SC4PIM-X 2026 & New Properties Update Out Now!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,453]

SC4PIM-X 2026 & NEW PROPERTIES UPDATE OUT NOW!

After several months of development, the new remastered and improved version of PIM-X is finally available to the public!

This new version includes many changes, which can be summarized as follows:

• Completely redesigned Lot Editor: The asset browser now supports searching, sorting, favorites, adjustable thumbnails and detailed hover information. Assets (props, flora, families, effects, textures, ...) can be searched by name, family member or source filename. The renewed editor also adds:
  •   Editable object position and rotation
  •   Alignment, centering, rotation and mirroring tools
  •   Configurable grid snapping
  •   Fit-to-lot and additional close-up zoom levels
  •   Layer visibility controls (i.e. temporarily turn on/off certain asset types to focus on others)
  •   Separate land and water placement constraints
  •   Better keyboard shortcuts and toolbar controls
  •   Persistent window layouts and column sizes
• Undo and redo in the Lot Editor: Lot editing is no longer a one-way process. Object placement, movement and other edits can be undone and redone, making complex lot work much safer and less frustrating.
• Timed, seasonal and animated prop previews: The Lot Editor preview system now understands more of what actually happens in-game. Date and time controls can be used to inspect timed and seasonal props, including playback and looping. Animated S3D and ATC models can be previewed and represented by animated thumbnails, while family variations can be inspected and selected directly.
• Day and night rendering in the Lot Editor (both Maxis night and SimFox DarkNite)
• Transit-enabled lot editing: The original release offered very limited support for transit-enabled lots. This edition adds a dedicated transit workflow with:
  •   Transit-object placement and inspection
  •   Edge-direction and edge-byte editing
  •   SC4Path discovery, parsing, previews and selection (i.e. the ability to assign custom paths to a TE tile)
  •   A structured Transit Switch Points editor
  •   Data-driven presets for common stations and transport combinations (thanks to @Tyberius06 for his wealth of knowledge on this!)
  •   Automatic calculation of relevant transit properties, costs and capacities
• Safer property / Filling Degree recomputation: Recomputing exemplar properties now opens a comparison showing what will be added, changed or removed. Individual changes can be selected before they are applied, helping preserve intentional manual overrides (i.e. OGs, etc.) and preventing unexpected bulk edits.
• Dedicated property editors: Several complex properties no longer have to be edited as opaque lists of numbers. Purpose-built editors are provided for areas such as:
  •   Occupant Groups and Occupant Type
  •   Transit Switch Points

  Building submenus

•   Response curves
•   Prop timing
• A new dependency report: The dependency dialog has been redesigned to find and clearly display all missing resources rather than stopping at an incomplete result. It understands additional resource types, and can use the SC4 Prop & Texture Catalog (thanks @nos.17 for providing this!) to provide more useful information about missing props and textures.
• Major loading and browsing improvements
• Additional improvements:
  • Configurable SimCity 4 Plugins location
  • High-DPI display support for crisper text and graphics for people with Retina or 4k monitors
  • MacOS compatibility (experimental!)
  • Numerous fixes for lot creation, exemplar values, models, textures, animations, ...

With these changes, a unified platform for SC4 modding is being developed, which will make it easier to create new mods even on modern systems where PIM-X previously had execution issues. Furthermore, with multiplatform support, mod creation has expanded to include operating systems that were not previously supported, such as Mac OS

What will happen to the old PIM-X?

The old PIM-X will still be available to the public to ensure a smooth transition, but after a certain period (about a year), it will be delisted from various exchanges, and the new PIM-X will be the only tool for mod development.

New Properties

New Properties has been updated, but now comes in two versions, allowing users to choose which type of algorithms they want to use, which provides flexibility. However, we recommend choosing the version that best suits your projects. As a general rule

• New_Property.xml -> Recommended for a vanilla or hybrid vanilla experience
• New_Properties.xml-patches -> Recommended for a CAM experience (CAM, CAM-SPAM, and CAM-Vanilla) or a hybrid experience

The only major differences between the two versions are

• In the New_Property.xml file, public services (Education, Healthcare, Safety) have values equal to half those of Maxis, forcing the player to build a greater number of civic buildings, in line with the BSC Team’s vision. The New_Properties.xml-patches version has values four times higher than those of the BSC Team and twice as high as those of Maxis.
• New_Property.xml is subject to delays in updates compared to the New_Properties.xml-patches version, which is updated quickly

Apart from this difference, the rest of the files are identical in both versions, which can be summarized as follows:

• The utilities have been revised to include new types of power plants, electrical substations, and batteries, as well as to re-enable features removed by Maxis, such as the Freshwater Pump, Desalination Plant, and Incinerator.
• Transit-Enabled (TE) buildings comply with NAM-MTA specifications
• All additional properties created by the DLL Mods have been added
• Update all Occupant Groups (OG) by adding the recovered ones and the new ones
• Added Farm Files from SPAM and Colossus Farming, in addition to updating the BSC ones
• The park system has been revised and improved compared to the BSC & Maxis version
• Added additional buildings from the CAM expansions
• Additional buildings and properties from the CAM expansions have been added
• Ability to generate farms up to Stage 10 (Requires CAM or SPAM for Stages 4 and 5—Requires CAM for Stages 5 through 10)

In SC4PIM-X 2026, New_Properties.xml is installed by default, but you can install New_Properties.xml-patches by downloading the file and installing it in this location: %APPDATA%\sc4pimx\

The files (SC4PIM-X 2026, New Properties, and New Properties Patches) are available on GitHub, Simtropolis, and SC4Evermore

 

[Propfam 2,301]

I wonder how can AI took out Python code. I know AI can indeed spit out a much better version. But, I'm still confused how AI can reverse engineer a thing called PIM-X. @CasperVg, may I ask to you?

[CasperVg 573]

1 hour ago, Propfam said:

I wonder how can AI took out Python code. I know AI can indeed spit out a much better version. But, I'm still confused how AI can reverse engineer a thing called PIM-X. @CasperVg, may I ask to you?

The reverse engineering/decompilation of SC4PIM-X 2009 itself wasn't done by AI. The process was quite simple thanks to the uncompyle6 tool (since Python is fairly easy to decompile) and I described it in the GitHub repository.

Quote

The original SC4PIM-X was recovered by decompiling its library.zip:

1. Unpack library.zip from the SC4PIM directory with a short Python script (a normal ZIP extractor will not work):

   
   import zipfile
   with zipfile.ZipFile('library.zip', 'r') as zip_ref:
       zip_ref.extractall('./library')

    
   This yields many .pyo files in the library folder.
2. Decompile the useful ones with uncompyle6:

   
   uncompyle6 SC4PIMApp.pyo > SC4PIMApp.py

    

The recovered Python 2.4 sources were then modernized to Python 3.11+ and a number of performance and QoL improvements were made. The original decompilation is preserved in the archive/decompiled-py24 branch and tag.

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,096]

I wonder if this version will run more successfully and less crash-y than the old one.

It seems to be a frequent woe to many. As far as I'm concerned I found out that PIM-X frequently stopped working anytime I rearranged or renamed my plugin folders.

I always liked this app for the automatic occupancy calculation option. Saves time trying to compare building sizes vs. Sims within... I'll have to recall it. Could be fun to start using this again...

[kaimai 1,066]

PIM-X will not start on my system. This may be the expected behavior (Mac OS 15.7.4, mid-2019 iMac, running SimCity and PIM-X under Wine 64-bit, version 21.1.0, in Windows 10 compatibility mode with dgVoodoo—this setup probably "shouldn't" be supported) but in case it isn't, what should I look for in the backtrace in terms of troubleshooting?