Cities: Skylines comes with a built-in tool if you want to tinker with the appearance of its assets, but there's also a mod that lets you change the way things look while you're actually playing the game. The Advanced Vehicle Options mod pops a little automobile icon on your dashboard, right next to the policies button. Click it, and you can start making changes to all the vehicles in Skylines, from cars and trucks to trains and planes, even while they're in motion.

There are several changes you can make, beginning with aesthetic ones. First and easiest, you can change the color scheme of the vehicles endlessly speeding around your city. Or, in the case of my terribly designed cities, the color scheme of the vehicles currently stuck in traffic. There are four color schemes for each vehicle, and once you've picked them the game will choose randomly between them when it spawns the vehicle. If you want every vehicle to spawn with the same color scheme (say you want to design a uniform fleet for one of your industries), just make the four color schemes identical.

While you're in there picking color samples, there are some other changes you can make that will actually have an impact on the game. You can enter a new maximum speed for the vehicles, though this doesn't necessarily mean you'll see cars and trucks traveling at point five past lightspeed. If there's traffic or if your roads don't support super-fast speeds (due to turns or traffic lights), they might not be able reach their new maximum speed. You can also change how quickly the vehicles accelerate and come to a stop.

This all applies to trains as well, both cargo and passenger. There's also an option to replace the last train car with an engine, which is generally the case with trains so they can avoid those pesky three-point turns.

If you're more draconian with your city management, you can completely remove all instances of a particular vehicle and not allow any more to spawn. This could have a serious impact on your city, depending on what vehicle you eliminate. Sure, you may be sick of seeing that damn donut truck everywhere you turn, but it is actually making deliveries that your business community needs. You can also change the capacity of vehicles, to allow them to carry more or less of whatever it is they are carrying. Donuts, for instance.

As is the case with most Skylines mods, Advanced Vehicle Options is a one-click install via the Steam Workshop, after which you need only activate it from the main menu. The modder states he hasn't found any compatibility issues, and I didn't have any problems running it despite the number of other mods I have enabled, either.

Do you like the dark? Do you like the way it moves? Do you come alive when neon kills the sun? If you answered yes to at least two of those questions, then first, rock on, and second, you'll be happy to hear that the first expansion to the hit Cities: Skylines has been revealed as After Dark, featuring a day/night cycle that Paradox Interactive says will have a big impact on how cities are managed.

"Day and night changes in the city and affects citizen schedules," the publisher explained. "Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency, further easing the traffic. Service vehicles move around as usual."

Other changes in the expansion are Leisure Specialization for commercial areas, which will make them more active at night, and Beach Specialization, which will enable "beach activities" in commercial areas such as beach bars and restaurants along the shoreline. City services are also being expanded: Criminals will be transported from police buildings to prison, taxis will hit the streets, and an international airport will allow for much greater volumes of traffic than the current model.

Released in March, Cities: Skylines handily out-citied SimCity and became a surprise hit, setting a Paradox sales record and quickly racking up more than one million units sold. In July, developer Colossal Order said it intended to support the game "as long as we possibly and technically can." A release date for After Dark hasn't been announced, but Paradox says it's "coming soon."

It shouldn't be a surprise, given that it's sold over one million copies, but Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order has pledged to support the game for "as long as we possibly and technically can while people enjoy playing."

In a huge TechRadar interview, CEO Mariina Hallikainen talks about the overwhelming success of the Paradox-backed citybuilder, as well as the work undertaken by the community through mods.

In recognition of the game's support, Hallikainen explains that they won't move on to a sequel until it doesn't make sense to continue supporting last March's release.

"I think the point where we have to move on to a sequel is when the technology is in such a state that it doesn't make any sense to continue working on Cities: Skylines," Hallikainen says. "I'm hoping that will be some years in the future because there's so many ideas we want to add to the game before going there."

As for what's next for the game, Hallikainen says, "We're going to be focusing on some great expansions and getting free updates out to generally improve the game. We're also very focused on improving the modding tools to allow them to do even cooler stuff."

More information is due out at Gamescom, this August. The game's most recent patch brought new buildings and pedestrian tunnels.

Thanks, VG247.

A new Cities: Skylines patch brings 30 new buildings, pedestrian tunnels, better auto-save functionality and a tonne of bug fixes, according to an announcement on the Paradox website. The patch addresses a bunch of mod-related bugs, which means some installed mods will be affected until their creators have made a few adjustments. 

The bug fixes include trains no longer getting stuck on map borders, de-zoned areas no longer magically re-zoning themselves, and a long list of more subtle fixes. It's also possible to unsubscribe from all mods at once now, which will come in handy as modders work to fix their wares to accommodate the new patch. 

"Due to some improvements with how mod-specific options are displayed in-game a fair amount of popular mods will be incompatible with 1.1.1b," the post reads. "We recommend using the steam launch options "-disableMods" and "-noWorkshop" until the mod creators have done the necessary, albeit very small, changes. More info on what needs to be done by our modders can be found here."

The full patch notes are over here. In the meantime, why not check out some of the most hellish cities ever created in Cities: Skyline, or see what happens when you build a city with only one house. 

We recently received a free update for Cities: Skylines in the form of European buildings and maps to use them in. Thing is, these new buildings will only grow in the European-themed maps. They won't show up in the cities you were building before the update, or in maps with other themes.

Modders, of course, have found a way to eliminate that peculiar restriction. There are two mods you'll need, the first of which is European Building Unlocker, by modder BloodyPenguin, which unlocks all the new European buildings and props for use in any map you want. This includes the buildings that grow in zoned areas, as well as the ones you place, like the European-style police stations, colleges, and so on. It also allows you to use the original buildings on any of the new Euro maps.

The second mod is Building Themes by modder boformer. This mod adds a 'Theme' tab to your districts panel that lets you control which districts the residential, commercial, and industrial European buildings will grow in. If you don't want the European buildings sprouting up all over the place, now you can specify where you'd like to see them.

Essentially, you can now play with those cool European buildings in whatever city and map you want, and dictate where they'll appear. Plus, if you change your mind about a district, you can just switch the theme. If there are buildings already in the district, they won't vanish, but will change to match the new theme the next time they level up. Pretty cool.

I tried the mods out on an old city of mine that I haven't played with in the past few months, and it works great. I just laid down some new residential and commercial zones on the map, used the new European district theme, and waited. Sure enough, European buildings began to grow, and I was able to place specialty buildings like fire stations and schools as well.

The Building Theme mod is in beta, and the modder is planning to add a theme manager tool, to allow players to create their own theme that can be used with custom assets. You can subscribe to both the Building Themes and European Buildings Unlocker mods on the Steam Workshop.

As themes go, "European" is a pretty broad category—encompassing centuries of history and architecture across multiple countries. Nevertheless, a new update for Cities: Skylines does attempt to make everything look less gosh-darn American. Patch 1.1.0—or European Theme, as it's also known—brings 72 new European buildings, and the ability for these buildings to form into terraces.

These buildings are part of a new European biome, meaning they'll only appear if you start a city on that map theme.

Also in 1.1.0, tunnels; a feature that Colossal Order say was "one of the community s most requested features". In addition, the asset editor has been expanded and now allows for the import of custom vehicles.

Here are the update's main additions and features:

• New: European theme added
• New: 72 European buildings in the European theme
• New: Support for corner and adjacent buildings in the European theme
• New: 3 maps added with European theme (Cliffside Bay, Foggy Hills and Grand River)
• New: Tunnels for roads and rail added
• New: Metro tunnels can be built at different levels
• Options: V sync option added
• Options: Invert Y mouse axis added

The full thing is much broader in its scope, and you can see the complete changelist over at the Paradox forums. Patch 1.1.0 is out now.

Are you still playing Cities: Skylines? Personally, the only city I'm visiting these days is Los Santos in GTA 5, but the nice thing about mods is that they can pull you back into a game you haven't played in a while. The CityCopter mod, created by modder InconsolableCellist and currently in alpha, is a good example. It gives you a helicopter hangar and landing pad, and lets you hop into a chopper's cockpit and fly around your city in first-person.

There are no real goals, it's just kind of enjoyable to fly around a city you've built from the ground up instead of one someone else made. You can entertain yourself by checking out your city from some new vantage points, by trying to land on chopper pads on top of buildings, by threading the needle through your city's arch, and by trying to swoop around and not collide with things (though there's no penalty for doing so).

With the mod installed and activated, you'll first want to place your chopper pad, which appears on the unique level 3 building menu. You'll also see a new settings icon, in green, in the top right corner of your screen. Here you can change the hotkey to climb into your chopper (by default, it's Ctrl+G), and tweak other settings, like field of view and whether or not you want building and ground collisions on or off. Your mouse controls your pitch and yaw, and WASD controls the throttle and roll. Holding shift while moving the mouse lets you look around the cockpit without changing direction.

You can also activate night mode, which blankets your city in darkness, along with a chopper spotlight, so you can freak out people on the ground by shining a light on them. You can also turn off height limitations and look at your city from far, far above.

In its current state the controls are a little awkward, but with some practice I got pretty good at piloting my helicopter around. I'm looking forward to seeing where the mod ultimately goes.

You can subscribe to CityCopter on the Steam Workshop. There is also a donation link on that page if you'd like to contribute to the modder.

I wrote about CityCopter—the SimCopter style Cities: Skylines mod—last month. It's now available to download and play.

Okay, technically it's been available to download and play since April 23. For not delivering the freshest news I am eternally sorry, and will, for the forseeable future, be flying the metaphorical helicopter of my state of mind around the twin cities of shame and regret.

Here's a launch trailer. A full 9,379 people have seen it before you.

In case you hadn't guessed, CityCopter lets you fly a helicopter around your city. It's in alpha at the moment, or, to put it in its creator's own words: "the helicopter model is ugly, and there will be bugs."

You wanted it, you got it. Now you can modify terrain in your Cities: Skylines city while you play. The Terraform tool mod is still a work in progress, currently in version 0.8, and I found it a bit buggy. Still, it's neat. You can load up your existing city and use a new toolbar to raise and lower the land, paint hills, cliffs, mountains, and valleys.

Once you subscribe to the mod, you'll find a new icon on your dashboard, next to your budget and policies icons. Clicking it brings up a panel of terraforming options, allowing you to right or left click on the ground and raise or lower the sections of the map you've highlighted. Pressing + or - on your keypad increases and decreases the size of your brush. This way you can make small adjustments like hills, or make the brush size massive and start growing mountains.

There's a cost associated with massive earthwork projects, naturally, so either keep a close eye on your bank account, or activate Skylines' unlimited money mod before you start. And, before you start mucking around, you might want to create a new save of your city. Somehow I accidentally created a massive gorge, and couldn't re-raise the land. Again, there are some bugs.

The strength of the tools can be adjusted as well, by holding Shift and using the + and - keys again, which should help give you more control over your terraforming. You can't raise or lower land if something is currently built on it, including roads, so if you imagined having skyscrapers on top of a mountain, you'll have to build the mountain first.

Water, naturally, responds to land placed in its way, or, I imagine, removed from its path, so hey, you might have a new tool to create a horrible disaster for your poor citizens.

You can subscribe to the mod here in the Steam Workshop.