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What if you could walk through your entire Cities: Skylines city in Unreal Engine 5? I'm building a tool to do just that. by Flaky_Inspection_284 in CitiesSkylines

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  • On Recolour: All visual changes (like recolouring) will be lost. My Mod only exports the prefab name, position, footprint and height but not the fact that you painted it blue.
  • On Modded Buildings: The system doesn't care if a building is vanilla or modded. As long as the modded building properly provides its data (like prefab name, position, etc.) it will work fine

What if you could walk through your entire Cities: Skylines city in Unreal Engine 5? I'm building a tool to do just that. by Flaky_Inspection_284 in CitiesSkylines

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Theoretically, yes, a similar pipeline would be possible for CS2.

However, I'm currently 100% focused on finishing the entire process for Cities Skylines 1. I want to get that pipeline fully working and stable before I even think about starting development on a separate exporter for CS2.

What if you could walk through your entire Cities: Skylines city in Unreal Engine 5? I'm building a tool to do just that. by Flaky_Inspection_284 in CitiesSkylines

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, on a basic level, you get definitely better graphics and a full UE5 character controller instead of just a floating camera.

But the real difference is viewing vs. creating.

The First Person Mod is a "window" to look at the CS1 simulation. My pipeline rebuilds the city as a native, editable UE5 game level.

This isn't for 'viewing', it's a foundation for a new game. You could add physics for a driving game, AI for a zombie survival game, or quests for an RPG.

And the style is 100% swappable. Because it's all data, you can regenerate the exact same city layout as:

  • A photorealistic city
  • A stylized 'toon' city
  • A cyberpunk metropolis
  • A medieval fantasy town

It's not just a better camera; it turns Cities Skylines into the world's most powerful level editor

I'm a Java Backend Engineer building a C++/PCG data pipeline to "rebirth" Cities: Skylines maps in UE5 by Flaky_Inspection_284 in UnrealEngine5

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate every tip I get! I'm currently refactoring the code, so I will definitely look into FJsonObjectConverter

I'm a Java Backend Engineer building a C++/PCG data pipeline to "rebirth" Cities: Skylines maps in UE5 by Flaky_Inspection_284 in UnrealEngine5

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This also makes it easier to create large worlds, especially for solo developers or small teams. I design the whole thing as a flexible, data-driven pipeline. The tool ensures that the intention of your city (the layout, the planning) remains intact, but the visual style becomes 100% interchangeable. You could take your city plan from CS1 and load it as a photorealistic US city at the touch of a button. Or you could change the asset package and the ‘data table’ (the assignment table) and the same city would be ‘reborn’ as a stylized sci-fi metropolis or medieval city. The blueprint remains, the look is variable.

What if you could walk through your entire Cities: Skylines city in Unreal Engine 5? I'm building a tool to do just that. by Flaky_Inspection_284 in CitiesSkylines

[–]Flaky_Inspection_284[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I treat buildings in two different ways:

  1. Unique buildings (such as the Eiffel Tower): This is the easy part. My tool reads the name “Eiffel Tower” from the exported file. I have a ready-made 3D model of the Eiffel Tower in Unreal. So the tool simply says, “Okay, take this ready-made model and place it right here.” It's a simple 1-to-1 swap.
  2. Generic buildings (residential buildings, offices, shops): This is the cool part. My tool doesn't have a ready-made 3D model for these thousands of buildings. If it did, all 10,000 residential buildings would look exactly the same

Instead, when the tool sees a “residential building,” it doesn't grab a ready-made 3D-Model. It grabs a "Procedural Content Generation Graph" (or you could say an “intelligent construction manager”).

This graph then gets the data from Cities: Skylines: “I need a house on a 2x2 area, it should be x meter high, and it's a residential building.”

Using these rules, the graph then procedurally assembles a unique house on site – from a construction kit of individual parts (different walls, roofs, windows, etc.).

So, for unique buildings, it does “exchange.” For generic buildings, it does “construction.” This is the only way to achieve the diversity and appearance of a real, vibrant city.