Finally, the time has come. The biggest Update so far for 8 Highrise City is out now! We’ve named it ComMutation - City Flow as this is exactly what this update is all about. We have changed a lot underneath which will make cities way more realistic.
The biggest change is that now indeed every citizen gets simulated correctly. That means that every citizen, as long as he or she has a job, will keep this job and get there from his home. The clue: Your citizens won’t take any job available anymore if the distance is too far. For you that means that you need to reconsider how you build your cities and an industry district far away from your main city is not possible anymore. That makes the game itself slightly more challenging but also way more realistic.
But no worries, you won’t lose oversight. We’ve taken care of that. We have added multiple new filters and systems which will give you detailed information about your citizens. No matter if you want to know if the distances are fine, the water supply, how crowded your zones are - we’ve got you covered. We have put a lot of time into making the game easier to understand and think that with the new filters and info systems you should be able to overcome every challenge.
Tons of buildings have been visually improved and received a lot of new details. A new highlight - if we are allowed to give you a hint here - is the new nuclear power plant and the animated ads on office buildings. It is our vision that the cities get more and more details so that you can discover something new around every color. That means we’ll keep updating the details on the buildings even further, the animations and the landscapes as well.
These are the biggest systems we’ve touched for this update. But there are more. Way more. Especially in the details. Street lamps now glow during dusk and dawn, the game saves a lot quicker, tons of small UI adjustments were made and we even found the time to fix some smaller bugs and issues.
The Changelog:
New Pathfinding for people (Influenced by the Difficulty Option ”Satisfaction Population”)
Saving the game has been speeded up (improved Multithread Support)
New filters allow to check needs and wishes of your citizens (No Work, No Workers, Waycosts Work, Satisfaction Flats, Density of Homes, Trash Factor, Electricity Factor, Water Supply Factor, Office Factor, Storage Space)
Street Lamps glow in dusk and dawn
Additional infos on resources being displayed in the construction menu (Stay longer with the mouse over a button to activate these)
Costs of Streets and Buildings are displayed on the cursor now
Improved cursor for more direct input
If a buildings gets wrecked, all stored resources will be transferred back to the town
Latest news regarding the game are displayed in the main menu
Buy Land Button is now on the top left side in the HUD
During the construction of a farm, it is displayed how much the farm will be producing
If a filter is active, additional infos are displayed at the mouse cursor
Different additional buttons (e.g. in the building information menu) ease the way to display filters
Icon-Buttons have a hovering and a press-animation
Research can be reset
Sizes of certain windows can be scaled (resource-list, research menu)
New research “clever traffic lights” has been added: Traffic lights are adjusted to actual traffic which reduces traffic jams
Cars reduce their speed in curves
Improved pathfinding for cars
Changing lanes is now more realistic at high speeds
In the Buy Land Menu resources can now be made visible
In the options all changes can now be reset with the Reset Button
RAM and VRAM optimized
Wrecking a building is now possible when the building has been picked
The Save Game folder has been improved and is not influenced by other files anymore
HRC now works on 2 core CPUs as well (at least for small / middle sized towns)
Video Option Texture Quality influences water quality. For Texture Quality Low a simple ocean shader will be used (useful for weaker machines)
Video Option "Foliage Density" reduces the amount of gras
Performance during the construction of a building has been improved
A warning gets displayed in the main menu if the machine does not not fulfill the minimum requirements
Adjusted the fonts
New buildings for Stage 1 added
Improved office buildings Stage 1
Buff-buildings need access to streets
Increased reach of buff buildings
New law "More Relaxed Road Users" added
Fixed some smaller bugs and issues
UI improved
The “Milestones” Tool Tip now also shows what is to be achieved
Color corrections of people and cars
Textures and color corrections for Landscape and gras
Trees move better when wind is active
Color corrections for Office Buildings and Houses on Stage 1
Plants on farms spawn with a bigger gap to the buildings and the fence
Reduced loudness level for music slightly
Increased loudness for chinese voice over
After loading a savegame the player can already take actions during the transition
Improved loading times for savegames (fixed some load processes for Voxel Landscape and 3D Assets)
Zones create less open gaps close to crossroads
Buildings do not spawn on streets anymore
Charcoal Burning productivity increased
Police, Fire Station and costs for the School have been slightly increased
Reduced need for water in the beginning of the game
Small water towers produce more water
Around the farm a little bit of space has been left free to spawn farm mesehs
Increased construction costs for a fruit farm slightly
Increased number of employees for the Brick Factory
Increased building times for bigger buildings
A New Demo is here! (Gamescom 2022)
In a few hours, gamescom 2022 will begin. And Highrise City is playable at the Indie Arena Booth. So feel free to come by and say hello, we're there, waiting for people to chat with. If you can't make it to Cologne this year (or attend the show), no worries. The demo is available on Steam as well. Right now. We've just unlocked it.
It already contains a bunch of features which will soon be introduced to the game itself as well. Which brings us an important question: When will the next big patch be released for Highrise City? The answer is rather simple: Very soon. We're currently targeting the 7th September. And we'd like to discuss a few changes. Especially since this will be the biggest update we've been working on so far.
Street lights will start shining soon. When you change the time of the day and go into the night, street lights will have a light source soon. This is, obviously, a cosmetic feature, but one we wanted to include right from the very beginning. And we finally were able to do so without killing the performance. And it looks gorgeous.
Filters. Quite a bunch of them. And you will need them, as we have reworked a few systems underneath. And these systems will also influence the way you will build your cities. As you know, people will only move to your cities if you can offer them jobs. However your citizens won't take any job - there is now a maximum distance they are willing to take. And the filters will enable you to see which industries are too far away from your citizens. They will also allow you to scan for other issues, such as overall happiness or if water supply is running low.
Soon, every way to work will be calculated correctly. That means, traffic management will become more and more important. If a city for example gets more than one million citizens, everyone of them will be correctly simulated - the code underneath allows to do that now.
Other changes which will soon be introduced: In the main menu, you will see the latest news regarding the game. When building a farm, you will be able to see how much the farm will produce. Countless performance optimizations have been made. Saving the game has been optimized A LOT. Also for savegames. Saving the game won't freeze your computer anymore for a long time. A lot of new buildings (visual variations) have been added. The landscape ground level textures have been reworked. Buff buildings will require access to roads now. Balancing adjustments, UI improvements and pathfinding have been improved and many, many more. Full patch notes will release with the patch.
A New Demo is here!
In a few hours, gamescom 2022 will begin. And Highrise City is playable at the Indie Arena Booth. So feel free to come by and say hello, we're there, waiting for people to chat with. If you can't make it to Cologne this year (or attend the show), no worries. The demo is available on Steam as well. Right now. We've just unlocked it.
It already contains a bunch of features which will soon be introduced to the game itself as well. Which brings us an important question: When will the next big patch be released for Highrise City? The answer is rather simple: Very soon. We're currently targeting the 7th September. And we'd like to discuss a few changes. Especially since this will be the biggest update we've been working on so far.
Street lights will start shining soon. When you change the time of the day and go into the night, street lights will have a light source soon. This is, obviously, a cosmetic feature, but one we wanted to include right from the very beginning. And we finally were able to do so without killing the performance. And it looks gorgeous.
Filters. Quite a bunch of them. And you will need them, as we have reworked a few systems underneath. And these systems will also influence the way you will build your cities. As you know, people will only move to your cities if you can offer them jobs. However your citizens won't take any job - there is now a maximum distance they are willing to take. And the filters will enable you to see which industries are too far away from your citizens. They will also allow you to scan for other issues, such as overall happiness or if water supply is running low.
Soon, every way to work will be calculated correctly. That means, traffic management will become more and more important. If a city for example gets more than one million citizens, everyone of them will be correctly simulated - the code underneath allows to do that now.
Other changes which will soon be introduced: In the main menu, you will see the latest news regarding the game. When building a farm, you will be able to see how much the farm will produce. Countless performance optimizations have been made. Saving the game has been optimized A LOT. Also for savegames. Saving the game won't freeze your computer anymore for a long time. A lot of new buildings (visual variations) have been added. The landscape ground level textures have been reworked. Buff buildings will require access to roads now. Balancing adjustments, UI improvements and pathfinding have been improved and many, many more. Full patch notes will release with the patch.
Roadmap Update & Gamescom Demo
Greetings Builders!
We sat together and finally updated the Early Access Roadmap on Trello again. Plans change all the time, especially with community feedback involved and we hadn't updated the roadmap since quite some time. We were now able to define the next steps for Highrise City and wanted to share the news with you. In case you are not used to Trello, the screenshot below should give you a good impression as well.
And of course: Listed are just the main features and changes. Smaller ones will be included along the way, too.
In other news: We'll be at the gamescom in Cologne this year. So feel free to say hello at the Indie Arena. And yes, a playable demo of Highrise City will be available on Steam during that time.
"The Netherlands are Flat" Update Released
Hello Builders!
After a short vacation we're back at work (during the heatwave currently hitting Europe. Nice planning we have there for vacations, right?). And sorry to all of you who are from the Netherlands that todays title of the news is a joke about your country having no mountains. But we have included a completely flat map for all of you to experiment with the new terrain tool.
In addition to that, we've also added Tutorial Videos for the Terrain tool and a small button in the upper right corner to upload custom textures. This will allow you to import heigth maps as PNGs and then start sculpting with them.
Another important thing: WIth the last update an annoying crash (well, to be honest, it wasn't directly a crash, the game just freezed for a long time to calculate collision in the background) happened with the Grain Farm. That is gone now.
We've also started to re-color certain industry buildings. That process takes some time, but for the color scheme we have in mind you should take a look at the copper mine and the iron mine to get an idea.
Yet another thing we've added: Details for the people living in your city. You can now track where people are working. It is a little detail preparing the game for future content updates. We don't want to spoil too much but some of these changes will require you to think different about your city planning.
Patchnotes:
<*>Added an indicator for office-needs <*>Improved post processing (Depth of Field fog added) <*>Depth of Field can be adjusted in the video options <*>Increased speed of clouds <*>Added shadows for clouds <*>Trees are now planted correctly when loading a savegame <*>Added a new Sandbox Map (located in the Netherlands. It's flat. Sorry for the pun) <*>Added statistics for people at the buildings they live in (this will be important in the future) <*>Performance of Farms heavily improved <*>Fixed a crash when deleting a savegame <*>Added a button to load custom textures <*>Removed terrain tool costs related points from the research menu for now <*>Terraforming tooltips in videoform have been added <*>Terraforming has now lines as indicators for heigth <*>Position of the camera for some monitors for the "Buy New Land" Menu imporved <*>Sorting of savegames added <*>Fixed a crashbug when using the pipette <*>Reworked designs for Ironmine, Iron Melter, Copper Mine, Copper Melter and others <*>Kilometers driven with the car now get tracked globally (Oh, trust us, we'll make us of global tracking in the future)
Terrain Overhaul Update is OUT NOW!
Greetings Builders!
Time for another bigger update. Due to the success of Highrise City so far, we were able to work full time on the game and could speed up development overall. And even extend the scope a bit. It will still take time to finish the game, sure, but we were able to hire additional people to get the job done. And one result of this situation is that we were able to come up with an update we had planned for a much later stage of development.
One thing quite a lot of you did not like were the height differences of the streets and the terrain. With the new update, we changed quite a few things and the streets got improved already. They are not perfect just yet, but we're getting there.
How? We were working on another feature people were complaining about: The terrain tool. We've completely reworked the way you can shape and form the terrain. It is much easier now. We've also tested out the performance when increasing the number of Voxels the terrain is made of.
Keep in mind: Loading an old save will now take a bit on the first run as the new system will reshape every Voxel in your city. It might happen that some things turn out not to be perfect though. But with the new tools you should be able to reset most of the errors.
Changelog
Improved Colors on the edges of the maps
Increased resolution of the landscape textures by 30%
Reworked the terrain tool from scratch
Added new terraforming tools
Removing streets & buildings resets the landscape below (or above)
Removed costs for terraforming for now (this will be changed at some point)
Ground of streets & buildings stays when using terraforming on it
Adjusted color of the ocean
Improved Voxel density on terrain by 50%
While driving the car, grass close by gets invisible
Improved visibility of small numbers in the construction menu
Added water plants (for now it is grass, new plants will be added later on)
New meshes for some farms which fit to the actual kind of farm
Farms use bigger (and upgradeable) streets now
Maps now have a difficulty advice when chosing them (1 to 5 stars)
Camera does not clip through the ground anymore
The option "Vehicle3DIconVisible" now gets saved correctly
Maximum speed of the free cam was reduced
Zooming speed of the camera has been reduced slightly
We're going Nuclear!
Greetings Builders!
The second major update for Highrise City is out now! "Go Nuclear" introduces Milestone 11 and quite a lot of adjustments, new content and bugfixes. Todays update introduces also a new map: Vancouver. And that's not all: Most of the changes also influence the gameplay.
Changelog
Achievements (They also influence the gameplay as they give you additional research points)
New Map: Vancouver
Milestone 11 is now available
New Building: Nuclear Powerplant
New Building: Enhanced Copper Smelter
New Building: Titanium Mine
New Building: Deep Coal Mine
New Building: Deep Copper Mine
New Building: Deep Iron Mine
New Product Chain: Medicine AG
Further improved visuals for some buildings
Images above Carriers get updated correctly
Several smaller bugfixes
Fixed multiple possible crashes
Since bigger cities consume a lot of resources, we have now introduced the deep mines, so that cities with more than one million residents can take care of themselves. They might be cost intensive but they can be well worth it, especially in the end game.
If you are wondering, how Achievements work and how they unlock additional research points, we've got you covered as well: If you unlock an achievement, you will get some additional points which will from there on be globally available in your account. So you carry them over into new towns as well, allowing you to proceed quicker after some time, giving advanced players the option to make progress faster with a new town.
In other news we have started working on the landscaping tool and on reworking the street system now. Our new programmer in the meantime is working on improving the editor in a way that you will be able to share custom 3D models in the future.
To celebrate the new update there is now a small discount available. Interested mayors get 15% off during the next seven days.
Patch 1.0.2 23 May Released
Greetings Builders!
A new patch is available for Highrise City, introducing some quality of life improvements especially for the recently released editor. We got quite some feedback and wanted to provide you with the tweaks we did before the big update next week.
Changelog
Improved descriptions in the building menu
Fixed the building restoration (it disappeared with the last patch)
Cleaned up the Milestone Menu
Adjusted Balancing of buildings
Editor
Buildings in the workshop can now be updated
Improved photo mode when taking a picture of the building
Added filters for the objects
Improved various models
Improved collision for quite a few objects
Camera is set to free cam per default now in the editor
And yes, you've notived that we were talking about the next update already. Next week we'll release the second major update for Highrise City introducing a new map, a new milestone, some Deep Mines and Achievements.
"If You Build It" Update Released
Greetings Builders!
The first major update has arrived. The first iteration of the building editor is here. The tool became a little more complex and has more options than originally planned as well. We're looking for feedback from Users now.
With the Editor we have also released the first custom building you can now download via the Steam Workshop and via Nexus. It should be noted that this specific building, which is literally the Willis Tower from Chicago, is way bigger than any other building in Highrise City and that it comes with a custom 3D Model. Something, which the editor does not allow for Users just yet.
We are working on an update that will release after the next bigger content update that will allow users to implement their own 3D models, too. In this first iteration of the editor, you will have to use assets already provided with the game. The custom 3D models will be taken care of once we have finished the next bigger content update. We will also write a documentation on how to set up the 3D models so that everyone can include them easily.
By the way, you can also share savegames via the Workshop!
Changelog
Building Editor
Steam Workshop integration
Savegames in Steam Workshop
Improved collisions for the decoration tool
Small comfort functions from the Editor added to the decoration tool
Streets can become one way roads again - sorry for the hiccup
What's next? Well. At the end of the month we would like to release the second major update. With that we will also introduce Achievements. They will come with a twist however: Achievements will be linked to research points, which means that if you achieve them, you will get some points.
In addition to that the Nuclear Powerplant will be introduced and Milestone 11 will get added. And new product chains will be added as well!
Patch 1.0.1 Apr 22. 2022 Released
Greetings Builders!
Just a small update today. We've touched the balancing a bit, fixed a few bugs and wanted to share the progress with you. What you can't see is that the update includes way more than the changes. Underneath we've been preparing the game for the upcoming editor, giving every building a unique ID and allowing the editor to create new unqiue IDs as well.
The sad news however is that it is unlikely that we'll be able to ship the editor in April. It will most likely hit early May. But we're getting there.
Todays Changelog:
Reduced the number of people on the streets near industry buildings
Milestone Rebalancing
Improved Melters now need less production resources
Powerplants produce 50 - 100% more energy
Fixed overlapping texts in the milestone menu
Improved various buildings
Massive improvements for the japanese texts
Improved street textures
Added quite a bunch of new sounds
Reduced the noise of doves
Performence improved
Tutorial will be continued after loading a game
Trade menu: When setting up the sliders, the tooltip will fade out
In other news, the next big update which will include the first iteration of the building editor, will also include steam achievements. Since we've been implementing the APIs anyways for the Editor, we've taken the chance to work on these as well:
