Setting up
This is the official guide on how to port Colombo Skylines to your PC. Make sure you go through the guide step by step so you don’t miss any important steps.
First you have to install city skylines using Steam: Cities Skylines. Cities skylines is available for windows and mac but some mods we have used might not be compatible with mac so we recommend using a windows pc with decent RAM and CPU capabilities.
We recommend using a high powered windows PC to run the Colombo Skylines save file as it is quite heavy on the computer, with a lot of details that are pushing the game engine to its limit. The underlying limits are mentioned below.
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 bit
- Memory: 32 GB RAM
- Processor: Intel® Core™ I7 2700K | AMD® Ryzen 7 2700X
- Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 580 (1.5 GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 560 (4 GB)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 12 GB available space
After the installation is complete, you have to download certain Mods that made the simulation of Colombo possible and some assets that gave the look and feel of Colombo city to the game. To make the process easier we have made workshop collections to easily add the relevant mods and assets. They are categorized according to the type of Assets or Mods that are inside each collection and by subscribing to them you can get the intended mods & assets (Make sure you add only, don't override existing assets and mods).
Colombo Skylines: Functionality Mods
This collection of mods help change the functionality of the vanilla game and allow more control over certain functionalities of cities skylines and also allow overriding cities limits. Adding this collection is very much necessary to run the save file without crashing.
Colombo Skylines: Visual Mods
This collection consists of all the mods that make cities' skylines more realistic and beautiful. These mods include shaders, theme editors, etc.
Colombo Skylines: Assets
This collection contains all the assets that were used in this save file and the game will crash if these assets are not loaded when the save file is launched.
To have the same functionality we intended when designing the city you need to configure your mods accordingly.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you have backups of the save files of cities you have currently active on cities skylines and also the mod configurations for each of the mods you have used.
First, download the .crp file here: https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-skylines/releases/download/v1.0.0/Colombo.crp
This is the save file that contains our city of Colombo. Next, you must place this into the save file location of your copy of Cities Skylines.
To download other configuration and overlay files you may have to download all the files in the Github repository by going to;
homepage of the colombo-skylines repository -> Code -> Download Zip
To find the save file Location in your PC, first run the command windows + R. This will prompt you a window that looks like this,
In the text field type %localappdata% and enter, this will open up a file directory which shows your local app data. From that folder navigate to;
Colossal Order > Cities_Skylines > Saves
Mod config files are a bit of a different story as they are not as straightforward as the save file to locate. Some mod files are located in;
%localappdata > Colossal Order > Cities_Skylines
To make the porting easier we made a folder that consists of all the mod config files, save files and all you have to do is navigate to Colossal Order File and paste the Cities_Skylines File into that. This will replace the mod config files and change it to the targeted configurations.
Local App Data
Some mods have there config files in the steam app data and to replace these we have to navigate as such;
Go to steam and go to the city skylines launch page. From there go to;
⚙️ > Manage > Browse Local Files
After you’ve located cities skylines file paste the files provided below to replace the necessary config files to run the game as intended. (This is also where the overlay images are situated if you require those files).
Steam App Data
You can pick and choose the necessary config files, but this won’t guarantee you having the same functionality as we intended.
After all the config files have been copied accordingly you can launch the game from steam. Here you will find there’s a menu item called Content Manager. Go to;
Content Manager > Mods
here you will find the mods you have added to the game. Make sure you tick all the mods to activate them in the game.
Before running the game we recommend you adjust the graphic settings according to the capabilities of your PC. Even if you have a high-spec gaming PC, it’s recommended that you keep the Shadows Quality, Textures and Level of Details to medium and increase these values if the PC was able to handle the load.
The Loading Screen mod is very helpful to increase loading speed and negate any errors while loading. It’s good to change some settings in the Loading Screen mod to stop the game from having crashes on the first load.
From the Game Menu go to;
Options > Loading Screen Revisited
Here change the settings according to the screenshot provided below.
Don't Change the prefab skip file location
Finally after all the configurations you can load the game. Navigate to the game menu;
Load Game > Colombo.crp
This will take some time to load and you can see the assets loading. Don't worry about the missing assets that are marked in orange; they are small assets that doesn't change the behavior of the game that much.
After launching the game to double check if the configurations are in place you can manually go to each game mod and check if they are set to the intended ways. Mod Configurations