Greetings, Mayors!
The First Frost update has officially arrived, accompanied by a comprehensive suite of improvements. This patch is designed to be mod-friendly, and we have ensured full compatibility with your existing savegames. Please be aware that simulation-heavy adjustments will integrate gradually into your established cities over time.
For a deep dive into the specific aesthetic and technical changes included in this release, we invite you to explore our latest City Corner developer diaries.
Gameplay & Simulation
- Cyclist Rebalancing: Bicycle trip frequency has been scaled back by 80% to better align with city transit dynamics.
- Mortality Realism: Fixed a simulation error where the time of day was neglected during health updates, which previously caused a disproportionate number of citizen deaths between midnight and dawn.
- Refined Lifespan Calculations: To prevent “death waves,” mortality is now calculated 16 times per citizen daily (up from 4), resulting in a more natural distribution of passings.
- Easy Mode Adjustments: Corrected a mechanic where nearly 80% of citizens were essentially immortal; citizens will now naturally pass away from old age as intended.
User Interface Enhancements
- HUD Overhaul: The primary dashboard has been redesigned to place a greater emphasis on demand indicators.
- Aesthetic Icon Refresh:
- Updated visuals for roundabouts and cul-de-sacs.
- Modernized 2D icons for the Road Maintenance Depot and various road services.
- Refined flora icons with more organic, natural color tones.
- New, intuitive icons for pollution types, land value, household wealth, and corporate profitability.
- Redesigned citizen happiness emojis and toolbar demand graphics.
- Onboarding Updates: The introductory tutorial has been streamlined for a better player experience.
- Vegetation Control: Introduced a tree age preservation toggle, allowing players to place and maintain specific growth stages for aesthetic consistency.
- Advanced Terraforming: Elevation tools now feature more nuanced default presets and mode-specific adjustment values for precision sculpting.
Visual & Atmospheric Refinements
- Shadow Fidelity: Improved shadow rendering to reduce flickering on high-quality presets.
- Hex Code Customization: Added a manual coloring system allowing players to use hex codes for precise control over asset palettes.
- Organic Placement: Adjusted tree colliders and line tool spacing to permit denser, more realistic clusters of vegetation.
- Environmental Effects:
- Decal-based lot surfaces now support snow accumulation.
- Vehicle snow rendering has been temporarily disabled for optimization.
- Seamless terrain blending now bridges the gap between playable areas and the background landscape.
- Lighting & Weather:
- Global illumination is now disabled by default to boost performance.
- Added map-specific sun height limits.
- Dynamic fog now scales with cloud density and storm intensity.
- Enhanced seasonal post-processing for Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal climates.
- Rebalanced cloud coverage and updated the night sky texture.
- Nighttime illumination has been brightened to improve general visibility.
Miscellaneous Quality of Life
- Performance Optimization: Graphics settings are now automatically optimized upon the game’s initial launch.
- Security: Autosave is now active by default for all players.
- Customization: Added new camera boundaries alongside options to re-enable legacy camera controls and the original UI.
Known Issues
- Trees placed on newly zoned or constructed lots may currently appear as saplings and fail to progress through their growth cycles.