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Cities: Skylines - Unity modding masterpiece?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by tiggus, Mar 13, 2015.

  1. tiggus

    tiggus

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    I saw that Cities:Skylines which is a Unity city building game was released and the modding capability just caught my eye. Wow! I have heard a lot of games talk about modding but after browsing their wiki this one seems to really walk the walk(if it works, haven't tried it yet).

    http://www.skylineswiki.com/Modding

    You have access to edit maps, import .fbx models and materials to create your own assets, and most impressively a C# game API exposed through some interfaces and base classes that are compiled to DLL at start and gives you full access to UnityEngine as well(dangerous to be sure but refreshingly open).

    I figured those interested in adding modding capabilities to their Unity games might want to check out how these guys approached it.
     
  2. Zeblote

    Zeblote

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    Unity games can have impressive modding support as long as it was planned from the start and the game was built around it
     
  3. Enoch

    Enoch

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    Mar 19, 2013
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    Now that all pro features come in personal edition this is one of those things that I expect we will see a lot more of. Leveraging the full power of the unity editor for mods now makes complete sense now. This could be one of those things that propels Unity forward a great deal as they start capturing more Asset Store revenue, now from Mod creators versus just game developers.

    The biggest issue I see as a developer is how to reconcile using 3rd party assets from the Asset Store in this scenario. I can't distribute those assets except in game form per the license. Does modding via the unity editor constitute game form in this instance?
     
  4. tiggus

    tiggus

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    Well if you look at what they're doing it doesn't use the Unity editor, not sure that has any relevance since nothing stopped you from distributing a Unity package/scene before. (also these guys make way more than $100,000 so users would have to own Pro to edit the project)

    I think if you distribute a source unity package it would have to be devoid of 3rd party assets unless you made a licensing deal with the author.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2015
  5. mgear

    mgear

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  6. tiggus

    tiggus

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    Nice, thanks for the link. I'm wondering if the licensing stuff in Unity 5 makes this more of a problem?

    Specifically the part where it states you can't use both Pro and Personal for same project. So if the devs use Pro and the players use Personal to develop levels for it, is that ok? (I would hope so but you never know)
     
  7. Zeblote

    Zeblote

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    The players aren't creating content that is shipped with the game. It's fine.
     
  8. alexzzzz

    alexzzzz

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    I'm afraid when IL2CPP comes to PC it will hurt the modding capabilibies. I'm not sure whether it supports loading user dlls at runtime.
     
  9. Random_Civilian

    Random_Civilian

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    Why be afraid? IL2CPP is a build option, not a requirement.
     
  10. NTDC-DEV

    NTDC-DEV

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2010
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    593
    Take a look at KSP. (Kerbal Space Program)

    I'm quite sure the Skyline team was heavily influenced by them ;)

    Steam Workshop is the last piece missing for KSP to be truly perfect.