Humane Society Ordinance - DLL Plugin

[Null 45 3,131]

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that adds a Humane Society ordinance to the game.

This ordinance is based on the Humane Society ordinance suggestion in this post, and has the following properties:

Availability Requirements: At least 1 hospital or clinic. The original suggestion did not include this, but I think it makes sense given the per hospital/clinic cost.
Expense: Base cost of $-50/month plus $-5 per hospital/clinic.
Effects:

• Increases mayor rating by 5 points.
• Reduces crime by 5%.

Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/35793-humane-society-ordinance/

System Requirements

•     Windows 10 or later

The plugin may work on Windows 7 or later with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute installed, but I do not have to ability to test that.

Installation

    1. Close SimCity 4.
    2. Copy SC4HumaneSocietyOrdinance.dll and HumaneSocietyOrdinanceText_English.dat into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
    3. Start SimCity 4.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4HumaneSocietyOrdinance.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

Source Code and Support

The plugin's source code and issue tracker are located on GitHub: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-humane-society-ordinance

	If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054
	Thanks to the few people who have donated to me.

[trar 336]

Very nice. I'm guessing we'll see mods made for the rest of the unfinished/community suggested ordinances in the OP of that old thread at some point.

[Null 45 3,131]

5 minutes ago, trar said:

Very nice. I'm guessing we'll see mods made for the rest of the unfinished/community suggested ordinances in the OP of that old thread at some point.

Possibly, but some of the unfinished EA/Maxis ordinances may be difficult to implement. I looked into the Water Tower Ads ordinance a while ago, I abandoned that ordinance idea because Maxis never added an occupant group to allow water towers to be distinguished from pumps. Another difficulty with the unfinished EA/Maxis ordinances is that there is no information on the possible effects.

[Propfam 2,311]

17 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Maxis never added an occupant group to allow water towers to be distinguished from pumps.

The interim solution would be to recognize a new property in your DLL and make an instruction how to do so. Hopefully, PIM-X will be updated for that. For the effects, well, we can just speculate and make a mod based on that.

Another is look up at ordinances in older versions of SC. I think some of those are available in SC3K and 2000.

[trar 336]

9 hours ago, Jidan said:

The interim solution would be to recognize a new property in your DLL and make an instruction how to do so. Hopefully, PIM-X will be updated for that. For the effects, well, we can just speculate and make a mod based on that.

Another is look up at ordinances in older versions of SC. I think some of those are available in SC3K and 2000.

Yes, SC3K had a ton of ordinances. I'd love to see the ones from older games brought to life as mods.

[Nihilianth 25]

Is this supposed to have a .ini file? It says in the readme and in the OP that it does. If so, what would be the point of renaming? Maybe perhaps for custom purposes if someone wanted to name to something like..... Kiwanis or Lion's Club instead for instance. 

In any case, I cannot thank you modders enough! You guys do absolutely amazing work! Thank you sooooooo much! You've inspired me to think about picking up the task of actually doing my CJ! 

[Null 45 3,131]

7 hours ago, Nihilianth said:

Is this supposed to have a .ini file?

Yes, I had forgotten to add that to the ZIP. Fixed.

7 hours ago, Nihilianth said:

If so, what would be the point of renaming? Maybe perhaps for custom purposes if someone wanted to name to something like..... Kiwanis or Lion's Club instead for instance. 

The main reason I added that was so that people running the game in languages other than English could translate it into their language. This mod was made before I figured out how to have the DLL read LTEXT files. For some reason this ordinance no longer shows up in my game, so I can't update it to use LTEXT files.

[Nihilianth 25]

4 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Yes, I had forgotten to add that to the ZIP. Fixed.

The main reason I added that was so that people running the game in languages other than English could translate it into their language. This mod was made before I figured out how to have the DLL read LTEXT files. For some reason this ordinance no longer shows up in my game, so I can't update it to use LTEXT files.

Yes, and that was my next question. None of the ordinances show up at all. I tried adding zzz_ to the folder name inside the plugins folder to make sure there wasn't a specific loading order that needed to be done after other things like, the NAM for instance. But nothing doing. 

 

I thought maybe there was an off chance I might have to have changed a command line in the .ini file, but that was missing altogether. Which is why I asked about that. 🤣

But yeah. Anyway. As always, I greatly appreciate the time and effort you and all other modders put into this over the years, even if something doesn't work quite right. 

[Null 45 3,131]

3 hours ago, Nihilianth said:

I tried adding zzz_ to the folder name inside the plugins folder to make sure there wasn't a specific loading order that needed to be done after other things like, the NAM for instance. But nothing doing.

The DLLs need to be in the top level plugins folder, not a sub-folder.

It turns out I had forgotten that this ordinance has a condition that requires the city to have 2 hospitals/clinics before it becomes available. Once that was fixed, it showed up in the UI.

[Nihilianth 25]

2 hours ago, Null 45 said:

The DLLs need to be in the top level plugins folder, not a sub-folder.

It turns out I had forgotten that this ordinance has a condition that requires the city to have 2 hospitals/clinics before it becomes available. Once that was fixed, it showed up in the UI.

Oooohhh! Ok! I'll try that out later today! Thanks! 

 

ETA: Is that also true for the Auto Save, and CPU and Graphics Options DLLs as well? 

[Null 45 3,131]

23 minutes ago, Nihilianth said:

ETA: Is that also true for the Auto Save, and CPU and Graphics Options DLLs as well? 

Yes, the game only searches for DLLs in the top level plugins folders.

[Null 45 3,131]

Release version 1.1, which changes the localization to use LTEXT entries.

[Rogdor 0]

I think the .ini file isn't included again, with the 1.1 version.

[Null 45 3,131]

10 minutes ago, Rogdor said:

I think the .ini file isn't included again, with the 1.1 version.

As of version 1.1, the INI file is no longer used.

Additionally, this DLL plugin is obsolete. It has been replaced by the Humane Society Ordinance example DAT file included with the Custom Ordinance Exemplar Host DLL.

[nos.17 5,265]

12 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Additionally, this DLL plugin is obsolete. It has been replaced by the Humane Society Ordinance example DAT file included with the Custom Ordinance Exemplar Host DLL.

I added a banner message explaining this to the top of this file.