Skid Cities
Neuralink will join your city, bugfixes and more!
🧠Neuraltink enters your city
Neuraltink is a global corporation specializing in brain augmentations. Its CEO may decide to build one or more huge offices in your city. When that happens, you will see that corporate offices will grow faster in your city. But beware! The unrest will also grow significantly.
Bugfixes:
🩹 Layers on ultra-wide fixed. Thanks to Svexel from the Discord community for bringin this up. Should be fixed, let me knwo if it's not the case!
🩹 Some players reported that the FPS would slow down and decrease after some time that the same city was running. I think this may be due to cars, so I placed a hard-limit on the number of cars and flying objects in general. I hope that fixes it!
New art:
🏢 I've added a bunch of new models for factories and commercial shops. You should see more variety in your city now!
New factory building art, VCR effect, OST, and more
🏢 New art
I've added more variations to level 1 factories, so you should see fewer repetitive areas when zoning factories of level 1. By the way, I've modeled and textured live on my Twitch!
✨Building and loading effects
I've added some subtle particle effect when placing down the buildings. I've also added some cool VCR-like effect when switching between levels.
🩹Loading bug
I've fixed a loading bug where some cities stopped loading and/or refused to show some buildings.
📈 Minor performance gains
I've tweaked the code and the art a bit and the game should run slightly faster (1 or 2 FPS compared to the previous version)
Bonus:📻Skid Cities OST is now on Spotify!
I've published the official Skid Cities soundtrack on Spotify, Apple Music and the other music services. You can check it out on Spotify here.
Small bugfix and new art
🩹 Fixes some issues with the new level spawn systems. Some roads would not show up properly on upper levels, plus some performance gains were nerfed. Fixed now!
🎨 Added some a new variation to wealthy commercial buildings of level 4
This release was prepared live on Twitch! Check out and follow the channel to catch me live
Big performance update + Mac fix
📈 Performance boost
This is huge. In order to improve the frame rate of huge cities, I had to rewrite all of the inner workings of how the buildings of your city are spawned for each level of your city. As you probably already know, Skid Cities allows you to build your city on multiple levels: in the skies, on the ground, and in the depths of the earth. You can go almost infinite with the number of levels! And people have done it of course.
It's easy to say in retrospect but levels are oh-so hard to keep in check in terms of performance. Before this release, I was using Unity's built-in hierarchy and tree to keep track of them. But it turned out, Unity would use up to 40% of your resources just to do that! Ouch. So I rewrote the whole level system, and now it's all custom written by me in C#, no Unity involved.
Bottom line: You should see a 40% improvement in performance with this update, on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Talking about Mac...
🩹 Mac (Apple Silicon) fix
A lot of Mac users started reporting seeing the screen "Can't find your Steam account" after launching the game, even if Steam was open. This bug prevented Mac users from enjoying the game. Ouch! That is now fixed. Thanks to all of the folks in the Discord community for bringing this up and for their patience. As a solo developer, seeing the love and care from the community means the world to me.
🚀 What now?
Now that this huge performance update is out of the way, I'm excited to go back to adding new things to the game. I want to focus on balancing events and crime, as well as adding new missions and organizations. If you are curious and want to see some previews before I release them, join our Discord here!
ps. I've released this last update in 3 or 4 patches, so you may have seen a bunch of small updates in the last 3 weeks. This is because this update was so complicated that I had to release it gradually to make sure that I was not breaking stuff.
Cinematic intro, voice overs, and bugfixes! Get ready to cyberpunk your city
I've worked on a small but almighty release, mainly starting from the feedback of the Discord community. This update includes:
🎨Opening Cinematic: Dive into the cyberpunk world of Skid Cities with an all-new opening cinematic, complete with voiceover! It sets the stage for your urban empire like never before.
🎨Voiceovers: We've brought life to tutorials and missions through original voiceovers, enhancing your gameplay experience with engaging narrative and instructions.
📈 Desirability Dynamics: As your city levels up, the desirability for locations changes! Wealthy citizens now seek to live amongst the clouds, while factories delve into the underground. Watch your city evolve dynamically with its growth.
📈 Sound Revisions: We've tuned into your feedback about some city sounds being too repetitive and slightly annoying. So, we've improved a variety of them for a more pleasant auditory experience.
📈 Building Information Panel: Ever wonder why a building isn't influenced by its neighbors? The updated building information panel now explains the ins and outs, making your urban planning smoother.
🩹 Tooltip Stability: No more crashes after using drone mode. We've squashed the bug that was causing tooltips to malfunction.
🩹 Canal Loading Issue: Cities with a canal at position 0 not loading correctly? Fixed that too. Your waterfronts are ready to dazzle once again.
I'm already working on the next update, which will be focused solely on (drum roll) performance!
Quick typo update
The fast food update
Please note that, due to geopolitical history and trade limitations, some organizations will not be present in all of the regions of the world. Try out different Trade Authorities regions to try different organizations!
KoKola
The KoKola Company is the biggest manufacturer of carbonated drinks in the world. Its secret receipe has been the subject of debate, but it has been proven not to be have addictive capabilities (drink responsibly). KoKola may open flagship stores in your city if your poor population is big enough to warrant enough demand for its (amazing) carbonated drinks. Once established in your city, KoKola flagship stores will stimulate even more demand for low-income commercial activities and shops.
McSoynald's
The McSoynald's corporation is the world leader in soy-based meat replacements. Its factories span all over the globe, and its soy-based patties and lab-grown chicken tenders are widely accepted as the most popular options for not-wealthy citizens in every trade authority. The McSoynald's corp. real advantage is its manufacturing process. You can attract McSoynald's by providing enough low-income workforce, and enough space for factories to grow. Once McSoynald's steps in, your low-income citizens will receive a huge wage boost, bringing in even more manifacturing capabilities to your city.
Also included in this update
🩹Fixed a bug where some cities that had canals intersecting with roads were not loading after save
📈 City sounds should be easier to hear and slightly more prominent
This update brings me one step closer to completing the full vision of what Skid Cities will be. I hope to be able to complete the game before the end of the year. I hope you will enjoy this update! If you like the game, please leave a review on Steam.
Loading bugfixes and better sunsets
🩹Fixed a bug where some cities in the Low Lands of Great Florida were not loading after save
🩹Fixed a bug where some cities that had canals intersecting with natural canals were not loading after save
📈 Improved the sunset and daylight appearance for icy lands (Greenland Autonomous Zone for example), cold lands (Canada Trade Authority for example) and tropical lands (Low Lands of Great Florida, Arhuaco, and more)
New art, bugfixes and more
Art
🎨 I've added more than 50 new variations for wealthy structures. You will now see a greater variety of wealthy residential, corporate offices, and rich commercial areas. I had a lot of fun creating these - I created more than 20+ new companies, logos, and advertisements that will populate your cities.
To give you a sense, this is my city in the East America Trade Authority before the update:
This is after it:
It may be subtle, but with this latest update, it's much harder to see the same buildings over and over!
Improvements and bugfixes
I've added some Quality of Life adjustments that were requested by the Discord community, in particular:
📈 Right-clicking anywhere will now unselect the building choice
📈 Zooming in will slow down as you get closer to the city, allowing for a more refined zooming and admiration runs
📈 The sunset light of tropical cities (Low Lands of Great Florida for example) is improved, now less crude and more pleasant
🩹The "Continue" button did not work properly for cities created in the real world. Fixed! Thanks to Legdig and Willy from our Discord community for bringing this to my attention
🚄Performance improvements.
I identified a performance bottleneck in the way that cars were animated and squished it. It will make the game run a lot smoother if you have the option to have cars visible (it is on by default). I'm excited about this improvement because it will allow me to add even more types of cars and vehicles to the game!
I've also optimized more than 20 building models to have them run faster. So if your city slowed down after your corporate offices reached level 4, no more!
New buildings for the poor, bugfixes and more
A bunch of new art
I've been exploring the thousands of cities that you all created in our persistent, global Skid Cities world. And I wanted to add more variety to them. So I went ahead and spent a bunch of time creating a lot of new variations of the residential buildings, as well as the factories and the commercial areas. This update involves only the poor areas. I'm working on doing another update dedicated to the wealthy part of your city soon.
This new update brings the total amount of models in Skid Cities to over 300 - all modeled and painted by me! To enjoy it just update your game and load your existing city or load a new one.
To give a sense, this is the same city before:
And after:
I hope that you will like and explore the new structures, as well as the new, cyberpunk companies that will populate your poor commercial zoning.
Event end bugfix
Thanks to the bug reporting of some players (Caesar, Willy, and others, you the MVP) I realized that the portion of the code that removed the squatters and the criminal buildings was bugged! Sorry to all of the players who were frustrated by the dissidents and terrorists not leaving the city. They will now! Just load up your city
Improvements
📈 Better lighting during the evening for cities built in desertic areas (like the Island of California)
📈 More video advertising on buildings
📈 More buildings have dedicated, unique names
📈 The UI now follows the new color scheme, including the RCI bars and the building ghosts when underground
Bugfixes
🩹Cars would not respawn properly if the player destroys the building they originated from. Fixed!
🩹The building info panel would sometimes not show up. Fixed!