We are Colossal Order, the team behind Cities: Skylines, a game close to launch that just released information about modding - AMA!

Whatever mod just gave us all that nice flair, thanks a lot, you're the best!

I asked Totaly Moo these questions before, but he told me to defer to the rest of you devs:

1. I've heard that the game will simulate families, groups of Cims with the same surname and all that - is this true? If so, what will the average size of these families be? For instance, will we generally see nuclear families of two kids and their parents, or will grandparents be included, or can there be no more than two kids per couple, etc? Or are things just really abstracted? If possible, how much of this can we mod?
2. How does crime work? Is, say, a random Cim chosen to be a criminal based on various factors such as unemployment, education level, and so on? Does the game distinguish between different crimes, like what SC4 did?
3. At release, can we mod what stuff the tweeter says? Not talking about removing or disabling it - rather I mean can we add in new tweets, and if so, what limitations are there (can we, say, mod a new building and make the tweet reference it when we place it in our cities)?
4. In the screenshots Euros are used as currency, will there be an option to use other currencies like dollars or yen or whatever?
5. This might not be answerable, but do you think it would be easy for modders to make performance mods that allow the game to be played in low-end rigs? Skyrim, for instance, has a mod that make the game playable on ancient computers by reducing the textures to to horrifically butt-ugly levels - something like that. I'm asking because my PC is really low-end, and while the cpu and so on meet the requirements I think, the GPU is waaaaaaay below minimum requirements, so I might not be able to play the game even with piss-poor fps until I get my new rig soon-ish.

Thanks in advance for answering!

In the screenshots Euros are used as currency, will there be an option to use other currencies like dollars or yen or whatever?

Those aren't Euros, that's afaik a fake currency (the "c" probably stands for "credits"?)

If they want to be REALLY clever, they could call them Cimoleons.

I hope they did not call them Cimoleons.

I think we're already in grey water (is that even a term?) with unofficially calling our citizens Cims ;)

It hasn't been lost on us Maxis folks ;)

Hope you see it as the homage it is <3

Hot water or gray area. Convey two separate ideas. Hot water means you are probably in trouble, gray area means it's iffy.

No idea who'd downvote you for that. Have an up.

Thanks for doing the AMA! I'm abig fan of Paradox and Colossal Order as I really like how you do business and how you treat your customers. To me it seems pretty miraculous how a small team such as CO can pull off a complex and thought through simulation game like Cities (let's assume it is a great as it seems so far!).

• What do you think were the factors that made you so succesful in your venture?

• Totally Moo mentioned in an interview that Mariina was/is a very strict boss. Can the other CO guys confirm that and do you think it was a crucial for the quality of the end-product?

Upvoting because Mariina hasn't reacted to that quote yet, at least not to my knowledge, and I can't live much longer without knowing if that was a goof by me or not ;)

The game seems to be featuring animals such as dogs and different farm animals (or am I wrong?)

However, I haven't seen anything about cats. Will modders be able to correct this glaring mistake and introduce cats into the game?

At first I thought it was you who posted this thread but apparently more people want cats.

You're not able to mod in new animals or citizens at launch, no. Would be super cool to add!

Cats? I fear for the safety of Chirper.

Crap, why didn't I think of that as a reason? Clever :(

Is it posisble to remove the size limit with modding tools? So instead of 9 tiles you could have more space to build?

We will not have modding support for increasing the size of the map as we have pushed the size to the maximum already (given technical limitations and reasonable performance).

Maybe /u/Totalymoo can clarify this, as I think there is a misunderstanding.

It seems that /u/co_martsu is perhaps saying that the actual map size itself cannot be increased, but modders will still be able to unlock 25 tiles on those maps if they choose to?

EDIT: Or perhaps she means that while modders can still unlock all 25 tiles, this is simply not something that will be supported by CO?

Basically, to my understanding, it's theoretically possible but it's not easy. Someone with a lot of knowledge about programming and unity can make it happen but there's no official tool for it, at least not at launch.

We know there is somewhat of a demand for a day / night cycle or at least the option to toggle even from an aesthetic purpose, a night cycle. Will this be something that you aim to do in the future or is this something the mod community could attempt?

We'd love to add it in the future, probably - mostly - as an aesthetic feature. I reckon, at least with the tools we're launching with, that it's a bit much for modders to bite into.

How do monuments work? Do they just attract tourist or do normal citizens come to visit them? Do they employ the cities' citizens? Can we make monuments in the asset creator and make a strip of casinos like Las Vegas?

Monuments are late game super buildings. They are often associated with powerful stats like raising land value a lot or attracting tourists, but they also come with a secondary - even more valuable - boon. That is the unique bonus they bring to the game.

So for example a certain monument can completely fill the city's need for electricity, or remove all ground pollution.

I'll let CO take the latter part of your question, a bit technical for me :)

By monuments do you mean buildings like the Eiffel Tower in the deluxe edition? It would be great if you could list the ones in the game.

No, that's a unique building. They "only" add land value, happiness and attract tourists.

Boon? What's that?

Something helpful/positive.

Will there be protests, riots and looting in the game if you're citizens aren't happy?

Not at launch, no. They mostly complain and then move to another city.

Hi guys, I have never found an answer to the following question:

What happens if the city has 1 million residents? Can we not continue to build? Or can we build more, but the remaining residents will no longer simulated?

You can continue building but no one will move in. So you're "stuck" at 1 mil pop. Things will continue working etc. but there's simply no new influx of citizens.

If I recall correctly in a video was stated that you could expand your city up to ~9 "tiles" (Don't remember exactly how you called it sorry!) even though there are a tonne more that can be easily enabled by modders.

Given that you provided this information, isn't it easier, faster and safer if you had an option to set a maximum number of tiles available with a disclaimer saying that going to the max might or will cause performance issues?

I'm so excited for this game!!!

EDIT: some words

Never a good idea to launch with an official option that isn't supported performance wise. No matter how many warnings you put on it people expect that a feature in the game should work flawlessly :)

Do you have plans for an online mode?

Not currently, no.

First off, thank you all for being bold enough to resurrect the city building genre. And thank you for what all evidence says is going to be a great game

On that note, what lead you to say "lets make our very own city building game?" other than recent failures by other studios and companies?

I think Shams, our acquisitions manager, mentioned that we started talking with Colossal over 4 years ago about a city builder. It was simply the time for us to make one, and CO is the perfect developers to do it as they are super passionate about the genre.

Both PDX and CO are big fans of older city builders, it's natural that we want to bring our own to the table :)

Is there a Linux port?

Yes, we launch with Linux, Mac and Windows support!

Are ploppable parking lots functional? If so, once a CIM parks will he/she walk to their destination?

Yes and yes :)

Night everyone, thanks again for participating. Stay awesome and join us at /r/citiesskylines!

60 fps - One more question please :)

• Is 60fps possible on a big city with the latest cpu and gpu? Or will it drop to 20fps for instance.

Thanks!

Yup, easily. Now I haven't played cities that fill all tiles and have the max pop but I've never noticed my game drop below 60 except for very brief framedrops where it might go down to 30-40. Honestly I didn't notice it before one of our trailer guys pointed it out and I turned on a FPS counter (playing on max settings with a 760 and an older i5).

Hi guys, super excited for this game and just can't wait to play! My question is since we will be getting a lot of cosmetics from the super modding community and small tweaks to the game, how big will your DLCs be in comparison to the free tweaks we get from the modders? Sorry if this has been asked and answered before! 13 more days!! =D

Expect most expansions/DLC's to be larger more "old school" type updates where we bundle many new features and content in one go. There might be smaller things here and there but our main focus lies with substantial expansions that make you feel like they add a lot of value to an already great game :)

What is your biggest fear for the initial launch of the game?

Why did you choose the name skyline?

Cant answer from CO's side, but personally...

That people expect too much from us and can't see what we set out to create and deliver.

Because it's darn hard to name a citybuilder if you want any kind of proper SEO and this turned out to be the most sensible name, plus CO made the Cities in Motion games prior to this - so Cities SOMETHING was a good way to go.

I'm planning to spend some time travelling around Scandinavia this summer. Are you (PDX or CO) averse to fans dropping in to say hi and thanks in person if they're in the area?

Can only answer for Paradox, or honestly personally. I'd totally be down for a fika if a Cities fan dropped by.

Fika (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈfiːˌka]) is a concept in Swedish culture with the basic meaning "to drink coffee", often accompanied with pastries or sandwiches. [...] In some social circles, even just a sandwich or a small meal may be denoted a fika similar to the English concept of afternoon tea.

I had to google "fika", but now I know that it's not a terrible typo I'm sold.

Also /u/TotalyMoo I think it's safe to say that you have been the face of Cities: Skylines on Reddit. The fika would be on me.

I'm not going to turn down a coffee and cinnamon bun bribe any day soon. Give us a poke if/when you're around :)

I really want to buy this game, but there's one thing that make me hesitate.

Take this screenshot as an example.

That building with the red billboard on the roof appears in the screenshot ten times, just rotated. The brown horse-show apartment building is there, cloned over and over too.

That screenshot's from a dev blog, but will the final release have the same limited number of assets?

This is an older screenie, even has the old UI, but there is still not a crazy asset variation. You won't see something this intense in the current game, we have several hundreds of different buildings.

Compared to some other big budget city builders we don't have the same extreme variation, no.

Just got one simple(?) question. What will we be able to mod? We know for example that we will be able to create our own 3D objects/buildings and maps, but what about scripts, sounds, textures for example?

Please take a gander at the modding wiki we put up today and, if you feel this is still something you're wondering after you've read that - we'd be glad to answer further :)

Can roads me moddable? Like realistic turn lanes and ramps? Is this somthing CO might add as DLC?

Roads aren't moddable at release but we'd love to add that functionality. Theoretically we could also release additional road options as paid or free DLC.

Will fires spread between buildings? Do you have to manually direct fire trucks to fires?

Nope, right now they are contained to the affected building.

And nope, fire trucks work automatically. :)

As was pointed out in this thread, the game features dog parks, but no cat parks. How does CO justify this major inequality? Cats are people too!

Our feline masters claim that there's no feasible way to replicate their grandeur in digital form; thus they have forced us only to add dogs as to mock their lowly rank in society.

Pretty much.

How hard is it to make roads EXACTLY the way I want them? Watching some early footage I noticed that roundabouts tended to be drawn as ovals, however I also noticed that someone had made a city entirely of perfect concentric circles.

Not too hard if you put effort into it. When you do curved roads there's a "ghost" thing that helps you see the angles, and you can turn on/off snapping to grid.

Hi Colossal Order!

Really looking forward to March 10th. Very important question: What are each of your drinks of choice when out at the pub?

Thanks!

Duvel or something similar to it.

Very much looking forward to the game, thank you for taking questions!

I very much welcome the from-the-get-go support of mods, but I also wonder about post-release official support. Outside of bug fixes (hopefully not necessary, but this is the real world of course!), can you say anything about what players can look forward to, ie. major city thematic options or expansions on the base game systems?

We're holding off on deciding most of our post-release plans until players have had their hands on the game, so there's very little concrete we can share with you today. What we can say is that you should look to the EUIV/CK2 DLC model that Paradox has taken previously, with adding free updates, patches and content alongside larger expansions that makes the gameplay deeper.

Still, stuff that we presume we'll focus on is adding more gameplay into current systems, increasing mod functionality and tools and creating new features like - for example - a day night cycle.

Hey! I'm a big fan of what you have shown and promised so far.

I just wanted to ask, are you able to turn up/ turn down the amount of cars being shown on the screen?

There's currently no dial for that, no. We're using pretty clever LOD scaling so, when you're fully zoomed out, you won't see the vehicles but as you get closer (to a reasonable distance) they will appear.

Thanks for your support!

Will there be triple-screen 5760x1080 support for the game? You all are doing God's work! Especially you Moo.

Dude, thanks but I'm not OK with being set aside like that. CO are the ones developing the game, I just get paid to talk about it. They deserve all the credit!

And no triple monitor support, unfortunately.

Oh I know. I was just joking around.. I can't even comprehend the skills necessary to develop a product like Cities Skylines. The entire team is doing an outstanding job from development to public relations and community outreach.

Sorry, didn't mean to come off as harsh. It's just inconceivable to me that I could take any kind of cred for this game, I'm just a supporting cast to CO's superstars.

Thanks for your support!

Hey guys!

I love the look of the game, and can't wait to get my hands on it when it releases. Just wanted to say that I don't really have any questions, but I was a SimCity (newer version) player and I did enjoy it, but I'm looking forward to your game for a little more realism in the simulation!

I guess a question would be...any disasters that could either be modded in or will be included stock? I always loved destroying everything in SimCity when I wanted to start over haha

Thanks!

Hey, thanks for your support! We're not launching with any kind of disasters beyond the chance of planning your city badly (wink) but this is one of the features we'd love to expand into in the future.

Still, we're mostly holding off on the DLC/expansion plans until we've let players had their hands on the game and given us feedback as to what they miss.

Thanks!! that was the first time anyone answered one of my ama questions. I feel so accomplished now!

Isn't the point of AMA's to answer as many questions as possible? :s Still, cool that you appreciate it. high five

Are you considering taking stuff built for the workshop and permanently adding them to the game in updates?

Probably not, but I am personally planning to have an official, curated list of mods and assets that people can just click in the workshop and get all the things we consider, well, awesome.

Why is Henri advertising Call of Duty?

Idk but imma join in. The latest Call of Duty was an awesome single player experience and kind of cool online too. It's the first COD since CoD4 I haven't regretted buying.

Hey guys, looking forward to the game! Is there a way to kill off cims? I'd like to create a "last man on earth" scenario in a major city, just to see how he copes with it. His glasses may or may not break.

You can force them all to drink polluted water, for example :p