Advanced Lot Plop - new GUIs with DLLs

[CasperVg 546]

Hey everyone, my first post in a long time

I've been working on a new DLL mod that makes finding and plopping lots a lot easier. Here's what it does:

Features:

• In-game UI window with searchable lot browser
• Filter by zone type (R/C/I/Ag/Plopped/Other), wealth level, lot size and if necessary Occupant Group as well
• Search by building name or description
• Shows building icons and details before you plop (if they exist)
• Should works with all custom content and growable buildings
• Hotkey to toggle the window (customizable, currently uses O which is not mapped to anything else in the base game)

Why:
Instead of scrolling through endless menus (though the Submenu DLL has already improved this a lot, thanks memo :D) or trying to navigate the awful builtin LotPlop or BuildingPlop dialogs, you can just search "police" or filter for "2x3 commercial $$" and see everything that matches. The tool interfaces directly with the game's placement system, so plopping works exactly like using the normal (sub)menus to plop something.

Video of the advanced lot plop tool in action here (on Streamable)

Note: The mod uses Dear ImGui for the interface and hooks into the game's DirectX renderer. It does need DirectX11, which means it will only work for people running SC4 in DX11 mode via dgVoodoo (or potentially other DirectX wrappers).

First release:
A first release is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.1
This is very much a "works on my machine" kind of release. My machine in this case means Windows 11 25H2, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition (Digital from GOG) and dgVoodoo3 set to DX11 mode. But you might be lucky with some other configurations too, definitely let me know!

 

Some screenshots are attached

Suggestions and comments appreciated!

  Edited October 19, 2025 by CasperVg  
Add release 1

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

I love where you are going with this. 

(I added the Featured Star to draw more attention to it.)

[hugues aroux 3,854]

Oh! I would have liked to try this, but I don't have a wrapper installed and I have DX12.. I guess it's dead for me!?

The aspect: "It's a mess in my Plugins directory\ but I can still find my little ones!" It's great!

[PixuuL 2]

Does this also show all the variations of a Lot? I know when using the in game buildingplop menu many lots have a few different variations for lot sizes and orientation of props etc. Absolutely amazing work though! Looking forward to its release

 

[nos.17 5,215]

This is hot. Could the search bar support searching by IID (hexadecimal or decimal)? Could be the final nail in the coffin for the mystery of missing Plugin Pack IDs. 

Edit: On second thought, nevermind, this won't work. If you're missing a building from your plugins, the game would not know what it is and have no way to find it from your Plugins list.

  Edited October 19, 2025 by nos.17  

[11241036 5,108]

This looks very promising. Although the Submenus DLL greatly improved the game, especially with my huge Plugins folder, this is something I've been thinking of already and it will surely make things much easier.

[CasperVg 546]

Thanks all! The reason I haven't released a build yet is because I've found that the initial creation of the "lot inventory" to be too slow for now. I need to look into some optimizations to make it work on realistic Plugins sizes (i.e. my own 8GB plugins) first.

 

@hugues aroux: The game by default uses DX7, even if you have DX12 on your machine (as do most modern Windows PCs). dgVoodoo wraps it so that it actually tries to run in DX11 mode, allowing some newer graphics features (larger display sizes for one).

2 hours ago, hugues aroux said:

Oh! I would have liked to try this, but I don't have a wrapper installed and I have DX12.. I guess it's dead for me!?

The aspect: "It's a mess in my Plugins directory\ but I can still find my little ones!" It's great!

[AsimPika3172 1,148]

I will waiting!  🤩

[CasperVg 546]

Thanks all!

A first release is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.1
This is very much a "works on my machine" kind of release. My machine in this case means Windows 11 25H2, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition (Digital from GOG) and dgVoodoo2 set to DX11 mode. But you might be lucky with some other configurations too, definitely let me know!

[simmering 2,722]

1 hour ago, CasperVg said:

and dgVoodoo3 set to DX11 mode

Is there an official download source for dgVoodoo3? I am asking because dege-diosg' GitHub only has dgVoodoo2.

[CasperVg 546]

6 hours ago, simmering said:

Is there an official download source for dgVoodoo3? I am asking because dege-diosg' GitHub only has dgVoodoo2.

Sorry I meant dgVoodoo2 of course There is a prebuilt package for SC4 here: 

 

[Jasoncw 11,940]

Stunning! This is obviously a huge quality of life improvement over the menus and buildingplop, but it will also be a nice creative tool as well. If you have a space you want to fill but don't know what to do with it you can filter by lot size and other things to help you find something that would be a good fit. 

I can also imagine this being a building block for making a new ui for the game. 

[11241036 5,108]

12 hours ago, CasperVg said:

Thanks all!

A first release is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.1
This is very much a "works on my machine" kind of release. My machine in this case means Windows 11 25H2, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition (Digital from GOG) and dgVoodoo2 set to DX11 mode. But you might be lucky with some other configurations too, definitely let me know!

I downloaded and installed the files, but so far it didn't work on my machine (I'm having Windows 10, SC4 Deluxe digital from Amazon). Just to make sure I didn't make any mistake, three questions:

How can I find out if I have dgVoodoo2 set to DX11 mode? I don't know what that is, sounds like sorcery to me...

I need to put the DLL file into the base Plugins folder, is this right?

I tried to merge your KEYCFG file into another one, by coincidence a mod you've uploaded that allows me to auto make historical all growables in my city. This is how it looks like. Did I do this right?

[Kel9509 1,476]

5 hours ago, 11241036 said:

How can I find out if I have dgVoodoo2 set to DX11 mode? I don't know what that is, sounds like sorcery to me...

I gave this mod a try also and originally it didn't work for me.  I had installed dgvoodoo2 according to Ulisse Wolf's instructions when I had to rebuild my computer and began using Win11.  If you've installed dgvoodoo2 (linked above) then it should reside in Simcity4's Application folder in the subfolder called Apps.  In my case, it's: D:\Games\GOG Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Apps

If you run "dgVoodooCpl.exe" in that folder, it looks like this:

Under "Output API" mine was set to "Direct3D 12 (feature level 12.0)".  So I changed it to "Direct3D 11 (feature level 11.0)" and tried the game.  The result:

So it works!  I haven't played around with it too much though.  But this might be a great way to get new systems into the game since the UI is otherwise pretty set in stone without significant edits.  Anyway, this is a great addition because the existing BuildingPlop is pretty hard to navigate.  

Several questions:

1. How do you reconfigure the key to use the menu?  You mention it's customizable but I didn't see that option in the INI file.  I didn't look within the DAT so I assume it's there?

2. The name of your mod is "Advanced Lot Plop".  Is is a lot plop or a building plop?  I know there's 2 different cheat commands in SimCity for those.  I've always used the Building Plop because I believe the difference there is that it remembers your place once you return to it.  Also, I believe LotPlop can give you different building sometimes since some lots use families for buildings.  Does this plop have any of those issues or distinctions?

3. It's not clear to me how the original list, without filters, is sorted at all.  I think it's sorted by file location, possibly.  But clicking on name, size, or even ID didn't sort by those.  It seems like the filters are really necessary if you want to find anything because unlike BuildingPlop, nothing seemed alphabetical to me.

[CasperVg 546]

Thanks @Kel9509, that is indeed the right setting in dgVoodoo2 to use Happ to hear that i'ts working  For you questions:

1/ It is configurable via the .dat file. There, there is a KEYCFG entry which you can edit to change the hotkey. This works the same way as editing the game's default hotkeys.

2/ Right now it was considered as a LotPlop alternative. It does remember the last position though, unlike the default LotPlop. I haven't looked into how it behaves with building families though.

3/ You're right, there's really no sorting in it at all at the moment. It's not too hard to add that in imgui, so I will add it for the next release.

[11241036 5,108]

17 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I gave this mod a try also and originally it didn't work for me.  I had installed dgvoodoo2 according to Ulisse Wolf's instructions when I had to rebuild my computer and began using Win11.  If you've installed dgvoodoo2 (linked above) then it should reside in Simcity4's Application folder in the subfolder called Apps.  In my case, it's: D:\Games\GOG Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Apps

If you run "dgVoodooCpl.exe" in that folder, it looks like this:

Under "Output API" mine was set to "Direct3D 12 (feature level 12.0)".  So I changed it to "Direct3D 11 (feature level 11.0)" and tried the game.  The result:

 

(etc)

Thank you for the explanation, I've installed dgVoodoo, following the installation instructions and your explanation, but I still can't get it to work. Unlike you, I'm still on Windows 10, though. I'm having DirectX 12, and the most recent Intel driver (although the card dates back to 2015, my machine is already 9 years old). It seems that this DLL simply doesn't work on Windows 10. If someone has an idea if I need to install something extra to make it work, that would be great. I'm tagging @Null 45 and @memo therefore.

[Null 45 3,086]

1 hour ago, 11241036 said:

It seems that this DLL simply doesn't work on Windows 10.

I tested it on Windows 10, the DLL runs but UI doesn't work. That could be due to DxWrapper picking DX12 instead of DX11, I didn't see a DxWrapper setting to configure that or even log the version it uses.

But as the plugin doesn't write a log file I can't tell where it is failing, it could just be taking a long time to build the cache. The cache file is written, so I have no idea why the log file isn't. I also can't build the plugin due to missing dependencies, all of the stuff in the vendor folder should probably be checked in as git sub modules that reference the necessary repositories.

[CasperVg 546]

9 hours ago, Null 45 said:

I tested it on Windows 10, the DLL runs but UI doesn't work. That could be due to DxWrapper picking DX12 instead of DX11, I didn't see a DxWrapper setting to configure that or even log the version it uses.

But as the plugin doesn't write a log file I can't tell where it is failing, it could just be taking a long time to build the cache. The cache file is written, so I have no idea why the log file isn't. I also can't build the plugin due to missing dependencies, all of the stuff in the vendor folder should probably be checked in as git sub modules that reference the necessary repositories.

@Null 45 DxWrapper, as far as I know, converts DX1-7 to DX9 internally, which wouldn't work as this DLL expects DX11. I think I will have to rethink the whole idea, as everyone seems to be using different wrappers with different target DX versions, which makes supporting all these configurations tricky.

If the cache file is written, it has indeed gotten pretty far, probably just failing to open the window itself because of the wrong DX version. Normally it should also log, but to the <My Documents>/SimCity 4 folder directly, not /Plugins. I don't really like how other DLLs put log files in the Plugins folder directly.

 

11 hours ago, 11241036 said:

Thank you for the explanation, I've installed dgVoodoo, following the installation instructions and your explanation, but I still can't get it to work. Unlike you, I'm still on Windows 10, though. I'm having DirectX 12, and the most recent Intel driver (although the card dates back to 2015, my machine is already 9 years old). It seems that this DLL simply doesn't work on Windows 10. If someone has an idea if I need to install something extra to make it work, that would be great. I'm tagging @Null 45 and @memo therefore.

@11241036 Make sure your dgVoodoo2 config for SC4 is set to Direct3D 11 as shown in Kel's post, even if you run DirectX12 normally. 

 

I am away on a business trip right now so unable to make any changes at the moment, but the feedback is very valuable! This DLL was, in some way, meant to "test the waters" on how well ImGui would work in practice. And so far it seems to work well if you have all the setup done completely right, but it is very brittle so I will need to look into ways to support more rendering backends. 

[Null 45 3,086]

47 minutes ago, CasperVg said:

Normally it should also log, but to the <My Documents>/SimCity 4 folder directly, not /Plugins. I don't really like how other DLLs put log files in the Plugins folder directly.

I am not seeing one there either.

[11241036 5,108]

12 hours ago, CasperVg said:

Make sure your dgVoodoo2 config for SC4 is set to Direct3D 11 as shown in Kel's post, even if you run DirectX12 normally. 

I made that sure, believe me. Nothing. But it wrote me a log file in the SimCity 4 folder with over 313,000 lines of text and a size of 37 MB. A lot of lines are saying "Added to exemplar cache", so, I took the liberty of omitting these lines and uploading the rest here, in case this is useful for you.

SC4AdvancedLotPlop.txt

[rsc204 21,857]

Note that everyone is using DirectX9 not 7, as the last version with full support for DX7, it’s what most wrappers default to.

Then it’s simply a case of whether DX11 or DX12 is in the middle for converting those operations to DX9. Windows 7 still supports DX11 natively and Win10 onwards DX12. But for compatibility reasons it would be ideal to support both 11 and 12 since depending on your setup, only one may work properly. Although it’s usually 11.

Note also not everyone will need a wrapper either, those users are probably running DX12 by default. So adding dgVoodoo2 to switch to DX11 would be the fix there. 

[rsc204 21,857]

On 21/10/2025 at 9:17 AM, CasperVg said:

If the cache file is written, it has indeed gotten pretty far, probably just failing to open the window itself because of the wrong DX version. Normally it should also log, but to the <My Documents>/SimCity 4 folder directly, not /Plugins. I don't really like how other DLLs put log files in the Plugins folder directly.

I wholehartedy agree, I want to keep the location of my DLL mods as clean as possible, it's a root folder afterall.

So I tried this on my system and so far, no dice. Win7 DX 11 with dgVoodoo2 (usually I use the ElishaCloud wrapper as dgVoodo2 causes problems with my setup). It seems that it is starting and I'm not seeing any errors?

I am sure the KeyConfig is fine, not sure if multiple such files can coexist now?, but I added the line from yours into the DAT for the SC4BulldozeExtensions file. The additional bulldozers work, so I think it should recognise 0, but when pressing it nothing happens in game.

So I wasn't getting errors, but seemingly now I am:

Quote

[2025-10-23 14:03:15.642] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop logger initialized
[2025-10-23 14:03:15.642] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Logging to file: C:\Users\MGB\Documents\SimCity 4\SC4AdvancedLotPlop.log
[2025-10-23 14:03:15.642] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop v0.1.1
[2025-10-23 14:03:25.507] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] PostAppInit: Initializing AdvancedLotPlopDllDirector
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.623] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Got game window: 0x403F0
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.623] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Initializing with game window: 0x403F0
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.623] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Installing Present hook...
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.633] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Temporary device created (FeatureLevel: 0xB000)
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.633] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Found Present at 0x633C1BD1
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.640] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Present hook installed successfully
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.640] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [error] D3D11Hook: Failed to get original window procedure (error: 5)
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.640] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [warning] D3D11Hook failed - ImGui will not be available
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.657] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Captured real game device: 0x431862C
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.657] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Captured immediate context: 0x5D02BDC
[2025-10-23 14:03:31.657] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Captured swap chain: 0x5D32B48

First run (same LogFile), shows it was working? Even though I couldn't get 0 to bring a window up?

Quote

[2025-10-23 13:41:38.307] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop logger initialized
[2025-10-23 13:41:38.307] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Logging to file: C:\Users\MGB\Documents\SimCity 4\SC4AdvancedLotPlop.log
[2025-10-23 13:41:38.307] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop v0.1.1
[2025-10-23 13:41:42.668] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] PostAppInit: Initializing AdvancedLotPlopDllDirector
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.406] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Got game window: 0x70444
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.407] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Initializing with game window: 0x70444
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.407] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Installing Present hook...
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.512] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Temporary device created (FeatureLevel: 0xB000)
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.512] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Found Present at 0x62AB1BD1
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.523] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Present hook installed successfully
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.523] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Window procedure hook installed successfully
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.523] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Original WndProc: 0xFFFF04A5
[2025-10-23 13:41:50.523] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook initialized successfully

What does Error 5 mean? Is this something I can troubleshoot?

[Null 45 3,086]

11 hours ago, rsc204 said:

What does Error 5 mean?

It means that this line was failing with ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED. That could be any number of things, e.g. an invalid window handle.

[CasperVg 546]

I created a new version that should resolve some reported issues: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.2

• Add sorting to most table columns
• Use built-in method to retrieve HWND instead of hacky workaround that was unstable (this might issue reported by @rsc204)
• Remove serialized cache and 'lazy loading' of icons
• Adjust logger to replace the previous log on each first load (this will avoid massive log files)
• Close any existing view input controls (i.e. previous plop tools, bulldoze tool, ...) when opening the window so that they don't interfere

 

 

 

[rsc204 21,857]

Thanks for the update, I’ll definitely take a look at it. Having finally, (after 4 years maybe), convinced the Intel utility to rebuild my RAID1 drive, I am in the middle of moving around TBs of data to get my system back in order. So it might be a few days before I can report my progress. 

[CasperVg 546]

New version with some extra features now available: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.3

- The filters you set are saved when exiting the city and carry over the next time you boot the game as the default
- You are able to mark specific lots as your favorite, this will also save and carry over to any other city within the plugins folder. (see image 1)
- The tool will keep track of your most recent plopped lots, and you can review them quickly in the Recent tab at the top. (see image 2)
- Double clicking the row of a lot in the table will now also activate the plop mode.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

[papiouuu 38]

I got it to work Windows 10

Put all files from folder in main documents folder.

It worked for me!

[Kel9509 1,476]

On 10/25/2025 at 1:18 PM, CasperVg said:

New version with some extra features now available: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.3

Does this new version still require using Direct3D 11?  Or can it work with 12 now?

[Null 45 3,086]

8 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Does this new version still require using Direct3D 11?  Or can it work with 12 now?

It still requires DirectX 11.

[11241036 5,108]

I gave the mod a new try with version 1.0.3, but I still can't get the Advanced LotPlop window to open in-game. The log file, however, has changed:

[2025-11-01 00:15:45.308] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop logger initialized
[2025-11-01 00:15:45.308] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Logging to file: C:\Users\Samuel\Documents\SimCity 4\SC4AdvancedLotPlop.log
[2025-11-01 00:15:45.308] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] SC4AdvancedLotPlop v0.1.3
[2025-11-01 00:29:38.071] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] PostAppInit: Initializing AdvancedLotPlopDllDirector
[2025-11-01 00:32:42.973] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] Got game window from framework: 0xB046A
[2025-11-01 00:32:42.975] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Initializing with game window: 0xB046A
[2025-11-01 00:32:42.975] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Installing Present hook...
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.016] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Temporary device created (FeatureLevel: 0xB000)
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.016] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Found Present at 0x6F2A0950
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.019] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Present hook installed successfully
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.019] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Window procedure hook installed successfully
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.019] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook: Original WndProc: 0xFFFF0259
[2025-11-01 00:32:43.019] [SC4AdvancedLotPlop] [info] D3D11Hook initialized successfully

 

On 26.10.2025 at 8:21 PM, papiouuu said:

I got it to work Windows 10

Put all files from folder in main documents folder.

It worked for me!

That sounds promising. Could you explain this a bit more in detail, please? Which files exactly did you move into the main documents folder?