A fresh update has just been released for Highrise City. And we have plenty of other news as well. But let's focus on what's new first. After massive feedback from the Community we're finally ready to roll out the new Research menu. You will have multiple categories now and can invest your hard earned research points in multiple tech trees. The new structure is way more effective and was also built with future content in mind. There are also some research missions now which you can fulfill.
Additionally the UI got an overhaul. Highrise City now looks more modern and we hope you like the new order and style. The HUD got reworked as well and the Tutorial got improved, too. For the future we will also update the voice overs.
And there's even more. New Milestones got added, we improved loading times, added smaller animations, updated various buildings and even added new ones (There's a new power plant... you'll find it, no worries!). And we've been fixing and finetuning a lot of things.
Full Changelog:
New UI
New Research Menu
Research Missions
HUD displays unemployed people per citizen stage. You can switch between relative to the camera position and absolute numbers
New animations for building selection
Improved the tutorial for new UI elements
Reduced Zone 4 & 5 building cists
Added 6 new Milestones
Optimized the game a lot, depending on the machines memory now citizies with up to 50 Million citizens are possible
Improved distance from where on vehicles are visibile
Vehicles will reduce their speed when they reach their target
Improved the time it takes to save the game
Reduced size of savegames
Improved loading times
Reduced memory use while saving and loading
Improved quality of shadows
Increased the stoarge of local storage by 100%
Fixed a bug which sometimes would block jobs from being taken
Improved Chinese language
Carriers now highlight their trucks
Garbage Zones can only be build near the Garbage Carrier
Compass now turns correctly
Number of vehicle spawns are now connected to the city size
Police, Firetrucks and Ambulances now start at their buildings
Construction sites now have different colors
If the player does not have enough resources during the Tutorial, the player can still finish it
Increased number of resources for each new city for every difficulty mode
Fixed a bug when building a farm
If you press "M" or "N" buildings now turn smoother when you build them
New Building Model: Fishery
New Building Model: Bank
New Building Model: Wind Turbine
New Building: Tidal Power Station
New Building: Global Carrier
If you think that's all, you're wrong however. We have been working on more features in the background. We'd like to announce that Highrise City will be leaving Early Access later this year and that the Science Update is the last bigger update before the full release. And we've been working on some massive changes which will influence the way you play the game a lot.
Features for Full Release:
Public Transport with Buses
Special gigantic mega skyscrapers
Story Missions
Substations & Electricity Lines
Updated Voice Overs
A small Story
A massive multi staged mega project to build
A new Map
New Production Chains
Of course, smaller changes, quality of life improvements are also planned. But especially the new electricity management and the public transport will change how you build cities. In addition to that, that secret mega project is something very, very special. We've been working for months now on some of these features and are glad that we can finally confirm that we've been working on them. And we can't wait to show you more.
But does that mean, that Highrise City will soon be finished? No. Of course not. It means we've come to a point where we have the game in a stage where we can say it is ready for a Full Release. But obviously we have tons of ideas for additional content and we will still keep optimizing the gameplay experience and work on additional stuff.
Having that said: By the end of this month we will raise the price for the game slightly in preparation for the Full Release. So if you think about getting it now, we'd recommend doing so during the ongoing Summer Sale.
"On Fire" Update is OUT NOW!
Greetings Builders!
A new update is available for Highrise City. A really lit one this time. Yes, that is indeed a reference to one of the most obvious changes. Buildings can now catch fire, so better make sure to build some fire stations. All buildings which do not have a fire station within reach have a certain chance each week to go up in flames - and yes, they can burn down.
We have, once more, worked a lot on performance. Internal tests have shown that now, especially bigger cities are 75% more performant. This also means that we could increase the visibility of cars when zooming out. Same for shadows. Oh. Shadows. These we have also reworked and aren't as harsh anymore.
There is now a blueprint mode in the game. If you create zones and hold the left mouse button, zones do not get created automatically anymore. They will start being used once you do not press the button anymore - if you right-click however, you can still cancel what you did.
We have also replaced the main menu. We really hope you enjoy the changes as it looks way more professional now and replaced the previous structure which was more or less build with functionality only in mind. The new one is still a work in progress, but you'll get the idea.
Full Changelog
Loading times improved for big cities (3x - 5x times faster)
Performance increased for bigger cities (between 75 - 107% based on internal tests for a 2.7 million city)
Cars are visible from higher zooms as well
Increased number of cars
Tweaked shadows
Reworked main menu
Implemented a Blueprint Mode for zones. Hold left mouse button clicked to paint zones. Right click to cancel
New Icons for Tutorial targets
Longhaul Vehicles are now driving on the streets
Green Zones now display the maximum of inhabitants based on the satisfaction level of the people
Reduced incomes form living and office zones slightly
Impact of taxes on satisfaction has been increased
If the game is in full screen mode the mouse stays in viewport
Fixed a crash bug which sometimes appeared when creating 3D objects
Implemented new in game hints
Highlighting buildings with the mouse visually improved
Tweaked the garbage zone mesh
Reduced cost of spices. Increased selling price
While being in decoration mode, the scaling of models is now set to ScaleLook automatically
Increased the production rate of the small wood cutter
Increased the production of sawmills
Productivity of buildings gets now displayed over time (visually)
Carriers and Garbage collectors now use workers
The radius of carriers and garbage collectors now gets displayed when you build them
Moved unlokcing of the court and laws to a later milestone
Filter for energy when building a new power plant is now displayed correctly (noise, pollution)
Farms are now included into the terrain better
New 3D model for garbage zones added
Incrased reach of fire and police stations
Nearly all buildings now need a fire and a police station nearby. If there is now fire station, buildings can burn down. If there is no police, the maximum usage of a building gets reduced due to crime
Around farms, there are now small trees
Fixed some text-breaks
Lots of buildings have now more trees
Fixed an error which displayed errors in graphs after loading a savegame
A very rare bug which prevented the game from saving for some has been fixed
Productivity has been improved for industry buildings
Increased number of starting resources
Fixed typos in English and German
"Achieve Your Start" Update Out Now!
Greetings Builders,
The new update is finally here. And it contains a lot of changes for the game and one major "fix" you've been waiting for for a long time. The curb is now on ground level. We're still tweaking the terrain a bit but we found a way to lower the curb to the terrain even though we are making use of a voxel terrain. The road building system will now also create tunnels and bridges automatically if they are required, so you don't need to manually configure your building mode anymore.
We've also been finetuning the balancing again. The carriers now can load more resources and the milestones got adjusted once again. Quite a few buildings have received visual updates, all 300 icons for the buildings have been redone and the terraforming got improved as well.
Full Changelog
Curb is now closer to ground level
Buildings create a massive foundation
Increased the number of citizens. Cities with up to 10 million people are now possible
Adjusted milestones
All 300 icons in the building menu have been redone
Zone-Buildings can now be placed freely in the sandbox mode
Increased the amount of resources carriers and the Garbage Collector can transport
Improved handling of the players car
Researches got better descriptions
The fences in farms are open around the building itself
The color of the fences is now different for each farm type
Improved the landscape of farms where they thouch the streets
Migration in relation to unemployement has been adjusted
Does the population shrink, people without a place to live or without work will leave the city first
When driving with your car, no hints or tips will be displayed anymore
Harbor adjusts the terrain level less harsh
Increased CPU performance
Increased performance while driving your own car
Symbols above vehicles disappear if a street gets demolished
Improved mouse collision when clicking on streets and crossroads
Fixed a bug when buildings bridges
Streets get correctly updated if terraforming is used next to them
You can now build streets by keeping the left mouse button clicked
Incrased the asphalt surrounding of buildings slightly
Buildings in first row to the street get automatically adjusted to the street level
If garbage is full at a buildings, electricity and water will still work
Traffic lights are now glowing stronger
Adjusted the size of trees for buildings of the first stage
Increased the resolution of textures on cliffs
Fixed a bug which made water pipes disappear
Changing the resolution or the mode in the options, the action needs to be confirmed afterwards (otherwise it will return to the previous state)
If there are issues in the main menu, you can reset the game by pressing Left Control + H + R
Milestones: two more areas can now be unlocked
Milestones: Laws are now displayed with an icon
Small performance improvements of the assets
Small visual updates for the office buildings of level 1, 2 and 3 with lights and signs
Removed a bunch of assets or replaced them. That reduces needed memory and increased the performance slightly
After loading a savegame, trees won't get placed on water anymore
Decoration objects can now be deleted correctly
Increased / Updated roads will reduce the way costs per person which means that people will take longer distances to get to work
Visually updated buildings:
Cattle farm
Sheep farm
Charcoal burning
Parks
Middle sized church
Garbage Powerplant
But: That's not all. We've been working on more things in the meantime. As you know, we recently confirmed that we are also working on public transport via busses. Don't expect that feature in the coming weeks as we are still adjusting a lot of things there - this one is quite complicated, but the feature will come later this year. Also we've started working on updating the whole research menu. Green Cars will soon find their way into the world of Highrise City and maybe we've even started on a massive building which will require more than just one stage. Stay tuned!
Upcoming Update & A Small Tease
Greetings Builders,
The next update is right around the corner. This is one of the biggest updates so far and will improve a lot of small details for Highrise City - and it will also prepare the game itself for future updates. We plan to release the next Update before Easter, so expect it to arrive next week. Obviously, you never know and things could take slightly longer.
We have redone more than 300 icons for the builder menu. We have improved the stability of the game and yes, we even found the bug which made water pipes disappear from time to time. We updated lots of buildings and tweaked the balancing a lot. We have adjusted the milestones, the amounts trucks can load and we also were able to improve the usability of the game.
But there is one thing you have been asking for a long time. And we finally managed to find a solution for the voxel based terrain. Pedestrian Walks are now on the nearly same level as the ground itself. So those of you, waiting for this fix - it will arrive in the coming days. The full patch log will be unveiled once the patch drops.
Speaking of features you requested...
So, you've been requesting a certain feature for a while. And we've been working on that one for a long time now and we think the time has come to finally share... something. It will take a bit till everything is finished but expect that feature to come out later this year:
Polishing, polishing, polishing. That’s what we do improve your experience!
Greetings Builders,
we're keeping on pushing forward with polishing ideas and are happy to release yet another update for Highrise City, heavily packed with quality-of-life improvements, polishing and some changes to the late game.
And just as Highrise City gets more polish every day, our buildings got a nice bit of polish as well! All buildings now have new building animations and scaffoldings!
A lot of the tooltips have been improved and new ones got added. We also tweaked the frequency of certain tooltips so you shouldn't see them as often now.
The cost of land expansions is now a bit higher so they more correctly reflect their actual value. And once you have reached all milestones and start a new game, you can now freely choose on the map in which area you'd like to start your game!
We also worked on interactions of certain buildings with their surrounding terrain. As such, harbors and fisheries now terraform the area
Roadmap Update
Greetings Builders,
The next bigger Update for Highrise City will most likely be released by the end of January / beginning of February. It will feature an option to pick your starting position on the map when starting a new game after you have reached the maximum milestone. It will also include a tweaking of the terrain and many smaller changes.
How do we know? Well, we have updated the Roadmap finally. Behind closed doors we've already started working on some features which will follow with the full release later this year. We have not yet decided on when this will happen and not all planned content is listed in the Roadmap just yet. As a little tease: We are definitely working on one specific feature quite a few of you have been asking for.
Late February, early March will see a new research and development techtree, the option to upgrade certain buildings, a new Map and more. In March / April we'll introduce a new Milestone and a new product chain and a rework of the tutorial.
And after that? Well. We have some ideas and plans but we are not yet ready to share these. We have some neat ideas to tweak a lot of features but we need to do some internal tests first. And since you'll find some teasers in the roadmap regarding the full release in 2023, well, we have to work on these features as well as they are pretty time consuming. But the wait will be well worth it, that's what we can promise already.
Christmas Update
Greetings Builders,
the latest patch gave the game a better look and improved the performance. This update seamlessly takes over, where the old one ended. We improved the optics again, upgraded the shadows, gave the filters a new look and redesigned some buildings. So there is a lot to discover in Highrise City!
We just can’t stop working on quality of life improvements to make the game better optimized for all of you. For example, the shadows are brighter now, so you don’t feel like staring into the void anymore when looking at them. Forests now have their own ground texture and in general, the grounds are now more diverse. Whilst we are at the visuals, we improved the overall look of the filters, so be sure to check those out. And if you ever felt like you just didn’t have the right resources on the top of your screen, now you can add and delete them to your liking!
Full Changelog
Optics enhanced
Shadows are brighter
Correction of shadow-artifacts in the vegetation
Landscape has more color variations
Forests have their own ground textures
Farm-modules aren’t created under the waterline anymore
Resources in the resource-menu now can be sorted by the player to their own liking
Resources can be added to the UI
In the main menu, the stars that show the difficulty of a map are animated and got a ToolTip
Preview pictures of the maps in the main menu got updated
Credits got a rework: they are now paid back continually, repayments and interest costs are explained in the ToolTip
Some texts in the research menu got reworked to provide a better oversight of the effects
Visualization of bigger numbers got improved
Improvement of the pop-up tip system - Better timing of the tips to avoid to many tips at once - Already viewed tips are saved in the savegame to avoid repetition of tips - Triggers for tips got optimized, so you don’t get a tip after you already learned a new mechanic - 13 new videos and pictures for old tips - 16 new tips for seasoned players added
Population of the city increased
Filter-visuals got improved - Optimized overview through recoloration of not impacted areas - Optimized overview through more meaningful, but softer colors - Volume, air pollution and more surface filter are now visible to the widest impact area possible
City name can be edited
Visuals of the water pipe display got visually improved
Loading times got faster. Load Voxel got removed. When old savegames get saved, the new savegame also has improved loading times.
Performance of the game got improved
Building menu pictures got reworked
Balancing rework
Insulation-material costs of the office- and living zones raised: 1/2/3/4 → 1/3/6/9
Offices per grid increased: 6/13/26/50/95 → 6/12/24/44/80
Maximum occupation of living houses on middle and hard adjusted Middle: needs 80% → 85% Happiness Hard: needs 90% → 95% Happiness
Research: farm needs less worker weakened -50% → -30%
Jobs in simple solar thermal power plant increased: 10 → 20
Jobs in improved solar thermal power plant increased: 25 → 40
Hospital jobs increased: 250 → 500
University Hospital jobs increased: 1000 → 1500
Glass melt 2 jobs increased: 1000 → 1250
Steal melt 2 jobs increased: 1500 → 1600
Iron melt 2 jobs increased: 600 → 650 offices increased: 400 → 450
Spice prices of resident groups changed: 0/1900/2000/2200/2400 → 0/1000/1100/1200/1300
Spice use of late residents increased
Selling prices for early residents increased, fish: 650 → 700, vegetables 450 → 500, fruits 500 → 550
Maintenance cost of building renovation decreased: 9000 → 5100, only costs 3 planks and 3 insulation-material per week
New laws for service sector: Paid vacation, 35 hour week, fire extinguisher program, improved school inventory, school on Sundays, religious holidays
Old laws of the service sector got adjusted: Gambling legalized, curfew for teenagers, police special forces, weapon controls, free doctor centrum program, vaccination mandatory, smoke detector program & reading campaign
Laws in service sector now add a specific number instead of percent numbers
Health/fire danger/security/religion demands of residents changed: 50/70/100/100/110 → 40/55/70/90/110
Health/fire danger/security/religion buildings new numbers: 50/70/100 → 40/55/70
Education/leisure demands of residents changed: 0/50/70/90/110
Education buildings new numbers: 50/70/100 → 50/70/90
Leisure buildings new numbers: 20/40/60 → 50/60/70
New calculation of service satisfaction
To optimize the game experience and to give the service sector more reason to be, we reevaluated the balancing. Our goal is to give players an easier beginning, which is why the earlier residents are barely influenced by the changes. In exchange, we gave the later residents more complexity, to create more opportunities to reach the maximum satisfaction.
Buildings visually improved
Wheat Farm
Gigant Warehouse
Grape Farm
Winery
Medical Technology Factory
Furniture Factory
Sheep Farm
Gem Mine
Elementary School
High School
So, as you can see, Santa Claus brought a lot of presents with this patch. Enjoy them and happy holidays!
Visual Reboot
Greetings Builders,
the last patch brought you new production chains and more variety to the gameplay of Highrise City. This time around, we tackled the graphics. You will notice a lot of upgrades to the visuals of the game with this patch. We are definitely proud of the more colorful look the game got. In addition to the new color palette, the post processing got a complete rework. The mission was to improve the overall quality and give the game a more vibrant look - we hope you enjoy the new look!
In general this patch focuses on quality of life improvements. You can now again easily enable DirectX 12 in the video options. This can improve the performance by 70%, which we know some of you asked eagerly for. The camera movement has been improved once more and the light radiating from your cursor is now dynamic to the camera distance.
Full Changelog
Graphics massively improved
Improved visual buildings (9+): Lumberjack, Water Tower, Fisherman, Semiconductor Factory, Electronics Manufacturing, Toy Factory, Research Centre, Simple Fire Station, Mayor's Villa
Demolishing of bigger city parts is now faster
English and German texts got reworked
DirectX 12 can now be enabled in the video options more easy, this can improve your performance by 70%
Light source emitting from your cursor is reacting dynamically to the camera distance
when the game is paused, buildings are no longer highlighted on the cursor
Tool Wrought no longer needs tools to be build
Camera movement got improved
Subsidy menu now got ressource icons
A mistake got corrected, that appeared in the overview of the loading screen
New Chains & Performance Updates
Greetings Builders,
The time for a new update has come. The new patch brings quite a few changes to the world of Highrise City. First of all, we have introduced new product chains. This also means that new buildings have been added to the game. You will now need to build Sawmills, Hemp Insulation Farms, Cement-Concrete Factories and more! They have also been filled up with tons of smaller details you might enjoy.
Next to the new buildings, we've also introduced a new feature for you: You can now subsidize whole industry parts. It will cost you quite a bit but it will boost the productivity of buildings. And this can also be combined with other boosters for your production as well. You can, of course, just play the game as you did before but we wanted to give you more options, especially if you want to save space and don't want to have so many production buildings anymore. You now have four options to boost the productivity of your production:
Improved Versions Specific buildings have improved versions you can unlock. Such as the deep mines for example. More of these improved buildings will follow over time.
Booster Buildings You can place certain buildings next to your producing buildings. Within a certain radius they will increase the productivity of these buildings.
Research & Development You can also invest your research points into certain product chains or specific buildings to increase their productivity. Or you can boost your booster buildings.
Subsidize You can subsidize specific industries to increase their productivity.
We have also reworked the menu a bit. Multiple buildings can also be found in more than just one area now. This is a comfort function so that you can quickly find buildings which belong to one specific product chain. We have also merged the zones now.
The third focus for this update has been the performance of the game and some small quality of life improvements. The zoom is now bound slightly to the mouse cursor, for example. In terms of performance we've lowered the loading times of huge cities quite a bit. We also improved the performance of landscape textures and reduced the memory usage of the game in general. Also the saving of the game is now fully asynchronical which means that saving is much faster and doesn't interrupt your game anymore.
Full Changelog
New product chains added
Subsidize
Cleaned up the builder menu
New Buildings for new product chains (Cement Concrete Factory, Ferroconcrete Manufactory, Sawmill & Hemp Insulation Farm)
Zoom to mousecursor implemented
Improved camera handling
Workshop buildings are now in an extra category for special buildings
Fixed a crashbug in the save-menu
Fixed a freeze when building roads
Fixed a crashbug while loading or saving a game
Saving is now asychnronus (game saves much faster)
Reduced Memory usage
Adjusted milestones slightly
In the builder menu is a new button which makes the menu stay always on
If a street is being demolished, vehicles now despawn correctly
Fixed calculations in the city budget
Improved performance of landscape textures
Fixed a bug which caused display errors in buy-land menu
Improved loading times for bigger cities
Improved loading times when creating a new game
Demolishing farms now removes the grass on streets correctly
Increased productivity of the clay pit by 50%
Increased the productivity of furniture factories by 33%
Fusion Powerplant can now be unlocked slightly different the research menu
Incrased storage of trucks
Reduced building costs of the highest levels
P.S.: The next update won't take so long as we've been working on it already as well. Let's say you'll get a visual update soon.
Performance of Naples
Greetings Builders,
The last update introduced a lot of changes to Highrise City. Changes, which required to re-write quite a few systems. Re-writes which also had a negative impact on the overall performance of the game. So while working on additional content for the next bigger patches, we've took some time to work on the performance again. Now the game should run way smoother on your machines.
Another thing we'd like to announce today is the release of Naples as a map. Some of you already found it to be live with the previous patch - and that was a mistake on our side. The map wasn't fully polished just yet. But we kept it in as some of you already started playing. We've fixed some smaller things now and from today on, Naples is offically a part of the game. And yes, your savegames should still work without further tweaking.
Changelog:
Added Naples as a playable region
Buildings use the street grid more efficiently so that more often bigger buildings will be build
Improved landscape textures for close by buildings
Added very low vidoe quality option
Updating the game on Steam is now faster (Take that, negative review guy!)
Removed lane marking on crossroads for now
Improved performance when building streets and buildings heavily
Lags removed while moving the camera
Waterpipes have a new animation
Increased performance when displaying zones
Increased the performance on GPU and CPU in general
Fixed microlags in the menus
Adjusted colors from zones slightly
Fixed the crashbug which happend while building roads
Fixed a crashbug which happened when the mouse cursor was outside the map
