14 DAY TRIAL // The latest developer diary from Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order details maps and how to go about editing them.
Cities: Skylines is the upcoming city-building simulation from the makers of the transportation-oriented Cities and Motion 1 and 2. The game focuses on zoning, infrastructure placement and management, public services and taxation, in a nutshell, a modern-day SimCity.
The game features a ton of in-depth simulation features, from water flowing realistically when you lay down a dam or bridge, to being able to place free-form roads and weirder-shaped zoning plans, that follow the environment and the infrastructure, and don't simply snap to a grid.
The developers also stated that one of their goals was to attract an active community of content-creators, and as such, your own models can be added to the game and used in your city planning, through Steam Workshop integration.
All about maps
The map editor will be one of the features utilized by players to create new content for others to experience. The way the map works in Cities: Skylines is that there is a playable area and another one that's just there as eye candy, the outer limits of the city where you can see tall mountain ranges, rivers and the ocean.
A good map relies on having enough flat space to build the future metropolis, as well as enough interesting terrain to make it challenging and fun to build on. The terrain features include rivers, lakes, highways connecting it to the outside world, and the map editor keeps track of everything and shows you how well your map is laid out.
All maps have a starting tile and several unlockable areas where players will be able to expand, and choosing the right location will dictate the general direction that players expand in.
A ton of useful features
The map editor comes with a bunch of terrain edition tools, enabling user to do pretty much everything they would like, from raising and lower to flattening, smoothing and creating slopes.
In order to create more natural-looking formations, players can also use brushes with various settings, which they can employ to fine-tune the minute details.
The map editor also uses custom heightmaps in order to automatically create natural-looking formations, as doing everything by hand from scratch can be very difficult.
Players can also place natural resources on the map, such as fertile land, trees, ore and oil. If you wish to learn more about how to make the best possible maps, give the entire dev diary a read.
Cities: Skylines is scheduled to come out sometime in Q1-Q2 2015, headed to Windows PC, Mac OS X and Linux.
