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[rsc204 21,808]

As ever with modding, there are limitations and you have to decide which you can and can't live with. Sometimes we can alter those things, this is not one of those cases.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I understand that. But there is always a way to mitigate the problem created by these lots, as I mentioned previously.

I was tempted to use tree controllers many times, but the main limiting factor that I find in them is the tree diversity per one "unit" of a forest. From what I read, a single tree controller should ideally consist of no more than 5-6 species (per given altitude, I assume) which is fairly low... With the forest lots I can stack even 20 species in and obtain a very high level of diversity, because no two lots will look alike if prop families are used.

[Corrino 3]

Hello. Long time no see.

I have an old Plugin Folder and installed the new CAM and NAM. But I really have trouble now building rails. Look at that. It is very smooth but I cant build rails to connect the station.

What can I do? Am I missing a crucial mod?

  Edited February 5 by Corrino  
Pic added

[EastChapel 115]

47 minutes ago, Corrino said:

Hello. Long time no see.

I have an old Plugin Folder and installed the new CAM and NAM. But I really have trouble now building rails. Look at that. It is very smooth but I cant build rails to connect the station.

What can I do? Am I missing a crucial mod?

Not sure if that's a trick with my eyes, but it actually looks like a slight slope running down to the road. If that's the case while It's smooth, because of the road nearby it can't flatten and the train tracks can't be constructed.

To test, try putting the station one tile away from the road and see if it connects.

Alternatively level the terrain nearby (use single road tiles to do this tile by tile - they will level automatically to the nearest adjacent road piece) and see if that fixes the problem.

Let me know how you go.

[Corrino 3]

Yeah it was the street. thank you!

[philforhockey51 4,211]

Does anyone know of a 'mod', or has started working on one, that removes all maxis trees? Not replaces just removes. Same for removal not replacement of maxis trees on transit networks. 

[marty1314 0]

I seem to have messed something up.  Program opens, my New York Cities appear on the region screen, but when I try to open one, it crashes after about 30 seconds. Program was running fine until I downloaded the extra transportation add-on. I previously had NO add-on's. 

UPDATE:  Turned out I had correctly installed the plug-in correctly.  I just hadn't read the instructions that pointed out it takes several minutes to load the first time.   

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

1 minute ago, marty1314 said:

I seem to have messed something up.  Program opens, my New York Cities appear on the region screen, but when I try to open one, it crashes after about 30 seconds. Program was running fine until I downloaded the extra transportation add-on. I previously had NO add-on's. 

Follow this Guide

https://www.sc4evermore.com/index.php/guides/how-to-configure-SimCity-4-on-modern-computers

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

On 2/21/2026 at 10:33 AM, marty1314 said:

I seem to have messed something up.  Program opens, my New York Cities appear on the region screen, but when I try to open one, it crashes after about 30 seconds. Program was running fine until I downloaded the extra transportation add-on. I previously had NO add-on's. 

 

On 2/21/2026 at 10:35 AM, Ulisse Wolf said:

Follow this Guide

https://www.sc4evermore.com/index.php/guides/how-to-configure-SimCity-4-on-modern-computers

Unless I misunderstood his (marty1314) post, or the NAM (I assume he's talking about the NAM seeing as it's the only widely recommended and recognized Transportation addon for SC4 that I know of) works differently now. But the way I understood his post is that he's trying to load a heavily developed city tile that is purely "Vanilla" as in no mods nor assets were used on it, and that the city tile won't load and is causing the game to crash. In which case his only two options are to either...

1. To temporarily uninstall the offending mod then try to load his vanilla city tile again to test if it'll load normally and not lead to a CTD. If the city tile loads fine and doesn't crash he'll have to...

2. Play on a fresh/empty city tile because more often than not the issue is that Vanilla assets that were modded (cases like relots, or when using Vanilla Rail and/or Maxis Highways) can cause issues. This is especially true IF say you use mods like Maxis Landmarks with Jobs that will cause a CTD when you load into a Vanilla city that has Vanilla landmarks already built.

So yeah, I really strongly feel his issue is just him loading into a heavily developed vanilla city tile whilst having a mod that changes several ingame values installed. It may or may not be the NAM though...

[simster007 370]

Hi, 

I didn't get an answer in the NAM Support so I repeat my question here:

How do I build these, or is it just not possible:

- Smooth elevated avenue curves (no matter if puzzle or draggable)

- FLUP pieces under diagonal avenue

Thx

[Tarkus 6,932]

Just replied to you over in NAM Support.  Pasting it here:

Just now, Tarkus said:

Correct, these do not exist.  Big issue with anything elevated is of course the model work, and aside from some menu/UI stuff Chrisim has done since his return, FLUPs development is stalled, and may remain that way until/unless DLL development is able to make the new draggable Subway-based system not be so incessantly temperamental.

-Tarkus

 

[Lab Rat 13]

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[Aka 412]

Hello, I'm not quite sure where to post this, and I'm not sure if starting a new thread is really necessary. Please forgive me in advance if I'm in the wrong place...

I recently saw these two threads on Reddit SC4:

- Started a petition to EA to request a release of the source code.

- Why can’t we get EA to release source code?

This is just my personal opinion, shared by others, but I fear we’ll never have access to the game’s source code through the game editor. These two issues are very important and represent something that all modders dream of having access to so they can finally modify the game without obstacles.

I don’t know what Simtropolis and its community’s stance is on reverse engineering for video games, but there is a method using AI that can “easily” recreate a video game’s source code, which can be found on GitHub. I’m no expert on the subject—far from it—but it’s certainly a plausible approach. Reverse engineering has been used for other games like Super Mario 64 or GTA 3, Vice City, and SA, the latter of which was apparently completed using AI in just a few months, even though people had been working on it for several years.

Speaking of GTA and Rockstar, the latter has systematically sued anyone who has published the source code, even if it was created by someone else and not copied from Rockstar.

My question is: is it possible to use this method for SC4? Something tells me it is—if it worked for GTA SA, I think it could work for SC4 too. Legally speaking, it’s legal—it’s not a copy in the strict sense of the term, and it’s a new invention since the game’s source code was never copied but rather imitated. If this method is possible, should we expect a legal backlash from EA?

Aka

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, Aka said:

I'm not sure if starting a new thread is really necessary.

We can watch and see how it goes. If we get quite a few comments for this specific topic, I can split them out into their own thread later on. (The only trouble is if someone replies to this and something else in the same post.)

 

2 hours ago, Aka said:

I don’t know what Simtropolis and its community’s stance is on reverse engineering for video games, ...

Our stance has changed over the years from Absolutely Not! to: It kind of depends on the game and the extent of the reverse peeking and poking. For SC4 we draw the line where we believe Maxis and Electronic Arts wants it. They allow creation of DLLs and that takes a significant amount of probing under the the hood.

For SimCity 2000 there's a thread here where I believe they've gone a lot further. (I don't really understand what they do, but the results are impressive.) For that we simply gave permission with the caveat that if we get a credible take down notice from EA, we would do so and post a recap of what occurred. That particular thread has been going for over a year iirc. (I seem to recall it's DLL based too so likely pretty safe ground.)

 

2 hours ago, Aka said:

If this method is possible, should we expect a legal backlash from EA?

I would certainly expect backlash from them. Even if they might eventually turn out to be wrong, they'd have the financial ability to bury us in court costs and drown us right out before we could ever present our side of the case.

I believe it would be a very bad idea for Simtropolis to allow any serious implementation discussion of it. (General What If? is ok tho.)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

How do I add a new "slider" image to the UI of funded buildings? Like schools (with an apple as default) or power plants (lightbulb)?

I can export a UI, and locate the branch which stores the .bmp image but can't paste my own in. Any help?

[Null 45 3,041]

10 hours ago, Aka said:

This is just my personal opinion, shared by others, but I fear we’ll never have access to the game’s source code through the game editor.

EA has been releasing source code for some older games in recent years, specifically a few games from the Command & Conquer franchise. But it is my understanding that only happened due to an EA insider with connections to the franchise pushing for source code to be released as part of a remaster that was already in the works, and AFAIK there isn't anyone connected to the SimCity franchise still working at EA.

The Command & Conquer source code is also not in a state where anyone could build an exact replica of the existing binaries, as the code has dependencies that EA could not or would not include. 

10 hours ago, Aka said:

My question is: is it possible to use this method for SC4?

There is someone who was working on using AI to do that with the SC4 32-bit Mac binaries (which have partial debug information, thank you Aspyr ), but last I heard it would take their local LLM models months to complete the necessary documentation. Even if that is successful in creating all the necessary documentation (of which I am highly skeptical), you would still need programmers to write new code based on that documentation. You may also have a situation where many DLL developers are taken out of the pool of programmers due to the fact that they would have done reverse engineering of EA's code.

The same individual was also trying to find people to contact within EA to ask about the actual source code, which I think is a slightly more feasible route.

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

For SC4 we draw the line where we believe Maxis and Electronic Arts wants it. They allow creation of DLLs and that takes a significant amount of probing under the the hood.

From this post by Karbydis, EA openly admitted to early SC4 modders that code modifications could be made with DLL plugins. But they never officially provided the necessary information to do so. AFAIK the current DLL advances are largely due to the to two things:

1. The late Paul Pedriana (Lead programmer on SC3K and SC4) leaking a few pieces of source code that describe what SC4 looks for when loading DLL plugins, and encouraging reverse engineering of the rest of the game's interfaces.
2. The previously mentioned partial debug information that Aspyr left in the 32-bit Mac binaries, which allowed many of the game's interfaces to be reconstructed. But there are limitations with this strategy.
   1. The compilers can modify how things are laid out when compared to the original source code.
   2. When porting the code Aspyr removed and changed a number of internal things that have no effect on game-play, but are in some cases visible to code plugins.
      1. Most notably they removed the code that would have allowed the game to load the Mac equivalent of DLL plugins. Although Apple security restrictions would likely have killed that eventually even if they left it in.

My understanding of the history is that EA's red line has always been distributing modified versions of the EXE, and while many DLLs modify the game's code when it is running the EXE on disk remains untouched. The 4GB patch modifies the EXE by changing an option the OS reads when starting it, but I doubt there would be any issue with that as long as no one distributes a pre-patched executable (but I am not a lawyer).

[Null 45 3,041]

37 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I can export a UI, and locate the branch which stores the .bmp image but can't paste my own in. Any help?

Does your image match the format the meter images use? I would expect it to be changeable for the query UI, but Maxis hard coded the meter image ids for tool tips.

The performance meter is specific to the education, health, fire, police, and utility buildings. Each one of those uses a specific control id that makes the game fill in the appropriate info.

[Null 45 3,041]

There is also a Started a petition for EA to release SimCity 4 source code topic on r/SimCity that attracted the attention of a former Maxis artist who worked on SC4 (u/vertexnormal).

They mention in the topic that they have copies of all the art source material (and possibly pre-release builds mentioned in another topic), but didn't grab the code and are not sure if EA still has copies. There is also a comment on the building/bridge creation which is a fun read.

While I know there is no chance of those pre-release builds ending up in public, especially since someone publicly admitted to possibly having them. IMO that would be a close second to the actual source code in terms of the number of things that could be discovered. I expect some of those internal builds may have things like:

• Ingred and all the related editors active with the proper file layout.
• Full Windows debug symbols (and perhaps even a full debug build, which would limit compiler magic).
• Plus a ton of other possibilities depending on the specific build, like getting a build with the original intended traffic simulator before they altered it to run on low-spec machines.