the texture. So, for example, I can create one image of 3x4, with each square representing a frame of the animation would look like this:
The shape of each square needs to match the UV map of the screen. In this case, since the advertising screens are mostly vertical, you will see a lot of vertical screen advertisings.
Second step: The art
Ok so now I just need to produce these image maps. At first, I tried to create them manually using Figma. But that was very painful and the final result was very lame. The animations were too simple and did not feel like cyberpunk advertising. So I had to bite the bullet and open up After Effects. I'm usually not a big fan of Adobe products, but After Effects is great to create animations like the ones I wanted. I would create animation elements - like logos, or faces - on Photopea and Figma, then export them in PNG and import them back in After Effects. There, I can have them disappear, move around, and so forth. After Effects also allows me to add a filter on top of the animation to add effects like distortion, a glow, and things like that. That final touch gives the animation a more professional, cyberpunk feeling that makes the advertising believable. This is the final result for the propaganda screens that keep your citizens happy:
Ok so now I have the animation in After Effects! Let's export it
Putting things together
In order to bring the animation into the game, I proceed to: - Export it as PNG sequence from After Effects, using the built-in Adobe Media Encoder - Upload the PNGs created in that way into Figma - In Figma, create a rectangle of all of the frames, which I then export from Figma into Unity For example, this is how the frame looks in Figma for the propaganda screen:
And this is how it looks in-game once everything is put together:
What is next?
What I plan to do in the near future is add a script to some advertising screens to randomize the advertising video shown, so that the same building can have a random advertising playing. That will add a lot more variety! The script itself will be kind of simple, but I want to create a certain number of advertising videos before I pull the trigger. Another thing that I plan to do in the near future allows modders to easily add new advertising to the game!
Hey cyberpunk builders! The art overhaul is proceeding in new, exciting directions that I wanted to share with you. If you missed my last update where I explained what the art overhaul is, check it out here. I'm now halfway done with re-working all of the textures of the game based on the new color palette. This new art direction is inspiring me, so I have decided that the art overhaul will include also new stuff, in particular: new countries and new cars!
New countries upcoming
Right now, you can start your city in 4 different zones of the 2093 world: The Greenland Autonomous Zone, the Canada Trade Authority, the Federal Trade Authority, the Island of California, and the Low Lands of Great Florida. With the next update, I'm planning to add 18 new territories. Yes, you read that right - 18! The next update will complete the Americas and will also include all of the territories belonging to Europe. For every new country, I go through a creative, technical, and lore process. First, the definition: I created the list of all of the territories in the Skid Cities world back with the first release of the game. The world looks very different in 2093, due to a variety of events that happened in the 40' and 50' that reshaped the world.
Eventually, I plan to make every single territory available for the players to build into. Each territory will have different characteristics, has different organizations that are present, and may have a unique look to it. When I create a new territory, I establish the lore around it, and then based on that I create the territory's coat of arms. In the Skid Cities' world, the concept of Nation-State has been mostly abandoned in favor of the concept of Trade Authority. Flags are not used anymore, as they are a national symbol. Trade Authorities retain only the Coat of Arms, used in official communications as a stamp. For example, I designed the coat of arms of the ISTA (Ireland and Scotland Trade Authority):
For this particular coat of arms, I chose to represent the fusion of the Irish arp and the Scottish lion. Another example is the Coat of Arms of the Autoridad Comercial Mediterrnea (or ACM for short), which looks like this:
Once this is done, I move on to the creation of the regional map. The regional map is shown once you select the territory you would like to build on, and it allows you to choose where exactly to build your city. This is important as, depending on where you build your city, the terrain will be different, and you may have different neighboring cities. So first of all, I create the regional map. For example, for the ACM, this is how the regional map looks:
The terrain is generated procedurally based on two factors that depend on where you build your city: humidity and altitude. To determine whether a particular spot is humid or not, I then create a humidity map. This map is used by Skid Cities to procedurally generate your terrain but is never shown to the player. The more the map is dark, the more humidity there will be. So for example for the ACM it looks like this:
I then create an altitude map based on the same concept. In this case, the darker, the fewer mountains there will be in that territory:
This is it for the maps! This is of course not sufficient to be able to add a new territory in-game. The other steps include:
- Writing the lore. I usually do this by writing the Skidpedia, the Wikipedia from 2093. You can check it out here (it's still a work in progress): https://wiki.skidcities.com/
- Create the 3D models of how the territory looks in-game. For example, the Greenland Autonomous Zone is an ice-covered territory with the occasional snowy hill. The Low Lands of Great Florida are swamps where trees are common.
- Decide which organizations have access to the territory and which bonuses are present. For example, Turing Inc. was banned in the Island of California due to its anti-A.I. history of the '40.
New cars
Right now, there are only two car models traveling in your city: The ones operated by poor citizens - community vans - and rich, faster, green cars. I've always meant to add variety and multiple models, but I never got the time to actually model and texture them. Since now I have a defined color palette that I can use, I felt like it was a good moment to crazy and model a bunch of futuristic cars. I started with the wealthy ones:
And then moved on to the ones used by your poor citizens:
These cars are low-poly style and they use the color palette as their texture. The idea behind this choice is to keep them blazing fast in terms of performance so that it's possible to have thousands of them flying across your city. I can't wait to add them to the game and see what you think! This is it for this update! Thank you for reading and for supporting this game - it really means the world to me. Thanks! --- Skid Cities is a cyberpunk builder created and developed by me, Vittorio Banfi. I'm a solo developer that is having a lot of fun. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at https://wiki.skidcities.com/
Hey cyberpunk builders! Sorry for keeping you updated as much as before. I did not disappear! The reason is that I started a huge effort: Reworking all of the colors of the game to better match a specific feeling.
In short, I was not happy with the final color scheme of the game, so I decided to rework all of the art of the game, adjusting the textures so that they match a specific palette. For example, it goes from here
To here
It's a massive work as there 100 and more unique 3D models in the game, each of them has at least 10 separate textures that need to be changed and adjusted in Substance Painter. I then need to 'bake' the textures into one big texture (the texture atlas) so that the game runs faster. I do that in Unity. Plus, I need to adjust the textures used by the 5 unique terrains, and the objects that appear on them, like the trees. I've been working on this for 3 weeks and I'm only 20% done, so I thought to give an update.
But why am I doing this???
I created all of the art of the game myself, and I was not satisfied by the final result. This is a problem as I plan to add a lot of content to the game in the near future. So before scaling the content up, I want to align the art with my aspirations. I consulted with a bunch of smart artists that I know - I worked with BeaBanfi (also the author of the news painting that you see in-game). Bea helped me understand that the issue was the color palette, and opened my mind about this topic. I also worked with Octavio S. who created some analysis and concepts as the following:
The final result will be a more consistent and pleasant art style that will allow me to scale up the content, add a lot more regions, organizations, and so on. Stay tuned!
Hey all! While I'm reworking all of the art of the game, I also worked on the first version of city sounds. Plus a bunch of fixes! City sounds are in! Just zoom into your city to listen in - almost every building has a unique personality and sound. Also, fixed: Deleting savegame did not work, fixed! Thanks to @Stoic and @kylefiredemon for reporting The resolution setting was not saved between game sessions, now it is! Thanks to @kora for reporting
A small performance patch! I optimized a little bit how cars are spawned and how they are moving around, so I'm releasing this small performance improvement patch. From my tests, your city should gain 5/8 fps from this. Behind the scenes, I'm working on a bigger art revamp, so stay tuned!
Savegame is fixed! I inadvertently broke the save function (both autosave and normal save) with the last update yesterday. Oops sorry. It's fixed now. Thanks to Bongo13 and viroX for reporting it!
Hi all! A bug fixing and adjustment weekend update. I am working on an art and color scheme overhaul, but in the meantime, I wanted to address some bug reporting: Better terrain generation: Rivers now show up on the map more consistently Fixed a bug where clicking on a lot of different points on the map before creating a city would crash the game. This may still happen from time to time, but it should be way rarer (Thanks ViroX for the report!) Fixed a bug where some cities would not load anymore (Thanks Pacer for the report!) Fixed a bug that would leave the game hanging if you selected 'New game' from within a city Updated UI color scheme Updated Island of California terrain Better colors for day view
Do you know how in Skid Cities you can pick where to build your city in the world? Well, now you can choose to do it in the online Skid Cities world. You will see the cities built by other Skid Cities players. You can build next to them to get bonuses. One, huge, persistent Skid Cities World!
Also, with this release, I'm introducing the region selection. Not only you can build in the Island of California or the Federal Trade Authority, but you can decide where inside these areas.
It works like this: First, you can decide whether your game will be shared online or not:
Then you of course pick the region:
Now you can decide where to build your city exactly. Different points on the map have different values for mountains, rivers, and temperature, which will affect your terrain:
You can see what the other players are building and start a city next to them to get bonuses!
If you are worried about the space running out, don't be. Each geography has 57,000 possible locations at minimum.
This is just the start! Right now, the bonuses that you get when starting a new city are fairly simple, based on the population of the nearby city - the bigger the nearby city, the bigger the bonus on the demand. I plan to add more interesting and powerful bonuses in the future, as the world is built by players worldwide. I also want to keep adding new geographies - the Republic of Texas and Norde are next.
Hey all! A small but mighty bug fixing and performance release: (Important) Fixed long stutters on big cities caused by cars: Now the game runs a lot smoother on bigger cities with a lot of vehicles spawning Fixed: Loading bar sometimes becoming larger than life Fixed: Moving on the minimap sometimes bringing you to the wrong city level Fixed: When zooming too fast, you sometimes would bounce back
A small update with some adjustments to the new terrain feature: Faster rendering of natural water (lakes and rivers), up to 40% faster! Better underground terrain generation: less busy and more forgiving
Hey cyberpunk builders! Excited to introduce the first iteration of procedural terrain generation in Skid Cities.
Terrain Generation
It will not affect existing cities, so if you want to try it out, create a new city. The first time that you will create a city, a procedural terrain will be generated. In this first iteration, the terrain may contain: - Rivers - Lakes - Mountains I really like terrain generation as it makes every city you create unique, and it allows you to take advantage of the natural terrain to build your city! Your first underground level will be affected as well. Your pipes will have to work their way around underground mountains and rivers.
Bridges & Canals
This release also introduces bridges to let you build roads on top of rivers, lakes, and city canals. Just build a road on water and the game will take care of the rest. This release also introduces the canal network. Your canals will need to be connected to a natural body of water in order for them to work. Just drag your canals to a natural lake or river.
Minimap
I've also included a handy minimap on the bottom left. It shows both the natural landscape and your city structure from the top. If you zoom in, it will also display your field of view. Click anywhere on the minimap to move the camera, fast.
Bug fixes & performance
On top of these, I focused my efforts on bug fixing and performance: (Important!) Fixed the annoying bug that spawned a building but did not calculate it when expanding roads and other city data Fixed the camera sometimes moving too near and becoming black Improved car performance Fixed player movement stutters Fixed main menu music too low for new players Fixed gun shop of level 2 (poor commercial) not having a name
Other things
When a level 4 building is downgraded, buildings built on top of it will be destroyed as they have nowhere to stand Added more opacity when working on upper levels The rocket port unlocks based on population
A bug fixing release. I went through all of the bug reports that were still pending and tried to squash all of them. Fixed (finally) the camera movements: Now clicking on the 'View' button works without stutters, and you are not weirdly stuck anymore when you reach the edges of the map (thanks @Korwinator2015 and others for the heads up!) Fixed Pressing Space to pause/unpause the game once again clicks random UI buttons like rotate, move level and zoom (thanks @Guardian_GI for the heads up) Fixed cars causing stutters (thanks @Xtal for the heads up) Fixed typing in the bug report message, the game registers key presses as shortcuts (thanks @Guardian_GI) Fixed: When you're building roads, the yellow money indicator that appears when you build it displays the amount of cash you have spent on previous building, and not the road itself (thanks @Guardian_GI for the heads up) Fixed: In certain situations, the city would stop building new zoning (Thanks to @Peri and others for the heads up) Balanced: Underground prisons now accommodate 5X more prisoners (thanks Guardian_GI for the heads up) I wanted to take a moment and thank the amazing Skid Cities community for helping me in finding bugs and adjustments. Please keep the bug reports coming!!
Hi all! A very beefy update this week. Three major news: Commercial Zoning, the first workshop mod, and critical adjustments to the cyberpunk system
Commercial Zoning
You can now zone commercial services for both poor and rich citizens. The commercial zoning has 4 levels of development and is now required to develop your city after a certain point. They also receive cyberpunk points from buildings around them, and generate taxes.
First community mod released!
The amazing Peri from our Discord community released the first-ever Skid Cities mod! You can activate it in-game from the main menu. It will replace the perky slums with futuristic domes for your poor citizens. This is very exciting, and I know for sure that another mod is in the works by another player. To celebrate the occasion, I'm making the workshop visible to everyone, not only to the Skid Cities players. If you are thinking about creating a mod, join our Discord here - it's very easy to get started and add crazy cyberpunk stuff to the game!
Cyberpunk adjustments
I found and fixed a big problem introduced to the cyberpunk system in the last 3 days - basically, the value did not reset well, and the buildings will always max out to the highest possible level of cyberpunk. I fixed it, and now the game progression feels a lot more natural, organic, and fun. I also added some other limitations to your building development - for example, if you don't add an airport, your corporation offices will not go over level 1, regardless of their cyberpunk level. If a building development is blocked in such a way, you can find it out by right-clicking on it.
Plus the usual
A bunch of other bug fixes as usual. Thanks to everyone who took their time to submit the bug reports and help me in the Discord community, I really appreciate it! Fixed the delete save game from the main menu (finally!) Fixed the progression of the Public augmentations Fixed a bug where the city newspaper would report on unlocking a building with no name (it was fun until it lasted) Fixed a bug that was causing lag spikes when cars are active
Hi all! Releasing a quick update to keep supporting the first mods created by the community. If you are interested in creating mods, check out this Youtube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3mkjIB9qKA You can then join our Discord here and get ideas, help, and so forth about mods!
An update to the cyberpunk system!
While I continue working on bugs and on new features, I focused on making the cyberpunk system better.
Two major changes:
- Now you can see what is creating the cyberpunk level for every building. Just click on the cyberpunk meter!
- Now each building type can bring the cyberpunk level up to 30 and not more. So now if you spam 4 public augmentation centers, your residential will not shoot to level 4, as the influence of multiple buildings of the same type is limited. You will need to get creative!
A couple of other improvements:
- Now the radius of a building will be shown even when the building is invalid, making it easier to place buildings
- Added some cool demolition effects
- Improved the layer's UI, as well as the graph's panel UI
Hi all! Since it was heavily requested, I added full support for the Steam Workshop modding. You can now go to our Workshop and add new building models and types there.
I also created some very detailed tutorials about how to create buildings for the workshop. Spoiler: It's very easy, you just need Unity and Blender!
To celebrate the occasion, I created the first two mods myself. The first one is an additional 3D models for your factories called the Obelisk
The second one is a completely new type of Entertainment building called The Purge
If you are interested in creating mods, please join our Discord here, we have a dedicated channel to modders: https://discord.com/invite/YNNZA2u
Other things released this week that you might have missed:
Huge performance gains: I moved a lot of the logic to your second CPU core, now the game runs a lot faster and without stutters, even with huge cities!
The rocket port is now launching an actual rocket every 60 seconds
NEW Building: Plaza. Your poor citizens really appreciate city plazas where they can buy street food and hang out. Works as a road, connecting your city
NEW Building: Canals. Add waterways to your city. Ok, it's not exactly water but you get the idea. Residentials of all types of wealth really like it. Bridges not possible yet.
NEW Building: Drone Cargo Station. This building will make the factories below, around, and on top of it stronger. Has to be built in the sky but does not require any structure below, as it's a floating station. Sponsored by one of the biggest e-commerce corporations in the Island of California!.
Bug reporting tool. If you see a bug, just press Escape and click on 'Report bug'. I will fix it! The tool will also upload your current city to the SkidCities server, which will help me debug a lot
Bugfixes:
Fixed: Uncontrollable rocket spawning
Fixed: Some issues with the new optimization system would sometimes lead to negative cyberpunk score for certain buildings
Hi all! An in-between release before I iterate more on the cyberpunk system. This release adds 3 new buildings and improves the performance gains of the last update NEW: Plaza. Your poor citizens really appreciate city plazas where they can buy street food and hang out. Works as a road, connecting your city NEW: Canals. Add waterways to your city. Ok, it's not exactly water but you get the idea. Residentials of all types of wealth really like it. Bridges not possible yet. NEW: Drone Cargo Station. This building will make the factories below, around, and on top of it stronger. Has to be built in the sky but does not require any structure below, as it's a floating station. Sponsored by one of the biggest e-commerce corporations in the Island of California! Fixed: Uncontrollable rocket spawning Fixed: Some issues with the new optimization system would sometimes lead to negative cyberpunk score for certain buildings
I've rewritten large chunks of the city logic, which is now computed on your other CPU thread core. What does that mean? Well, that the stutters should be now gone, and that big city will update way faster than before From my testing, a large, 9 levels city that used to update every 3 minutes now updates every 20 seconds! Of course, there is more work to be done on the FPS side with the 3D model optimizations, but apart from that, you can now scale your city to be HUGE. Please do it. Also: The rocket port is now launching an actual rocket every 60 seconds.
The new cyberpunk system needed a bunch of balancing. I've nerfed buildings and empowered others. I will not list them as I've changed all of the buildings in the game. It should feel more balanced now! Of course, the balancing is not complete but it's a good start.
Hey cyber builders! After talking with a lot of you and watching a lot of gameplay, I realized that I wanted to change the main mechanic of the game: how residential and factories upgrade. It used to be too mechanic and simple, and not really able to provide a lot of sandbox experience. So, I changed it completely. Meet: The cyberpunk system!
Now, to evolve your city, you just need to make it more cyberpunk. What does that mean? Up to you. You can add mines in the bottom level that feed the factories upstairs. You can add algae buildings to clean up the air next to your wealthy citizens. You can allow buildings to be squatted. There are multiple ways to increase the cyberpunk level of your city, and some of them will work with say residential but not corporate offices, and vice versa. The result is a city that feels more alive, less mechanic, and more interesting. Also, it allows me to keep adding building types and all will work out - as long as they give you a cyberpunk feeling!
This release also comes with 5 new buildings, bug fixing, and more!
New Buildings:
Cyberspace node
Mining facility
Algae Air Filter
Android Arena
Kill Android Center
Bugfixes:
Fixed some cities not loading up properly
Fixed pressing "Space" also clicking a UI button
Fixed confusing camera movement when moving to bottom levels
Fixed a potential memory leak on load
Hi there! Sneaking a quick patch in before a longer cycle Bug reporting tool. If you see a bug, just press Escape and click on 'Report bug'. I will fix it! The tool will also upload your current city to the SkidCities server, which will help me debug a lot Adjusted: Now the camera will follow you nicely when switching to a lower level Better terrain color for Federal Trade Authority Better memory management: If your city was sometimes crashing on loading, it will not anymore Faster loading times for new and existing games
Hi cyber builders! I'm releasing an update that will break your previous saves. Sorry about that. But it lays the foundation to make the game faster and more performing, which is important. Also, a lot of bug fixes and a new loading screen, Performance: Big cities will update (e.g. build new things) way faster Fixed: The Yakuza going rampant with no way to stop it Fixed: Some cities not loading after save Fixed: Corporate offices never reaching level 4 New: Loading screen with random, historical news from the past Better lighting in the Federal Trade Authority and the Island of California
0.75 brings a lot of new things: Pass laws to keep your city in check. Build Interpol Money Trackers and bunker courthouses, and more.
Pass laws in your city
You can now approve crazy cyberpunk laws in your city: Legalize any type of crime, allow opposition parties, allow rogue androids to roam free. Every law will solve a security problem, but it will also cause another one. So choose them carefully!
Interpol Security Buildings
It used to be that your secret service would curb the organized crime families in your city. But we recently discovered that the secret service was actually working with the organized crime all along! That can't continue. You can now build Interpol security buildings in your city to curb organized crime activities. Automated dark money trackers and bunker courthouses will be available. The secret service will continue to do its job in policing dissidents, as they are pretty good at that.
New music by ReKreator!
The game now sports 3 new tracks by ReKreator, an amazing composing duo from Northern Europe that I have been working with. I also added some logic so you will hear some dramatic music when stuff happens. Give it a listen, it's amazing. I will be interviewing ReKreator on our Youtube channel this week if you are interested
Gameplay change
Now every security building that you place in your city will also cause a side effect. For example, surveillance drones will curb common theft and criminals, but they will also cause unrest in your city. I wonder why, as having drones police you every day is such a great thing!
Other things
Those are the big things. Plus of course a bunch of smaller things: - Fixed a bug that made the bounty hunters building very ineffective - Improved the UI of the city news panel - Improved the time it takes for big cities to update - Added a time indicator to make it clear when the time is passing
Hi all! A small Tuesday patch with some fixes and tweaks while I work on the bigger feature. New setting: Disable cars. Once you changed this setting, you need to wait a bit or load a city again to see its effect New setting: Disable autosave Enabled utopia/dystopia calculation again Fixed Organizations (like Yakuza) bringing taxation to negative levels, destroying the economy of a city Faster updates for bigger cities: It should take less time to see a bigger city update, build new buildings, etc Optimized screen advertising shader: The FPS should not drop now when a lot of buildings with animated advertising are displayed (Thanks to Peri for the heads up!) Fixed some city saves not loading (Thanks to Killer3000 and Malmal for the heads up!) Fixed: Hide tall building was not working with newly built tower bases (Thanks to Peri for the heads up!) Fixed taxes panel not updating (Thanks to Malmal for the heads up!) Fixed radius indicator not hiding when hovering on other UI elements
A nice Sunday update, with Quality of life improvements and bugfixes. Quality of life improvements: Added RFC panel to keep an eye on the demand easily The tower base will get partially hidden when you use the 'hide tall building' button Clarified the utopia/dystopia advisor panel Moved the organizations into a new "Laws and Organizations" panel Fixed a problem with the demand that would stall your city Fixed a bug with bonuses not getting applied Fixed a bug that caused the cars not to move
Hi all! Friday update with a bunch of new things, plus, the first winner of our weekly challenge! Our first weekly challenge - the Theta Saga - was won by: Malmal! Who managed to reach level 124 for the Theta Corporation in his city, crushing everyone! Malmal gains the Cyber Mayor role in our Discord, plus an in-game building entitled to him! (I'm not gonna reveal which building, but you may find it in-game!) We will run the weekly challenge again next week on our Discord, join it here: https://discord.com/invite/YNNZA2u Also, a beefy update: Better, faster building water pipes in the underground level. You will now see the ghosts of the buildings on the upper level, and you will be able to place your sewers faster and more precisely. I did this change because placing the water pipes was not fun as the layers were too in the way and too slow - now it's super fast and looking a lot better! Not only that: You can use the same technology to see the buildings on the upper level or on the level below. Look for the cloud icons on the bottom left corner, next to the 'Hide tall buildings' icon! Bonuses and maluses display: I added a small label next to every metric that you see - unrest, dissidents, taxation, and so on. It will show the bonuses or maluses that you have created in your city. By clicking on it, you can see what factors are contributing to it. For example, if you are building in the Island of California and Bonfire joins your city, your dissidents will get +50%. By clicking on it, you will see that 20% is due to California and 30% is due to Bonfire. Gameplay adjustments! I inverted the radiuses of the android distribution centers and of the public augmentations. Now the cheaper buildings will have a big radius, and the more expensive ones a smaller radius. I expect this change to bring the growth of more interesting cities, plus it's not forcing you to build a lot of structures just to get your buildings to level 2. Gameplay adjustment 2! Now the factories will require a lot more workers than before. So in order to keep your factories running and building, you will need a substantial amount of poor residential buildings. And clearly a bunch of performance improvements: Made layer loading faster: Now the layers will load only the portion of the city that you are looking at, instead of the whole city. Very noticeable on big cities Sped up loading time a bit for new cities Sped up loading time for the UI to show taxation levels, budgets, population, and so on Small but good improvements on FPS for bigger cities Reduced occasional stutter on bigger cities Made default zoom and camera movement faster And of course bugfixes: Fixed the cars slowing your city down, at least a bit Fixed tooltips crashing or not showing up after pause Fixed drone mode exiting without reason with error Fixed the Bounty Payment Office looking strange when not zoomed in
I spent the weekend reworking all of the networking systems as they did not scale well with big cities. Now bigger cities (1,000 buildings or more) will load faster and will update way faster. Also smaller cities will benefit from this. I also added an optimization that makes running cities with a sped-up time faster. I'm also working on a bigger release that will introduce a lot of new mechanics, but it will take a week or so. Plus: New building! The secret service black site is in Adjusted the demand dynamics to be more forgiving at the start of the game Fixed bug that was causing the building information panel to display weird labels when a building was downgrading due to low desirability Fixed a bug that was causing the right-click-drag player movement to be wonky if the camera was rotated
Small lunchtime patch! 2 new vehicle types will roam your city! Rich, fast cars, and toxic waste containers Now the demand is influenced by your taxation level. Increase taxes to decrease demand, decrease taxes to stimulate demand! Better event system. Now events will be more sporadic and random Fixed demand bugs that would skyrocket or plummet your demand for residential and factories Fixed corporate unemployment not being calculated Fixed graph labels not being aligned properly Fixed drone mode making the game unusable after 5 minutes Faster loading time on new game
Hi all! Quick update tonight, addressing mainly bugs and small adjustments Fixed the crazy taxation bug that would shoot your taxes to infinity. It was fun until it lasted! Fixed the crazy dissident bug that would destroy your city with incessant attacks. It was not fun until it lasted! Adjusted night and daylights and saturation. I hope you like it, let me know what you think! Updated the initial tutorial to clarify the underground road building
Hi all! Evening update, with some new features, surprises, and of course bugfixes! Features: Sewer and roads: You can now build sewers on top of roads and vice-versa. A very requested feature! Just drag your road on top of your sewer, or a sewer on top of your road. Both will work out. Utopia / Dystopia system: Depending on how you build your city, it will become utopian or dystopian. No building is inherently utopian or dystopian - it's about how you arrange them in your city This its first incarnation of course and I will work on this more. This also comes with 2 new missions! Dissident events: a new string of events will rock your city if the dissidents will roam unchecked. Good or bad, you decide Fixes: Fixed bulldozing things you were not supposed to, like illegal clinics (Thanks Malmal for reporting!) Fixed some cities with high crime levels getting stuck and going to zero (Thanks to Nebish and Andromeda for reporting!) Fixed some situations where the taxation revenue would become negative - although I'm not sure I covered all of the cases (Thanks to Lunafox for reporting!) Fixed buildings not hiding anymore in certain situations, making it difficult to bulldoze (Thanks to Kylefiredemon for reporting!) BONUS: We are running a weekly challenge this week on the Discord! Join it here: https://discord.com/invite/YNNZA2u
Hey cyberpunk builders! I just released a small patch update to address some of the issues of the last update, in particular: It was very difficult to bulldoze buildings behind buildings, fixed! Tall buildings would not hide anymore when you were trying to build behind them, fixed! The 'hide all' mode was bugged, making it difficult to bulldoze when active - fixed! Some big cities would get stuck, reset everything to zero, and plummet their population and buildings to zero. I hope I fixed it - if not, I now should have enough logs to fix it soon I also wanted to take a moment to take the community, you all have been amazingly supportive and kind! Thank you
With Missions (released 2 hours ago), I introduced a nasty bug. If you had issues loading your game or if your city was going crashing to everything zero, update and it will be solved. Uops!
New update released! One big new thing: Missions! - Missions: 3 unique missions to bring your city to the next level. Missions will make you gain a lot of money but they are hard to accomplish. You can find them in the Missions Tab! - Move around with the mouse! Right-click and drag to move around - Better hide tall buildings mode: Now the buildings will look as if they were level 0, giving you a better view of your city when activated Fixes: - Some events would trigger only if you loaded a savegame and not during the game. Fixed! Expect a lot more building squatting - Building when zoomed out was very imprecise and painful. Now it's very precise and nice! - Volume was jumping up on loading or new cities, fixed - Big cities were going down to zero and then back up in certain situations, (hopefully) fixed
Bunch of bug fixes in this small patch:
- Fixed Yakuza never entering any city! Look out for the Yakuza
- Fixed buildings immediately downgrading back to zero instead of showing an alert first
- Fixed wrong copy on Corporate Office Advisor level 3 and 4
- Added keyboard and mouse command view in the Settings
- Fixed drone view button misplaced
- Improvements performance (FPS) of rich residential models until level 3
Woha I did not anticipate the players to create such huge and peculiar cities! This fast fix is to allow players who build huge horizontal cities with a lot of water networks to keep playing normally
A bunch of small features:
- Autosave every 5 minutes
- Quicksave: Just press F5
- Removed the mechanic that required global city levels of androids and public aug to keep your buildings upgraded, as their sudden downgrade was confusing users
- Added a button to hide all of the tall building for easier building
- If a building cannot advance due to low desirability, the label will say that when you right-click on the building
- Added indicators around the downwards road to clarify that you can connect roads to it
- Fixed layers not updating when changing level
- Fixed graphs looking all the way to the right
- Fixed the fact that the label 'Outside of city boundaries' was being shown at the wrong time
- Small performance improvement (more on that in the next release)
It used to be that city-wide low levels of Androids or Public Augmentations would trigger a downgrade for some buildings. Watching streamers and listening to players in the Discord community, I noticed that this mechanic was very confused. So I removed it. Now buildings will not downgrade based on the total amount of available androids or public augmentation in the whole city. But there's a catch! Without a positive overall value for the whole city, new buildings will not be built
After months of work, we are proud to announce that we will launch in early access next week, on February 25th! We also created a new official trailer, check it out [previewyoutube=3s1fkspmSyM;full][/previewyoutube] The Early Access will sport a lot of unique cyberpunk city-building challenges, such as:
- Deal with rebel androids!
- Build your city on top of your city
- Build an underground city
- Pick one out of 5 different, future countries to build your city in
- Deal with unrest and dissidents
- Attract or deny powerful corporations
A very busy December and January for Skid Cities! I'm getting ready to release the game in late February. The release will of course be in Early Access. In the last two months the progress has been amazing, check out these updated screenshots:
We are working on a new, improved trailer that should be ready sometime next week. I've also started to add the first Steam achievements. The game will release with at least 6 different Steam achievements, although I may be able to add more of them before February the 25th.
Stay tuned for the upcoming trailer!
November has been so busy that I'm getting to write an update blog post only now. I've added a bunch of new stuff to the game: wasteland, a new UI, and a new dystopia mechanic. Let's take a look! I also created a devblog video with this update: [previewyoutube=2EsIbvExKrA;full][/previewyoutube]
Wasteland
Your factories will produce toxic waste, and you can store it in the wasteland. I made it so you can expand it indefinitely, and I also added some cargo ships that will bring the waste from your factories to the wasteland:
You don't need wastelands at first, but if you want your factories to prosper, you will somehow need to decrease the toxic waste lying around. Either by scattering around your factories or by building wastelands.
New UI
I wasn't satisfied with the yellowish UI that I had, so I changed its main colors a bit:
Now it looks a look better. The UI is a big part of the game, so I expect to keep iterating on it.
Dystopia/Utopia mechanics
Based on how you structure your city, parts of it will be considered utopian or dystopian. They are both valid options with different outcomes and influences. You can decide and structure your city how you want. For example, building sewers near residential areas will increase the dystopian score of these buildings.
What do you think? Leave a comment with your ideas and what you would like to see in game!
Woha this has been a very busy month! I added a lot of new buildings and effects. Let's check them out!
Building Robots Animation
I did not like that the buildings would pop out of nowhere, especially when your buildings would upgrade! So I came up with a giant building robot that will upgrade and build your buildings. The whole process went from pen and paper, to Blender to Unity:
I then proceeded to animate it and this is how it looks:
I also created a Devblog video about this creative process! You can check it out below. Make sure to subscribe to the Youtube channel if you did not do that already [previewyoutube=knkqpTySCz0;full][/previewyoutube] I'm really satisfied with this as it gives your cyberpunk city a gritty, alive feeling. I will probably create some variations and other types of robots in the future.
Events
I implemented an event system. You now have a City News panel that will keep you updated about what is happening in your city. For example, you get notified when a new building becomes available, or when something important happens in the city. I'm really excited about this become it's very flexible and it will allow me to add a lot of random news in the game, as well as add additional mechanics. To test it out, I added a new event, which is occupation! If you leave the dissidents in your city unchecked, they will occupy buildings and streets, taking over. You can leave them be - you will get some bonuses out of this as well - or you can remove them by force by placing lots of self-driving police tanks and vans. This is how an occupied area looks like:
At night, you will be able to see the fires burning in that area:
I'm planning to add more events in the future - I want to add an Android Revolt event, where the androids in your city will gather somewhere and try to start their own, closed community. I will also add an organized crime event, that will create an organized crime structure out of normal street gangs. Please leave a comment if you have any ideas about future events!
New Buildings
As always, I've added a bunch of new buildings and variations of existing buildings to the game. In particular, I focused on special buildings. I added the Darwin's Island park - a public parks for your wealthy citizens:
As well as the Electric Sheep Zoo - a zoo that displays electric animals such as sheep and turtles:
I also added more evil buildings, like the Self-driving Police van station. It will curb the local street low-level crime:
This is how it looks in-game:
And the secret service listening post. It will remove dissident citizens and bring them to secret jail locations:
As well as the secret service black interrogation site:
That's it for this devblog! I will publish another one as soon as the last addition is complete. Don't forget to add Skid Cities to your wishlist if you did not do that already! Please let me know what you think in the comments below.
Finally, I started to post this Devlog on Steam! Before I tell you a little bit about the amazing progress, check out this early gameplay video: [previewyoutube=hlIICSZgUgs;full][/previewyoutube] Admittedly, it's very early from a graphics point of view. In the last two weeks since this video:
- I improved the lighting and the neon effect (important an a cyberpunk game!)
- How the terrain looks
- And I added a bunch of other models
Also in September, I modeled some very cool buildings. Take a look:
I hope that you are excited about the progress. I will now post every month or more to keep you in the loop. I will also open an official Discord soon!
Skid Cities
Vittorio Banfi
Vittorio Banfi
Feb 2021
Singleplayer EA
Game News Posts 56
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Mixed
(67 reviews)
http://skidcities.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1242630
Skid Cities Linux Depot [10.48 G]
A full, immersive world
The year is 2092. What used to be the United States is now divided into three main Trade Authorities. The rising sea levels have changed coastal landscapes worldwide and spurred the creation of multiple sea-only independent countries. Europe is still recovering from its civil war, 20 years after it. The rich are getting richer, augmenting their brains with technology. Androids are being produced at a scale never seen before. The world will not stop because of your city. You will have to navigate all of this as it happens.Build your city on top of your city. Or below it
There is no limit to where your city can develop. Up in the sky? Just build tower bases and vertical streets. Deep underground, Asimov style? You can build up to 100 underground levels below your city. And it's not just esthetic: Your levels will influence desirability levels, industry, and each other.Utopia or dystopia
Who said that dystopia is bad? You can make your city dystopic or utopian, up to you. You can also create areas of your city that are utopian and others that are dystopian. Your city will adjust based on that, no judgment.Welcome or reject corporations, criminals, and more
As your city grows, it will attract attention from the rest of the world. Evil corporations may look into moving offices or even their headquarters into your city. Oh, organized crime may want to do that too. They will for sure be an influence on your city - wanted or not. You can try to kick them out, embrace them, or flat-out ignore them.- OS: Ubuntu 19 or later
- Processor: 64BitStorage: 12 GB available space
- Storage: 12 GB available space
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