Cheats Update

[huzman 445]

It's surprising how some (many) people keep having troubles with the cheats. So I started compiling all the cheats I could find.

This is a recapitulation of Cheats found in different sites. It looks incomplete. The intention is to gather all of the cheats, give them added descriptions and simply explain how they work.

 Any new cheats, comments and suggestions are most welcome.

This is the latest update as of 2/12/17

 

ALL_THE_CHEATS_OF_SIMCITY_4_RUSH_HOUR_AND_DELUXE47b.pdf

  Edited December 4, 2017 by huzman  
update

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Other notes on SimDate:

The date set will be the day after what you enter.

The change might not be displayed immediately while paused. You might need to save the city, exit and reload before you'll see the new date in the display.

There are also date limits and rollover described in old threads.

[rsc204 21,804]

Not to mention jumping back and forth with dates can seriously mess with the timing of seasonal flora/props. Since that may entail removing and replacing them entirely to fix, I'd go sparingly with using SimDate.

[huzman 445]

On 7/30/2017 at 8:22 PM, jeffryfisher said:

You might need to save the city, exit and reload before you'll see the new date in the display.

I think that just un-pausing the game might do the trick. (to be checked.) Confirmed. See below.

 

On 7/31/2017 at 1:20 AM, rsc204 said:

jumping back and forth with dates... etc.

Seems obvious. But then, why does anyone wants to do that? One changes the date for several reasons just once, in most cases. Can't think of a single reason to change dates several times within the same game.

[rsc204 21,804]

7 hours ago, huzman said:

Seems obvious. But then, why does anyone wants to do that? One changes the date for several reasons just once, in most cases. Can't think of a single reason to change dates several times within the same game.

Well, how do you think I found this out... What I was trying to do at the time was use the SimDate cheat when making scenes with flora. So I could jump between the planting dates of the 1st Sep and 1st Mar, rather than keep having to wait for the simulator and pause on the exact day. However, it soon became apparent this would cause more potential trouble than I realised, necessitating restoration from some backup cities.

[huzman 445]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

having to wait for the simulator and pause on the exact day.

I find a great sense of humor here. Because I'm experimenting with the seasonal flora myself. The difference is that I let the game run from season to season or year to year in cheetah speed, of course slowing down to turtle speed as the wanted day approaches and hitting the ctrl+pause on the 1st of the month. I did this for about four years (times 4 seasons a year) and I got mixed results. some good but quite a few looked  all wrong. Here is an inventory of the seasonal flora only, that I have loaded down. The very first thing I did was setting the date the 1st of sep 2000. Saving the game, and only then plopping all of them down.

What I don't understand is why you had to fiddle with the date.

Seasonal flora.bmp

[rsc204 21,804]

Because some seasonal flora needs to be plopped on the 1st March, others on the 1st September. This is due to how seasonal flora is created, it's necessary sometimes to alter the plop-date to get the desired effect of the seasons. If you use Girafe's flora, look at the flowers, many of which have a 1st Mar placement date. So whilst you could simply set 1st Mar, place all those things then go to the 1st Sep and place the rest, that isn't how I work. I tend to build up my flora scenes in layers, necessitating a lot of switching between those two dates to get everything just how I want it. This is time-consuming, prone to missing the correct day and generally a PITA.

However, with no good solution I could find, I've come to terms with it. To assist I've ensured all my 1st Mar and 1st Sep flora are grouped together in the menus. Nothing worse than finding your flora was plopped on the wrong day, when you have a scene that took hours to create. Because inevitably the only solution is to destroy it all and start over.

[huzman 445]

6 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

seasonal flora needs to be plopped on the 1st March, others on the 1st September

OK. You start your new city on the 1st March. Plop the pertinent flora. Let the game run to the 1st of September. Plop the pertinent flora. And if needed, run the game to the next 1st March. Plop the pertinent flora. And so on. Am I understanding you right?

PITA : Pain In The Armpit I suppose.

[rsc204 21,804]

Absolutely, but that's hardly a fun thing to do, hence I had hoped use of the SimDate cheat would get around the problem. But in trying that out, I came to the conclusion that it was too fraught with the potential for breaking things to be useful, hence my warning.

[huzman 445]

 

16 hours ago, rsc204 said:

too fraught with the potential for breaking things to be useful...

That is the truth. In my testing, I discovered that rushing to the next date was wrong. After all the growing had to go at even pace. Rushing at cheetah speed doesn't seem to do it right. Be patient and run the game at normal speed, have a beer and wait for the next date.

I will post such an evolution in my next post. (I'm working on it as I write this post.)

Note: I'm using a few cheats for these tests. FightThePower  doesn't seem to work right. In spite of using that cheat that useless advisor keeps asking for a fire station. Hum! maybe that's the solution.

Note: Notice that the city keeps growing as demand needs it. Want to see it?

Note: How do I get rid of the box below? DONE!

[huzman 445]

I'm very surprised about the lack of interest in this topic. Do people know all about cheats? Do they know how to use them? Do they care?

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

Nice work compiling this together.

If you think it'd be useful, I can replicate the table in your initial post (via HTML). I think that may help make it easier for the info to be viewed. Then the attached version could be downloaded for anyone who prefers a local offline reference.

By the way:

Thanks for the mention in the document, but I've never actually been involved with discovering the codes.

 

1 hour ago, huzman said:

I'm very surprised about the lack of interest in this topic. Do people know all about cheats? Do they know how to use them? Do they care?

I suppose lots of people are already familiar with many of them. But don't be dismayed, that doesn't mean it's not worth investigating and trying to make the info easier to understand. For instance, I've found the flora blast quite useful for quickly filling a city tile with trees. Though without some trial and error, it's not fully clear what the parameters are or what they do.

There are also other commands that are still have unknown functionality, and possibly others still undocumented.

Maybe @simmaster07 has more info on those, or how they could be found?

 

1 hour ago, huzman said:

How do I get rid of the box below?

Looks like an attempted paste of a table format.

I can remove it if you'd like using source mode. Or try clicking inside the box, then press the Delete key a couple of times.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

1 hour ago, huzman said:

Do people know all about cheats? Do they know how to use them? Do they care?

I'm aware there are cheats available and I do often use the whererufrom one when I mis-name a city tile. I have @FlyHigh's Complete List of Cheats bookmarked for when I need to look one up. I also have SimCity 4 Cheats & Tricks bookmarked, but it's not as complete.

[simmaster07 1,220]

3 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I suppose lots of people are already familiar with many of them. But don't be dismayed, that doesn't mean it's not worth investigating and trying to make the info easier to understand. For instance, I've found the flora blast quite useful for quickly filling a city tile with trees. Though without some trial and error, it's not fully clear what the parameters are or what they do.

There are also other commands that are still have unknown functionality, and possibly others still undocumented.

Maybe @simmaster07 has more info on those, or how they could be found?

Sure, I'll look into those in a bit when I get home, feel free to toss other undocumented cheat codes my way to look into.

[simmaster07 1,220]

Adv
For debugging the advice system. Can take the following parameters:

• -refresh - Reloads the advice system as if you just loaded the city
• -reload - See -refresh
• -print - Unknown
• -trigger <id> - Triggers an advice message
• -guids <on/off> - Unknown

controllers <on/off>
When turned off, certain automata controllers (such as the commotion automata when building landmarks and rewards) are disabled.

CreateException
Intentionally crashes the game without question, hence the name of the cheat. Seems to be intended for debugging the crash dump system.

Effect
For debugging visual effects. Can take the following parameters:

• kill - removes effects which are not attached to an entity, i.e. those created exclusively through this command
• save - the result of this command is inaccessible on retail builds
• load - not fully known; seems to try to load a resource with the ID 0xca51189b (for effects?)
• showMaps - shows visual maps, not 100% sure, probably related to pollution. See screenshots below
• clearMaps - resets all maps to zero before being regenerated by the game over time
• prop [optional: <name> [optional: <x> <y> [optional: z]]] - not sure; might create an effect at the given coordinates. If none given, defaults to "pothole"

Above: A game without and with showMaps

ForceIdle - does not force the game to use more CPU power, instead this forces an idle tick, which in turns forces the game's resource manager to perform garbage collection to unload resources that are no longer being referenced. Running this command frequently may actually adversely affect performance.

HeapCheck - this toggles a flag in the effects manager, but this flag isn't actually used by anything, so this cheat code doesn't really do anything interesting.

NoCSI - CSI stands for City Situation Indicator. City situation is a fancy way of saying missions. Using this cheat code hides UDI indicators for missions; you can also do this from the U Drive It menu, but this cheat code forces it even if mission indicators are enabled there.

RenderProp - Does not do anything. There's a component that registers this cheat code, but there's no code to actually handle this cheat code.

RP - See RenderProp

Tutorial - Only useful when in a tutorial. Takes the following arguments:

• save - forces the tutorial city to save even though this control is normally disabled
• next - forces the tutorial to jump to the next step of the tutorial
• quit - exits the tutorial and returns to normal gameplay
• reset - resets the tutorial to the beginning; can be used even after quitting
• step <N> - jumps to the Nth step of the tutorial

csitrigger <mission ID> - forces a mission to be triggered

toll - Switches to a bare toll booth placement input control. Only seems to be used for debugging toll booth placement validation; even regular toll booth lots don't use this control and go through the lot placement input control.

udriveit does not require correct capitalization, nor do any of these cheats.

  Edited August 1, 2017 by simmaster07  
Finished editing

[huzman 445]

6 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I can replicate the table in your initial post (via HTML)

That is my original thought. But I left the file in plain winword spread sheet so people could easily add and modify it. Then, when those empty values and "how to" are filled, translate into HTLM. If you feel like it, do it now...

But your contribution was mentioning the cheat and the comment by J. Unger.
RE: flora blast : can you expand on those values?

6 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I have @FlyHigh's Complete List of Cheats bookmarked
(and)  I also have SimCity 4 Cheats & Tricks bookmarked

Now that's a couple of beauts. That's what I'm looking for. Most helpful.
 

3 hours ago, simmaster07 said:

Sure, I'll look into those in a bit

Great! Looking forwards to it.
As for the cheats you mentioned, maybe you could explain all of these cheats in a more down to earth language.

At last, some progress in progress!

[simmaster07 1,220]

42 minutes ago, huzman said:

As for the cheats you mentioned, maybe you could explain all of these cheats in a more down to earth language.

I'm not really sure how much more I can water it down. The cheats that have been undocumented up to this point were made for the sole purpose of debugging the game and content being created for it, and they would only be of relevance to modders who would understand some of the terminology there.

[huzman 445]

On 7/31/2017 at 4:51 AM, huzman said:

I think that just un-pausing the game might do the trick. (to be checked.)

RE: the SimDate cheat, confirmed.

 

1 hour ago, simmaster07 said:

how much more I can water it down

Try explaining them to a 10 year old. I mean, don't "water it down", instead expand them.

[huzman 445]

13 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I think that may help make it easier for the info to be viewed

Concerning the PDF version, hold your horses. There are a lot of new cheats posted here which let's me update the file in my first post. So, if you did a PDF file it will be out of date. Let's wait until all those empty cells are more less filled.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 7/31/2017 at 1:10 PM, huzman said:

I'm very surprised about the lack of interest in this topic.

It (appears to have) been done before. Any new revelations/discoveries beyond what's in past threads should be highlighted and/or summarized in some way.

[huzman 445]

That's what I'm trying to track down. I'm sure there are more cheats out there. That motivated my whining.
And I second your suggestion. You have any leads?

[Grumalg 17]

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 4:10 AM, huzman said:

Concerning the PDF version, hold your horses. There are a lot of new cheats posted here which let's me update the file in my first post. So, if you did a PDF file it will be out of date. Let's wait until all those empty cells are more less filled.

A couple of notes:

Both Open Office and Libre Office can import .doc *and* export it as PDF - both are freeware.

MSWord itself can Save As .html which would convert your table to html.  There are some caveats if the .doc has images, but they wouldn't apply to just your table.

[huzman 445]

@Grumalg : quite right. PDFing this file ain't my priority right now. The aim is getting together all the cheats, or most of them.

[Grumalg 17]

1 hour ago, huzman said:

@Grumalg : quite right. PDFing this file ain't my priority right now. The aim is getting together all the cheats, or most of them.

Was just trying to help a bit...   I've done some pretty extensive MSWord docs and converted them to PDF and HTML.

You can find an example ~80 page set of tables extensively internally hyperlinked with a massive amount of embedded images in tables here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-vi-reference.25734/

It started as MSWord tables and wound up as both PDF and HTML for website use.  If you need help or more suggestions, I'll happily provide them.

[huzman 445]

3 hours ago, Grumalg said:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-vi-reference.25734/

I'm impressed. Very nice job. Will keep your phone number under my thumb.

Let the file grow a little more and then tackle editing.

[APSMS 1,892]

On 7/31/2017 at 3:41 AM, rsc204 said:

Well, how do you think I found this out... What I was trying to do at the time was use the SimDate cheat when making scenes with flora. So I could jump between the planting dates of the 1st Sep and 1st Mar, rather than keep having to wait for the simulator and pause on the exact day. However, it soon became apparent this would cause more potential trouble than I realised, necessitating restoration from some backup cities.

You know, the game only plans out flora on a monthly basis, and doesn't switch months until the 4th or 5th. So in theory you can plant for March from Feb 6th to Mar 5th, even though the game doesn't change the flora until the 1st of March (or Sept etc.).

Vortext used this as a suggestion to enable staged autumn colors (the trees don't all change at the same time), and additionally knowing this gives you a lot of flexibility for when to plant the flora. For instance, you can start planning fall in the middle of August. Fall comes early that year, but that year only. After that the dates get sorted and the flora will only change on the 1st of the month following the planting.

[huzman 445]

6 hours ago, APSMS said:

(the trees don't all change at the same time)

I noticed this in my sporadic tests. I used to build complete (RCI) little hamlets to fill them with seasonal flora but those darn advisors quickly become overbearing.
So now, I just plant the trees and use a nice collection of cheats to keep them away. But I just gotten started, nothing to show yet.
BTW, "seasonal" means four seasons per year. (duh...). So these trees will change every season, if I'm not wrong?

Great to discover the cusps of dates for planting. Thanks.

[huzman 445]

On 8/4/2017 at 8:53 AM, APSMS said:

You know, the game only plans out flora on a monthly basis,

Not even. I just ran 3 years of seasonal flora, saving each season. To say the least, I wasted a whole afternoon doing this.
* Only a few trees changed seasons (Ashes, Norway Maples and some others).
* Winter and snow trees don't change at all. I guess they are meant to planted in high snow covered mountains.
* Pine trees (all genus) are not seasonal.
* Many seasonal trees change at odd dates (Maples, Honey Locust and such).
* Flowers, bushes and non-tree plops don't work at all. I'm sure I put them on the wrong date.

Who wants to go thru all that hassle? I just want to make pretty landscapes instead the naked vanilla version, but there is nothing wrong with that.

I have three years of evolution, that means 12 files (pix) if anyone wants them. Personally, They are not even worthwhile to post them in a thread.

[huzman 445]

OK, here is a new version of the document that I'm compiling. There are some 'cheats'* not included in the spread sheet. I'm planning to test them within the game.
The perspective is daunting since many of them are obviously meant to used by Maxis programmers and not for the lambda player.

Hope this will help some people and broaden the horizon of all. Quite a few of them are real eye openers!

*'cheats': This is a misnomer as most of them are useful in game playing and they are not "cheating" stricto sensu.

 

[licoricebomb 93]

This is a good idea. A couple of points to include in your document are:

1) After using the "flora off" command, the player must enter "flora on" in order for seasonal flora to change, otherwise they will remain in the season they are in when first planted until "flora on" is entered. Additionally, the timing of seasonal flora may be restarted by establishing and obliterating a city, but this will not result in correct synchronization with the game calendar. This is vital info that I rarely come across.

2) I can see that in your second version you have removed the comment about residential plops "working" with the "buildingplop" command. Some clarification is needed in the final version. From what I've read, residential buildings can absolutely be plopped with this command, but they will not generate commuters, rendering any residential buildings plopped with this command a) permanent eye candy and b) doomed to abandonment/dilapidation. The word "works" is too ambiguous for this to come across. The command "works" to plop R buildings, but those buildings don't function. You may want to verify this for yourself as part of your tests.

 

You may also find this thread helpful, as the initial explanation of the document format is quite clear (i.e. it explains how variable fields are indicated, etc.):

 

And finally, are the Chernobyl, hazmat, UncivilDisobedience, and SievertBeGone cheats actually in the vanilla game as your document states, or do they require this .dll?