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Cities: Skylines is a prospective civil engineer’s dream come true. It’s been a staple city-builder for a few years now, and in that time the modding community has turned its sharp eyes.
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Cities Skylines Ps4 Mods Reddit
How to Beat the Traffic AI in Cities Skylines - No Mods.can it be done? Want me to FIX your City in a future episode? 1) Upload your City save to the Steam. The game introduces new gameplay elements, allowing you to experience the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city.
Paradox Interactive is launching an independent platform for game mods, which will allow PC modders direct access to console audiences for the very first time.
According to Anders Törlind, the product owner of Paradox Mods, the Swedish company's push toward releasing games on console platforms was the catalyst for creating a dedicated distribution platform. After years of PC focus, there was a huge potential audience that wouldn't be able to enjoy Paradox games in the same way.
'You might recall a time -- not so long ago, actually -- when we only published PC titles,' Törlind said, when we spoke yesterday. 'There was a time when we were basically Steam exclusive, and at that point we could rely on Steam Workshop for our modding needs.
'Steam mods will only serve Steam users, and we have a growing percentage of players that buy their games from elsewhere'
'But as we started to distribute our own games, and as we started to move into the console space, we realised that, in order to serve all of our customers with mods -- and we think mods are a very important part of the gaming experience -- there would be a segment of our players that couldn't enjoy modding; neither the act of modding the game, nor using mods.'
Paradox Mods has been in development for around a year, and Törlind admitted that mod creation will remain the preserve of PC users for the time being. 'We might go into that eventually,' he added. But for now Paradox Mods is chiefly notable for giving console players an unprecedented degree of access to an essential aspect of PC gaming culture, and for being a clear signal of the way the PC market is changing.
'We investigated various solutions,' Törlind said. 'But we came up with the conclusion that, in order to be able to serve every operating system -- be it console or PC -- and every distribution platform out there, we needed to have a system that was completely agnostic from both.'
While the integration with consoles is perhaps the headline feature, Paradox Mods also reflects an expectation that PC publishers can no longer be 'Steam exclusive' by default -- as Paradox once was. Valve's platform may still be the overwhelming market leader, but that dominance has also never felt more legitimately challenged than it does right now.
Just as publishers like Ubisoft and THQ Nordic have made gestures toward a future in which Steam will be one of several valid options on PC, Paradox is making a similar statement on behalf of its modding community. Paradox Mods wouldn't have been created 'with the same urgency' were it not for the Swedish company's more aggressive push into console, but Törlind knows it would have reached the same conclusion based on the PC market alone.
'As we're seeing more and more distribution platforms pop up, I would think that, around this time, we'd start thinking about a very similar thing to what we've already done,' he said. 'There are more and more companies moving into game distribution. We've got Amazon with Twitch, we've got Discord, we've got Epic, and GOG obviously.
Cities Skylines Ps4 Mods 2020
'We can actually allow people to upload mods and moderate them after the fact. It's fantastic progress'
'Eventually we would have come to the conclusion that Steam mods will only serve Steam users, and we have a growing percentage of players that buy their games from elsewhere.'
A more open and diverse PC marketplace will only be to the benefit of the industry as a whole, and while that transition occurs, more and more companies will need to create solutions like Paradox Mods. In terms of console, though, it has long been the case that publishers were forced to play by the platform holders' rules. That is also changing, Törlind said, but it's worth remembering that it would have been impossible for Paradox Mods to exist even relatively recently.
Paradox decided to experiment with mods in the Xbox version of Cities: Skylines in February 2018, but it quickly became apparent that the restrictions were too many for the idea to flourish.
'The problem with that solution was that you could not submit any mods to us, because they were part of the validation that we had with Microsoft,' Törlind said. 'It was incredibly limiting, and also very time consuming and expensive for us to publish new mods. They needed to go through individual validation, which is pretty much a deal-breaker.
'That's why we're excited about this version, where we can actually allow people to upload mods and moderate them after the fact. It's fantastic progress, actually.'
At the time of the announcement, only Microsoft had agreed to let Paradox modders export to its platform, the Xbox One. The first game to make use of that function will be Haemimont's Surviving Mars, but in future, every Paradox product on Xbox One will have the full range of PC mods available. Publishers like Bethesda have also offered mods to its console audience, but only with similar restrictions to Cities: Skylines.
'[Surviving Mars] is the first time that anyone, to our knowledge, has a modding solution for Xbox that is open for submission without pre-moderation,' Törlind said, stressing that Paradox Mods is set to 'publish to all platforms' with a single upload by default. 'For all intents and purposes, Xbox players will have the same selection of mods that PC players will have.'
'Our mod policy remains completely unchanged... Our basic outlook on mods, modding, and usage of mods within games is the same. We just want to make sure that all of our players can partake.'
'I do see value in the whole closed ecosystem, but there is space for a little bit of wilder growth of content as well'
If Paradox Mods speaks to larger changes in the PC market as a whole, it also has roots in one of the key trends sweeping through the console space. As evidenced with cross-platform play between Xbox One, Switch and (when it suits Sony) PlayStation 4, the walls around each of these discrete ecosystems are not so very high as they once were.
As such, it is no surprise that Microsoft is the first company to allow Paradox Mods such a direct route to its audience. It has, after all, been attempting to bridge the gap between console and PC players for years already, and it may do so even further with its push into streaming technology. While on a much smaller scale, removing the friction from letting console owners access mods would be very much in line with its high-level strategy for Xbox.
'As far as I've spoken with Microsoft and the Xbox people, they were quite excited about the whole prospect of having mods on console,' Törlind said. 'I believe they see it as a competitive advantage, basically. They want our games on console, and with our games you don't get the full experience if you can't mod them.'
Whether Sony or Nintendo will follow suit is another matter, and one probably shouldn't hold their breath in anticipation of either doing so. Törlind certainly had no information on any 'breakthroughs' in that respect, but he did acknowledge the vital roles mods can have in sustaining games that can be played for hundreds of hours -- games very much like those that now dominate the console space.
'I do see value in the whole closed ecosystem, and the very guided experience that consoles have,' he said. 'But there is space for a little bit of wilder growth of content as well.
'Especially with games like ours, which are designed to be played for hundreds of hours, multiple hundreds of hours... That's very, very hard to attain if you don't have the ability to use mods and change the game in ways that are interesting to you.
'For companies that publish titles like that, they should be interested in the business for modding on consoles.'
A Cities: Skylines player has taken to Reddit to show off an incredible recreation of Red Dead Redemption 2. With landscapes and towns that look just like they were pulled from Rockstar's 2018 hit, u/Rowendi's creation is almost impossible to distinguish as anything but the wild west.
Cities: Skylines launched back in 2015 and has since seen dozens and dozens of mods that have added unique textures and items, like the ones in this Reddit post. Wild west towns and landscapes stand in opposition to the game's typical modern urban structures and are only possible through outside additions to the base game. Red Dead Redemption, as one of the more successful western titles in recent memory, has inspired players to recreate that game's setting in this city building simulator.
Cities Skylines Ps4 Modern City.center
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U/Rowendi's clip shows off an expansive world that genuinely replicates parts of the map from Red Dead Redemption 2. Sites such as the city of Valentine and the sprawling landscapes of the Heartlands can be seen in the recreation. Though the buildings and scenery aren't a flawless match for Red Dead, it is astoundingly close considering this is Cities: Skylines.
The scenes in the clip replicate the areas around the game's Horseshoe Overlook camp including the numerous paths that cut across the land as well as the large rock outcroppings to the camp's north. This player's version of Cities: Skylines must have quite a few mods in order for it to look as it does. People reference this in the comments on the post on the Red Dead subreddit but the creator hasn't mentioned any specific mods as of yet.
The recreation of Red Dead Redemption 2 in Cities: Skylines is not a common combination, but it does work surprisingly well. The love it received on the Red Dead subreddit goes to show how impressive of a feat it was to create this map. While the mods add the needed textures, it takes skill to replicate scenery from Red Dead Redemption2 well enough to fool a good deal of commenters on the Red Dead subreddit.
The combination of these two games is definitely out of the box but that is exactly what makes it work so well. Though this is quite far from Cities: Skylines' original purpose, which focuses on modern urban planning, it pushes the game to new heights. Mods like the ones needed to create this world remind players exactly what mods should be. They expand on an original creation, add a new flavor to a game, and should make a player think that the mod probably should have been part of the main game.
But for those loyal to the core of the vanilla version of Cities: Skylines, this may be seen as too much of a divergence. U/Rowendi's drive with this creation was to replicate the natural beauty in Red Dead Redemption 2 which is in opposition to the city planning and skylines in the vanilla game. Then again, Cities: Skylines is a game that allows players to create, balance, and enjoy world-building – and that is exactly what can be seen here. Either way, this project looks to be a solid tribute to both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cities: Skylines.
Cities Skylines Ps4 Mods
Cities: Skylines is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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