Patch content

• UPDATE: Unique building can now be rebuilt if they are destroyed
• UPDATE: Performance improved
• FIX: Translation fix
• FIX: Sometimes, gift are given twice
• FIX: Some buildings remain white in data viewmaps

Known issues

• KI: x3 speed performance is difficult on a large map
• KI: Windows have the wrong colors
• KI: The "news report" message is wrong when a tornado appears in town
• KI: In tutorial #4, colors of the building do not match with the dialog ones
• KI: Disasters can appear in tutorial mod

[ 2023-10-07 13:39:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Silizen voices are audible from an heigher altitude.
• UPDATE: new commands added (check our wiki: http://wiki.polycorne.fr)
• UPDATE: Performance improved
• FIX: Several minor bugs that affect silizen happiness
• FIX: Wrong color for abandonned houses in viewmap "Residence"
• FIX: Cursor on Mac is huge. We've added a settings to change the cursor size.
• FIX: Translation fix

Known issues

• KI: x3 speed performance is difficult on a large map
• KI: If a unique building is destroyed, you cannot build it again
• KI: Sometimes, gift are given twice
• KI: Windows have the wrong colors
• KI: The "news report" message is wrong when a tornado appears in town
• KI: In tutorial #4, colors of the building do not match with the dialog ones
• KI: Disasters can appear in tutorial mod

[ 2023-07-11 17:24:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our First Video Game Release

THANK YOU to everyone who played, reviewed, tested, and worked on Silicon City. This marks the beginning of our studio, and we take pride in being a small team of gamers making games. Silicon City was created with sweat, blood, and tears, fueled by our passion and lots of coffee. We are thrilled to be part of the gaming industry's future, even with humble expectations.

Player Feedback

The Good

We are immensely grateful for the mostly positive reviews and support we received. Many reviewers recognized the essence of Silicon City, which is a retro city builder with intriguing new mechanics. The focus on citizen happiness resonated with some players, and we are grateful for that. Additionally, thanks to our rigorous testing and production efforts (despite not having a dedicated QA team), the game had a smooth release without major bugs.

The Bad

We also acknowledge that there were some negative reviews of our game. We have read all of them and found valuable insights. Our game is not perfect, and some criticisms accurately described its shortcomings. Players noted the absence of a narrative in the classic mode, mentioned that the game was too easy, and pointed out imbalances in mechanics such as budgets, park costs, and energy management. Furthermore, a few comments were made about the subjective topic of low-poly graphics.

The Ugly

While most of the aforementioned issues are relatively minor, a significant concern looms over the game. At around 1,000 citizens and after several hours of gameplay, performance drops significantly, causing the game to become slow. We recognize the seriousness of this matter, which exposes our studio's inexperience. However, we are committed to addressing this issue.

Upcoming Patches

Performance

As mentioned earlier, our primary focus now is to optimize Silicon City's performance and enhance its speed. Here's our plan regarding the game's performance: As this is our first game, many members of the Polycorne Team are talented developers who do not come from a video game background. We have learned a great deal, particularly about the differences between creating software and games. Unfortunately, we realized the importance of multi-threading when it was too late. Most of the game's code runs on Unity's main thread, utilizing only a single core. However, we have already been working on a substantial code refactoring for the past few months to implement multi-threading. This process will take a few more months for testing and release, but it will result in a significant improvement in the game's performance by the end of the summer. Additionally, before that major update, several optimizations will be implemented to enhance CPU and GPU processing. For instance, the upcoming 1.0.1 patch has already achieved a solid 20-25% framerate improvement, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Balancing

We have also taken note of player feedback regarding city mechanics and budgets. We will be making slight adjustments to building prices and upcosts to prevent players from relying solely on specific parks and gifts to maximize their stats. Real-life situations involve a combination of positives and negatives, so in future patches, we will inform you about the affected buildings. The power plant is likely to undergo changes in cost and capacity.

In-Game Content

During this summer, we will release a free update that includes new super-customizable parks and additional landmarks. Stay tuned for more information!

The Long Run

DLCs for the Future

Once we have addressed the aforementioned issues, we will begin developing extra content for Silicon City. Our objective is to create DLCs that offer everything we didn't have time to include in the base game. The first DLC will focus on transportation, introducing railroads, buses, parking lots, and other features related to traffic management in Silicon City.

Community Content

In the near future, we will dedicate time to crafting custom scenarios for Silicon City, which can be shared and modified. We will also expand the capabilities of our API (available on the wiki). Additionally, we are working on a standalone app that will enable users to create their own procedural buildings. Imagine an editor where you can maximize customization by exploiting procedural rules and then share the building seeds on the Steam Workshop.

Conclusion

Developing Silicon City was an ambitious undertaking, filled with a rollercoaster of emotions and a tremendous amount of work for a new indie game development studio. We are delighted to have made it this far and are proud of the game's quality. We understand that game development doesn't end with the initial release, and we look forward to updating and improving Silicon City. Cheers, Polycorne.

[ 2023-07-04 18:40:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are thrilled to release our first game. An independant vision of city building, born out of our love for the genre. Join us as we embark on a journey to bring you a game that sparks humor, creativity, and lets you build and care about a city and its citizens.

A Vision of Emotionally Driven Citizens

In Silicon City, we wanted to create more than just a simulation of buildings and infrastructure. We wanted to breathe life into our virtual world by giving each citizen their own emotions, and desires. Witness their joys and frustrations as they interact with the changes happening in their living society. [quote] The games emphasis on the well-being and desires of the Silizens added an emotional connection that drew me in. Despite their simple representations, I found myself genuinely invested in their happiness and success. Witnessing their struggles and striving to address their needs added a layer of depth and purpose to my gameplay. - @gamesasylum[/quote]

Shaping Skylines with Procedural Buildings

Our journey took us beyond the realm of predefined structures. We sought to break free from the constraints of repetitive architecture using algorithms and let players to truly shape unique cityscapes. With our innovative procedural building system, any zone structure that rises in Silicon City is dynamically generated, resulting in a diverse and visually captivating urban landscape you can finely craft.

smash that BUY button!

If you believe Silicon City has the potential to become a know title in the genre, consider supporting the game and our small studio Silicon City is more than just a game to us. It is a tribute to the city builder genre from the 90s and a testament to our engagement for making video games. We took on the challenge of delivering a city builder that remains classic and stands out by its originality. With your support, we can show the world the power of indie innovation. Join us in embracing the underdog narrative, as together, we shape the future of city building. Thanks to all the gamers who played Silicon City so far and gave us their help and feedback. We can't wait to see the community growing. See you at the next update :) The Polycorne Team

[ 2023-06-22 14:16:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Novel home and loading screens
• UPDATE: New visuals for procedural buildings
• UPDATE: Performance improvements
• UPDATE: Re-balancing of terrain value thresholds for residences at higher levels
• FIX: Reverse scroll direction in toolbar

Known issues

• x3 speed performance is difficult on a large card
• When shadows are activated with large cities, the game is slowed down.

[ 2023-06-22 14:15:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Performance improvements
• FIX: City with rank 5 cannot be saved
• FIX: When SSAO was disabled, color were very dark
• FIX: In some circumstances, the ambulance was stuck in the middle of the road
• FIX: Silizens were sometime not happy although all the required buildings were next to them

Known issues

When shadows are on, big cities slow down the game

[ 2023-06-22 13:28:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Performance improvements
• FIX: Tutorial typos and fix

Known issues

When shadows are on, big cities slow down the game

[ 2023-06-19 01:25:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: performance improvements
• FIX: Tweets were incorrectly saved
• FIX: When an internal soccer match happens (between two teams of the same city), an error occurred
• FIX: Some buildings windows were lighted up right after their construction (even with no power)
• FIX: An error occurred while trying to get the value of the function : get_population_happiness_count
• FIX: Signatures of chapter 04 were not saved when the mayor quit the city

Known issues

When shadows are on, big cities slow down the game

[ 2023-06-16 19:46:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Performance improved when building raise from the ground
• UPDATE: New tips of the day!
• UPDATE: Silizens
• FIX: Some window did not light up correctly during the night
• FIX: Game was stuck during massive destructions
• FIX: Achievement Steam working again
• FIX: Cursor triggered a construction sound even if no build was made
• FIX: Happiness was not calculated correctly

Known issues

When shadows are on, big cities slow down the game

[ 2023-06-14 21:42:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: All the hidden building are now gifted during the classic mode missions
• UPDATE: Office, restaurant and shops procedural rules have been improved to create bigger building for big areas (5x5)
• UPDATE: Performance improvment
• FIX: Translation issues
• FIX: Barking do not spot the last answer in the silizen profile

Known issues

Nothing to see here

[ 2023-06-10 10:12:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: A new visual family have been added to for houses and appartements
• UPDATE: A new visual family for Office. Try to increase the landvalue to discover the new windows.
• UPDATE: The shake effect of the construction has been reduced
• UPDATE: Silizen have won a cute walking animation
• FIX: Translation issues
• FIX: Tooltip is flickering
• FIX: The "FREE" label do not block your construction anymore
• FIX: Story 04 was impossible to finish in some cases

Known issues

Nothing to see here

[ 2023-06-07 14:58:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Ads billboard can use up to 8 custom textures.
• UPDATE: The shake effect of the construction has been reduced
• Translation issues
• FIX: Some grounds props (trees) spot at 0,0 in house and appartment blocks

Known issues

Nothing to see here

[ 2023-06-05 16:31:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: There is now an audio feedback when winning or losing elections
• UPDATE: Viewmap are beautifully displayed at night
• UPDATE: Silizens talking capacity have been increased (try to talkto them ^^)
• UPDATE: The Barkr view can now be flattered for better visibility
• UPDATE: Silizens names have been moved out in a json file (which allows you to change or add new names)
• UPDATE: Ads billboard are now rebuildable. It means you can switch the display between 8 differents textures. Adding your own is also possible.
• FIX: Translation issues

Known issues

Nothing to see here

[ 2023-06-05 15:25:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• NEW: new building: the ads billboard. You can customize the display using your own .png file!
• UPDATE: Statistics labels rebranded
• UPDATE: Performance improvements
• UPDATE: Tooltips rebranded
• UPDATE: Starting popup rebranded
• UPDATE: Twitch options moved to settings menu
• FIX: Clicking on a Silizen portrait make them talk again!
• FIX: Viewmap fixes (colors)
• FIX: Coal powerplant model was buggy
• FIX: Mainmenu UX
• FIX: Park was marked as unaccessible with pedestrian alleyse

Known issues

Nothing to see here

[ 2023-06-02 21:38:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is the final major update that we will release before the game's launch on 06/22/2023. As promised during the early access launch, we have added a bunch of exciting new features. Let's take a brief tour of what's new.

A Wiki to Understand it All

To help you during your mayoral quest, we have set up a wiki available at http://wiki.polycorne.fr. You will find a lot of valuable information there, including budget management tips and explanations of citizens' behavior. We will continue to add more articles as the release date approaches. With each new version, the game has more gameplay and concepts. Managing a city is challenging, and understanding what's under the hood is a must.

Elections

As the leader of your city, you want to make sure that your citizens are happy. The city department provides you with real-time information about voter engagement to help in your decision-making and get re-elected. To win the election and keep your seat, it is important to recognize your citizens' needs and understand their mood. Use the map view to identify the actions that can keep you in the race. Do they need access to schools? Do they have a hard time finding a job that allows them to pay their rent? Do they lack places to enhance their social life? Take the right decisions and make them on time before election day!

GDP

Until version 0.38, players were able to compete at an international level through population and city income leaderboards. As the game is becoming more complex, we decided to rethink the way mayors are compared to each other. So we introduced the GDP: **Global Domestic Product**. It is a combination of several factors that represent your city's wealth. As the challenge is different with small and big maps, the leaderboard splits the challengers based on the map size. Discover the details of the new score here: http://wiki.polycorne.fr/Economics-ad73f273bdc44e02a4c844d05baacd85

Twitch

This new version comes with very exciting possibilities. Thanks to our Twitch integration, you can be a mayor and a streamer at the same time. Mayors take care of their citizens as streamers pay attention to their viewers' excitement.
The game now allows your viewers to interact as if they were citizens. They can move their avatar, vote for the mayor, try to find a better job, give money to the mayor, and more.

Wir Sprechen Deutsch

The game has finally been translated into German! Did you identify a translation that could be improved? You can help us fix it through our dedicated website: https://lang.polycorne.fr Your suggestion will be reviewed and integrated into the next patch. ;)

Patch content

• NEW: You can now visualize the Barkr of your silizens thanks to a beautiful new viewmap
• NEW: Silicon City is now linked to Twitch. Stream you Mayor sessions and let your viewer interact with your city !
• NEW: A new score is available : make your city as productive as possible and compare your score with Silicon City players over the world !
• NEW: Election feature is now live. Pay attention to your citizen needs and happiness otherwise they will quit the city or vote for your opponent
• NEW: Student now go to school. They will try to apply to the closest school from their home.
• NEW: Chapter 04 of the story is available and will teach you how to win the elections
• NEW: new disaster: tornado!
• NEW: You can now see the impact radius of the buildings before placing them
• UPDATE: Custom scenario can be started directly from the command line
• UPDATE: The cinema is now available.
• UPDATE: A list of employee/silizen Barkr activity is visible in the building panel
• UPDATE: UI have been updated to improve the QOL, especially for missions, charts and politics
• UPDATE: Viewmap visiblity and colors have been updated
• UPDATE: All blocks in panel are collapsible for better readability
• UPDATE: Building multiple blocks at once is now really cool (new animation)
• UPDATE: You can randomize the building colors and shape using new buttons in the Building panel (in the statistics block for now)
• UPDATE: The game is translated in German !
• UPDATE: The preview of the building you will construct is more accurate. It displays the next iteration of the block style and disappear during the construction animation.
• UPDATE: There is now a delay between two building upgrade. The city urban service can only handle 5 construction request per hour.
• UPDATE: Adult silizens will try to gain new skills at the library or any other building that provide skills.
• UPDATE: Added a link to the Twitch commands documentation
• UPDATE: Performance improvements
• UPDATE: Open a new panel with Shift + click on a Silizen (same as building)
• UPDATE: Upgrade mayor text has been modified to be more explicit
• UPDATE: Houses/appartments upgrade is now linked to the land value. Poor neighborhoods prevent the houses and appartements to grow.
• UPDATE: Fire probability have been reduced
• FIX: Shield have now a pixel perfect aligment between shapes
• FIX: Baby silizens didn't rank up to level 2
• FIX: Front factory doors had Zfight
• FIX: Crash after save
• FIX: Elementary school and Museum text have been translated
• FIX: Spotting icon height is too high on few buildings
• FIX: UI Panels should reopen at the same location
• FIX: When selected block is rebuilt by a neighbour, it closes and keep its outline
• FIX: In collapsible, the last silizen is half visible
• FIX: In scrollable element, scroll is inverted
• FIX: Zoom speed fixed (when close to the ground)
• FIX: Barkr notification windows redesigned to handle long nickames
• FIX: Thick procedural fences appeared sometimes
• FIX: Live chat notification was still on when Twitch account is disconnected
• FIX: The bank mission is back!
• FIX: GDP score was stuck at 2.3k
• FIX: When a classic game is started for the first time, the map was full blue
• FIX: "Menu served" statistic appeared only when there is employees working
• FIX: Primary school and high school do not provide skills
• FIX: Mapsize dropdown was unselectable in Map editor when custom mods are availlable
• FIX: Twitch chat failed to connect
• FIX: Art Museum is in the wrong menu
• FIX: Error on citizen selection
• FIX: UI bugfixes
• FIX: Two mayor houses are given sometimes
• FIX: UI icon quality improvements
• FIX: Happy citizen count is blocked in the mission "Keep your silizens happy"
• FIX: Fixed error that blocked the game when elections started
• FIX: Twitch !show command doesn't work
• FIX: When mainmenu start and a Twitch viewer is connected, the Silizen is not created correctly
• FIX: Wrong Leaderboard shows up when I click on the GDP button
• FIX: Close button on GDP leaderboard doesn't work
• FIX: Mission "Higher more cashier" starts too early
• FIX: Silizen build new shop/restaurant without taking the job it provides

Known issues

Nothing to see here (hopefully!)

[ 2023-05-30 14:39:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join us celebrating the summer with the release of Silicon City. On the 22nd of June, 2023, you'll be able to play the golden version 1.0 of the game. To celebrate we've updated our live streams calendar on Twitch for the month of May and June! Polycorne will host several live events where we'll answer your questions and present the gameplay of the latest features. Check it out here: https://www.twitch.tv/polycornegames/schedule In the meantime, you can still get Silicon City in early access. Your copy of the game will obviously remain valid and updated once the official release is out.

[ 2023-04-28 14:04:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• UPDATE: Buildings can now have two colored walls
• UPDATE: Savegame is now notified by a tweet (instead of a popup)
• UPDATE: Vineyard props style added to farms
• UPDATE: Buildings have now beautiful balconies
• UPDATE: Better silizen level up help text.
• FIX: Errors during save game
• FIX: Culture building category was missing in construction menu
• FIX: Language change popup was behind the escape panel
• FIX: Light poles glow during the day
• FIX: Graphic glithc : water disappear in ISO mode when building
• FIX: Ambulance were invisible when the game was loaded from a save
• FIX: Building title were not visible in their selection panel header

Known issues

• KI: Silizens don't want to learn new skills
• KI: Factory main doors texture have z-fight

[ 2023-03-17 13:38:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Polycorne is proud to announce the release of the new version of Silicon City, 0.37. We worked with the help of Alexandre Agniel, our sound designer, on the audio aspects of the game. On the agenda:

• Dynamic sound ambiences
• Immersive sound effects
• Voices for the Silizens

[previewyoutube=Sz40PmP2Zo4;full][/previewyoutube]

Listen to our talented unicorn!

Alexandre Agniel took care of reworking the whole sound aspect of the game. By listing all the interactions of the mayor and the consequences they can have, he was able to produce dynamic sound systems and sound banks that seal the artistic coherence of the game.
Find his entire interview here: https://polycorne.fr/fr/2023/02/meet-the-dev-7-alexandre-2/ And his portfolio here: https://alexandre-agniel.jimdosite.com/

A dynamic soundscape

As the mayor moves through Silicon City, his ears can pick up the activity of the city. Pedestrians are talking in the street, cars are honking, industrial machine tools are echoing, the concert hall audience is cheering, ... [previewyoutube=_TI7oDJWdCc;full][/previewyoutube] Everything is dynamic: the more dense a building category is, the more intense the sounds are. This complex system of dynamic ambience brings a pleasant and captivating immersiveness. Need to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city? Take the height to have your head in the clouds [previewyoutube=O6LoeR6byH0;full][/previewyoutube]

Immersive sound effects

A city never stays still for long, especially in Silicon City. Residents expand their homes or speak out, the mayor adds new infrastructure, restores parks and streets, and expands buildable areas. [previewyoutube=2XuRoRUs2UI;full][/previewyoutube] All these actions now generate sound effects in line. The mayor sees but also hears the evolutions little by little.

Voices for the Silizens

They have all recently acquired a face, they now have an adorable little voice! We can then distinguish their level of happiness (happy, neutral or sad) by the sound during action in the city but also through the interfaces. [previewyoutube=BiMGolXvMtE;full][/previewyoutube]

Patch notes

Thanks to the feedback from the community on our Discord server, we were able to make a lot of small fixes to the game and improve some things. You can read here the article on Steam which contains all the details of this new version

Polycorne news

We are working on the last major feature of the game: elections. We'll be releasing a BETA version soon for those who want to test this system early.

[ 2023-02-16 15:39:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• NEW: New immersive in-game soundscapes, from city life to environment eco-system.
• NEW: New audio effects for each action in the game (building, upgrading, destroying, ...)
• NEW: Cute silizen's voice when interacting with them or when they have something to say
• NEW: UI sound effects reworked to ensure level and flavor consistency
• UPDATE: Buildings can now have two colored walls
• UPDATE: Savegame is now notified by a tweet (instead of a popup)
• UPDATE: Vineyard props style added to farms
• UPDATE: Buildings have now beautiful balconies
• UPDATE: Silizens increased their job lookup algorythm. It means they reach available jobs faster.
• FIX: Translation fixes
• FIX: Forest random rotation and size is back
• FIX: Siliberty statue is not selectable
• FIX: The cursor back to default selection when going back to main menu
• FIX: Double poor window is not correctly placed
• FIX: Sometime camera position is desync (slight shift between the center of the screen and the pivot rotation center)
• FIX: Cursor remains as a hand when mouse-leaving a panel
• FIX: Farm barn disappeared
• FIX: When you reach level 3, the building are locked as if you are at level 1

Known issues

• KI: Light poles glow during the day
• KI: Some viewmaps are visible but are not used yet

[ 2023-02-16 15:35:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• NEW: You can now follow your silizens in the city thanks to a new follow camera. Accessible though their profile.
• FIX: Splashscreen is back
• FIX: Bigger houses host more silizens. For example a 2x2 (leve1) house host 4 silizens. A 3x2 (level2) house now hosts 7.
• UDPATE: Performance improvments
• UPDATE: Graphics improved
• UDPATE: The shadows tilt according to the season

Known issues

• KI: Light poles glow during the day
• KI: Some viewmaps are visible but are not used yet

[ 2023-01-25 13:49:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Low level citizen were not able to apply to the soccerfield job open positions
• FIX: Several navigation bugs fixed
• FIX: Barns building names were missing
• FIX: The city panel was broken in Sandbox mode
• FIX: The cinema has been hidden until the next update (not available yet)
• FIX: Firework button was not working in Sandbox mode

Known issues

KI: Light poles glow during the day KI: Some viewmaps are visible but are not used yet

[ 2023-01-05 14:58:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• NEW: The new needs and moods system is available. Buildings provide 7 types of needs (Health, Security, Education, Shopping, Culture, Social interaction and Sport). Some are provided around the buildings, other are provided when the silizen visit the building.
• NEW: Silizen now require more attention. They have needs that evolve with the level of the city. This mean that your challenge will be higher with bigger cities. Click on their profil to discover their new skills and needs.
• NEW: You now start with dirt roads instead of tar roads. They are cheaper but you cannot build bridge and the car speed limit is lower. Tar roads are unlocked with city level 2.
• NEW: New buildings are available ! Elementary school, theater, concert hall, E-sport stadium and a lot of new parks and statues. Discover them in the tool bar.
• NEW: Missions in classic mode have been totally rewritten (thanks to Aurel). They now fit with the new features.
• NEW: The game main toolbar shows new icons and 3 different sorting: by needs, by size and by skills. You can switch between them by clicking on the figures 1, 2 and 3 at the bottom left of the screen.
• NEW: New monuments are available for your city ! The first silizens, In memory, Liberty and much more !
• NEW: The city is enlighted ! Buildings windows shine at night, street lamps can be placed and turned on as well.
• NEW: Silizens now follow path along few buildings models. They walk on path and avoid fountain or walls. More buildings will be converted to this system step by step.
• NEW: We added custom cursors in the game. They will give you more tips about the action you're going to do if you click !
• NEW: New leaderboard are available for you to show your mayor skills. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a calculation of several city data (% of employment and silizen skillset). It reflect your level of mastering of the game :)
• NEW: Missons in classic guide you through more steps than ever.
• FIX: The number of blocks built is not reset correctly, which causes errors in the process of unlocking Steam achievements.
• FIX: A silizen who wants to take his car can collide with a silizen who wants to leave his car. Traffic is sometimes blocked because of this.
• FIX: Flames and smoke appear at square 0;0 when a fire starts.
• FIX: Improved performance in data visualization mode.
• FIX: Trees are missing on a specific forest block.
• FIX: Ocean glitch at map border has been fixed
• FIX: Budget calculation fixes
• FIX: Citizen do not glow with no reason
• FIX: cars did not stop at traffic light (bug introduced in 0.36.1)
• FIX: farm water tank were magenta sometime
• FIX: Performance improvement
• UPDATE: A delay has been introduced before automatic mission complete. This way you'll no longer build something by mistake on a mission complete.
• UPDATE: Educational building moved to public service category
• UPDATE: Citizen's flat circle can be selected in flat viewmap mode
• UPDATE: Babies and kids don't pop as tourists. They can only appear if 2 citizens goes to the hospital and generate a child
• UPDATE: Faceblock indications fits the 3 state viewmap legend (happy, neutral, unhappy)
• UPDATE: Cost of residential area have been decreased from 200$ to 150$
• UPDATE: The building menu now have stunning miniature of the blocks you will be able to build
• UPDATE: A new satisfying builing effect have been added
• UPDATE: Industrial blocks have been improved with chimney, industrial style and smoke
• UPDATE: Farms blocks have been improved with barns, fences and tractors
• UPDATE: You can launch fireworks from the building panel (if the building allows it)
• UPDATE: You can disable the overview camera in building panels to improve the performance on small PCs
• UPDATE: We added funs building statistics as "number of fire extinguished" or "number of menue served". You can see them inside building panels.
• UPDATE: Silizens now stay a bit when they have things to do (sport, buy things, eat at restaurants, ...) instead of hop in and out
• UPDATE: More viewmaps are available and selectable in the viewmap menu (fire safety, health, shopping, education, ...)
• UPDATE: Silizens tweet when they improve their skills
• UPDATE: Some UI elements in panels can now be collapsed for better readability
• UPDATE: Misc. graphics improvment. Such as flashing lights on vehicles, new ballon shapes, reflection in windows, ...
• UPDATE: A delay has been introduced before automatic mission complete. This way you'll no longer build something by mistake on a mission complete.
• UPDATE: Educational building moved to public service category
• UPDATE: Citizen's flat circle can be selected in flat viewmap mode
• UPDATE: Babies and kids don't pop as tourists. They can only appear if 2 citizens goes to the hospital and generate a child
• UPDATE: Faceblock indications fits the 3 state viewmap legend (happy, neutral, unhappy)
• UPDATE: Cost of residential area have been decreased from 200$ to 150$

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: Industries do not have the correct models.
• KI: Some viewmaps are visible but are not used yet.

[ 2022-12-30 15:46:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Polycorne is proud to announce the release of the new version of Silicon City, 0.36. 3 more versions before the release of the game. This is the most important update since the beginning of the development of the game, where all the balancing has been defined and redesigned to link the buildings and the citizens.

A new city evolution system

Citizens show what they need to evolve within the city. We have worked to make the understanding of the daily life of silizens more accessible. The citizen's descriptive sheet is now adorned with 3 tabs that correspond to the activity, skills and needs of the citizen. It is by following these indicators of need that the mayor will be able to make his citizens happy. When they see their needs met, they can access the next level and bring in more money. This increase in revenue is crucial for the mayor to improve the city's infrastructure.

The arrival of cultural buildings

Your citizens eager for culture and art and wish to attend shows or exhibitions. We have put at your disposal a panel of cultural buildings. They will also radiate on the attractiveness of the city.

Patch notes

You can find here the patch notes article detailing everything that has been added to this new release

Polycorne news

We were at PAris Games Week. We had the chance to participate to the PGW 2022 by putting Silicon City in free access during the whole event. A few hundred players had the opportunity to test the game and give us feedback. Some of this feedback has already been integrated into the game through versions 0.36.2 and 0.36.3. What's next We are working on the last major feature of the game: the elections. We will release a BETA version soon for those who want to test this system before time.

[ 2022-12-30 15:43:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Papy McCornick is blind (no eyes)
• FIX: Solar panel flying in the sky on building preview
• FIX: Error during navigation
• FIX: Procedural roofs are black in viewmaps
• FIX: Citizen get stuck somehow
• FIX: Factories graphic glitch in dataview mode is now fixed !!!
• UPDATE: More cars are visible in the streets. The silizen are now able to use their cars as soon as they have one.
• UPDATE: Tooltips size are adjusted in a better way
• UPDATE: You can change the shortcut keys in the game settings
• UPDATE: Input tooltips now display the key binded to the action in the settings
• UPDATE: Memory footprints improvements
• UPDATE: General performance improvements

Known issues

• KI : When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2022-07-08 15:47:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: The sentence in the status line of the building (bottom was wrong). Text now count the number of available jobs in the building.
• FIX: Graphic glitch with carrot crops
• FIX: Exception raised when Discord is not connected to Internet
• FIX: House lvl0 still have residents after downgrade
• FIX: Silizens coming back from delivery don't hide bubble
• FIX: Hats appears slightly rotated on the head of the silizens in 3D mode
• FIX: Tweets from profiles the mayor follow don't show up in the mayor tweetboard
• FIX: "Help the farmers" mission has the wrong unit
• FIX: When fire destroy the city, powerbals are stuck in the middle of nowhere
• FIX: Silizens do not keep their car color between two car trip
• UPDATE: You can now play with camera options (such has travelling, 2nd camera for video capture, camera rotation, etc...) by pressing F6. Documentation will follow.
• UPDATE: You can display the shortcut key by pressing "?"
• UPDATE: Dutch language has been added to the game. You can select it from the ingame settings.
• UPDATE: Clicking a second time to a building in the building bar will unselect it
• UPDATE: Disasters button now display in every mode as soon as a disaster is ongoing in the city. You can switch between two disasters using prev/next disaster button
• UPDATE: As a player in Sandbox mode, I want to have a disasters toolbar
• UPDATE: Memory footprints improvements
• UPDATE: General performance improvements

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: Factories 3D models are a total mess in data view

[ 2022-06-13 12:19:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: When a NPC get a job, he/she loose his/her hat
• FIX: Story03 throw an error at last mission
• FIX: Fires sometimes disappear unexpectedly
• FIX: NPCs loose their hat after a savegame load
• FIX: Locked area indicators are rendered over databars
• FIX: The key are incorrectly displayed if I have an AZERTY keyboard
• UPDATE: You can now generate disasters like fires or meteor
• UPDATE: Thanks to a new panel, laptop players can move the camera easily with their track pad
• UPDATE: Sandbox saves can be identified thanks to their icons
• UPDATE: Silizens now have cute face!!! Discover them walking around in your city
• UPDATE: Silizens show theirs faces in the menus and the dialogs!

Known issues

• KI : When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: Factories 3D models are a total mess in data view

[ 2022-05-17 12:50:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

How will you implement the re-elections system?

The election system will be periodic. Every 4 years in the game, new elections will be launched and will be the occasion for the mayor to move up in level: the citizens vote will decide this. For citizens to vote for you, they must be happy in your city. On the other hand, having more than 50% unhappy residents will not work in your favor, and you will not be re-elected. We have modelled ourselves on the reality of the Western world, i.e. municipal elections. So there will be a test to pass this checkpoint in the game, and if the player does not manage to pass it, it will be Game Over.

What will be the changes compared to the current versions of the game?

Indeed, all this political aspect is not yet implemented, except for what can be seen in the Silizens' Twitter. The followers will be used to measure and show how popular the mayor is with his citizens. The interface is being developed: where is the happy and unhappy population? How many subscribers and non-subscribers are there to the mayor? All the analytical data that goes around politics will be visible, as well as the game pop ups with re-election events. The player will be able to know if he is good in the polls or not, what issues need to be solved before the elections in order to be re-elected and to be able to continue playing. Mayor's ranks will also be added, which will unlock new buildings according to new needs. The higher the mayor's rank, the greater the needs of the citizens to be met.

Are you trying to make the game time unlimited?

Indeed, we aspire to make a creative game. The goal is to give players a tool to play with the algorithm of evolution of a city according to what he will build, and on the other hand to give him the tools to develop his creativity, like a canvas on which the player can paint, erase and start again infinitely according to his desires. The unlimited life span is related to the creative tools the game offers. As in all CityBuilders, the game is unlimited, there is no end goal. Here, as long as you have money and as long as the citizens vote for you, the game continues and you can continue to do whatever you want.

What competition will the player face in the election?

When the elections come every 4 years, the player will have to face a fictitious political opponent who will confront his ideas with those of the mayor. This opposition will be added for story and narrative purposes.

How will the difficulty of the game be adjusted to the player? Will it be increasing?

There are two ways to manage the difficulty: the first one is when the player starts a game and he can choose the difficulty level (which will vary different parameters afterwards), while the second one is a difficulty undergone by the player, which is due to the progression and the increase of the needs and things to manage during his progression. The level of difficulty of the game will be linked to the level of development of the city. During the first municipal elections, the challenges are lower because the city is less developed and the citizens have fewer expectations. The more developed the city is, the higher their expectations are, and the more points the citizens will be dissatisfied with. "With a great city comes great responsibilities."

What would it take to be the ideal mayor and be re-elected for sure?

To be the ideal mayor, I think you have to build your city little by little, follow your citizens and optimize the population density and the productivity of your businesses. You have to think about solving the problems of your citizens before trying to "expand" your city, which means that you have to make your citizens happy too. The game provides several tools to improve the player's understanding of why the citizens are unhappy. Finally, it is important to find the right balance between managing the happiness of the citizens and the money that comes in. I don't think that the game allows you to be a perfect mayor: it will be up to the player to determine where he will put the cursor, i.e. if he will put himself at 50% and thus have enough money to build more, or if he will put himself at 80%, which will make the game more difficult because less money will come in the coffers.

[ 2022-05-05 12:56:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Sunflowers back texture is bugged
• FIX: When playing an offline, the story progression is not saved
• FIX: Houses have their door at the opposite side of the road
• FIX: There is a construction sound when I click even if I cannot build something
• FIX: When a save migration fail, there is no error message displayed
• FIX: Population text on the city status panel doesn't wrap if the text is too long
• FIX: Missing translations
• FIX: In story 01, "make some room" do not use the good video
• FIX: When the game is saving, I can ask for another save before the first one finished
• UPDATE: New city status panel information
• UPDATE: You can now customize the shield of your city. Each new city rank will give you more options (colors, shapes, ...)
• UPDATE: Your Discord friend can see you the details of your current Silicon CIty game
• UPDATE: Building selection visual effect is now totally linked to the view your are using. If the building is visible, the selection outline the building. If the building is not visible, the selection outline the cell.
• UPDATE: Bulldozer and dezoner tools have been updated to allow better destruction options
• UPDATE: In silizen lists, you can open the silizen profil by clicking on their row instead of their button
• UPDATE: Mission objectives can now display percentage
• UPDATE: You can now reimburse your ongoing loans

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: Factories 3D models are a total mess in data view

[ 2022-04-26 08:38:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Discover how Polycorne integrated energy management in Silicon City. Between game design, user experience, challenges and problems encountered, the Polycorne team answers your questions! Read more on the Polycorne website : https://polycorne.fr/en/2022/04/silicon-citys-energy-management-program/

[ 2022-04-14 16:29:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Default weekly challenge crash. Needs an upgrade of the .scg
• FIX: Silizen sometimes are stucked at home
• FIX: Silizen's balloon remains visible at cell 0;0 forever
• FIX: In building mode, hands are not refresh when switching between buildings
• FIX: Dynamic SSAO settings is back (was missing in last version)
• FIX: When dismiss the loading error popup by the red cross, game is stuck
• FIX: "Employed" and "now working" databar color do not match the reality
• FIX: Mouse scroll do not work on Parks menu
• UPDATE: Memory usage reduced
• UPDATE: When building a firestation or a wind turbine, the building tool is not cancelled anymore
• UPDATE: You can now build zone over electric lines
• UPDATE: New settings available. It is possible to change the screen edge scroll settings (disable, small area or wide area)
• UPDATE: Performance improvement when in trafic view
• UPDATE: New disasters toolbar in sandbox mode

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2022-03-25 09:36:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: In happiness viewmap, residential zone with no resident are colored but they shouldn't
• FIX: Unable to start the game if player.config is corrupted
• FIX: A back and forth navigation to the leaderboards create duplicated entries
• FIX: Right click on building panel raise errors
• FIX: Citizen with no profile have no profile picture
• UPDATE: Building a large area is no more slowing down the game

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2022-03-11 23:18:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: The budget value of park do not change when you move the budget cursor
• FIX: When you use the tree offered as gift, 2 are used
• FIX: Some citizens are considered as tourists and can have jobs and more
• FIX: Saving the game when a silizen just died prevent the save to work properly
• FIX: Level 0 building (zone) have too much information displayed in their panel
• FIX: Car in intervention teleport sometimes
• FIX: Block highlights doesn't disappear when panel is closed
• FIX: Right click on panel display a tooltip at weird location
• FIX: Houses and offices 3D models slightly change randomly over time
• UPDATE: Silizen delivering goods are now considered as "At work"
• UPDATE: Farms buildings and models color and design aligned
• UPDATE: Mouse pan direction inverted
• UPDATE: You cannot destroy building on fire anymore
• UPDATE: Performance improved slightly
• UPDATE: Panels are now displayed over the viewmaps buttons and status bar. Building bar now takes the full width of the screen
• UPDATE: When a panel is shown, it now appear in front of the others

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: When you build a zone, the first block is not connected to electricity

[ 2022-03-02 21:19:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Polycorne has developed the user interface promised at the beginning of Silicon City! After a year of design and development, the Silicon City UI finally reveals its face. Made for all types of resolutions, the UI is scalable and modular. It allows you to display, close or minimize information windows of your city. More room to play, more room to rule!

One year of development?

From sketch to functional interface Building a quality user interface is a process that requires maturation for a development studio. This update is by far the most significant improvement we've made to Silicon City for the small Polycorne team! Almost twelve months ago, our lead UX designer La Medrano started the first drafts of this interface. Today we are proud of the colors given to the game and of this integration, along with the updates made since. We have sought to provide players with a game experience that:

• Takes up less space than before to provide a better view of the city.
• Is adjustable to all resolutions and screen sizes.
• Allows the player to display the data that is relevant to them
• Open Silicon City to future mods and offer more and more features

Jaz Lyn has understood us well. They won't be disappointed! So why is this so important? [quote]"Understanding precedes action." - Richard Saul Wurman [/quote] TED Talk creator and Aiga Gold Medalist (the most prestigious award in communication and design): Wurman confirms with his words that our decisions are made on our ability to understand the information around us. Silicon City is a management game where information is the key to optimal urbanization. By mastering it, you are able to make decisions to manage your city... Or to simply keep an eye on how your population is doing. Available now on Steam! This update is available for download if you have already purchased Silicon City. But if you're still wondering what all these features are, take a look at this list: Features

• The whole interface is scalable! That means that all tools are usable, with small or large resolution. From 800x600 to 4K, with all ratios from 4:3 to 21:9
• The windows are movable to be able to monitor all neighborhoods and numbers at the same time.
• Minimize certain windows to organize your screen, or pin them so you never miss a move of your citizens
• The menu has been reorganized into convenient categories to bring all the game's tools together in a few lines. What a space saver, with even more information on the screen.

What did our testers think?

Our beta testers gave us their feedback on this update, here's what they said: [quote]We can see the inspiration of the excellent Open TTD but this time it's on a real city builder! The best of the best for a management game." [/quote] [quote]I like that it's much more spacious." [/quote] Most of the streamers who shared their experience of Silicon City warned us, we listened well. From now on, the bottom left corner of the screen is free of everything so we can see them playing the game with ease. We embrace GamerZak who was one of the first to stream about Silicon City and to point out the importance of the user interface. He announced Silicon City as the winner of the most anticipated city builders of 2022! Come and vote for Silicon City and discover his blog here

Add Silicon City to your wishlist!

To make sure you don't miss the next major milestones in the development of Silicon City, you can already add the game to your wishlist on Steam! Thanks for your support, it also helps the game to be well referenced.

The next step of the user interface

We still have many surprises in our to-do list, we are already preparing the following improvements for you in the next updates:

• Adjustable windows
• Saving an interface configuration.
• New trackers to follow the movements of citizens.
• Detailed information about the life of citizens.
• Even more analysis and decision screens to better manage your city.

[ 2022-02-17 09:36:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: MayorHouse was missing grass
• FIX: Game crashed when ambulance not able to reach its destination
• FIX: Construct a building close to the map border would fail
• FIX: Saving the game when a silizen just died preventes the save to work properly
• FIX: Some achievement would be triggered too early in game

• MAJOR UPDATE: Welcome to the Sili UI, the game changer user interface.
• UPDATE: Improves savegame list loading time in main menu
• UPDATE: More performance improvement
• UPDATE: Silizens taking their car use a new nice way to leave the sidewalk
• UPDATE: Trees can grow on sand in the desert biome

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: When a building is selected then unselected, it remains hovered in orange
• KI: Draggable panels remains behing the game bar
• KI: Houses and offices 3D models slightly change randomly over time

[ 2022-02-15 13:20:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: MayorHouse is missing grass
• FIX: Game crash when ambulance is not able to reach its destination
• FIX: Construct a building close to the map border fails
• FIX: Saving the game when a silizen just died prevent the save to work properly
• UPDATE: Improve savegame list loading time in main menu
• UPDATE: Performance improvement

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2022-01-27 08:05:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Chapter 01 have now a real "abandonned house" look
• UPDATE: Improvement of the building upgrade algorythm
• UPDATE: New custom scenario parameters available: budget management settings
• UPDATE: Custom icons can now be used with custom scenarios
• UPDATE: Overall performance improvement (better FPS)
• UPDATE: Memory footprint improvement

Known issues

• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2022-01-19 10:26:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Terrain grid emit color on snow
• FIX: Graphic glitch on tree alley (any kind)
• FIX: Sometimes, powerballs cannot move from a building to another
• UPDATE: Money income is transferred to the city bank account every hour instead of every month```

Known issues

• KI: Cells appear as abandonned when they're not
• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: Some light artifacts don't disappear in data view

[ 2021-12-19 17:56:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rewind on the previous challenge

Kudos to all of you who entered previous weekly challenge! The last challenge stood here for the past week. "A Christmas star" challenge was completed as it follows, Congratulations to our winners: YoTimo584 is our grand winner who made the best score 237 Followers. Bravo! _brenneke_ gets the silver medal with a score of 175 followers, Aurel claims the bronze reward for the 3rd place, with 170 followers.

Our new weekly challenge has begun: Help the Elves

Place some expensive Fir trees for the season Accomplish the given missions with the tools at your disposition to make some money quickly. Being a mayor is also about following your social networks. Game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time). See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-12-13 22:19:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Save button is visible in the demo version
• FIX: Error during viewmap change
• FIX: Some tweets were not translated in other languages
• FIX: Performance improvements
• FIX: Abandonned houses miss windows on walls time to time
• UPDATE: New shops design
• UPDATE: Size information added on building tool
• UPDATE: When a road with a crosswlak is build over a road without a crosswalk, the cost is now only the price difference
• UPDATE: More details on office buildings
• UPDATE: New moutain biome with snow (BETA)
• UPDATE: New fir tree

Known issues

• KI: Cells appear as abandonned when they're not
• KI: Sometimes, powerballs cannot move from a building to another
• KI: Texture of several buildings are bugged
• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2021-12-13 13:14:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: If a tourist is selected, its popup is not refreshed when he finds a home
• FIX: The townhall is given twice during the mission 'Reach 1000 silizens'
• FIX: The mayor house is not colored with data information in data view
• FIX: Some tweets were not translated in other languages
• FIX: Performance improvements
• UPDATE: Silizen now stay at home 1 hour before they try to find another activy to do
• UPDATE: New silizen path design

Known issues

• KI: Cells appear as abandonned when they're not
• KI: Sometimes, powerballs cannot move from a building to another
• KI: Texture of several buildings are bugged
• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2021-12-09 10:16:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our new weekly challenge has begun: A real Christmas star

The winter special serie of 4 challenges starts now! The First game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time)
You have two months to find as many followers as possible in your city! Time is running out, Christmas can't wait. Santa is counting on you to get as much followers as you can in your city to inform your silizens of the end of year celebrations. See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-12-07 08:44:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Silizens were sometime stuck in the middle of a building or the sidewalk
• FIX: During deliveries, farmers were driving with their pickup in the fields
• FIX: When silizens were looking for entertainment, they sometime headed to a corner of the map
• FIX: Powerplants no more increase their energy during pause
• FIX: When a silizen died, its popup was still there
• UPDATE: You now have the possibility to exit or save & exit when you leave your city
• UPDATE: When you change a setting that require a restart, you can now deny the restart

Known issues

• KI: Cells appear as abandonned when they're not
• KI: Sometimes, powerballs cannot move from a building to another
• KI: The townhall is given twice during the mission 'Reach 1000 silizens'
• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back
• KI: If a tourist is selected, its popup is not refreshed when he finds a home
• KI: Texture of several buildings are bugged

[ 2021-11-26 14:17:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rewind on the previous challenge

Kudos to all of you who entered previous weekly challenge! The last challenge stood here for the past 2 weeks. Week 46 got covered by the v0.34 release version. "The immigration Game" challenge was completed as it follows
Congratulations to our winners: Ceowulf is our grand winner who made the best score 1412 Silizens. Bravo! peekiwi gets the silver medal with a score of 1336 silizens, ant28jsp claims the bronze reward for the 3rd place, with 1300 Silizens.

Our new weekly challenge has begun: An old man's wish

Get as much money as possible in 12 months, with less than 250 citizens! This old town is now deserted and many houses are abandoned. Fulfill it's original destiny, rezone the neighborhood and bring it into a thriving economy! Game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time). See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-11-23 22:34:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Mayor, We just released a new update, Silicon City v0.34! Discover the new features of this last version since the early access one.

*Click* *click* - Ah! powers back on!

Due to bugs encountered recently by players, we were able to find a way to improve the energy distribution in Silicon City! The small energy balls that can be seen sailing around the city in the energy view are now independent of the game speed. The consumption and production of energy of all the buildings is now consistant and avoids the slowdowns linked to a high game speed.

Houses abandoned by their inhabitants?

When a house or an apartment is no longer occupied by any silizen for a while, they become abandoned and need to be razed by the mayor in order to renew the residential area and avoid the negative effects of an abandoned building. As a mayor you must ensure that the residences remain attractive to your citizens. If they become derelict, the surrounding area is probably not attractive enough.

The award of the most beautiful garden!

The houses of our dear silizens are embellished with new trees! The higher the land value, the more the variety of gardens will vary. Look at these apartments of the most beautiful effect!

A Blocksy terrain editor

To expand the possibilities of the city editor in sandbox mode, and to give you more opportunities to create the city of your dreams, we have added a terrain editor mode, giving you the possibility to change the type of soil.

Release content

Thanks to your feedback on our Discord server, we could make some nice fixes and upgrades as you suggested.

• NEW: Houses and apartments are becoming more and more varied! With embellished gardens and abandoned houses to rebuild. Customize your gardens
• NEW: The soil painting tool for forests, fields and beaches
• NEW: New tool to destroy the building without destroying the zone (Residential, commercial or industrial)
• UPDATE: Performance improvements. Better parallel threading
• UPDATE: Silizens search for their way in several times if it is too far
• UPDATE: French and English translations fixed
• UPDATE: 3D models of forests are drawn in a more natural way
• UPDATE: Rebalancing of the solar panels features
• UPDATE: If a word is not translated, the english word is dispayed (useful for translators)
• UPDATE: The marina has been redesigned
• UPDATE: A maintenance message is displayed for challenges between midnight and noon each monday

Bug fixes

• FIX: trackers on top of buildings don't go out of the screen anymore
• FIX: Game do not crash on MacOS + Silicon M1 chipset anymore
• FIX: The sun do not created a very bright and dazzling light anymore
• FIX: Firefighters and ambulance drivers do not use their emergency vehicle to reach the emergency destination
• FIX: Sometimes databars are not updated when building information change

Known issues

• KI: Texture of several buildings are bugged
• KI: Some silizens lose their way when they look for entertainment
• KI: The townhall is given twice during the mission 'Reach 1000 silizens'
• KI: When a gifted building is destroyed, it is not possible to build it back

[ 2021-11-16 22:14:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rewind on the previous challenge:

Kudos to all of you who entered previous weekly challenge! "Central Lake City" challenge was completed by 11 of you and the podium is as it follows:
Congratulations to our winners: Ceowulf, is our grand winner who made the best score 1 month, 22:08. Bravo! Nkbs gets the silver medal with a score of 2 months, 01:44, Peekiwi claims the bronze reward for the 3rd place, with 3 months, 03:28.

Our new challenge has begun: The Immigration Game

Get the most citizens as possible within 18 months! Pastoralbourg has a nice lake and the residential area were already set around. Build stategically the parks and commercial areas to get the most silizens possible. Think about the power and don't forget to add a fire station when possible! Game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time). See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-11-08 14:24:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rewind on the previous challenge:

Kudos to all of you who entered our first weekly challenge since the game has entered early access! "It's time to harvest" challenge was completed by 12 of you and the podium is as it follows:
Congratulations to our winners: Ceowulf, is our grand winner who made the best score 1119 Silizens. Bravo! Peekiwi gets the silver medal with a score of 800 Silizens, DoodleNoodle claims the bronze reward for the 3rd place, with 729.

Our new challenge has begun: Central Lake City

Get 200 citizens as quickly as possible! Central Lake City has been already planned using a very American grid layout. You can't override the roads already here neither the protected forest. Use space available to place residential and comercial zones efficiently. Game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time). See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-11-01 11:02:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Mayors!

Rewind on the previous challenge:

Kudos to all of you who entered our first weekly challenge since the game has entered early access! "The west bank" challenge was completed by 12 of you and the podium is as it follows:
Congratulations to our winners: PC, is our grand winner who made the best score 787 Silizens. Bravo! YoTimo584 gets the silver medal with a score of 763 Silizens, Peekiwi claims the bronze reward for the 3rd place, with 740.

Our new challenge has begun: It's time to harvest!

Employ as many workers as possible! Hello @mayor, Welcome to St Wendy! The fields, crops and cultures of our islands are ready to be harvested! The agricultural property established here is a family owned private corporation, McCornick associates, you can't build anything there. The small island you see on the east side is a natural reserve. Don't event think building some nice apartments, the government is formal, you can't build anything there either. The main island is yours! To harvest St Wendy's fields, build zones and attract farm workers within 12 months. Game is ON until next Sunday, midnight (Paris Time). See you next week to celebrate our winners! Good luck mayors!

[ 2021-10-25 15:46:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch content

• FIX: Improved electricity dispatching
• FIX: Translations improved

Known issues in 0.33.7

• Firefighters and ambulance drivers do not use their emergency vehicle to reach the emergency destination
• Powerballs still have some difficulties to reach far and almost isolated areas
• Texture of several buildings are bugged
• Sometimes databars are not updated when building information change

[ 2021-10-25 15:45:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

We managed to fix the crash that happens when the game start. It was linked to HDR capable screen. Unity (the game engine) seems to create a lot of image buffer and overload the memory.

Patch content

• FIX: HDR capable screen crash solved
• FIX: Better performance

Known issues in 0.33.6

• Firefighters and ambulance drivers do not use their emergency vehicle to reach the emergency destination
• Powerballs still have some difficulties to reach far and almost isolated areas
• Texture of several buildings are bugged
• Sometimes databars are not updated when building information change

[ 2021-10-23 15:19:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

We spent the last few days to work on several bugs the community raised via Steam discussions or Discord. We managed to improve the performance, memory usage and fixed 2 main causes of crash (related to memory usage). Here is the result.

Patch content

• FIX: You can no longer build on the water in Island biome
• FIX: Powerball in 3x speed provide electricity to building in a better way
• FIX: If you build on a forest and you don't have enough money for the building, the forest will not be destroyed
• FIX: Better building selection preview rendering
• FIX: Better memory management
• FIX: Better performance
• FIX: Several translation fix

• UPDATE: you can skip the intro using ESC key

Known issues in 0.33.5

• Displays with HDR capability and HDR turned ON on Windows and MacOS are preventing the game to start Known workaround : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1121200/discussions/0/4809273833199389744
• Firefighters and ambulance drivers do not use their emergency vehicle to reach the emergency destination
• Powerballs still have some difficulties to reach far and almost isolated areas
• Texture of several buildings are bugged
• Sometimes databars are not updated when building information change

[ 2021-10-20 14:50:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Polycorne is ready to jump into the race for the early access release of Silicon City! Find out more about the game's development roadmap over the next 18 months. A galloping adventure awaits!
This release is scheduled for 14 October 2021. This is just the beginning of a great list of updates that we will be unveiling regularly throughout this period. A lot of new things will be released: early access is part of this dynamic. Come and give us your feedback, your impressions, your ideas to build a great city builder on our Discord server. Support us by adding the game to your wishlist now. Join the adventure during early access by purchasing the game at a discounted price! Follow us on your favourite social networks: Twitter, Instagram so you don't miss any news. Silicon City's silizens can't wait to meet their next mayor, you!

[ 2021-09-23 13:48:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're proud to reveal the trailer of Silicon City to announce the release of the game in Early Access on october 14th 2021. Discover this 1min video: [previewyoutube=aJJIiDor3lY;full][/previewyoutube] Will you find the hidden bug in one of the gameplay sequences? Share it with your friends and wishlist the game to receive a notification the D day!

[ 2021-09-20 15:51:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Mayor, We just released a new update, Silicon City v0.33! Discover the new features of this last version before the early access one.

Last run before early access!

Here we are almost there! We already now the final release date for Early Access. Well tell you more in the upcomming days. Its now more than ever the time to promote Silicon City around you! The more whishlists the game will receive, the more promotion it will receive on launch day! Its your time to shine and spread the word :)

Your house received some beautiful upgrades!

We remodeled the mayors house in the game. Its now as big as your political ambitions! Look at it grow along the city, the more population, the nicer your house gets!

Stop at the red light!

Following an improvement of the navigation algorithm, we have reactivated the consideration of traffic lights. Cars stop at red lights and pedestrians wait their turn to pass. Travel times are therefore increased. It is up to you as mayor to take this into account for the good of your fellow citizens! [previewyoutube=HvWltXcNLaY;full][/previewyoutube]

More data!

The new data visualizations are now having new features: chart bars and ground decorations.




Use the 3D buttons in the maps panel to switch from 3D mode to chart mode, according to your liking to analyse the best way the strength and weaknesses of your city to help solving problems and reaching the hghest scores. As a mayor, information is key!

Minor updates

Thanks to your feedback on our Discord server, we could make some nice fixes and upgrades as you suggested.

• performance ingame improved
• loading time improvement
• the cars and silizens now wait at the traffic light
• translations and texts were corrected in French and English.

Bug fixes

• if the load of a game crash (new or savegame load), an error message appear
• silizens dont go through others buidling when navigating in the city. They now behave and take the sidewalks.
• the Steam leaderboards are now showing without issues.

[ 2021-09-16 08:01:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Mayor, The latest version of Silicon City is now available! Find out this almost last version before the early access release.

The Data Analysis feature upgraded with astonishing graphics!

At Polycorne, we like it when its pretty and useful. So these analysis view maps got way prettier, and render cool screenshots! All that while keeping it clear and fully functional, for you to extract the data you need, when you need it. We hope youll like it! Good to know : This is just the beginning, this is only a new iteration towards an extended viewmap system. Were planning to release more options next month!

Citizens that dont get lost anymore

Our beloved silizens finally know how to use a GPS to wander around town. Thanks to your feedbacks, we could enhance the navigation algorithm:

• The citizens dont get stuck going round and around in some places.
• They easily find their way to reach their destination.
• The mayor can now place pedestrian crossings wherever he/she wants to optimize the citizens path.

Procedural and infinite combination of buildings

[previewyoutube=aJKO0RsUob8;full][/previewyoutube] The citizens build themselves their house and office with random shapes, walls and roof colors, windows and other decorations. Discover their different personalities in the infinite combination of all possible buildings. Well extend this feature bits by bits to other building such as the shops, parks and farms for more and more unique cities in the next updates.

They are takling about us

Some great people on youtube are talking about Silicon City and uploaded some cool videos. Thanks to them, here are some videos in different languages:

• Nookrium: Silicon City - (Classic City Builder) - YouTube
• Memoria: Silicon City - Construisons Adorable Ville | Memoria FR - YouTube
• DrProof: Schon fast zu Old School Let's Play Silicon City 4k PC Angespielt Deutsch - YouTube

Minor updates

Thanks to your feedback on our Discord server, we were able to add many other updates, as always to make this game always better (Cheers to Rilo the Urist, watermelon, Yarso, Huddleston for their input!)

• New selection system
• New autosave feature
• New delete button for your saves in the main menu

Bug fixes

• Powerballs do not go under bridges anymore
• W (watts) are now the unit for power everywhere in the game. No more confusion between W and Wh (thanks to Hanako Seishin)
• The ISO camera now stick to 0, 90, 180 and 370 (no more weird perspective effect when you release the right clic after a camera rotation)
• The city sounds volumes takes in consideration the distance

[ 2021-07-19 11:56:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

This sunday, at 9:00PM (Paris) / 12:00PM PDT, watch the Silicon City dev team plays with the game and reveals some news upcoming features and answer your questions !
Don't miss this unique Steam Fest live event !

[ 2021-06-20 17:45:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

This Monday, june 21st 9:30PM (Paris) / 12:30PM PDT, watch the Silicon City dev team plays with other game studio from France ! We will organize a funny challenge and see if our friends can beat us !
Don't miss this unique Steam Fest live event !

[ 2021-06-16 16:11:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

This sunday, at 9:00PM (Paris) / 12:00PM PDT, watch the Silicon City dev team plays with the game and reveals some news upcoming features and answer your questions !
Don't miss this unique Steam Fest live event !

[ 2021-06-16 15:46:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

This Thursday, at 10:00AM (Paris) / 1:00AM PDT, watch the Silicon City dev team plays with the game and reveals some news upcoming features and answer your questions !
Don't miss this unique Steam Fest live event !

[ 2021-06-16 15:45:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Mayor, Silicon City gets a new community game mode: the weekly challenges.

A NEW GOAL EACH WEEK

This game mode offers challenges each new week and their goals can change, such as:

• Get to a population goal in the shortest time
• Reach the maximum amount of citizens in a given time
• Build a city with the most residential zones
• Make the most money in a given time

You got it, the goal here is not necessarily to have a stable city but to reach the target, whatever it costs. Your strategy!

A NEW MAP EACH WEEK

The Polycorne team will prepare you a new map each week. Whether it is a small island, an estuary or an abandonned city, youre about to discover all the possibilities of Silicon City! ;) [previewyoutube=pHY9Zimd2xA;full][/previewyoutube]

ALL ABORD THE LEADERBOARD

This duet challenge/map is shared between all the connected Silicon City players (for now a Steam account is required). The weekly challenge starts the monday morning between midnight and noon (UTC) to end Sunday evening at 23:59. We keep the monday morning for any maintenance. Your high scores are saved online in Steams leaderboards and can be accessed at any time. A worldwide ladder is now on and will restart for every weekly challenge.

Minor updates

Thanks to your feedback on our Discord server, we were able to identify bugs, so we could fix them and improve the game even more (rsdworker, Yanabamenara)

• The savegame list loads faster in main menu
• New building available : the marina
• Use numpad+ and numpad- in FPS mode to increase/decrease the camera altitude

Bug fixes

• Translation fixes
• The city was not loaded when a savegame was resumed
• The citizen finds available jobs more easily

[ 2021-04-02 15:46:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Mayor, One step closer to the official early access of the game ! After a quiet beginning of 2021, were back with new features and content. This version 0.30, codename Beaufort, focus on visual effects, rendering and performances.

FOLLOW US AND SHARE OUR NEWS!

We need you to make Silicon City more popular to the world. Share the news around: add the game to your Steam wishlist (click on the banner below). Follow us on social networks, retweet or share posts and spread the word. Each contribution matters and gives us more visibility, so we have more resources to finish the game this year. Without you there wouldnt be Silicon City. Thank you!

NEW WORKERS ARE IN TOWN!

Our beloved Silizens finally got two eyes to see the world around them. Some of them have a distinctive sign that let us know which job they have. For now, only 4 jobs are involved but the next ones will come later in future updates. [previewyoutube=Yy7mqCsVYs4;full][/previewyoutube] They can also express themselves now through bubble representing their emotions. Zoom in and browse your city to discover their daily routines.

MINIATURE MODE AND CAMERAS

We added two new camera modes to make the game a little bit more retro. Whether youre a fan of the city builders from the 80s, the 90s or the 00s, youll find a style that suits you! [previewyoutube=nuYwsrNGdsE;full][/previewyoutube] Protip: the default camera is a pivot camera (view from the sky). You can switch it to an FPS camera (1st person view) if you want to take advanced screenshots.
Still with the idea of giving you more creative tools, we added a miniature effect (tilt-shift). You can set this on or off, or the strength of the effect in the Settings menu.

A NEW BUILDING

We finished a new building for one of our backers. It is only available in the sandbox mode for now but it now became the largest structure of Silicon City. Apparently it helps you Silizens celebrating new years!

WHAT ABOUT NEXT?

Were still working on an new user interface. It will be ready for april, well release pictures of it soon. It will be more flexible, more complete for a complex city builder such as Silicon City and adapted to large resolutions. Other hot topics are in the oven as well: procedural construction for our buildings for infinite 3D models, a new version of traffic management, online ranked weekly challenges and a new extended tutorial. Well get back to you on Discord or on social networks each week.

A MILLION THANKS TO

We wanted to thanks the streamers and bloggers who are talking about us and the game. A special thanks this week to TWord who wrote this article about Silicon City. TWord is a blogger who collects retro consoles and games. He shares with everyone pictures of his collection and writes articles about other independent video games. Go check his website and his Instagram profile: @thetword90

Minor updates

Thanks to your feedback, we were able to identify bugs, so we could fix them and improve the game even more (Paren, Yarso)

• Better performances
• The camera position is now restored to where it was after a saved game is loaded
• The game speed is restored when a saved game is loaded
• New buildings
• More graphical and visual settings to configure
• Nicer colors for data-analytics tools
• The difficulty of chapter 1 has been reduced and is now faster to play through

Bug fixes

• Translations mistakes
• No access icon still there after road construction around a big building
• Camera locked after resuming game
• In Classic, the bank mission acts weirdly
• Story 02 crash at 22:00
• Citizen looking for work get lost
• No more freeze after midnight (the budget calculation was not optimized)
• Scrolling mouse when the game has not the focus still zoom in/out
• Exiting in game save/setting menu unpause the game even if it was paused before the menu call

[ 2021-03-13 09:31:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Mayor, First of all, were sending you a million thanks for checking out our progress so far, you lovely player of Silicon City! Were getting closer and closer to a release version of the game and are very proud to show you the new version we made.

Abondance... Is that a french cheese reference?

Yes my lord ! Were from the french Alps, and theres one true thing: we love cheese. We wanted a way to identify our updates and promote local specialties at the same time. The team started to think about it and voila! Our next update will be named after our favourite cheeses, alphabetically ordered.
This first one is named Abondance. Its is a famous cheese produced in Haute-Savoie near to our location (big up !). Find more information about this outrageously delicious cheese at Wikipedia : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abondance_(fromage) Now this cultural and delicious moment is over, back to business !

Let me tell you a story

We spent a lot of energy and passion to create a new story mode. Follow an adventure as a mayor apprentice and learn the basics of the game step by step. Meet unexpected people along your journey and make new friends and foes. Politics is definitively not an easy path

Play 3 brand new scenarii

Get in touch with the actors of Silicon City (mayors, consellors, citizens, ) New chapters will be added to the main story on a regular basis! Stay tuned for more adventures! You can see below the story mode screen. This is now the entry point which displays the progress of your adventure as an apprentice mayor. The very first level available have been designed to teach you the basic mechanics of the game. The characters you will meet are full of good intentions Help them to succeed their missions.

Unlock the sandbox box for unlimited city building!

The previous concept of blueprints is gone, now you can play with the sandbox mode and have access to ALL the building in Silicon city, without the total freeedom to build anything. Unlock that game mode by achieving all the missions in the story mode!

A scenario? Like a scripted act?

YES. These scripted games of Silicon City you will play, means we developped in house a way to programmatically interact between the player and the game. Thats called a MOD. If you know about modding, you might be interested that youll be soon able to create yours, just as we did. We still need more time to completely release this make your own saga feature, but we are close. You can see below an example of the tool we develop to create scenario graphically. We hope we will be able to offer this tool to the community.

I can see the light... But my socks are wet

Weve working hard on color and light improvement. What weve done for this first step:Improvement of the night sky color to make it more popishChanged pixel stars to cubic starsImproved tonemapping post processing We also improved the water look to match the 3 different lore available in the game:Mainland with relaxing deep blue waterIsland with waves and lagoon clear waterDesert with calm and crystal clear waterThis is the first step of a list of immersive effect in the game. We will bring other elements such as weather and daytime related effects step by step.

Who said wind is not powerful?

Hey, youre a mayor looking for more power? We got you. We brought you a new wind turbine model that produces twice the energy of the small ones. Youll have acces to it proving that you ambrace green energy. We let you find out how unlock this new model.

Drop your worries under the palm tree

Your dream of building a coastal city is now a reality. Use the new pam tree available in the Island and Desert biomes.

What a big city!

We unocked the 256256 city size. You can trust us when we say that it will takes A LOT of time to completely fill in the area. Be careful though because it is still under beta and takes a lot of computer resources. Use it at your own risk Send up your screenshots! #siliconcity

Minor updates

Thanks to our communitys feedback, we were able to fix a lot of bugs and implement some improvements.

• You do not pay again when you rebuild a block (such as alleys or road). Except for gardens (gree spaces).
• We managed to improve the game performance by smartly optimizing the code. Well wrote a specific article on that point.
• New tutorial videos
• New Steam achievements
• Reward animations and achivements when you unlock the classic and sandobx mode
• You can select your mayor avatar if your are offline (not connected to Steam)
• You can disable the TV news overview in the settings
• New tips randomly displayed during loading screen

Bug fixes

• Translations fixed
• Fixed issue with the Steam API. Some events where not sent to Steam so the Steam achievement where not unlocked
• When typing a tweet, the keyboard shortcut are disabled. The same when the setting window is displayed
• Fixed issue with roads
• Fixed issue about money not delivered to the city account at the end of the day

[ 2020-12-06 14:55:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello mayors ! Were happy to release this new version of Silicon City, 0.27 . We worked on many improvements to make the game easier to play. We did also a lot of work to prepare the next version we will release next month : the Abondance update. This version will bring a lot of very exciting new features, such as the Story mode for beginners and advanced players to understand better the game mechanics. Other features and more missions will be added too.

TWEET, TWEET AND TWEET

We improved the readability of the Population interface. The window is smaller and contains less data. Its a new small step towards the UI of tomorrow! Before
After
Tweets are longer displayed from the main population interface but contextually when a Silizen is selected. Before
After

LOOK UP IN THE SKY !

Planes are now randomly flying across the sky above your city. Look how cute they look!

WE NEED MORE MONEY

You can now manage the budget of the different public departments of your city. Increasing them will make the related jobs more attractive and will ensure your city will be more protected. In the other hand, lowering them will save your money to build new infrastructure. It's up to you !

THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD !

Are you ready to manage danger and crisis in your city ? With this new update, big fires can start and potentially a very huge rock coming from space could crash into your city. As soon as something big happens in your city, the local news will cover the event.
We implemented the natural disaster engine in the game. The meteor is the first one of a surprising list of disasters that could happen to your city. Who said mayor lifes easy?

UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY

We redesigned the map generator with a more realistic and more efficient random generator. We also increased the map size possibilities from 32x32 (extra small) to 256x256 (big). You can now generate up to 17,592,186,044,416 different map so it will be a huge challenge to play them all

MISC IMPROVEMENTS

• Firemen jobs are more easily filled in
• The game difficulty has been adjusted regarding the budget
• Pressing F will select the bulldozer and pressing F again will select back the previous tool
• Silizens can now walk on tree alleys

BUGS FIX

• A lot of translation issues have been fixed
• The game do not pause anymore when a fire starts
• The water disappears as well as the ground when the distance is too far
• Silizens who where looking for a job were not visible when the Work map layer was enabled
• Game is not resumed anymore when the objective window is closed (if the game was paused before)
• The second objective do not validate anymore before the road are really constructed
• The Silizens were not able to go home correctly. This is now fixed.
• Too many height contraint error message is no longer appearing

[ 2020-10-15 19:56:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

SERIOUS CITY TRAFFIC

Integration of intersections is now automated while laying out road in your city. Automatically, traffic lights are generated and synced together for your cars. Vertical and horizontal streets are synced and traffic lights durations are fixed to a 4 minutes cycle. Pedestrians also respect traffic lights and cross streets alternatively with cars. Creating intersections automatically generates the appropriate lanes. They get colored from green to red according the amount of traffic that sits within. New cars models and colors have been added. Theres more diversity in the streets!

TRAFFIC MAP VIEWS

The whole map of your city generates the ways layout for your citizens to navigate from a point to any another in your city. These waypoints are made for pedestrians as well as for vehicles. If you show up the Traffic view, youll see different ways the citizens can use and youll also see them navigating along their paths.
Please have a look at the following video for a quick overview of a neighborhood animation during the day on youtube here: [previewyoutube=Tpt9bdhoZtg;full][/previewyoutube]

NEW PARKS AND OTHER BUILDINGS

Finally, some new types of entertainment buildings have been added. There are a tennis court, a swimming pool and the iconic skatepark that can be built in your city as soon as youll reach rank 2. They provide a nice daily or weekly outdoor activity opportunity for your citizens. Theyre cheap buildings and raise the land value around them. Also, from now on, when you have an active soccer team in your city, every night at 8PM a match will be played and will attract many tourists according to the popularity of your team.
You can now buy a solar power plant that will distribute the greenest energy , as much as a wind turbine, however it becomes powerless at night

MUSIC & AUDIO

The second most significant change in this new update is the addition of music. Composed by Yves Days specially for Silicon City, it offers the player a better immersion in the game with a playlist that will also get new songs in the future. Sound effects were added too as both audio feedback for when the player build or destroys buildings, but also environment audio. Move your camera closer to the ground and youll hear the traffic, the birds chipping in the parks or sometimes the soccer game going on at night. If you hear a siren, they is probably an emergency going on and the police is on the way!

BUGFIXES AND SMALL UPDATES

• Navigation for citizens has been improved. The path finding is still confusing for the citizens but they navigated better in town and always reach their goal, by car and walking. Citizens with a car will park it as soon as they arrive nearby their destination to continue walking.
• Game speed has been decreased to allow a slow play mode at a realistic pace.
• Camera dont get stuck anymore underground

[ 2020-06-21 14:42:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello mayors! Theres a new update for Silicon City! Heres a brief list of the new features it includes:

• Steam achievements
• Bank loan and budget details
• Game performances

Achievements

Silicon City Achievements popup Were going to start with 20 achievements! They are unlockable if you play connected to Steam, and not in sandbox mode. Ive added the basic achievements with the city ranks to reach. Also some classic counters on the amount of houses / shops / offices you can have in your city. For exemple, youll receive the first achivement with 100 houses in your city, the second at 500 and the last one at 1000 Also are some unique achievements for special buildings you can have in a city, or some related to your soccer team. A secret one is already in the list, but not likely to be found yet. Ill place some hints here and there about hidden objectives during the development of the game in the blog.

Bank loan and budget panel

Suggested by a member of the community, there is a new option for the mayors having trouble with their finances. As soon as you finances go below 0$, the banker will give you the opportunity to build a bank to take out a loan. This will go into your gifts and youll be able to place the building for free in your city. Then select the bank and youll see the loan panel in the building overview:
Now youre able to take out a loan. You can decide ho much money you wan to borrow, up to a certain limit, based on your city rank. At Rank 1, it is only 10,000 $ but can go up to 200,000 $ at Rank 5. Youll be able to track the loan cost in the budget panel. The design here has been reviewed for more clarity and to use less space in the interface. The city expenses have been broken down into three categories: Roads, Parks and Public services. Some red and green arrows at the very right of the panel gives you indications on the evolution of your budget compared to the previous month. The chart is now interactive as the population one, and you can show or hide some parts of the cart to focus on a specific data.

Game performances

A big work has been done to make the game faster. The time the main screen takes to load has been drasticly reduced. I found more opportunities to improve the game in general so more updates on this topic will follow in the upcoming releases

Linux and MacOS support

The game is now compatible for Linux, but some issues are still here. I had to delay the release for Ubuntu 12.04 (and more) for the next version. The support for MacOS is pending because it requires Apples notarization and might take a day or two. I dont have any Apple computer to build the game and have to use somone elses to do the tests, this is why it will take a bit of time. If the results are positive, this version (0.24) will be published for MacOS during the next week. Otherwise, it may come with the Linux version, for the end of the month. If you have an old spare macbook, you can donate it to Silicon City

Bug fixes

• The leaderboard screen has been updated
• The electricity propagation has been fixed. It now navigates better through the city
• The pedestrian paths were improved for buildings with entrances, such as the police station or the soccer field.
• French translations are now complete and include the tweets of the silizens

[ 2020-04-13 12:50:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello mayors! Heres a new update for you. This one is the introduction to the sandbox mode! And some other changes such as:

• New camera movements
• New buildings: the green spaces
• Bug fixes

Its been only 2 weeks after the previous update, ans what we have here to celebrate is huge! I really hop to keep the pace going, but first, lets get an overview of

The sandbox mode! Unleash your creativity

If you dont know about sandboxes, not the ones from your early school years, but the ones you find in simulation games, let me introduce you to the concept. A game you play in Sandbox will have no limitation nor restriction on budget. Everything is free! However you dont have access to any mission and the leaderboards are deactivated, that would be too easy. The sandbox in Silicon City lets you first use all the new basic tools to create the foundations of a city, such as the roads, the alleys and the small parks with the new greeen space (check it out below). You also have access to the 7 zones and once again they all cost nothing. Now you also have access to your blueprints. These can be bought during a regular game (non sandbox). You can select (almost) any building in your existing city and buy its blueprint. The price is based on the level of this building, from 2,000$ (lvl1) to 32,000$ (lvl5). Once youve bought the blueprints of your favorite buildings, you can go back to the sandbox mode and place any of these buildings for free anywhere it pleases you. Its time to get creative and build the greatest cities ever made in a grid based City builder! Also checkout the new building added for more creativity!




You are now ready for making the craziest cities without any budget limitation

New camera movements

This new feature has been requested by the community and Im very happy I spent some time implementing it. The new rotation system used to manipulate the camera is way better than previouly. There is a new setting in the main settings screen and let you decide which kind of camera rotation you want to use. The new one, called pivot mode, has been chosen by default but you can change the setting back to its original if you want. The pivot camera rotates around the focused object. The opposite was more like an FPS camera looking to its left or right.

New building: The green space!

To come with the sandbox udpate, heres the latest building of Silicon City, and its made for creatives. The green space is available from the beginning of any game, and is a simple park that extends like the zones or trees would do. Select the green space building and place them using a drag and drop on the map. Using the same green space tool, click again on a block with a green space and change its design. With the multiple combination of paths, borders, trees and alleys, create new tow centers more beautiful and friendly than ever! Share your work using #siliconcity hashtags!

Bug fixes

• An issue where the taxes were not displayed correctly was fixed.
• Electricity navigates automatically where most of the power is needed
• Items in the main menu are now correctly selected when using them

[ 2020-03-29 03:38:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello mayors! I'm very excited to finally announce this update of Silicon City. It's been 2 months since the last one. Today I'm going to introduce you to the newest updates and show the evolution that happened in the game.

Go Soccer Teams!

Once a soccer field or a stadium is built and has hired eleven players, you'll be asked to choose more about your city team! Follow your team's score against other cities and gain from your teams popularity and results.

Avenues and new road laying tool

The reason this update took so long is mainly because of the impact of the new road features. I was inspired by the previous software I made, to integrate a proper navigation system. Brace yourselves for the most major update given to Silicon City until today. It was the best opportunity to finally include the avenues as a new kind of roads in Silicon City. Avenues are a 2 blocks wide road that can connect to smaller ones from intersections.Cars starts to go around town from working buildings, a hospital would pop ambulances and the fire station will send firetrucks in your city. Traffic is not managed yet (no traffic lights nor stops), so cars still go around freely but they will soon in the next update or the next one.

Navigation routes for silizens, cars and electricity

As you might have seen from the previous video about the merge of Rushhour and Silicon City (link), the game is now getting a new dimension into deep simulation: way finding and path navigation. The routes used in Silicon City also connects electricity. Power from your wind turbines or Coal plants will use the electric lines created by your roads and the buildings themselves. Your silizens now follow more realistic paths to go from their house to their workplace. They will use sidewalks and crossings to walk around town. The further they'll find a job from their house, the more time it'll take them to go to work, and the less money their company is going to generate.

Building entrances

Some buildings are now subject to entrances. This only allows pedestrians to enters the building from one or more specific block neighbors. Make sure to place a road over there for an access. In the updates to come, this will help making intersections with roads for cars entrances and better handle pedestrians paths. The ideas of 'hands' to connect blocks to each others came from the roads themselves. Here's an example of the connections made from road bits to each others.

Leaderboards

Who's the best mayor? Is it you? Compare your best scores with Steam leaderboards. Have the most populated city of attract the most followers to rank up the ladder! Click on the leaderboards button in the game main menu to see the best scores.

[ 2019-12-31 05:07:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=4NocvmP9x2c;rightthumb][/previewyoutube] - Social Network - Map views - Difficulty levels - New buildings - Bug fixes Social Network All the citizens in your city have a social network profile to post messages about their daily life. When they move in, get or lose a job. As a mayor, you can read all the tweets sent by your silizens and understand how they feel. Follow them to keep a closer look at a close group of interesting citizens, some of them will write relevant information. Themselves can tag their own friends or relative in their tweets. They will notify you when they have something important to let you know about, such as why they left the city.
Map views New views show more information. Works lists the total jobs available in your city, among all comercial, industrial and institutional buildings, and how many of these jobs are active or vacant. Similarly for residences, you can see the capacity of your city. This number evolves as soon as houses and apartment grows or when you lay down new zones. And finally, the energy view that shows your electricity consumption vs. what your providing.
Difficulty You can now choos any of the 5 modes of difficulty when you create a game. Once a city is started as easy, normal or hard, it is impossible to change. In a harder game, you start with less money and it is harder to please the citizens to have them to move in. New buildings - News Agency will be gifted to you when you reach 500 silizens. It allows the creation of newspapers, which are institutional and trusted sources of information. This use the Twitter messaging system to broadcast more detailed information about the city. - The Silo farm is a special unique building unlocked after a secret mission. It provides around 20 farmer jobs and also brings a bit of clean energy. - Offices: High tech Startup (3 different levels) - Irish pub, wine bar, and different shops.

[ 2019-09-22 02:04:53 CET ] [ Original post ]