Dev Diary - City Stations by Bad Peanut

Hello everyone!

Bad Peanut here, and this is the dev diary for my first Creator Pack for Cities: Skylines II. For those of you who know me, I’m going back to my roots with some public transport. For those of you who don’t know me, I started out making assets for Cities: Skylines way back in 2015 (yes, I am now officially Old™), where I made train station assets, vehicles, and other things inspired by local Australian architecture.

Over the years, I released quite a portfolio of content for free on the Steam Workshop, as well as two Content Creator Packs - Train Stations and Sports Venues. Since Cities: Skylines II launched, I’ve also continued making free assets on my Paradox Mods creator profile following the release of the asset editor beta.

In this dev diary, I’m going to take you through the ideas I had when designing this pack and show off some of the features and details I’m most proud of.

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I’ve always thought of City Stations as a bit of a spiritual sequel to my first pack, Train Stations. A lot of the concepts I used in that pack have been expanded upon here, but this time making use of some of the new functionality Cities: Skylines II gives us as asset creators.

One of the biggest differences this time around is the wider range of transport options available in the base game. In particular, trams are now part of the core transport network, so it felt important to include them in the design of the pack as well.

Looking at the public transport systems available, I decided to focus on the four main intra-city types: Bus, Tram, Train, and Subway.

From there, I had to decide the scope of how many buildings I could realistically create during the development period. I wanted the pack to feel diverse and flexible so players could use the stations in many different situations across their cities, while also including a cornerstone “landmark” for each type to give your city that wow factor.

For each transit type, I wanted to include two stations that can be placed repeatedly across your city as everyday variants, as well as one major landmark station. There are also a variety of upgrades that are used across most of the assets.

Stations that are not unique and can be placed many times in your city make use of the placeholder propping system in Cities: Skylines II. This means I have created a “placeholder” prop that represents the roof elements of the platforms and concourses. Each time you place a station, it randomly selects one of two roof designs to use.

Each of these roof designs also includes an assortment of colour variations separate from the main building’s colour variations. This helps each station feel slightly different, so you aren’t placing the exact same-looking station across your city every time.

All bus stations included in the pack are designed to be slightly sunken below ground so that the pedestrian concourses span over the bus lanes, allowing grade separation between bus traffic and the people accessing the stations. This helps keep passenger movement smooth while buses continue flowing through the station.

There is also a new bus stop prop included, designed with slightly more comfort for citizens waiting for the next bus.

• Compact Bus Depot

• Architectural Bus Stop Shelter

• Small City Bus Station

• Large City Bus Station

• City Center Bus Station

Each transport type includes a new depot, and I tried to make these depots as compact or functionally different as possible compared to the base game versions.

While its footprint is small, it still packs a fleet of 10 buses and includes an upgrade for electric buses if you choose to use it.

I made the decision to keep the shed open so you can see any parked buses. Since we can now have service vehicles parked on lots, it adds a bit more detail and realism to the depot.

Compact Bus Depot

This is a new bus stop prop that can be placed on your sidewalks, acting as a slightly more comfortable and desirable stop for your citizens.

If your citizens care about comfort, they may prioritise using a bus line that utilises these shelters - and yes, they will sit down to wait!

Architectural Bus Stop Shelter

This is the smallest bus station included in the pack. It has 4 integrated bus platforms and also features 2 parked buses on the lot, acting as a microbus depot to add a little extra capacity to your city’s fleet.

While this station doesn’t have any upgrades, the upgrade menu contains a shortcut to the bus line tool, making it faster to access and create bus lines without returning to the transportation menu.

A key aspect of my stations is that the public can use them as recreational park spaces, so this station also provides a small amount of park leisure to the surrounding area.

Small City Bus Station

The Large City Bus Station has similar functionality to its smaller counterpart. It spans a larger area, allowing space for more bus platforms. Each platform includes pull-in bays so other buses can move past vehicles that have stopped to take on passengers.

It has two upgrades available - Extra Platforms and a below-ground Subway Interface.

The roofs used on the platforms alternate between two designs, as does the main roof over the central plaza and concourse, along with the Subway Interface.

Citizens can spend leisure time here before their journey starts, as the station also doubles as a park for the surrounding area. They can also use the station as a small public parking area for park-and-ride trips or for visiting nearby spaces.

Large City Bus Station

This is the landmark bus station for the pack - a unique building. Because of this, its visual appearance mostly doesn’t have alternating designs, so as a statement piece, it will always have a consistent look when placed in your city. That being said, the platforms still utilise the randomising roof props.

The functionality of the station starts with a single platform per concourse, but there is an upgrade available to add a second platform attached to the same concourse. Citizens will route to the end of their platform before gathering in the waiting area, so if you have long lines for the bus, they won’t stretch far enough to block the stairs (though if it gets that far, you might need to add more buses to the line).

There is also a small, basic bus depot that adds an additional fleet of 8 buses to your city. The caveat is that it does not house electric buses by itself. The station also features a wide open park in front of the concourses and a small car park outside the front of the waiting hall and staff offices.

It also supports the Subway Interface upgrade, which comes with its own alternating roof designs.

City Center Bus Station

Two of the tram stations are designed to be part of a plaza or gathering point for people. The tracks run through from front to back, allowing you to create a through-tram plaza or ignore the rear access and treat it as a terminating stop.

The landmark asset is a terminal station where the trams loop around the back, meaning pedestrians don’t need to cross the tracks to wait on the platform safely.

Included assets:

• Compact Refurbished Tram Depot

• Architectural Tram Stop Shelter

• Small Tram Plaza

• Large Tram Plaza

• Tram Terminal Plaza

This tram depot is something I really like - it reminds me of the older tram depots in Melbourne when I used to live there. The fact that it offers a larger number of trams for the area it takes up is also a big advantage for the building.

It comes with an upgrade that adds an additional modern tram shed to the back of the lot, giving you 6 extra trams to add to your fleet.

Compact Refurbished Tram Depot

Similar to the new bus stop prop, this tram stop prop allows you to place a modern-looking shelter with slightly more comfort for your waiting passengers, who can make use of the built-in seating.

Whether placed on the sidewalk or on a road median, the stop can be used as part of the road layout to accommodate it. Two shelters can fit side by side on a median to service both directions.

Architectural Tram Stop Shelter

This plaza has a tram track running on a curve through its centre. The track connects automatically to the road at the front, and you can optionally connect the rear side to create a through-station or leave it disconnected to use it as a terminal stop.

Doubling as a park asset, it supports nearby properties and residents with a recreation space, even if they aren’t planning to take the tram. The roof design alternates between two models.

Small Tram Plaza

The Large Tram Plaza is an expanded version of the Small Tram Plaza. It provides a leisure space for citizens to spend time, as well as 6 platforms for trams to stop at.

Its alternating roofs provide shelter for passengers waiting at the platforms, and it features an upgrade that adds a small tram depot yard at the rear of the lot to help boost the number of trams available in your city.

Large Tram Plaza

The landmark station for trams is a large, sheltered plaza where the tram tracks loop around the rear of the building, creating terminus platforms so that citizens don’t need to cross tracks to wait for their next tram.

It features an indoor passenger hall where people can wait, buy food, or pick up the local newspaper. Out front, there is a fountain and, like the other landmark stations, a tall glass clock tower. The clock tower can be replaced with a Subway Interface upgrade that connects passengers to subway services at the front of the plaza.

The design of the building remains unique within your city and was inspired by a station I previously made for Cities: Skylines as a modular train station, loosely inspired by Rotterdam Centraal.

Tram Terminal Plaza

Subway stations were some of the station types I created for my first Content Creator Pack for the original game. I wanted to provide similar options for the sequel, so you will likely recognise concepts such as the bypass station and the 4-platform station, not to mention the return of a sunken subway plaza.

This time, the plaza appears as a circular park that can be upgraded and is one of my favourite stations in the pack. It was also the first station I modelled and planned out during development.

Included assets:

• Compact Subway Yard

• Small Subway Plaza

• Elevated Bypass Subway Station

• Sunken Subway Park

This compact subway yard was designed to be a shallower version of the base game yard, allowing you to fit more vehicles into a smaller space. To start with, you get 6 subway vehicles parked under the main shed, which also houses the offices where staff can have good oversight of the tracks beneath the roof.

An upgrade adds another 6 subway vehicles and a new, shorter shed adjacent to the main one. The tracks are slightly sunken, with one end of the yard connecting to a ground-level offshoot and the other linking to the underground network via a concrete tunnel entrance.

The yard also includes space for public parking that can be used by staff and nearby residents. The design of the shed mirrors the modern shed used in the Tram Depot.

Compact Subway Yard

As you can see, the theme of public transport as a public space continues! This Small Subway Plaza is home to a park where citizens can come and hang out.

It starts with a double-track island platform and, with an upgrade, expands to include a second perpendicular island platform that runs beneath the first, connected by an underground concourse.

The roof design alternates between two styles, and there is a separate upgrade that adds a compact bus interface. This creates a small loop around the plaza and adds 3 pull-in bus bays.

Small Subway Plaza

With a return to the bypass configuration, this elevated subway station starts as an island platform, with 2 bypass tracks running along the outer edges.

When upgraded, 2 side platforms and their supporting access structures connect to the underpass. This station also features 2 alternate designs to switch between and includes the familiar compact bus interface upgrade, adding 3 bus bays to the main entrance.

The station is placed perpendicular to the road beneath it rather than parallel.

Elevated Bypass Subway Station

Here it is - the landmark of the subway stations. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and while it follows similar principles to its predecessor in my first pack, it’s a completely new take.

As a circular asset, it can be placed and elegantly integrated into a surrounding park area or even in the centre of a giant roundabout. If circles aren’t your favourite, it still fits into a square space, and you can use the pathways and surfaces tool to tweak the included connections to suit.

Featuring the iconic glass clock tower, the central park area is visited by citizens who can picnic or do yoga on the lawns, or sit on the stepped terraces to watch the subways go by.

The first level of tracks is smoothly curved to complement the circular shape of the sunken park. If your subway network is busier and requires more platforms, an upgrade is available that removes the central park area (and therefore reduces the attraction value), replacing it with a second, deeper level containing 8 extra platforms.

For those of you who have little trust in the powers of drainage, it also includes an upgrade that adds an architectural glass roof to protect the platforms from the worst of the weather, boosting the station’s comfort.

Sunken Subway Park

Also featured in my original pack for the first game, train stations are my bread and butter, as they were the first kind of asset I ever made for the franchise. Since then, I’ve created many more, whether through Content Creator Packs, free uploads, or even as part of official DLC during my time at Colossal Order.

As with the subway transport, these stations build on the principles of bypass stations and compact variations, all except the landmark train station. There’s nothing compact about that one!

Included assets:

• Compact Rail Yard

• Sunken Bypass Train Station

• Elevated Bypass Train Station

• City Central Train Station

Compact Rail Yard

The Compact Rail Yard starts as a terminal yard. The shed - which matches the design of the subway shed and modern tram shed - is open so you can see the train parked within, with the staff offices located in a two-level space next to the tracks.

Each track has a maintenance platform that allows workers to thoroughly inspect and clean vehicles when they are returned to the yard, and the site is surrounded by a fenced perimeter for safety.

The rail yard also includes a sub-building upgrade in the form of a separate throughway rail yard, with its own maintenance platforms and fencing, which can be placed multiple times around the main yard.

Compact Rail Yard

Here is one of the first assets I worked on for the pack, second only to the Sunken Subway Park. It features a sunken set of tracks configured initially with 2 inside bypass tracks and 2 outside tracks serving the platforms. This allows trains to service the station without holding up through traffic, as can be seen in the screenshot below.

It includes built-in parking roads, space for a Subway Interface upgrade, and the option to replace one section of the parking roads with a bus interface.

The roof design alternates between two models, both covering the overpass concourse that connects the platforms.

The final upgrade available adds a centre island platform, converting the station from a bypass configuration into a 4-platform station and adding a stair and lift connection to the centre of the concourse.

Sunken Bypass Train Station

Similarly, the Elevated Bypass Train Station matches the design of its sunken counterpart, though it has a few quirks of its own. The building resembles an older brick station with arches that has been renovated with a modern passenger hall finished with a stone façade.

You’ll find built-in parking roads at the front of the lot, as well as beneath the arches. When connected at the rear, these allow traffic to pass through underneath the station.

The parking lot in front of the new hall can be replaced with a bus interface, and there is also space for a Subway Interface upgrade.

As with the sunken version, the bypass station can be upgraded to add an island platform, giving you the choice between a bypass station and a 4-platform station. At both ends of the station, tucked beneath the final arches, you’ll also find small local shops for passengers to browse before their journey.

The roof over the platforms alternates between two designs, or can be left open with no roof at all.

Elevated Bypass Train Station

This landmark station is the largest in the pack. In its base form, without any upgrades, it features 12 platforms of varying lengths and curvature. It has a large open plaza at the main entrance and a suspension bridge for pedestrians to cross from one side to the other, while also connecting to most of the platforms.

It includes two main corridors of connecting track, with an 8-vehicle rail yard built into the rear of the lot, boosting your train fleet without needing to place an additional rail yard.

Starting as a terminal station, it can be upgraded to add tunnels beneath the entrance concourse. It also supports a Subway Interface upgrade and a Botanical Gardens upgrade, allowing the station to act as both a transport hub and a leisure space for your city.

City Central Train Station

This pack also includes new pedestrian overpasses, found in the Pathways tab under the Landscaping menu. They can snap to the centre of roads or be placed freely - just be sure to connect some form of pedestrian access to each stair.

Included assets:

• Small Pedestrian Overpass

• Medium Pedestrian Overpass

• Large Pedestrian Overpass

• Extra Large Pedestrian Overpass

Four sizes correspond to the width of road they are best suited for, though the wider variations can of course be placed over smaller roads. The Medium, Large, and Extra Large versions also include an upgrade that adds stair access to a wide median if you have the appropriate road and road upgrade placed.

They work best when used together with the crosswalk road tool to remove nearby crosswalks.

The overpasses also use the small roof placeholder seen on the bus stations, so they will alternate between two designs or appear without a roof at all.

They also provide a small amount of park Attraction, allowing citizens to spend a little leisure time watching the traffic go by. If they’re anything like me, they might sit there for ages just watching cars zoom around the city.

Overpass with Median Access

All overpasses are on their best-suited road widths, with a wide sidewalk upgrade on the median.

Finally, the pack includes 14 props for you to use freely when customising your city spaces. The two architectural stops we’ve taken a closer look at are included, along with the glass Modern Central Clock Tower, which can be freely placed or even used in the centre of a roundabout.

All of the props can be found under the Landscaping menu in the Park tab. You can also filter by the City Stations pack to find them more easily.

But what exactly are these props? Because of the alternating roof designs, they are all technically what the game refers to as a sub-object - essentially the technical term for “props” in Cities: Skylines II. Since they function as props due to their ability to spawn randomly, I decided to expose most of them so you can use them yourself to create custom plazas, stops, or whatever else you’d like to decorate your city with.

The 11 pavilions can be freely placed and have collisions that align only with the structure or supporting pillars. This means you can build underneath them easily without running into collision errors - as long as you avoid the pillars, of course.

All props, excluding the architectural stop shelters, are found in their respective transport tabs.

Examples of the Modern Central Clock Tower placed as a roundabout, and the flexibility of one of the roof props.

One of the cool features of this pack is the use of alternating roof designs. Each station that uses this system has its own custom “placeholder” object. This means that any asset creator who wants to can add their own designs to the pool of random roofs that can be selected by each station.

As long as the roof they design generally fits the station, all they need to do is set the custom placeholder object in the new roof’s Spawnable Object Component.

As an example of this concept, the screenshot below shows the station on the left with its blue and white checker placeholder object. On the right, you can see both alternating roof designs included in the pack, each with its own separate colour variations for additional variety.

The right panel also shows a preview of where the placeholder object is set on a specific roof prop.

Behind-the-scenes look at the stations in the Asset Editor.

And that’s that!

I hope this gives you a good look into the ideas and design process behind the stations in this pack. My goal with City Stations was to give you a range of transport hubs that feel like real parts of your city - places where people gather, travel through, and spend time.

I’m really excited to see how you use these stations in your own cities, whether it’s building huge transport interchanges or small neighbourhood hubs.

Thanks for reading,

Bad Peanut

You can find more assets from Bad Peanut for Cities: Skylines (1) and Cities: Skylines II!

Please enjoy these last few screenshots of the busiest stations!