City Corner #7 - Morning Dew

Hello Mayors!

It’s that time again, where we look at the things that are in store for you in our next patch! This time, the focus has been on vehicles and their pathfinding. We mentioned in our City Corner #4 - A Peek into Performance, that we were working on improving the vehicle behaviors, and we are finally ready to tell you about the first implementations we have made to make traffic more manageable! We have also completed our shadow improvements we started a few patches ago. These improvements fix obvious visible issues, especially when you’re playing around with different camera angles.

Patch 1.5.9f1 - Morning Dew will be out tomorrow at around 10AM CEST!

As a continuation of our earlier shadow improvements, we have prepared changes in the upcoming patch that further polish the way they behave within Cities: Skylines II. You might have noticed before that when you admired your city and tilted your camera towards the horizon, the distant shadows seemed to be playing hide-and-seek, disappearing and reappearing in the distance. In this patch, we’ve fixed the shadow rendering distance jumping around, resulting in less flickering, less strain on the eyes, and, of course, better views overall!

A demonstration of the shadow flickering in action, and looking into the distance after the upcoming patch!

Another improvement in this patch addresses shadows cutting off when looking straight down. Previously, if you zoomed the camera in very close, you might have noticed the shadows forming a noticeable circular shape near the edges of your screen. This effect has now been fixed, making shadows appear much more natural and consistent, even at closer camera distances.

Old - Shadows are clipped from the edges.

New - Shadow clipping is fixed from the edge of the screen.

As you can see, the shadows are no longer cut off around the edges, allowing you to capture those beautiful close-ups without the shadows disrupting the fantasy!

We have also taken a look at the shadow cascade distribution and fixed the issue where it was unevenly distributed. Previously, shadow cascade levels were not distributed evenly, which caused the shadow quality to drop closer to the camera. This was especially noticeable on lower shadow quality settings. In addition, we have slightly improved the shadows of the trees’ flickering while the simulation is running and the sun is moving.

Old - Shadow cascades were not used effectively before.

New - Shadow cascades are now more evenly distributed, which significantly improves shadow quality.

With these improvements, shadows should now behave more consistently, no matter the camera angle or distance. So, whether you are admiring your city from afar or zooming in on the smallest detail, the world should now look cleaner and more natural.

Traffic jams can be incredibly frustrating, not only in real life, but also in Cities: Skylines II. To make the traffic smoother and less rage-inducing, we have improved the vehicle behavior in a way that the vehicles will now make fewer illegal U-turns. Previously, the cost of a legal U-turn was 0, so it was always considered a valid option when it came to routing. We have now increased the cost significantly to reduce unrealistic legal U-turn behavior. We have also done the same for unsafe U-turns and increased the cost even higher. These adjustments should noticeably improve the car pathing, resulting in more realistic traffic behavior and less traffic jams within your city!

Highway with neater lane change behavior.

In addition to U-turns, we have also adjusted the vehicle lane selection logic. Currently, the vehicles tend to switch lanes too late, which has also caused a lot of traffic jams. For this patch, we have improved the lane merges to be more realistic, so that the vehicles will actually change lanes at an earlier point. This should be especially noticeable with highway exit behavior being more realistic. These changes won’t fix everything related to the traffic behavior, but you should see a significant improvement.

For this patch, we have again taken a look at some of the bugs you have reported and terminated them.

For example, natural resources were previously being depleted at a faster rate than intended on easy mode. This has been fixed in the upcoming patch, which means you don’t have to demolish your farms to get more bang for your buck!

Speaking of resources, farms, and specialized industry, we have also prepared a fix for the stuck delivery trucks, which were unable to leave the specialized industry buildings to export and sell their stock, causing the cargo to pile up. Now, the trucks should properly leave the buildings, as intended. The Coal Power plants also had the same problem, where they couldn’t receive the resources they had sent their vehicles to purchase, since the truck would always despawn immediately. This has now been fixed, as well.

Last but not least, we have reviewed and prepared a fix for the education overlay, which previously showed all children as eligible students for elementary schools, even though in our latest patch, we changed it so that the toddlers will no longer go to school. The issue here was found within the UI, and after this upcoming patch, the education overlay will show the correct number of students for the elementary school.

As we’re heading towards summer, we are planning on releasing a major patch for you to explore and play with in June. We will keep working with the game throughout the summer, during which we will gather more of your feedback on the changes and the suggestions you have sent us. Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, let us know what you think about the upcoming patch in the comments!

See you soon!