Hi everyone, and welcome to this week’s dev diary for the USA Southwest Pack! BadPeanut here, reporting for duty. Let’s take a look behind the scenes at the creation of this exciting new pack.
As I will be writing the final two dev diaries for both the Southwest and Northeast packs, you may notice some content overlap between them.
The pack is available now, for free, on Paradox Mods: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/101898/Windows
The Creators
A big team of creators came together to make these packs happen! Our primary team for the Southwest Pack consists of Badi_dea, BadPeanut, Bsquiklehausen, Darf, Gèze, Gruny, King Leno, and Smilies.Badi_dea
You will know Badi_dea from various community projects, particularly their game-changing Parking Lot Roads, which allowed us to create realistic parking options. Alongside a wealth of clever, network-based assets, Badi_dea also worked on industrial assets, such as the oil refinery collaboration with other well-known community creators.BadPeanut
You all know me from my various train stations, stadiums, and vehicles released over the years on my workshop for Cities: Skylines, as well as the two Content Creator Packs I released: Train Stations and Sports Venues.Bsquiklehausen
Needing no introduction (but getting one anyway!), Bsquiklehausen is renowned for creating highly detailed, transit-related models, typically inspired by real-life American infrastructure. In 2022, they created the epic Content Creator Pack Vehicles of the World, which featured an impressive array of vehicles. Bsquiklehausen narrates the trailers for both of the USA Region Packs and maintains a YouTube channel dedicated to Cities: Skylines, transportation, and the occasional Lego video!Darf
Darf’s contributions to the Cities: Skylines community focuses on creating extremely accurate and highly detailed buildings, often based on real examples from the United States. Whether you are recreating a bustling downtown or a historic city center, Darf has you covered.Gèze
You will know Gèze most recently from their outstanding work on the French Pack. They are back with us to work on the Southwest pack, and we are incredibly grateful for it! Gèze’s attention to detail, accuracy, and passion for architecture are put to great use. Gèze also created the Seaside Resorts pack in 2022, filled with heritage-style buildings from the United States.Gruny
Also, fresh off the French Pack, Gruny has likely already impressed you. If you need a reminder, they have contributed numerous high-quality assets to the Cities: Skylines community in the past, including Parisian assets, vehicles, commercial assets, residential buildings, and amazing props.King Leno
Known for two incredible Content Creator Packs, University City and Shopping Mall, King Leno’s workshop is packed with American-inspired assets. It is difficult to do justice to their modding career, with over 400 contributions ranging from suburbia to infrastructure, medium and high-rise apartments, offices, parks, and much more.Smilies
Lastly, but by no means least, we have Smilies! Another prolific creator with close to 400 contributions, I am sure you have used an asset or two from their workshop. Typically focused on American architecture, Smilies’ workshop features a variety of low-density housing - think classic “American dream” living - alongside higher-density options, row housing, and small-town-America commercial assets. It has been an absolute pleasure working with all these creators. Having known them for so many years, it is fantastic to see what we can create when we come together as a team!Concept and Planning
The team members for both of the USA packs overlap so much that we all agreed to treat these packs as a “Part 1 and Part 2” setup. While the contents of each pack are distinct in terms of their intended regions of the United States, they can seamlessly intermingle with one another, much like the architectural diversity found across America. This decision to create two packs for the United States - given its vast diversity - was made to avoid the limitations of a single pack. By splitting them into two, we were able to increase the overall number of assets included across both packs, allowing us to better capture the distinct regional differences.
Organization for the Southwest content
For planning purposes, we used a storyboard organizer to help us document various references we had found, which would serve as inspiration and track our individual progress in creating the complete meshes and textures.
In the early stages, we spent time on video calls - an especially enjoyable experience during the pandemic restrictions - collaboratively exploring different areas of interest on Google Maps to find fascinating examples of architecture we wanted to include in the pack.
We would then add images and links of these references to a post on the board, where each of us could claim one to work on. You will recognize some of the buildings above as inspirations for what ultimately made it into the pack, while others were left for future endeavors.
For the Southwest pack, we aimed to create more low-rise style buildings. While there are still some high-density buildings, they are generally smaller in stature than their Northeast “Part 2” counterparts.
The Southwest pack also introduces one unique zone that is not represented in the Northeast: Low Density Housing. We wanted to focus on the sprawling suburban areas found throughout the Southwest, giving you the tools to create the urban sprawl of your dreams (or nightmares).
The USA Southwest Pack includes the following:
- Service Buildings
- Signature Buildings
- Zones: [list]
- Low Density Housing
- Medium Density Row Housing
- Medium Density Housing
- Mixed Housing
- High Density Housing
- Low Density Offices
- Low Density Business
Making the Assets
Below, I have asked my fellow team members to share their first-hand experiences creating some of the assets they personally chose to work on for the pack. Please keep in mind that some of these assets were still a work in progress when I requested their input, so not all of them may have made it into the final pack—and if not, we can hopefully look forward to seeing them in the future!Badi_Dea:
I have been doing IT consulting for many years and have worked in many offices throughout the USA. Because of this, I decided to contribute five styles of offices to the USA Southwest Region Pack. Starting small, the first office is inspired by a combo bistro and office buildings. I can just imagine the employees running down to grab lunch to eat at their desks while they work on spreadsheets.
Office Style 01
The second office has got to be the spitting image of every bank branch I have ever seen. This rounded front theme will be seen in another office later and is reasonably common throughout the West Coast and into the Rockies.
Office Style 02
I had to throw in some truly bland offices to capture that authentic Corporate America feel. So, I actually put effort into making these offices as unremarkable as possible.
Office Style 03
This office is the most unique-looking one of the set and my favorite too. I put a fair amount of thought into the progression of leveling up this building.
You may have noticed that the levels of these buildings increasingly increase in complexity. I think that's represented best in this building. The first level starts out as ground floor only, the 3rd level will add another floor, and finally, the 5th level changes the second level from a squared-off area to a more rounded area.
Office Style 04
The last office style in the set illustrates my approach of including subtle hints about the prestige of the building level into the propping of the asset. The pavement for the parking lot gets darker, representing that it had been surfaced recently. The lower levels have more haphazard landscaping, whereas it's much more defined in the higher levels. I tried to build in a lot of these hints to all the assets I contributed to this Region Pack.
Office Style 05
I enjoyed making these assets, and I hope you enjoy using them!
BadPeanut:
One of my contributions to the pack was the USA SW High School, inspired by a school in Arizona. When we first started the Region Packs, there was no hint of the upgrade system we have now, where you can place sub buildings around the radius of the main building. Instead, much like at launch, the plan was to have extensions on the lot, with sub buildings snapping along the main lot’s boundary. With that in mind, I decided to design the high school's main lot as a wide, long lot. This allows players to significantly expand the capacity of their cities by allowing more real estate along the boundary to place additional sub buildings!
USA SW High School
Fast-forward to later in development, after Cities: Skylines II received the update that allowed a radius to be set around the main building for placing sub buildings; I didn’t change the overall size of the main lot (I liked how wide it was!). I did, however, create a couple of variations of the sub buildings to really help shape a cool high school campus. Below, you can see the sub buildings placed further away from the main building.
USA SW High School Sub Buildings
Darf:
For years, I had the idea of creating my own version of the General Hospital, inspired by the Los Angeles Medical Center, but this proved quite tricky in the first Cities: Skylines. This building has a huge footprint—about 180.000 tris. When we first got the pitch for the Region Packs, I knew I wanted to include it right away. I think this building has the largest footprint of all the American Buildings. It’s a behemoth. I started modeling it out in SketchUp and textured it in Photoshop and Blender. The base material had a couple of iterations. It started off as a very rough concrete, which I made in Substance Designer, a custom material. It was only after a couple of iterations that I was happy with the overall look of the base material. This building has many Art Deco elements, so I handpainted the panels, which are also used in many Art Deco skyscrapers. All the arches have handpainted normals and textures—there are a ton of them! This took a huge amount of time, but I’m so happy with how it turned out. To further emphasize the Art Deco look I made all the windowframes and accents in a gold metal material. This can’t be done in Cities: Skylines, which further emphasizes Art Deco architecture. This building really makes use of all the PBR maps that Cities: Skylines II has to offer.
USA SW Central Hospital
The propping in the game was quite challenging because of the extensions. However, I actually learned a lot about propping this building, such as how networks work. It has many props because there are so many air conditioning bays.
USA SW Central Hospital
I don’t know how much time this took. I only finished the model for this building in 2023, and it was during a 2-week modeling session. I really hope you enjoy all the effort I put into modeling this.
Gèze:
After I finished the French Pack, I worked on both USA packs. For the USA Southwest, I was assigned only a single mixed residential building, which limited my building choices but didn't really hinder my progress in asset creation. The textures I created for this pack all come with a degree of possible recoloring, which should help with mixing and matching them with other assets in the game.
Mixed Housing
The building reference that I initially found is located in Los Angeles and is not a mixed residential, but that didn't prevent me from adapting it to fit the game storefront mechanics. I adjusted the ground-floor height, element spacing, decor, and the general building shape.
Mixed Housing with Fire Escapes
The building's almost austere Art Deco facade is broken up with the fire escape ladder, which is a very common element of facades on the West Coast. I decided to also include proper curvature of the roof as a detail that not many people might notice at first, but one that made the building feel more authentic to me.
Mixed Housing rooftop detail
King Leno:
Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Antonio were the main cities from which I drew inspiration in creating Southwestern-themed assets. However, some of the Low Density Residential assets were based on buildings from another coastal US city outside of the Southwest that had Spanish-influenced architecture. Houses with features such as stucco walls and terracotta roofs can be found all over the Southwest and really work well with the theme of the region pack. I wanted to choose houses that can be seen in desert, tropical, and urban settings.
Low Density Housing
I chose brightly colored modern and newly developed apartment buildings to represent Medium Density zoning. Similar style apartments can be found across the US, and I wanted the buildings to be versatile in their style and the way that they are zoned. Some are wall-to-wall and will have a cohesive look when spawned next to each other, but they work just as well as stand-alone assets. Different techniques and road placement can be used to create a sprawling apartment community.
Medium Density Housing
One of the main challenges in creating large assets for the original Cities: Skylines was the prop limit on a single building and coming up with creative ways to include more props or using the mesh and texture to achieve those details. In Cities: Skylines II, the challenge was the opposite. Cities: Skylines II is packed with amazingly detailed props to enhance assets, and using the vanilla props saved a tremendous amount of time during the creation process. Navigating and managing the nearly unlimited amount of props used for larger assets was a learning experience in addition to surfaces, paths, effects, and area markers that can be included in assets.
I created this large apartment complex that has pedestrian paths leading to each building set away from the main street. Achieving symmetry with the walking paths and surface areas in this asset required a lot of trial and error. 155 surface areas were used, the largest of which has 96 nodes.
Low Rent Signature Buildings
Smilies:
I focused pretty heavily on low density houses, medium density and mixed-use residentials for this region. I wanted the houses to be a mix of styles, from the Spanish Revival houses commonly found in California to the Craftsman-style homes found in Washington.
Low Density Housing
Low density houses were some of the first things I created while I was learning how to make things for this game. I spent a lot of time attempting to learn how to use Substance Painter and Substance Designer while making these houses. I figured it'd be better to make mistakes on smaller houses and fix them as I go than having to re-work larger high-rises.
I tried to do more modern glassy, looking mixed and medium residentials for this region. A lot of it was particularly inspired by California.
Medium Density Housing
Medium Density Housing and Mixed Housing
The low density houses, medium, and mixed buildings all were designed to take full advantage of the new color variation mechanic and will have dozens of different paint schemes.
Not everything is a clean, modern, and glassy building, though!
Mixed Housing
