Colossal Order has released their first post-launch update for Cities: Skylines 2, a small hotfix patch that is designed to target a few small game crash bugs, and implement the first few performance optimisations. Cities: Skylines 2 patch 1.0.11f1 is out now on Steam, and coming “as soon as possible” to the Microsoft Store.
In particular, Colossal Order has modified how the LOD setting works, optimised and tweaked fog, depth of field and global illumination, and tried to reduce the stutters when buildings spawn or level up (and just in general).
The first of several planned patches that CO has planned to try to improve game performance, the team writes, “While this does not address all issues we are aware of, we wanted to get you these improvements as soon as possible.”
Here’s the Cities: Skylines 2 version 1.0.11f1 patch notes:
- Changed LOD to be independent of rendering resolution to get more consistent performance with high resolutions
- Minor optimization with fog
- Depth of field optimizations and tweaks
- Global illumination tweaks
- Optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up
- Optimized various stutters across all systems
- Fixed crash after upgrading wind turbine
- Fixed crash when car crashes into still hidden car with trailer
- Fixed crash with mesh loading (that happens with low settings mostly)
Cities: Skylines 2 launched with the developers readily admitting that performance was not as good as they wanted it to be at launch. With this in mind, they released a statement explaining the situation and recommending lowered settings for users to at least be able to aim for 30fps. As we’re already seeing, they pinpointed depth of field, global illumination and volumetrics as key areas, and are targeting frame rate stutters. Here’s their optimisations tips guide.
All of this has put a dampener on the game’s release. While it’s hit high numbers on steam player counts, the Steam user reviews currently pegs it as having a “mixed” reception.
All that said, there’s an optimistic future for a game that will have a long future ahead of it, much like the original Cities: Skylines. In our Cities: Skylines 2 review, I said, “The core city building is solid, a well-rounded new take on the city building genre that already covers a lot of bases, but has plenty of room for expansion and further ideas to come through to it. Sure, you might miss the creature comforts of old DLC and mods, but given time Cities: Skylines 2 will be a bigger and better city builder.”
Source: Paradox
