New SimCity game

[Valou 4]

Hello,
After all those years I still can't find a city builder that simulates as well as SC4. For me SC4 is the only simulation who managed to recreate lively and evolving cities. I really don't like those plop and forget city painters.

So I decided, why not make my own?
I have programming skills, and I'd figure it would be a great passion project.

For now my goal would be to recreate the core system of SC4, modernize and add new features:

• Mixed multi zones: To create lots that allow commercials mixed to residential, like per example having shops and restaurants on ground floors of residential buildings.

• Mixed population in buildings: Buildings could hold different types of population income (Example 50 low rent apartments, 20 middle class and 10 wealthy). Depending on economic factors, the balance could shift, rent becomes too high, low incomes are pushed out,...

• In the base game we have 3 types of population, low income, middle class and wealthy. I would like to try and see if we can subdivide more into, family, single, couple, if it could bring some interesting gameplay (Singles and couple wouldn't mind living in a neighborhood without school per example..)

• One huge single map that is the size of a SC4 region, where there is no boundaries between cities. The player could create cities anywhere in the region, with each their own budget, policies.. But they would influence each other like the SC4 region (global demand, pollution, trade traffic, commute and specialization..). The goal would be to manage to run a region of 40millions citizen with good FPS. On paper it is doable, but that would be the biggest challenge (But so interesting !!)

• Other ideas:

  • The player doesn't own the buildings the sims built, so you wouldn't be able to destroy them at will, you'd need to get building owner agreement (payment can speed up the process, but could be expensive depending on land value)

  • Buildings decay over time, owners need to refresh or abandon the building if conditions are degrading too much

  • Traffic affected by weather (less pedestrian during rain or cold..)

  • Energy consumption varies with seasons

  • Franchise for commercial (Example: supermarket chains, gas/EV stations, food chain restaurants..) Different franchise would pop in wealthy district and poor district

  • Internet provider. Lay cable lines and manage bandwidth demand

  • Data centers (with huge electric power and bandwidth consumption) for AI providers to attract high tech industries

What do you think about those features?
As SC4 is such good game already, do those features justify a new development?

I'm curious if people would be actually interested about it, let me know your opinion!

(Copy from my reddit post in r/simcity4)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

On 23.12.2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

• Mixed multi zones: To create lots that allow commercials mixed to residential, like per example having shops and restaurants on ground floors of residential buildings.

• Mixed population in buildings: Buildings could hold different types of population income (Example 50 low rent apartments, 20 middle class and 10 wealthy). Depending on economic factors, the balance could shift, rent becomes too high, low incomes are pushed out,...

I like these two points best. Those would address some of the expectations that are sometimes voiced here. As for the second point, buildings which are exclusively dedicated for one wealth type should be included anyway but mixed levels - by all means.

On 23.12.2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

One huge single map that is the size of a SC4 region, where there is no boundaries between cities.

There is really no "size of a SC4 region" standard. Many regions of different size exist. Besides, I actually came to like the regional system.

On 23.12.2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

The player doesn't own the buildings the sims built, so you wouldn't be able to destroy them at will, you'd need to get building owner agreement (payment can speed up the process, but could be expensive depending on land value)

I think this is already the case in a way. We already pay for it.

On 23.12.2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

Buildings decay over time, owners need to refresh or abandon the building if conditions are degrading too much

But why should that be a mayor's concern?  Adding a mechanism of micro-management of a building condition will be a nightmare even in a small city, let alone a 40 million metropolis that you mention... City hall usually has no leverage over how a private property is cared for.

On 23.12.2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

Energy consumption varies with seasons

In that case, make sure that seasons are long enough as to not become too cumbersome. Increasing and lowering power (heating) output every five minutes can become very annoying.

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,461]

On 23/12/2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

Mixed multi zones: To create lots that allow commercials mixed to residential, like per example having shops and restaurants on ground floors of residential buildings.

The curious thing is that SC4 already supports mixed buildings, but due to a bug, the system is broken

On 23/12/2025 at 2:35 PM, Valou said:

• The player doesn't own the buildings the sims built, so you wouldn't be able to destroy them at will, you'd need to get building owner agreement (payment can speed up the process, but could be expensive depending on land value)

• Buildings decay over time, owners need to refresh or abandon the building if conditions are degrading too much

• Traffic affected by weather (less pedestrian during rain or cold..)

• Energy consumption varies with seasons

• Franchise for commercial (Example: supermarket chains, gas/EV stations, food chain restaurants..) Different franchise would pop in wealthy district and poor district

• Internet provider. Lay cable lines and manage bandwidth demand

• Data centers (with huge electric power and bandwidth consumption) for AI providers to attract high tech industries

Many of these things can be implemented with LUA, but there are obviously limitations. For example, traffic that varies according to weather conditions requires a DLL Mod.

As mentioned above, there is already a sort of OpenSC4 where development has stalled due to people's inability to manage such a huge project. You can find it here. 

https://github.com/OpenSC4-org/OpenSC4

It would be better to revive this project by trying to save it without having to start all over again.

[Terring 6,476]

5 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The curious thing is that SC4 already supports mixed buildings, but due to a bug, the system is broken

Is it possible to fix it with a DLL Mod? That would allow us to have mixed-use buildings and even bring the arcologies from SimCity 2000 back.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,461]

46 minutes ago, Terring said:

Is it possible to fix it with a DLL Mod? That would allow us to have mixed-use buildings and even bring the arcologies from SimCity 2000 back.

Ask @Null 45

[Badfish301 60]

What justifies a new game is that graphics, and road /rail tools have improved dramatically since SimCity 4.

As much as I love SC4 I can't go back because of the road building now/lack of true 3d.

 

SimCity 4 was my favorite city builder of all time, but the lack of better road tools is what holds it back now. 

SimCity 4 definitely had the best "city growth" model out there where you had to work hard to get the very tall buildings and there was a lot of sprawl- across maps even, which was great, because you got a good sense of scale.

 

Cities Skylines never really got the scale right - because they were simulating too much (but not simulating the right things- teeth instead of a city growth model) - and skyscrapers would appear all over the place with hardly any work on the player's part.  What is the point?

 

The fact that so many important buildings need to be "Plopped" also ruined the game - the size and scale of most of these buildings was much too large- and placing the most significant skyscrapers kind of defeated the entire purpose of the game.  Growing the tallest skyscrapers is what makes a game fun, plopping them defeats the purpose in my opinion.

Plopping tall buildings to me is kind of cheating and pointless.

 

A city game is about the challenge of developing services and infrastructure to the point of getting the buildings to grow taller, getting areas to become very wealthy etc.. That's where skylines 1 and 2 missed the plot.

Getting a Pedriana Pharamaceuticals to grow or equivalent in just the spot you had planned it was so enjoyable.

FYI- There was a good indy city builder game called "New City" that did a pretty good job simulating height and city growth recently, but it stopped getting updated. Its graphics weren't great either, which unfortunately is a bit of a deal breaker in a city game where graphics actually do matter.

 

I just posted another thread about how AI probably could be used to create a huge number of building models fairly quickly- generally AI is good at creating city-specific models too, so that could be a huge time saver.   If you could create a procedural generation method like CityState Metropolis is trying to do that would be the best, but having a lot of good building models would be fine to.

 

I just keep hoping some people from the old Maxis Emeryville come back, using the new tools we have and create a SimCity 2030 (SimCity 5). 

Good luck with your game, if you make it- seems like a lot of work, but can never have too many city builders - especially if they are a builder/simulator and not a building plopper.

[Null 45 3,116]

14 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The curious thing is that SC4 already supports mixed buildings, but due to a bug, the system is broken

I think it is more likely Maxis planned to support some kind of mixed use building system, but like so many other things with the game they had a partial implementation that was abandoned at some point during development. There is no way to know that Maxis was intending by 'mixed use' buildings without seeing the internal design/feature documentation for SC4. As much as those documents would be fascinating to read, EA (or other game studios) would never publicly release that type of info.

9 hours ago, Terring said:

Is it possible to fix it with a DLL Mod?

Not at present. Even if we had the game's full source code, it would be a complex task, likely requiring extensive modifications to the building growth algorithms. But I don't think it would require modifying the EXE, as Maxis intended for DLLs to be able to replace built-in game systems.

8 hours ago, Badfish301 said:

I just keep hoping some people from the old Maxis Emeryville come back, using the new tools we have and create a SimCity 2030 (SimCity 5). 

One of the former Maxis artists who worked on SC4 and SC2013 addressed EA's ability to create a new SimCity game on Reddit in several different posts:

Quote

Nope. I am super skeptical they will ever make another one, EA is too happy to kill franchises. If they did, literally everyone was laid off when Maxis Emeryville folded and most of the creative leadership had left in the year between Cities of Tomorrow and the closure. It's really hard to do a deep city builder simulation. I know people were pissing on SC2013 because of how easy Skylines made it look, but I think time has proven it wasn't a true SimCity killer.

Could they spin up an entirely new team and make a new game? Yes, but it would take years and I don't think they have the patience for that. It would also take someone with a creative vision compelling enough to greenlight and they are too busy milking every dollar they can out of the Sims to ever do that.

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They absolutely could not. They don't have the people required to make that kind of game anymore and the people who did would never come back to EA.

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I dunno man, I actually was a staff artist on 2013 and lived through the downfall of Maxis and I say they couldn't. Yes of course it's possible for them to throw money at it in a way that would deliver some sort of SC sequel, but knowing the way EA works, they can't. Every single person who has ever worked on a SC game in any major capacity no longer works at EA, and the institutional knowledge lost is impossible to regain.

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There is no studio left to make it. SC had a continuous line of developers passing on knowledge and design philosophy from SC to SC2013. That died when they shut down Maxis and had even lost creative direction before that. Can EA form a new studio? Yes. Will they? Probably not. Would that studio have the capacity to actually make a true sequel? It depends on the lead designer, and thats the hardest part to replace.

IMO modern EA doesn't value the type of single player games that SimCity fits into, and I don't think I would trust them not to lock half the game behind DLC.

Ideally EA could be persuaded to release the source code of SC4 and older, but that is probably even less likely than them making a new SimCity game. Plus the closure of Maxis means that the community doesn't have any contacts within EA to send such a request. EA released the source code for SimCity 1/classic in 2008 for use with the One Laptop Per Child project, but that was done with the support of Will Wright who pushed for it within EA.