Hey there, city planners and virtual architects! Buckle up for an exciting journey into the latest offering for Cities: Skylines II. The new Eastern Europe Region Pack is here, and it’s packed with all sorts of architectural goodness that’ll make you feel like you’re building your very own slice of this culturally rich area. But what does it really have in store? Let’s find out!
Eastern Europe Region Pack
Hello everyone! Welcome to the development diary of the Eastern European Pack for Cities: Skylines II. I’m Alex_BY, one of the first modders of Cities: Skylines. Today, I’ll tell you a bit about how we worked on this vast building pack and the concept behind it.
You can download the Easter European Pack here: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/98960/Windows
Concept and Inspiration
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “Eastern Europe”? Depending on what you’ve seen in movies or read in articles, you might picture something like this:
A frame from “Eurotrip” (2004).
And yes, there’s some truth to that! However, our primary goal was to give players everything they need to construct a genuine Eastern European city—think panel houses, panel houses… oh, did I mention panel houses? And naturally, service buildings made from those very same panels.
The biggest panel district in Eastern Europe – Saltivka, Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Add a dash of historical architecture alongside a few village homes and voilà—you’re equipped to create a true-to-life Eastern European city!
Another angle of Saltivka, Kharkiv.
During planning for our pack, we ran into some hurdles right off the bat. First things first—the pack was going to be massive. My reference file alone weighed in at nearly 1.5 GB.
The PureRef doc is where we collected our main references.
The focus areas included:
- All residential Medium and High Density options as well as Mixed Density.
- Low Density Commercial buildings.
- A significant portion of service buildings.
This hefty file already boasted over one hundred assets—not counting Residential Low assets or additional Commercial and Service buildings. Spoiler alert: by completion, we ended up with over 300 entries! With levels and styles factored in, we’re close to hitting a thousand assets overall.
The bottom row of the Eastern Europe assets list.
A major challenge was adhering strictly to Colossal Order’s detailed technical specifications for models. Unlike traditional workflows that often use tiled textures, Cities: Skylines II required each building texture not exceed 4096×4096 pixels. This was quite different from how many modders approached asset creation before!
In previous iterations like Cities: Skylines, modders frequently mapped textures at smaller resolutions with UV islands extending beyond their designated boundaries.
For this project though? All UV islands had to fit snug within those limits—stacking them over one another instead of letting them stray outside.
It became clear that optimization would be crucial—my mantra throughout development became reuse wherever possible while maintaining quality.
This philosophy wonderfully aligned with real-world Eastern European architecture; many structures were designed for quick construction using similar panels across various designs. It translated perfectly into game assets—and boy did it pay off!
A representation of Medium and High-density panels used for builds.
The UV map showcasing Medium + High Density residential layouts.
You can see buildings beautifully mapped onto single textures here—there’s even space left on them! Combine these visuals with an effective texturing approach—magic happens!
This brings us back around to those initial thoughts about “Eastern Europe.” Folks familiar with countries from the former Eastern Bloc will likely resonate strongly with this concept. Many old gray panel buildings are currently undergoing renovations or have already transformed into visually pleasing homes. We wanted this progression reflected within our pack too!
- Level 1-2 showcases more gloomy facades lacking character.
- Level 3-4 brings colors into play along with added charm.
- Level 5 presents fully renovated structures radiating beauty!
