This patch should not affect mods, and loading of old savegames is supported.
After our first patch last week, we received a lot of great feedback from you. Thank you for all the comments and for pointing out the issues, especially regarding the lighting. Now we have prepared a hotfix, addressing the lighting and some other points you raised.
Reduced indirect multiplier value back to the original value.
Global Illumination setting can now be enabled correctly.
Camera zoom now works when the color customization color wheel is open.
Development tree title text visibility improved.
Fixed issue where Autosave setting state sometimes reset unintentionally.
We want to go through how and why this happened.
The way we develop the game is by creating a branch to our version control for each new feature or a fix that we plan to make. These branches are basically separate workspaces, so every change or feature can be worked on in their own dedicated space without getting mixed up with other work going on at the same time.
With the previous patch, we had a branch where we worked on adding the new fog system driven by the simulation. On that same branch, we made minor changes to the visuals of the different climates and their seasons, weather, and night lighting. At the same time, shadow improvements were worked on in another branch, and a development value related to indirect lighting was set to a high value to make sure we remember to go through and correct it later, once it’s been merged with the other visual changes. Eventually, this development value in indirect lighting got shipped with the previous patch unintentionally.
Unfortunately, we combined these changes in the wrong order. We had already made the biggest visual polish check on the game before the shadow changes, which meant that the incorrect value simply slipped through our fingers. Our focus was on testing patch stability, game balance, and performance at this point. We are now making changes to our processes to make sure we also catch these kinds of visual issues, even if they come up at the end of the development cycle.
Thanks for reading! We will continue working on Cities: Skylines II, and as always, keep the feedback coming!