The ever successful Cities: Skylines by Paradox Interactive had revealed earlier than plans for their first expansion would be on its way out to game owners. As mentioned in an earlier article, the expansion will have the much anticipated day/night cycle that changes the city’s characteristic and creates a more ‘night life’ vibe to the city.
The expansion, titled ‘After Dark’ would be having a great deal of work put into it according to lead designer, Karoliina Korppoo:
“After Dark, the first big expansion for Cities: Skylines, has many new features, but the most notable one is the day and night cycle. Taking the cities from daytime to night is not as simple as one might think. While the change from day to night is visually stunning, there’s much more going on under the hood. Each and every building in the game received a new texture layer to have the windows light up nicely. In addition there are new lighted signs, neon signs and other lights to make the city look interesting during the night. The sun rises and sets, painting the sky with bright colours, you can see the moon and stars move across the night sky.”
Not only is there an extreme attention to detail to the texturing and lightning effects especially when working with the day/night cycle; there is a systematic approach to the way the team is working on the citizen AI:
“The city simulation changes during the night to make sure the night time feels like a night should. Citizens go out less and prefer to stay indoors. Only a few go to work, to simulate a night shift. The people who do go out, choose destinations that have to do with having fun and spending time with friends. When there are not as many private vehicles on the roads as during the day, service vehicles can move more freely. The separate night time budget allows you to adjust how active services are during the night and day. To get the most out of the quiet night time, you can set garbage trucks to operate mostly during the night, or have hearses pick up bodies at an increased rate.
One big change during night is that crime increases. With the cover of the night criminals are more active and more police are needed to keep the city safe. This can easily be done with the night time budget: raising the budget allows police stations to have more vehicles in use and thus they can work more efficiently.”
Especially in lieu with of the addition of prisons, the crime increasing under the guise of night fits together perfectly in order to add a whole lot more challenging city management.
Finally, the expansion is slated to drop on the 24th of September, 2015 for PC, Mac and Linux. Cities: Skylines After Dark expansion will cost $15 USD on the steam store. For more information regarding the expansion, you can keep a watch on the developers site and forums.