Not even a week has gone by and the Steam Workshop for Cities: Skylines is already bursting at the seams with player-made content. Along with maps and buildings created using the game's editors, mods have begun to appear, most notably one that lets you unlock all 25 map tiles. The vanilla game lets you use nine, which is still pretty roomy, but why limit yourself?
The tile unlocking mod is hard to make a full column out of, however, so here's one you might also want to check out: the free camera mod.
It's described as a first-person camera mod, but it's really more of a noclip mode, allowing you to fly through the city unrestrained, drop down to street level, zip between buildings (or through them), and basically check out your creation from any spot you like.
Got a problem in your city? Don't be an aloof mayor, coldly sitting in your office in the sky. Go check it out in person. It's the least you can do when your citizens start complaining about traffic or taxes or garbage collection or, I dunno, that their houses are submerged in sixty feet of water. You know, the kinda stuff people just have to gripe about.
Once you subscribe to the mod, you'll need to activate it in Content Manager menu. In the game, you'll now see a button in the top right corner of your screen. Click it to bring up a settings window, which lets you set the speed you want to move at and how close to the ground you want to get. Move around with WASD. Tab returns you to normal mode, or you can configure it to another key.
Obviously, your city wasn't meant to be seen from quite so close up, so it's not exactly pretty, but it's still a neat tool and useful for getting a closer look at things. For instance, what's going on at that bus stop? Clearly, there's just too much novelty food truck traffic to let the bus through. Get on it, mayor!
I think the game's regular camera is fine for the most part, but it can occasionally be tricky seeing things up close since it bounces over buildings, trees, and hills, so the new camera is a nice addition. I even loaded up a save from the diary I did this week, to get a close look at one of the more disturbing events that took place.
