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Mod Manager for SimCity 4 plugins.

This program handles the process of downloading and installing SimCity 4 plugins, including all their dependencies.

It helps you assemble a full Plugins folder very quickly, and also keeps your plugins up-to-date and organized.

Usage

  • Download: Choose between

    • the desktop application for Windows 10+,
    • the desktop application for Linux, and
    • the cross-platform web-app for other platforms.
  • Verify the checksum of the downloaded ZIP file against the checksums published on Github (optional).

  • Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file to any location of your choice.

  • At first launch of the application, it guides you through the initial setup: creating a new Profile and configuring the location of your Plugins folder.

  • Go to Find Packages to search and select packages to install (for example cyclone-boom:save-warning). There are already more than 5000 plugins with compatible metadata to choose from. Once satisfied, go to the Dashboard and hit Update to download and install the plugin files. Files are downloaded directly from Simtropolis or other sites like SC4Evermore, ToutSimCities, SimCityKurier (archived), Hide and Seek! (archived) and GitHub.

  • If you are signed in to Simtropolis, watch out for the “Install with sc4pac” button on the STEX. It appears for plugins that can be installed with sc4pac. Start small and gradually build up your Plugins folder. Don't download everything at once.

    image.png

  • Install null-45:startup-performance-optimization-dll if you use the Windows digital edition of the game. (This adds support for plugin file paths exceeding the 260 character limit on Windows, which could otherwise be a problem for a small number of packages that use deeply-nested, long file names.)

  • Install memo:lua-sandbox-dll if you use the Windows digital edition of the game. (This provides a more secure environment for your plugins by preventing mods from using unsafe Lua functions.)

  • Be aware that Simtropolis has a download limit of 20 files per day for guests. To avoid this limit, go to Settings and set up your personal authentication token for Simtropolis (step-by-step guide). Alternatively, simply continue the installation process the next day.

Plugins folder structure

050-load-first
060-config
075-my-plugins         (your existing manually installed plugins)
100-props-textures
110-resources
140-ordinances
150-mods
170-terrain
180-flora
200-residential
300-commercial
360-landmark
400-industrial
500-utilities
600-civics
610-safety
620-education
630-health
640-government
650-religion
660-parks
700-transit
710-automata
770-network-addon-mod
895-my-overrides       (your manually installed zzz-folders)
900-overrides

Packages are installed into subfolders prefixed by an even number, as the order in which files are loaded by the game is important. This ensures a consistent load order. Files you install manually should be put into subfolders prefixed by an odd number (ideally before 900-overrides).

Migrating an existing Plugins folder

If you already have a non-empty Plugins folder and want to switch to sc4pac, start by moving the bulk of your manually installed files into a new subfolder 075-my-plugins and your zzz-folders into 895-my-overrides to ensure correct load order. Once you install more and more packages and dependencies with sc4pac, delete the corresponding older, redundant, manually installed files to avoid duplication or version conflicts. If a dependency was installed with sc4pac, there is no need to keep older manually installed copies of it.

In the long run, create additional odd-numbered subfolders for better organization of your manually installed files and to fine-tune load order.

Managing multiple Plugins folders

The sc4pac GUI supports creating multiple Profiles. For example, you could use a unique Profile for each of your Regions. Each Profile corresponds to a Plugins folder.

Important: Make sure to select distinct locations for all your Plugins folders to avoid interference between Profiles.

You can use the SC4 launch parameter -UserDir:"..." to start the game with a custom location for the game's user directory, which contains the Plugins folder (and Regions folder).

Uninstalling

  • Uninstall all packages for each Profile (see Dashboard  Profile  Delete options).
  • Delete the download cache folder (see Dashboard).
  • Remove the profiles configuration folder (see Settings).
  • Finally, delete the folder containing the sc4pac program files.

Documentation

Visit the Troubleshooting & FAQ section of the sc4pac Website for more information, or the development & support thread.

To make your own uploads installable with sc4pac, see the topic about the sc4pac STEX integration.

Credits

A big thank you for contributions to sc4pac@smf_16 @nos.17 @Zasco @Flann @Shadow Assassin @Cyclone Boom @CorinaMarie @Null 45 @Ulisse Wolf @timdmackey.


What's New 1.6.1   View Changelog


Released

Changes since version 1.6.0

  • updated external documentation files (no need to redownload)

Upgrading from previous versions:

Simply extract the ZIP file. You can remove the previous application files in favor of the newly extracted files.

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even signed into simtropolis and after i created a profile in this application, downloading assets failed.

something about daily download limit lol. a mess

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5 hours ago, MstrFox1982 said:

even signed into simtropolis and after i created a profile in this application, downloading assets failed.

something about daily download limit lol. a mess

Being logged into Simtropolis in your browser is not sufficient. You need to copy the Simtropolis credentials from your browser into the application so it can use it. You can go to Settings in the app to get guidance on how to do this.

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ah yes. since you've got it figured out, is there a select all option for the results? individually selecting the mods can be quite the bear

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I cannot save the game when I add the startup performance optimization mod. If I try to simply save, I get an error. If I try to exit w/ save, the buttons say "option disabled". I'm assuming its also not working as intended since it still takes 5-7 business days to load. 

I first added ~50 mods like a dummy and couldn't save. I uninstalled all (except NAM, was already there and I didn't touch it ever) and added back one by one in the 150-mods category. All was good with only the submenus, prop names/query fix, industry quad, and max zone size mods but got the error as soon as I added SPO. I uninstalled the SPO, added a bunch of other mods for fun, and it worked fine. I probably should have experimented more but I ran out of time. 

Any ideas or tips? I'm very new here and don't understand any of the "why" behind what these programs do/are, but I'm pretty decent at following directions to troubleshoot. If this is important: windows 11, only had NAM in before sc4pac, got game from GOG but don't play it through their portal thingy, java and sc4pac downloaded yesterday.

Shoutout to all the people who put work into this, I'm so dang impressed. 

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Save & exit is disabled as a result of this mod, which is included with memo:essential-fixes. The reason is that Save & exit is known to be problematic as it may corrupt your savegame. Instead you should just save as you would normally (Ctrl + S, or the in game ui) and then use Exit without save.

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I had removed the essential fixes and only had submenus, prop names/query fix, industry quad, and max zone size mods - is it "hidden" in one of those? I could not ctrl +S or use the game ui. The pop-up box after trying those methods said there was an error, game could not be saved.

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In that case it's not caused by sc4pac I think. I suggest to report the issue in the support thread for the startup performance DLL:

 

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6 hours ago, Rboo said:

I had removed the essential fixes and only had submenus, prop names/query fix, industry quad, and max zone size mods - is it "hidden" in one of those? I could not ctrl +S or use the game ui. The pop-up box after trying those methods said there was an error, game could not be saved.

When you say you removed it, are you talking about un-starring it from within sc4pac, then telling sc4pac to update?  Or are you manually deleting things that sc4pac has installed?  I ask because it sounds like you might have been manually moving around things that sc4pac has installed for you.  In this case, if you had deleted the folder for the essential fixes package, you might be unaware that this package is actually a collection of other packages which would be installed in different folders.  In any case, if you wish to uninstall something that sc4pac has installed, the correct thing to do is un-star it and click the update button.

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I can not get this program to run on my newer computer. Keeps giving the error of not having the latest java. I have downloaded all there is to update. 

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2 hours ago, coxiesclub said:

Keeps giving the error of not having the latest java.

Some things to try: Open Powershell and type "java -version". If the version number is lower than 11, that's the problem. Install Java 21 or 23 by downloading and installing the .msi installer from Adoptium. If it asks whether to add Java to your PATH, accept. Reboot.

If you have an older version of Java, consider uninstalling it, unless you need it for something specific.

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On 2/14/2025 at 4:32 PM, Flann said:

When you say you removed it, are you talking about un-starring it from within sc4pac, then telling sc4pac to update?  Or are you manually deleting things that sc4pac has installed?  I ask because it sounds like you might have been manually moving around things that sc4pac has installed for you.  In this case, if you had deleted the folder for the essential fixes package, you might be unaware that this package is actually a collection of other packages which would be installed in different folders.  In any case, if you wish to uninstall something that sc4pac has installed, the correct thing to do is un-star it and click the update button.

This is very possible I did something like this. It did use the star/un-star method for the reasons you mentioned and tried to ensure consistency, but after that first save error I definitely auto piloted myself to the plugins folder and might have done something. I will fiddle around with it more, but since all the other mods I installed worked, and this is the first time I'm playing with any kind of mod except NAM, it might be a few days before I attempt again :) 

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I don't understand this. Do I need to create the Plugin folder structure?

Where does this mod install the mods? I've installed a couple but they're not in the Plugins folder.

I've installed NAM. I created 777-NAM folder and installed it in there.

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49 minutes ago, karissabob said:

I've installed a couple but they're not in the Plugins folder.

Are you, perhaps, looking in the Installation Folder's Plugins rather than the one in Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins ?

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23 hours ago, karissabob said:

Do I need to create the Plugin folder structure?

No, the folders are created automatically when needed.

23 hours ago, karissabob said:

Where does this mod install the mods? I've installed a couple but they're not in the Plugins folder.

Once you click Update, they are installed into the Plugins folder which you configured when initially creating your Profile. See Dashboard > Folders.

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wowsers, even with the right setup of the mod manager, anybody else keep getting the same two error messages: downloading assets failed, failed to download some assets. maybe your authentication cookies have expired or the file exchange server is currently unavailable - when there is no issue in any of these areas?. Anybody else still getting these error messages after returning to the mod manager after repeated system reboots and time away from the site?

any fix for that?

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On 28-2-2025 at 2:14 PM, MstrFox1982 said:

wowsers, even with the right setup of the mod manager, anybody else keep getting the same two error messages: downloading assets failed, failed to download some assets. maybe your authentication cookies have expired or the file exchange server is currently unavailable - when there is no issue in any of these areas?. Anybody else still getting these error messages after returning to the mod manager after repeated system reboots and time away from the site?

any fix for that?

The reason is probably that you haven't properly set up your Simtropolis authentication cookies. Simtropolis has a download limit of 20 files per day if you are not signed in, which you hit fairly quickly when using the mod manager. Note that it doesn't matter if you are logged in in your browser, it's sc4pac (the mod manager) that has to know your authentication credentials. It also explains why rebooting doesn't help here: rebooting your pc doesn't reset your download count for that day on the Simtropolis side.

It's a bit cumbersome to setup, and efforts are underway of working around this limitation, but there's quite a detailed explanation on how to setup your Simtropolis authentication cookies if you go to Settings > Authentication (Simtropolis).

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(ref)

Quote

One question though, I'd like to have 2 different profiles (one with SPAM, CAM), do I need to "download" all the mods again for my CAM profile? Create another plugins folder, copy/paste existing files from my SPAM profile in it, then link it to my CAM profile? Not so sure on this one.

@Frenchizzle34 Create two profiles. They should use different Plugins folders, but the same Download Cache folder. If the Download Cache folder is identical, you will download all the mods only once. You do need to "star" all the mods again that you want to also install in your second Profile, though. (Manually copying files from one Plugins folder to the other is not going to work.) If you want to quickly transfer large amounts of mods from one Profile to the other, you can go to Settings and open the Profile Config folder. Then edit the "sc4pac-plugins.json" files of your two Profiles in a text editor to transfer explicitly added packages. Then click Update.

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1 hour ago, memo said:

If you want to quickly transfer large amounts of mods from one Profile to the other, you can go to Settings and open the Profile Config folder. Then edit the "sc4pac-plugins.json" files of your two Profiles in a text editor to transfer explicitly added packages. Then click Update.

@memo Created a "test" profile & folder and transferred a few mods, It worked just fine. Thank you so much for this tip!

Now... I launched the game again, had selected my "test" profile in sc4pac, but I realized that I could still see some of the mods that I didn't transfer. My 1st profile points to ...\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins and my 2nd "test" profile points to ...\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\test. Could it be because my "test" folder is inside the other one?

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18 hours ago, Frenchizzle34 said:

@memo Created a "test" profile & folder and transferred a few mods, It worked just fine. Thank you so much for this tip!

Now... I launched the game again, had selected my "test" profile in sc4pac, but I realized that I could still see some of the mods that I didn't transfer. My 1st profile points to ...\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins and my 2nd "test" profile points to ...\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\test. Could it be because my "test" folder is inside the other one?

yes, they need to be parallel

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Let me start by saying I love this program. No problems downloading and installing items. The only problem I have is with the network addon mod. I can't figure out how to "manually install" it. I'm sure I am just overlooking something. I would any advice or help.

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17 hours ago, Huggy-Bear said:

The only problem I have is with the network addon mod. I can't figure out how to "manually install" it.

@Huggy-Bear Installing something "manually" means installing something without sc4pac, but using the conventional methods of installing plugins. For the NAM, this means you simply download it and run the NAM installer, selecting the folder "777-network-addon-mod" as installation location. Sc4pac doesn't know these manually installed plugins and doesn't track them in any way, so you have complete control over them.

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23 hours ago, memo said:

@Huggy-Bear Installing something "manually" means installing something without sc4pac, but using the conventional methods of installing plugins. For the NAM, this means you simply download it and run the NAM installer, selecting the folder "777-network-addon-mod" as installation location. Sc4pac doesn't know these manually installed plugins and doesn't track them in any way, so you have complete control over them.

 I installed NAM in the "777-network-addon-mod" folder, but it does not show up in game. Only the basic roads show.

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Trying to download it , but it stops downloading in 86.5 MB!..although the file size is 241.07 MB ...

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