Growify Plopped Buildings Cheat - DLL Plugin

[Null 45 3,048]

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that adds a cheat code to convert plopped buildings to a growable RCI zone type.

This mod is an in-game equivalent to the SC4 command line tool's growify command for editing save games (and the website version).

One of the differences between the two tools is the building exemplar property that is used to detect the RCI building type.
The SC4 command line tool uses the Capacity Satisfied property from the savegame's lot subfile.
This plugin uses the Purpose property from the building's exemplar.

Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36180-growify-plopped-buildings-cheat-dll-plugin/

Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-growify

System Requirements

• SimCity 4 version 641
• 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 the ability to test that.

Installation

1. Close SimCity 4.
2. Copy SC4Growify.dll into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
3. Start SimCity 4.

Using The Plugin

The plugin adds a Growify cheat code with the following syntax:

Growify <zone type> <zone density> [make historical]

The <zone type> parameter is one of: Residential, Commercial, Agriculture or Industrial.
The <zone density> parameter is one of: Low, Medium or High.
The [make historical] parameter is optional, when not present it will default to true. This behavior is intended to prevent the game from replacing the plopped building as part of its normal zone redevelopment process. Setting the value to false will preserve the game's existing historical option for that lot.

All commands are case-insensitive.

Example Commands

The following command converts all commercial plopped buildings to the Commercial Medium-density zone: Growify Commercial Medium To save typing, you could also use: Growify Com Med or Growify C M. This works with any zone or density value.

Because the Agriculture zone only has 1 density, it can be used with just the zone name: Growify Agriculture.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4Growify.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

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.

[11241036 5,100]

Wow, Null 45, you have me again astounded with a new DLL mod of yours. I'm currently about to go to bed, but I'm offering you to test this in the next days, in case you need testing players.

There are, however, a few questions:

There are two ways of plopping buildings with jobs/residents - plopping a building that is actually a ploppable lot, and using the BuildingPlop cheat to plop a building that is basically growable by default. (I hope I can express myself in a way you can understand it.) Does this cheat work with both ways or only one?

How does traffic react? The main reason why I would use the Growify cheat would be the fact that traffic cannot leave a plpped lot, which makes residentials almost always abandon.

[Kel9509 1,421]

You mean we can plop residentials now, and make them growable in-game?  

This is like the motherlode of all DLL cheats.

[Null 45 3,048]

47 minutes ago, 11241036 said:

Does this cheat work with both ways or only one?

It should work for both, provided the plopped building has the correct properties. I only tested it with the BuildingPlop cheat and a few built-in Maxis lots, which I assume were part of the game's growable set.

47 minutes ago, 11241036 said:

How does traffic react?

I don't know. I was testing with the game paused in one of the tutorial cities, and I was only checking that the lot had the correct zone type in the advanced query and after demolishing it.

[SneakyDeaky 1,128]

2 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

You mean we can plop residentials now, and make them growable in-game?  

This is like the motherlode of all DLL cheats.

I just tested this crudely, but after 9 in game years this row of residential I plopped has yet to abandon (except the one in front of the station of course) and they seem to be using my trams. 

This. Is. Amazing! 

 

[rsc204 21,817]

Great work once more Null, your recent contributions are transforming the possibilities already. Just imagine what could be possible in a year or three?

[Null 45 3,048]

16 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Great work once more Null, your recent contributions are transforming the possibilities already.

Thanks.

I received a request about changing the plugin to convert the BuildingPlop lots to growable as the are plopped, this should be possible to implement but I am not sure if there is any demand for that behavior change.

[Kel9509 1,421]

On 3/15/2024 at 8:29 PM, Null 45 said:

I received a request about changing the plugin to convert the BuildingPlop lots to growable as the are plopped, this should be possible to implement but I am not sure if there is any demand for that behavior change.

I think that would be useful, if it could be possibly controlled through an INI file to change whether historical mode is on or off.  And it would eliminate the need for typing, which is always good.  

One question - how does this mod handle improperly coded buildings?  Some older ones provide jobs, but PIM-X shows that they're coded incorrectly, such as being Landmark instead of CO$$, for instance.

[Null 45 3,048]

22 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I think that would be useful, if it could be possibly controlled through an INI file to change whether historical mode is on or off.  And it would eliminate the need for typing, which is always good.  

I am not sure the BuildingPlop change is feasible, I had forgotten about the zone density issue and I don't think there is any way for me to automatically set that.

23 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

One question - how does this mod handle improperly coded buildings?  Some older ones provide jobs, but PIM-X shows that they're coded incorrectly, such as being Landmark instead of CO$$, for instance.

Not sure, I have not seen any buildings like that.

[Kel9509 1,421]

2 hours ago, Null 45 said:

I am not sure the BuildingPlop change is feasible, I had forgotten about the zone density issue and I don't think there is any way for me to automatically set that.

Hmmm..  What about setting a default, which could be changed?  Like default it to Medium, but the INI file might permit it to be changed to Low or High?  

As for improperly coded buildings, they're typically older ones that were the first "ploppable jobs" buildings.  I wish I could find an example (I've unfortunately fixed most of the coding in my game).  They provide jobs using the Capacity Satisfied exemplar, but their Occupancy Group and/or budget items might be Landmark only (not Landmark CO$$ for instance).  I think I've found these in the older retail restaurants occasionally.  Since this mod uses the "Purpose" category, I suppose it'll work if those are coded with that exemplar properly.  But if not, they won't be converted into growables.  I haven't really looked to see if many ploppable commercial buildings have their Purpose exemplar coded properly.

[Null 45 3,048]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

Hmmm..  What about setting a default, which could be changed?  Like default it to Medium, but the INI file might permit it to be changed to Low or High?  

That seems like a lot of work for limited gain. I think I will leave the plugin as a cheat code.

[SneakyDeaky 1,128]

I want to add that the Growify mod does work on 4.0, disc version, but most of Null's mod's do NOT work for me, as I expected. I must download the current digital version to avoid any issues. 

[smf_16 1,836]

I've been away for some time, but this sounds amazing! The nature of the sc4 command line tool (which I wrote) required you to always save and exit a city before you could growify, but this solution is way better!

On 15-3-2024 at 12:18 AM, 11241036 said:

How does traffic react? The main reason why I would use the Growify cheat would be the fact that traffic cannot leave a plpped lot, which makes residentials almost always abandon.

As I understand, this DLL works similarly to my command line tool, and in my experiments back in the days I found that the traffic simulator often was a little confused after growifying, but that after some time it stabilized and the occupants of the growified residentials were able to find their way out so the buildings did not abandon. See also the post below in my original topic about developing the growify command line tool.

 

[Kel9509 1,421]

I've been testing this in the game recently.  I wanted to see how long it took for newly growified Residents to find jobs, and also appear in the census, and then in the line  graph.  So far, it appears that the census changes approximately a week or so after Growifying a Residential building.  The residents of that Growified Residential  building typically find jobs about 33 days after growification.  And the line graph updates about 2 months after growification to show newly plopped Residents.  In almost all cases, newly plopped residents got jobs outside the city at first, and then only later started finding closer jobs within the city.  But I'm not sure if that was because after plopping residential buildings and growifying them, I also plopped various commercial buildings.

For commercial buildings, I tested to see if there was any difference between a Landmark commercial building and a Buildingplopped growable commercial building.  The Growify Mod "grew" both types, but just as if in the game you plopped them without growifying them, I'm not sure the mod made a practical difference at all.  Prior to this mod, if you plopped a commercial building (either as a Landmark with Jobs or as a BuildingPlop cheat), the demand was adjusted accordingly downwards and if you plopped too much without regard to the demand, the new jobs would be from commuters (and possibly "fake").  Only after several months did the new Growified Residential buildings and the newly growified Commercial lots seem to mesh up and new Residents used them.  

In this case, I plopped a custom growable version of the residential Eureka Tower (I had to make it this way in PIM-X since the current version here is landmark eyecandy only), since it provided over 5,000 R$$$ sims.  I also plopped a custom 220 Central Park residential, and some CitiGroup Towers from Diego Del Llano and Capitalsim.net.  Most of these buildings were made growable by me in my game in PIM-X, but I've also retained ploppable commercial landmarks with jobs.  I'm not running a CAM game, so normally these buildings would probably never grow in my game.

Here's the effect of the plopping on jobs/population:

Here's the effect on commuting and transit:

Of note, a Landmark with Jobs that was "growified" still retained its Orange commuter box hover-over:

Playing with this mod is a little fun, but frankly it reeks of a command-economy style of playing that seems oddly inapplicable to the supply-and-demand style of SimCity 4.  

I can't really tell if the mod provides a practical benefit in growifying Commercial or Industrial buildings that otherwise could be plopped with the Buildingplop cheat, or as a Landmark with Jobs.  You don't SEE any difference at all.

But the mod is perfect anyway because it solves the major problem of how to plop Residential buildings.  And like any cheat or power, I feel it should be used sparingly just as if you were going to plop a Commercial or Industrial Building.  You don't want to mess with the demand too much, or else you could crater demand and cause stagnation in growing naturally for a while.  I think the mod is best used in plopping some residential buildings that otherwise wouldn't grow naturally, due to their difficulty or the game merely favoring one building over another because of slight nuances that are hard to account for.  So this mod definitely promotes variety in Residential building styles for cities and city journals.  All of my games are "real" and not just for show.  If you play just for show, I don't know if you'd ever need to even run the game under normal speed at all and worry about abandoned residentials, but this mod will fix that.  

More testing will need to be done to see if plopping residential buildings and growifying them means that you're literally seeding cities with new residents and thus new demand for jobs.  So far, that appears to be the case.  Note that I plopped buildings in areas that normally wouldn't degrade or abandon easily, and I have the Less Abandonment mod as well.

[rsc204 21,817]

I think from the perspective of Commercial, nothing really major changes as they will work fine as Plop lots.

But the key benefit for Ind is that Plop Ind can not export freight, which if done too much will harm demand caps calculated on freight exports.

I always wanted to convert all my Plop Com buildings (the only type I have up until now used) to reward buildings. Simply so they would remain de-selected until such point as demand was suitable to plop them. I think this would be the best way to avoid ending up with many phantom sims.

I very much intend to make some Plop Res as fillers but still want most of my growth to happen naturally. Then where things don’t match I can manually plop things and have them growified so they work. For example streets of matching row houses. It will also be useful for Corners, Diagonals, FA etc, being able to plop functional lots. 

[Kel9509 1,421]

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I always wanted to convert all my Plop Com buildings (the only type I have up until now used) to reward buildings. Simply so they would remain de-selected until such point as demand was suitable to plop them. I think this would be the best way to avoid ending up with many phantom sims.

I wonder if plopping residential buildings would counteract the possibility of phantom jobs?  That's what I was trying to test, in a way, by plopping residential R$$$ sims, and then plopping commercial buildings that need those sims.  There was some interval between the two, and the new R$$$ sims at first went entirely outside the city to find jobs.  When I plopped the large commercial buildings (they have about 7,000 or 10,000 jobs each in those CitigGroup buildings) at first the jobs appeared to be coming from commuters.  But after several months, the new residents went there instead of the commuters. 

I guess I'm saying is, if you're careful to try to manage things it might be possible to erase phantom jobs and fill the jobs with real residents you can plop.  Possibly.  But the simulator seems to manage this best on its own which is also why I rarely plop commercial buildings too.  I'll probably use the Growifier to plop residential buildings that for whatever reason don't or can't grow in my cities, to diversify the look of the buildings.  

[rsc204 21,817]

Perhaps you can ‘resolve’ the phantom jobs, but I would tread with caution. You might want to read up here, where this problem is explained:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=4297.0

You can use the same testing regime used by RippleJet, but using Plop Res and see if the results bear that they are truly there and functioning.

[11241036 5,100]

I've meanwhile tried out the new Growify DLL, and it works quite fine for me. Both residential and industrial zones are sending out traffic, albeit only after a few days, but that's not that big of an issue. So far, this is really a big helper.

I'd like to mention two main problems, of course, this is not memo's fault, but if it were possible to resolve these, that would be a great addition to this new file. Please do not consider this as criticism, only as my personal thoughts of how to improve something that is already good:

Every time I want to plop a growable building in my city, this requires me to press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+X and enter "BuildingPlop" or"LotPlop". Needless to say, that's quite annoying. Thus, is it possible to make this process less cumbersome by adding such a thing as a keyboard shortcut that would directly trigger the BuildingPlop/LotPlop cheat?

Also, finding the right building is somewhat difficult; the window that pops up after triggering the cheat is only a list of all available buildings with no other way of finding it than literally scrolling through all available entries - in my case, I'm speaking of probably thousands of entries. Is it possible to somehow improve the interface to include such a thing as a window where one can type in letters that match a part of an existing plugin in order to speed up searching?

[Null 45 3,048]

3 hours ago, 11241036 said:

is it possible to make this process less cumbersome by adding such a thing as a keyboard shortcut that would directly trigger the BuildingPlop/LotPlop cheat?

That should be possible.

3 hours ago, 11241036 said:

Is it possible to somehow improve the interface to include such a thing as a window where one can type in letters that match a part of an existing plugin in order to speed up searching?

Those dialogs are hard-coded in the EXE, and would appear to be difficult to modify.

[Null 45 3,048]

Release version 1.0.1, which fixes detection of buildings that store the Purpose property as a 1 item array.

[Max4k 721]

Do we have to type anything or is it automatic ?

[Null 45 3,048]

1 hour ago, Max4k said:

Do we have to type anything or is it automatic ?

It is a cheat code, so it is not automatic.

[Max4k 721]

Do you have to type the cheat before or after plopping ?

There was old method where you have to hold the right mouse click and control keyboard before plopping ?

[Null 45 3,048]

15 minutes ago, Max4k said:

Do you have to type the cheat before or after plopping ?

After plopping.

15 minutes ago, Max4k said:

There was old method where you have to hold the right mouse click and control keyboard before plopping ?

I have never heard of that.

[Max4k 721]

What I meant was, I don't need to zone first , then plop?  Just need to plop them add cheat?

 

I read of an ancient method require to zone first, then do right click, but don't think was reliable

[Null 45 3,048]

3 hours ago, Max4k said:

Just need to plop them add cheat?

Correct.

[Dono 178]

Hi, I've come across this thread late and have read all I could find, so I'm sorry if answered before 

Do I need to bulldoze all plopped buildings prior to using the cheat and start from a fresh slate. Only asking as I have used other workarounds to get plops to function in the past but have used this DLL to get a temperamental one to work. When I used it, and it had finished, it said "Growified 24 residential lot(s)". I'm assuming the DLL had added my "Growify R H" command to all the other prior plops as well. Any clarification would be much appreciated.

Anyway......A Big Thanks Null45 for your hard work...Thank You!

[Null 45 3,048]

2 hours ago, Dono said:

Any clarification would be much appreciated.

For residential buildings, the DLL looks for lots that that have a lot zone type of Plopped and a building purpose type of Residence. It shouldn't affect previously growified plops unless the other method failed to growify them. The growifying process would change the zone type from Plopped to something else.