Playing SC4 on December 25.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just a quick note to remind people that if you have to play SimCity 4 on Christmas Day (system date 12/25/xxxx) you will get snow in your mountains will-ye, nil-ye.  It is a built-in Easter Egg from the developers

Every year we get panic entries in the forum about this because people think something has gone wrong.  It hasn't.  Enjoy the effect.

And so, if the pickle doesn't run away with the spoon, Santa should come on time.  He likes big chocolate chip cookies and warm milk.  Merry Christmas.

[Compdude787 916]

It makes for a great Christmas update to your CJ, as well!

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

If you have buggi's extracheats.dll installed, you can get the effect at any time by typing "snow" in the cheat box. Also some semi-interesting trivia.

[Prophet42 1,501]

I always make it a point to play some SC4 on Christmas day just to see the snow effect.  Makes for a nice birthday treat.

[El N1gra 0]

It's strange, but this christmas snow may cause microlags in game. I playing last few days and everything was OK, but then I launched the game last night, 25 December, I found that everything moves with every second lag - traffiс, pedestrians, clouds, buildings (when growing or demolishing) moves by fits and starts. About one microlag every 1-2 seconds... After checking another reasons I checked the last that came to my mind - I changed the date on my PC to December 24. And the lags are disappeared! I changed the date back to December 25 and they return   This is Christmas miracle, guys

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Your city must have a fairly large population for this to happen.  Generally speaking I turn off the expensive items such as clouds and waves as these tend to eat the CPU thereby causing lags.  These features don't really add anything to the game and they are costly of resources.

[SteveMSim 275]

I ran my game today and saw the snow effect in the higher elevations.  Just one complaint is that you can't see the roads.  It's difficult to lay out the roads when you can't see them.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just wait for spring.  Actually this is a toggle.  If you have the extra cheats dll installed use the word 'snow' in the cheat box. (no quotes).

[El N1gra 0]

A Nonny Moose, my city is only about 15k population. Nerby I have neighbour city vith 300k... I played SC4 about 2-3 years and in both cities never seen before this type (every second) of lags. Otherwise I would not write about it now.

And what you'll say about this:

 

22 hours ago, El N1gra said:

I changed the date on my PC to December 24. And the lags are disappeared! I changed the date back to December 25 and they return

Just a coincidence? Now December 26 and I playing without any lags. Furthermore, if now I'll change the date on my PC to December 25 - I'll see snow and lags again

Anyway, the problem detected & solved and my post was just for future searching - may be it helps someone next Christmas.

 

p.s. WJC started!!!!11

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sometime try the toggle (CTRL+xsnowCTRL+m) and see if you get the lag again.  Like waves and clouds, something tells me having snow is expensive of CPU cycles.

[philforhockey51 4,211]

I noticed this post and looked for snow yesterday but saw none. I believe the combination of mods that I have installed eliminated the visual snow effect however I did notice the moments of micro lag and issues with the draw scroll. Though I'm running the SC4Launcher, entire areas of my cities would be nothing but textures until the props and models filled in. Like watching your city grow in a continuous flow arching away from the previous center of screen.  

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Or your city is not high enough. The snow will appear in higher areas.