april 1st Regional Night View Mod  1.0

REGIONAL NIGHT VIEW MOD

At long last, after a long time, I have finally made a mod that allows you to view your regions at night! After a long time of searching, turns out there's a hidden option maxis meant to implement in the SimCity_1.Dat file that allows regional night view!

When you save a city, SC4 generates an image of the city that can be viewed in regional night view. This mod unlocks a hidden option that Maxis removed in the game's development that allows night mode in the region view. The game actually saves the nightlights already even without this mod believe it or not, just not at night. Now you can finally see night mode! I had to make the night view atmosphere manually using the DAT files and based it off SimFox Day'nite mod to match the mayor mode night view since all cool kids now'days are using it  
 

How to Install:

You must follow these steps EXACTLY as below in order for this mod to properly work!!!

1. Unpack ONLY .dat files to the plugins folder

2. Unpack the DDS Saver Updater Mc-thingy.dll file into the Programs/Maxis/SimCity 4/Plugins Folder

3. Copy the DDS Files to to the same place as step 2

4. Also copy the .dds files to your plugins folder in My Documents while you're at it

5. Once finished, start the game. 

6. You should see a new button on the regional view simniliar to the day/night on mayor mode panel! Once you see it, click on it and you can switch to a realistic nightview!

In order to see nightlights, load up one of your cities (or civilized areas of your region!). In mayor mode, switch to day view then night view until all city lights are on. THEN save the game and exit to region. You MUST have it switched to night when you save. The reason for this is because of the way SC4 saves region files. Repeat for all cities. To switch back to daylight, follow the same procedure as previously stated but with day view instead of night view  

Now you must have SimFox Day n' Nite installed since I had to manually create the night view on the region that matches city view too. You won't see nightlights immediately though. 

7. Please refer to the troubleshooting manual in my  read me if you encounter any issues as it is highly imperative proper installation procedures are followed or cities may be corrupted, forever.

It's likely they removed this feature because of the game's limitation of having to save every city and exit out in night mode, hence why they left it as day time. 

Bugs/Possible issues

-At the moment, this mod only works on Windows. Tried installing this on a mac but it crashed then exploded (possibly for an unrelated reason)

-Possible artifacts from Maxis

-Requires EP1 update to work

-It can get quite tedious saving every individual city in your region but boy it's worth it! Best part? If you want to switch back to day time, all you have to do is go back and save EVERY single city again but with day mode this time! Isn't that great?!

-Likewise you also need update 1.1.640 for this mod to work

-For months, I couldn't figure out how to get the UI to show up consistently. Give this mod a little time. It'll warm up to ya. 

-Occasional instability and slow FPS in night mode.

-One time I used this mod to take pics of my region for my city journal! It's time I share with you...my genius!

-Likely possibility of this mod not working if instructions are not followed correctly!

'Tis the season for Christmas, this mod is compatible with snow mod terrain and also compatible with NAM, CAM, SPAM, FLAM, JAM, DAM, DiaphRAM, etc.

-Sometimes, the game crashes and corrupts all city files with this mod when taking screenshots. Must be another game limitation. Taking a screenshot with my iphone or samsung crashes the phone and the game.

 

DEPENDENCIES:

-SimFox's Day/nite Mod

-SimCity 4 Rush Hour or Deluxe with EP1 or 1.1.640 update 

-A Working Windows PC

-Working internet to show off your wonderful regional night views!