SimCity 4: Extra Cheats Plugin by Buggi, testing the Commands.

[City_Slider 2,716]

Hello everyone,

I´m testing this: 

 

i´m  checking the Commands of the Cheat Program. PlopAllLots/Buildings are shown so far.

Next try is "LotPlop". Brb...

  Edited February 19, 2021 by City_Slider  
Titel fixed

[City_Slider 2,716]

Open the Cheat Box by pressing  "Ctrl + X" at your Keyboard, right click in the Box that just opened and search for "LotPlop" in there by scrolling with the Mouse Scroller...

and click in there at any Lot you would like to have a look at.

Example:

After i closed the Window by clicking at the Cross, i could set the Lot: 

After this you could open the next Box with Ctrl + X and pic the next one.

Realy helpfull if you need to check one Lot, that wont work in your Game. Or if you would like to have a look at it before you install it finaly.

Next Test are coming soon ;-)

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

Have you tried the Extra Extra Cheats by @simmaster07? The dude added a few to what @Buggi did.

 

[City_Slider 2,716]

On 20.2.2021 at 3:21 AM, Whte_rbt said:

Have you tried the Extra Extra Cheats by @simmaster07? The dude added a few to what @Buggi did.

I have had a look on it.. and i can tell.... that Cheats aren´t helpfull. So i wont test it out. 

But thanks for sharing it,

Oliver

[City_Slider 2,716]

Im´m still testing it...

but one Question for between... whats the Different between "PlopAllBuildings" and "PlopAllLots"? And why does BlockAllMaxiBuildings wont Work with it?

Happy Day, Oliver

[City_Slider 2,716]

No one? Hmmm, thats sad :-/

[City_Slider 2,716]

"LotPlop"

The Files without a Name, are those Maxis Lots?

Still testing the Cheats.

Oliver

[City_Slider 2,716]

*Push*

[SIM-ple Jack 17,445]

On 2/22/2021 at 3:39 PM, City_Slider said:

I have had a look on it.. and i can tell.... that Cheats aren´t helpfull. So i wont test it out. 

But thanks for sharing it,

Oliver

Most of them are destructive, not constructive. For entertainment purposes mostly.

On 3/24/2021 at 2:45 PM, City_Slider said:

Im´m still testing it...

but one Question for between... whats the Different between "PlopAllBuildings" and "PlopAllLots"? And why does BlockAllMaxiBuildings wont Work with it?

Happy Day, Oliver

Building Plop and Lot Plop are roughly the same thing. Building Plop is easier to use because it holds it's scroll position. Lot Plop doesn't. Lot Plop's main advantage is it lists by category, whereas, often times you have to remember the mods correct name to find it with BP.  BlockAllMaxiBuildings conceals regular menu listings as well as preventing grow lots. "PlopAllBuildings" and "PlopAllLots" is a cheat I don't recommend using unless you have a few hours to kill or feel like crashing your game or computer.

On 3/25/2021 at 1:59 PM, City_Slider said:

No one? Hmmm, thats sad :-/

20 hours ago, City_Slider said:

"LotPlop"

The Files without a Name, are those Maxis Lots?

Still testing the Cheats.

Oliver

Yes.

28 minutes ago, City_Slider said:

*Push*

[City_Slider 2,716]

Hi Jack,

i figured this out=

PlopAllBuilding = every Modell in the Plugin Folder is generated. That means... EVERY Modell will showes up. (Time from Start the Command till the End= ~28 Minutes per 1GB).

PlopAlLots = Only one Modell of a Lot shows up.  (Time from Start the Command till the End= ~4- 5 Minutes per 1GB).

LotPlop = you can search for an specific Lot to test it.

These Commands are really helpfull.

 

[Buggi 684]

Amazing this is still going! Almost 20 years now!

[Propfam 2,292]

Welcome back to Simtropolis, @Buggi! Nice to meet you after 3 years! 

[City_Slider 2,716]

10 hours ago, Buggi said:

Amazing this is still going! Almost 20 years now!

You made an great Mod. So it never dies ;-)

[Buggi 684]

Well, I had the contacts and good fortune to know the guy who created the back-end data system for all Maxis games at the time. He developed the DB system that I cracked way back then and wanted to support the community that developed around the game so sent me the source code and DLL that is referenced here.

Several years ago I made an attempt at getting the source code to SC4 to push the game into a true community game but was blocked by EA lawyers. A couple years later they released the epic disaster that was SimCity 2013.

[OrSpeeder 72]

Hey Buggi!

 

I am trying to do same thing.  Even found Paul Pedriana and Bob Summerwill. Can you help out? I couldn't figure out even how to  reach EA lawyers in first place.

I wanted to release the source,  if not possible, then create a team to make official updates for SC4, starting with me removing the stupid RDTSC.

[pultava 7]

The source code would keep this game alive for another 20 years from now. I think it is possible, but definitely not an easy task. The game itself is still the best candidate for long-time improvements (like OpenTTD).

EA open sourced (at least some) of the C&C games recently. Does someone have idea why or how this one was pulled off? That series was also very popular and long-lasting, although the first game dates to 1995.

I think this needs somehow a coordinated effort starting from mapping the idea of terms and conditions related to the future use of the source code and trying to find the current contacts from EA. Not sure, but one possibility would be to get a permission for prioritised code fixes, and update the most critical parts of the code bit by bit. Someone more experienced community members can probably have an good idea what those fixes could be.

Thanks by the way for all active members here, I have been enjoying SC4 (and Simtropolis too) for long time, not contributing though! Just finalised by profile after 17 years

[City_Slider 2,716]

Someone should Kontakt Larry Probst via E-Mail and asking him for the Codes ;-)

https://rocketreach.co/larry-probst-email_6900531

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

2 hours ago, pultava said:

I think this needs somehow a coordinated effort starting from mapping the idea of terms and conditions related to the future use of the source code and trying to find the current contacts from EA. Not sure, but one possibility would be to get a permission for prioritised code fixes, and update the most critical parts of the code bit by bit. Someone more experienced community members can probably have an good idea what those fixes could be.

This sort of rewrite of the game code would require someone who really knows what they're doing. If there was at least one member of the original dev team it would go far smoother as they would be availible for consult when you inevitably run across poorly commented code. There was a discussion of this many years ago but EA seems unwilling to let go of intellectual property that still generates income. With the C&C release, I don't expect that the first games (95-99) have been generating any income as the game has moved on from there technically with subsequent releases. The same never happened for SC4. Both official SimCity releases after 4 have failed (Societies and the 2013 'thing'), with SC4 continuing onwards regardless of EA. The fact that they keep putting the unmoddable version back up for sale despite having been informed by several people probably shows the contempt that EA holds for our community, after all, we don't charge for our mods.

[OrSpeeder 72]

I already poked around to see what need fixes and even know how to fix some of them, but I need EA permission to make it official.

RDTSC is the first fix I would do, it would immediately stop all complaints on Steam about SC4 crashing, and could even improve performance.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

RDTSC: Is this the borked timer thing that stops multithread working properly?

[OrSpeeder 72]

Yes.

RDTSC was supposed to tell you how many clock cycles happened since last call.

SC4 uses it for that specific purpose, it calculates how fast your processor is and adjust the game rules accordingly.

 

Except right after SC4 launched, because most programmers were using it wrong (they were using to count TIME instead), Intel and AMD decided to change what RDTSC does, and make it count time, instead of counting processor cycles. This causes a bunch of issues with SC4. The only way to play SC4 in a way that makes it behave perfectly, is use a computer from around 2002 :/

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

A notion popped into the head over breakfast: Does anyone else think that EA might respond better if approached by members of the original dev team wanting to rebuild the game? I know its unlikely to occur due to these people having another job or different priorities by now, but surely these guys would fare better than us civvies when tackling the EA board/decision makers?

[OrSpeeder 72]

I am currently trying to talk to EA by various means, if all of them fail I will try to convince Paul Pedriana, or see if I find other devs.

[Propfam 2,292]

12 hours ago, OrSpeeder said:

Yes.

RDTSC was supposed to tell you how many clock cycles happened since last call.

SC4 uses it for that specific purpose, it calculates how fast your processor is and adjust the game rules accordingly.

 

Except right after SC4 launched, because most programmers were using it wrong (they were using to count TIME instead), Intel and AMD decided to change what RDTSC does, and make it count time, instead of counting processor cycles. This causes a bunch of issues with SC4. The only way to play SC4 in a way that makes it behave perfectly, is use a computer from around 2002 :/

So, if I'm using a multi-core server CPU from 2002 (since multicore consumer CPUs were rare at that time), I can play it on multiple cores without crashing, right? If that's true, the retro community will be siding with us.  But I still have another question, can a server from 2002 keep up with 2021 contents? I've never seen someone here playing SC4 in a 2002 server. It would be nice to have beefy 2002 server running SC4 with 2021 contents, but those machines can be very expensive, especially in great or even never-unboxed-before condition. Also, the machine might not support newer version of Windows, which is good for performance and bad for security. Not only that, servers in general are energy-intensive. So, if you have limited power and/or energy conscious like me, this isn't a good option compared to buying newer machine with its workarounds.

[Tarkus 6,932]

On 5/9/2021 at 6:06 AM, OrSpeeder said:

I already poked around to see what need fixes and even know how to fix some of them, but I need EA permission to make it official.

RDTSC is the first fix I would do, it would immediately stop all complaints on Steam about SC4 crashing, and could even improve performance.

Coming in a little late to this discussion, but want to note . . . if these sorts of fixes are the types of things that can be done with a DLL mod, similar to what @simmaster07 did with SC4Fix, then that doesn't need EA's explicit permission.  Per @Karybdis, who was one of a few early modders who EA actually flew to San Francisco to talk modding, new DLLs are their preferred modus operandi.

I'll also note, @InvisiChem also researched whether or not it would be viable for him to redistribute a modified version of SimCity_1.dat.  That discussion gets the most interesting on its second page, but the general finding has been that as long as there's not a modified executable roaming around, EA's not going to have a problem.

That said, having the retail versions be pre-patched to include this kind of stuff out of the box would only be to EA's benefit (and that would definitely require their involvement).  SC4's still a great game, and it'd be nice to see them stop repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with regards to the franchise and realize that.

-Tarkus

[Propfam 2,292]

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The most helpful thing to know is when these CTDs are occurring, that will likely make it clear. The most common problem for SC4 is needing to force the game to use just a single core of your CPU, failure to manually set this will lead to much instability. If you forgot to add this when you installed the game on your new machine, that would explain it.

I would like to bring my reply from other topic.

On 10/5/2021 at 8:57 PM, chfzdn said:

So, if I'm using a multi-core server CPU from 2002 (since multicore consumer CPUs were rare at that time), I can play it on multiple cores without crashing, right? If that's true, the retro community will be siding with us.  But I still have another question, can a server from 2002 keep up with 2021 contents? I've never seen someone here playing SC4 in a 2002 server. It would be nice to have beefy 2002 server running SC4 with 2021 contents, but those machines can be very expensive, especially in great or even never-unboxed-before condition. Also, the machine might not support newer version of Windows, which is good for performance and bad for security. Not only that, servers in general are energy-intensive. So, if you have limited power and/or energy conscious like me, this isn't a good option compared to buying newer machine with its workarounds.

Since @OrSpeeder won't make a mod that fixes the issue anytime soon, what if we find a VM app that perfectly simulates (or implements) 2002 CPUs like Pentium 4 and earlier when RDTSC meant how many cycles happened after the last call, not counting the time? With this way, we can run SC4 within the VM with all cores enabled without any issues. This is another approach that's faster since modern CPUs are indeed faster in single-core (and possibly multi-core depending on the CPU) than even enterprise-grade 2002 CPU, economical since you don't have to find a 2002 server that's getting rarer and rarer every day, and environmentally friendly since you don't need an energy-guzzling server.

[rsc204 21,836]

4 hours ago, chfzdn said:

So, if I'm using a multi-core server CPU from 2002 (since multicore consumer CPUs were rare at that time), I can play it on multiple cores without crashing, right?

No, the basic problem hasn't changed, the game's code does not have any function to split the CPU load between more than one thread. People really misunderstand multi-core and how it works, you can't fake multi-core support, the code needs to be altered.

Why do we now all need to add the -CPUCount:1 command line switch, when previously a lot of players never had to worry about it? Two main reasons, the first being that for a good time after SC4 was released, multi-core still wasn't a big thing. The second is that Windows Vista was the first true multi-core designed Windows OS (for consumers), it will try to split tasks to multiple threads, even if the software in question wasn't designed to do so. This is exactly why the game CTDs, because when the tasks are split between cores, no code exists for one thread to wait for the other to catch up with it, should they not be in sync. In turn this creates an error in the runtime for which the game has no code to deal with, so the App simply CTDs. When you add the command line switch, Windows won't try to do this any more, so the game only runs on a single core, but it's important to note this is a Windows command, nothing specific to SC4.

The other big thing people tend to get wrong, is assuming if you have X cores, then you could get X times the performance of just one, it just doesn't work this way in the real world. When coding software, developers need to alter how their code is written, to ensure it can optimise the usage of multiple cores. As such, most such software is written for a number of cores that is considered standard, i.e. that which the largest number of potential users will have. It took many, many years before owners of quad-core CPUs could play a game that used them all, and today little software is optimised for more than 4 physical cores. Anything beyond 4 tends to be classified as many-core, but if you bought the 20 core i9 monster for about $20k, you'd quickly find games don't run much better for having it. In fact, since more cores usually equals slower cores, under most uses software would actually run faster on the 4 faster cores of a quad-core CPU than one with more but slower cores.

Quote

Of course theoretically, if you designed your code to take advantage of 20 cores and even more threads, you can fully make use of such a CPU. But this sort of part is just as dumb as buying the engine from a gigantic JCB and thinking it's the best way to pimp your sedan (saloon) to go faster. The right tool for the right job is often not only more elegant as a solution, but just plain better. These CPUs are intended for huge data centre/data mining and scientific applications, those who might splurge on them likely would customise their code to take full advantage of them.

If we could prevent SC4 from CTDing when not using the command line switch, this would NOT result in performance gains relative to the number of extra cores you have available. Windows' magic can only force SC4 onto 2 cores anyway, the second 'thread' of which does not do 50% of the processing either. Disable the command and play the game, it'll work for a while if you avoid moving and especially zooming/rotating (anything that refreshes the screen seems to trigger the CTDs). You'll quickly see that performance is only a little better, I'd estimate it to be around 10-20% from the one time I was messing around with it, that's assuming you've cities that would even benefit from the change. The point is, that's a simple test anyone can do themselves, that clearly shows there is no huge potential hidden gains to be had that we're missing out on. I've said before, if we could get a few % more performance sure I'd take it, but there is no simple solution that will fully optimise SC4 for the CPUs we have today. Again from a coding perspective, you have to balance the workload of the various processes somehow, it's not like a quarter of everything goes to each of 4 cores automatically somehow. Take Virtua Fighter as an example, Sega used one CPU for each of the two fighters, which meant load balancing was quite easy, but the optimisations are often vastly more complex than this, few games can have their processing split in half (or more) so easily.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

9 hours ago, chfzdn said:

I would like to bring my reply from other topic.

I moved said reply of yours back to the original thread as well as @rsc204 's reply to yours.

While I don't know for sure if the RDTSC @OrSpeeder has mentioned is related to multi-core processing, I do believe that is what you (chfzdn) seem to be referring to by mentioning old multi-core servers from 2002.

So, let's keep this part of the discussion here rather than in an unrelated thread.

[Djohaal 121]

On 5/10/2021 at 8:43 AM, OrSpeeder said:

I am currently trying to talk to EA by various means, if all of them fail I will try to convince Paul Pedriana, or see if I find other devs.

You know, with the recent success of CnC Remastered I wonder if EA's stance on refurbishing SimCity4 could be more favourable. One can dream...