SimCity4 (with RH) on Steam

[jdv57 0]

Have had SimCity 4 Rush hour for years, but stopped playing it a few years ago due to just life in general... Recently it was on sale at Steam at Christmas time, so I bought it just because it would be easier (not having to deal with putting the disc in, etc. and yes I am that lazy)

So, in the past, I have downloaded so many plugins from here and the other sites that I have an absolute ton of them, which I know are obsolete after looking on here for hours and downloading some more. I put them all in my docs/simcity/plugins folder, but there's so many it's making my head explode.

I'm trying to play this game through steam and it runs fine so far, but plugins are missing, even new ones I downloaded today are not showing up in the game and they didn't need dependencies.

My question really is, should I do a complete uninstall of the game that I have on my system from the CD's if I'm now playing the game through Steam?

Will worlds collide if both are on my computer?

I did download the newest NAM, because I know that is an important one, but how does one know if certain plugins don't work anymore, or can they even just stop working?

The idea of moving them all somewhere and starting over is completely overwhelming, but I have loved this game forever and I would really like to have it all cleaned up. I don't mind starting new cities, I just want things to run right.

I have set the launch options in Steam to :  -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32 -intro:off -CPUCount:1

And I read here in the forums that if it's from Steam, it comes already patched.

So, i guess my two main questions are, should I uninstall the CD version and also, how in the world does a person know if a plugin is dead? Right now I feel like just deleting them all, but then I won't remember which ones I loved having.

[rsc204 21,804]

12 minutes ago, jdv57 said:

Have had SimCity 4 Rush hour for years, but stopped playing it a few years ago due to just life in general... Recently it was on sale at Steam at Christmas time, so I bought it just because it would be easier (not having to deal with putting the disc in, etc. and yes I am that lazy)

If you've a fully up-to date patch history for Windows, the CD version would actually fail to start, so now you have an excuse ;).

13 minutes ago, jdv57 said:

Will worlds collide if both are on my computer?

Astrologically, I think we're fine... but actually having the same application installed twice is always bad news. Worse still, the only solution now is to remove both versions before installing only the new one. There are a number of problems such a setup can cause, the #1 problem is that unexpected behaviour might start occurring.

16 minutes ago, jdv57 said:

And I read here in the forums that if it's from Steam, it comes already patched.

So, i guess my two main questions are, should I uninstall the CD version and also, how in the world does a person know if a plugin is dead? Right now I feel like just deleting them all, but then I won't remember which ones I loved having.

Indeed it does come pre-patched, but check here for a fix to one of the most annoying bugs/issues players has to face until recently. Don't forget the I-HT fix, without it your regions are gonna suffer eventually. You can search for "Maxis Fixes" to find others, but the I-HT bug breaks the game at later stages.

Yes uninstall the CD & Digital versions. Reboot, then install the Steam version once more.

Plugin files are not linked in any way to your particular install of SC4. In theory at least, a plugins folder could be placed on any computer and work. However, if it's been a while, many things may have changed. I wouldn't delete anything, but I'd move all the old plugins somewhere else. Get yourself setup with the latest NAM first. Then, slowly start putting the old files into your game in chucks. Try to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. There's a good chance you are simply missing required dependencies (the only reason you will ever see a brown box).

If you go on a download binge, chuck all those files into the game and pay little attention to the readmes, you are going to have a bad time. In the same way, you need to take things a little slower and in manageable chunks, so that when problems arise you can trace the source of the problem.

Without prejudice to any previous creations, the standards for custom content are getting higher all the time. Depending on how long you've been away, you may find some of the older items don't seem to fit with the new very well. Just look at the Chrysler Building from Reddonquixote for a jaw-dropping example of why SC4 still holds it's own.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Be sure you have the correct directory (the user space one, not the game residency) and you can then organize your plugins to reflect any needs you have for maintenance.  Always use the user space one (usually C:\<user name>\Documents\Simcity 4\Plugins) and work on it.  Anything you put in the game residency becomes global to all players on the machine which isn't good if you have more than one account.  I don't load from Steam, so I don't know if the directory above is the exact one you need, but something similar must be there.

Do note that the file system is case sensitive (at least on my machine).

[jdv57 0]

12 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Be sure you have the correct directory (the user space one, not the game residency) and you can then organize your plugins to reflect any needs you have for maintenance.  Always use the user space one (usually C:\<user name>\Documents\Simcity 4\Plugins) and work on it.  Anything you put in the game residency becomes global to all players on the machine which isn't good if you have more than one account.  I don't load from Steam, so I don't know if the directory above is the exact one you need, but something similar must be there.

Do note that the file system is case sensitive (at least on my machine).

I do have the file path correct, but I do have a question... when downloading mods, etc. is it okay to put them in sub-folders under the plugins folder? I have a lot of sub-folders in my plugins folder so I could keep track of the main name of them. Or should all the .dat, .lot, SC4lot, etc. files just go directly into the plugins folder? I am going to clean all this mess up and I want to do it right.

Thank you for your help!

16 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If you've a fully up-to date patch history for Windows, the CD version would actually fail to start, so now you have an excuse ;).

Astrologically, I think we're fine... but actually having the same application installed twice is always bad news. Worse still, the only solution now is to remove both versions before installing only the new one. There are a number of problems such a setup can cause, the #1 problem is that unexpected behaviour might start occurring.

Indeed it does come pre-patched, but check here for a fix to one of the most annoying bugs/issues players has to face until recently. Don't forget the I-HT fix, without it your regions are gonna suffer eventually. You can search for "Maxis Fixes" to find others, but the I-HT bug breaks the game at later stages.

Yes uninstall the CD & Digital versions. Reboot, then install the Steam version once more.

Plugin files are not linked in any way to your particular install of SC4. In theory at least, a plugins folder could be placed on any computer and work. However, if it's been a while, many things may have changed. I wouldn't delete anything, but I'd move all the old plugins somewhere else. Get yourself setup with the latest NAM first. Then, slowly start putting the old files into your game in chucks. Try to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. There's a good chance you are simply missing required dependencies (the only reason you will ever see a brown box).

If you go on a download binge, chuck all those files into the game and pay little attention to the readmes, you are going to have a bad time. In the same way, you need to take things a little slower and in manageable chunks, so that when problems arise you can trace the source of the problem.

Without prejudice to any previous creations, the standards for custom content are getting higher all the time. Depending on how long you've been away, you may find some of the older items don't seem to fit with the new very well. Just look at the Chrysler Building from Reddonquixote for a jaw-dropping example of why SC4 still holds it's own.

Thank you for all your advice. I was pretty sure this was going to be the answer, but was hoping I was wrong! I just need to start all over I guess. I have never heard of the I-HT fix at all, so I will be sure and do that with the NAM first.

One more thing I would like to know. I was looking through all the mods you can download and stuff and a lot of them said they were obsolete, but still had the download link and file. I guess these are just abandoned mods and may or may not work? Try it (one at a time) and see type of thing? I used to know all this stuff, but it's been so long since I seriously played the game.

thanks so much...

[rsc204 21,804]

30 minutes ago, jdv57 said:

One more thing I would like to know. I was looking through all the mods you can download and stuff and a lot of them said they were obsolete, but still had the download link and file. I guess these are just abandoned mods and may or may not work? Try it (one at a time) and see type of thing? I used to know all this stuff, but it's been so long since I seriously played the game.

It really depends. A number will have been updated to new versions for example. Why a file without a replacement would be obsolete I don't know, but in some cases they are merged to other mods. An example of this is NAM, previously it was modular and you downloaded all the parts you wanted. This was changed to a complete release of all features, with an installer to allow you to select what features/customisations to use. So for example, these components have been superseded, that said for whatever reasons, some people may want to use the older versions. They may work, they may not. Installing them won't break anything, but do test such things before using them. Any RHW mods prior to NAM 30/31 will no longer work full stop, P57, a project to unify the RHW networks ID scheme broke everything by changing the IDs. Such changes (within the NAM) are very rare though.

36 minutes ago, jdv57 said:

when downloading mods, etc. is it okay to put them in sub-folders under the plugins folder?

Absolutely. Just be aware of the loading order SC4 uses for folders/files though. For 99% of content, this is irrelevant. Mods that change existing content though, they must be placed to load in such a way that the items you want to see are loading last. Rather than get into anything complicated, if you create a folder z____NAM Overrides (That's 4 underscores) anything placed inside it (folders too) will load completely after the NAM files. This really only gets complicated when you want to mix and match mods that do similar things.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Subfolders are just fine.  AFAIK any depth is allowed.  There is one exception:  Any *.dll file must not be in a subfolder but directly attached to the Plugins header. 

I just did a quick check, and my maximum depth seems to be four subfolders.  From a management point of view, this is a great plenty.