Cities: Skylines II

Description

This mod supplements existing tools so you can precisely and quickly place objects such as trees, shrubs, and props in lines, curves, and circles with varying parameters.

It works alongside the game's inbuilt line tool to provide advanced functionality, including:

Support for objects other than trees and props

Circles

Continuous lines and curves

Grid placement

Many advanced placement options and controls (see below)

Features

Integrates directly with in-game tools: No hotkey required.

Place objects in lines: Create straight lines, curves, circles, or grids.

Works both in-game and in the editor.

Fence mode: Automatically align and place objects end-to-end.

Wall-to-wall mode: Automatically align and place objects side-to-side.

Appearance randomization controls: Settings to control object appearance randomization.

Accurate placement: No worrying about imprecision.

Adjust spacing and rotation: Use the in-game tool UI for more control, including random rotation for a more natural look.

Random position variation (optional): Provides natural irregularity.

Live preview: Provisionally place a line, adjust spacing and/or rotation, and see how it looks in real-time before making the final placement (or cancelling).

Displays distances and angles for fine-tuning.

Usage

To activate the tool, select the object that you'd like to place in a line (such as a tree), either normally or with the Dev UI. Then, select a line mode from the line modes options at the bottom of the tool options panel.

To exit the tool, select 'single placement mode' to return to the normal placement mode for the selected object, or press Escape.

Place a line

Click where you want the line to begin, and click again at the desired endpoint to place the objects. Note: Curves and grids require three clicks - start, guidepoint, and end.

Shift-click at the end of a line starts a new line placement at the spot where the previous line ended.

Control-click at the end of a line leaves it in preview mode; you can adjust the settings and see the results in real-time. You can also drag the highlighted control points (blue circles) to adjust the line positioning (Control-click to start dragging ensures that you don't accidentally trigger placement if you miss the point circles, but regular clicking also works). When finished, click to place or right-click to cancel.

Right-click to cancel placement.

When placing curves and grids, holding down Alt will snap angles to 15-degree increments.

Tool options

Line modes

Toggle between single object (default game tool), straight line, curved, circle, and grid modes.

Toggle fence mode to align objects with the line direction, and place them continuously end-to-end (like a fence). If not using snap-to-length, then you may need to enable Anarchy (via the Anarchy mod) to place the final (overlapping) piece.

Toggle wall-to-wall mode to align objects with the line direction, and place them continuously side-to-side.

Note: fence mode and/or wall-to-wall mode are not available for all prefabs (and those options will be hidden if they're not available). This occurs when the underlying prefab doesn't have a mesh that can be used to properly calculate dimensions (e.g. parking lots).

Appearance randomization

Enable randomization to randomize the appearance of objects to be placed (within the normal range for that object), or disable randomization to have all objects take their default appearance.

Use the change fixed random seed to change the appearance of objects to place to the next random option.

Object placement spacing

Adjust distances using the arrow buttons - click for 1m increments, Shift-click for 10m, and Control-click for 0.1m. For circle mode, spacing is rounded up to the nearest distance that ensures an even placement around the circle.

Select fixed-length even spacing mode to space out objects evenly over the entire length of the line, with spacing as close as possible to the spacing distance you set. For circle mode, this causes spacing to be rounded to the nearest number (up or down) that ensures an even placement around the circle (default circle rounding is always up).

For grid mode, the set spacing will be used for both dimensions, unless fence mode or wall-to-wall mode is selected; in which case the set spacing will only be used for the grid depth spacing.

Object rotation (angles)

Manually adjust the rotation for all items using the arrow buttons - click for 10-degree increments, Shift-click for 90 degrees, Control-click for 1 degree.

Select relative rotation to make the object face along the line direction (following any curves).

Select absolute rotation to make the objects all face in the same direction (ignoring the line direction).

Select random rotation to have each object in the line have a different randomly-chosen rotation.

Placement randomization

Set variable spacing greater than zero to apply a random length offset to each item's spacing, up to the maximum distance specified - click for 1m increments, Shift-click for 10m, Control-click for 0.1m.

Set variable offset greater than zero to apply a random sideways offset to each item, up to the maximum distance specified - click for 1m increments, Shift-click for 10m, Control-click for 0.1m.

To remove variable spacing and/or offset, set the field(s) back to zero. Shift-click (10m increments) to make this faster.

Mod options

Available in the game's options menu. There's currently only one control: a slider that allows you to control the transparency of the placement guidelines (white dashed lines). Set to fully transparent to disable the guidelines entirely.

Meta

Translations

This mod supports localization. Please help out with translating this mod into different languages via the CrowdIn site at crowdin.com/project/line-tool-cs2.

Modders

Modders (and aspiring modders!), as always I'm available and happy to chat about what I've done and answer any questions, and also about how you can implement anything that I've done for your own mods. Come grab me on the Cities Skylines Modding Discord!

Credits

Incorporates overlay improvements and enhancements by phillycheeze.

Special thanks to yenyang for various tips and advice!

This mod uses the Harmony Patching Library by Andreas Pardeike.

Screenshots

Changelog

1.1.9 - Released 2026-01-08

• Hide game topography toggle if Topo Toggle mod is present.