Introduction to Paradox Mods
Dear mayors! The announcement that Cities: Skylines II will be using Paradox Mods for mods distribution has sparked a lot of discussions - and we are happy to see that you share the same passion for Mods we do! We understand this change brings about questions - This Dev Diary aims at reducing uncertainty and hopefully will make the transition of you using a new platform easier.
Background
First and foremost - Paradox Mods is our own platform-neutral modding system. The initial version was made to allow mod support for the Cities: Skylines Xbox Edition. Since then, the platform has come a long way in terms of features and volume: We now serve mods for over a dozen games!
Paradox’s considered opinion is that mods are, and should always be, free of charge community-created content. This is not something that we will ever change. Mods have always been one of the most impactful ways a community can change their own game, and this creativity is never something we would want to hinder.
Features
Given the extensive use of mods in Cities: Skylines and our ambition to make mods more available, we have been hard at work developing and perfecting many features that were already part of Paradox Mods, and new features that would be beneficial for the Cities: Skylines II community. Let’s show you its features!
Subscriptions
As is normal, provided you have a Paradox account, you can subscribe to mods. Subscribing will cause the mod to be automatically downloaded and installed on your computer. When that mod later has an update, it will also be automatically kept up to date. Subscriptions are portable across platforms (Steam, Windows Store, Playstation, Xbox, etc.), meaning you can play with the same configuration of mods on any platform that you own the game on. Be aware that code mods may not be possible to enable on consoles however!
This is an example of what a mod information view would look like in-game.
Discussions
In order to facilitate the conversations and discussions between users and creators, mods can be connected to forum topics. This means that all of the features available on the Paradox Forums can be used while discussing mods. Pins, topics, future planned features, and different active conversations can all be delegated their own thread.
Game Support
Since a mod may have been made to support a specific version or versions of the game, Paradox Mods gives the mod creator the option to tell the players what version of the game the mod is intended to work with. Naturally, Paradox Mods won’t prevent you from playing with “incompatible” mods, but it will tell you when you are about to try!
Versioning
Since many of our games go through quite significant changes with most big DLC releases and/or Free Updates, and some users like playing old game versions, Paradox Mods also supports downloading older versions of a mod. This will allow you to play with mods targeted at non-current game versions. That means that if you, for some reason, don’t want to play the latest version of the mod, you can revert to an earlier version. The version check discussed in the previous paragraph will also be active if you were to accidentally (or on purpose) select a version of the mod that is incompatible with your game.
Dependencies
Mods sometimes depend on other mods for functionality (like Harmony Mod in Cities: Skylines (1), for decoration (a tree or a prop), or for memes (looking at you “Ability to Read”), and we also support this type of relationship in the Paradox Mods system. If you subscribe to a mod with dependencies, you’ll be given the option also automatically to subscribe to those mods.
As a bonus feature of this, collection mods can be created as basically empty mods containing only dependencies.
Playsets
Users with completely different mod setups (maybe one for your east-asian style and one for your cute French cottage-core set) can use the playset feature, where entire blocks of mods can be activated as a unit. Playsets are entire setups that will ensure that dependencies are fulfilled. Playsets are, of course, cloud-synced and portable between your devices.
Each subscription will belong to a given playset - This means that you can add collection mods to different playsets and, in this way, quickly build different experiences to your liking.
For some games, the order in which mods are loaded is important. In such cases, the playset will also allow you to set the order in which you want the mods to be loaded. By default, mods with dependencies will load after the mods they depend on.
You can add up to 50 different playsets. This is a playset containing three Paradox-themed buildings.
Choosing what playset to play with is a breeze!
Tags
In order to make searching mods easier, up to ten tags may be attached to a mod. The game team will define these - An initial set will be made for the launch of the game, and more may be added later on. Search results can be filtered on what tags you want the mod to have. Some examples would be to filter on “highrise”, “modern”, “office”, or maybe “collection”, “French”, or ”cottage”. You can then apply sort orders such as “most recent” or “highest rated”.
We will write more Developer Diaries in the future where we talk more about Search and Sorting, so if this interests you, stick around for more of these!
Mods in Cities: Skylines II
Our intent with the mods solution is to make mods easily available on all platforms that the game is launching on. For that purpose, we have constructed an in-game interface for mods browsing, subscription, and management. In addition, there will be mod tools delivered with the game, aimed at making mod creation easier and more accessible to those new to the hobby. You can read more about these tools in one of the latest Developer Diaries from Colossal Order.
You will also be able to check out the most recent Paradox Mods additions from your browser so that you can modify your playsets and feed your mod addiction on the go.
The web interface is made for the modder on the go.
We believe that modding is a crucial part of the game experience and will be an important factor in determining the success of the game on PC as well as on consoles. Naturally, console players may face some limitations that PC players do not - primarily regarding available disk space and use of code mods - but we will do our best to accommodate as broad an audience as possible.
We are not done yet…
…and we probably never will be. The Paradox Mods platform is under continuous development and will remain so - We are currently working on more features that focus on efficiency and convenience, and of course a whole bunch of other stuff that we are not yet ready to share. A couple of examples of this are differential updates, where only the part of the mod that actually changed is downloaded and installed, and granular search, where we enable weighted search results, aiming to deliver more precise and relevant mods.
We hope you’ll share any feedback with us so that we can make this a platform of your dreams.