CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF SimCity 4
SimCity 4 turns 20 today, and as a community, we are proud of reaching this milestone! Despite the various difficulties we have encountered along the way, we have achieved a lot; let's walk through these moments.
SimCity 4 was officially released on January 14, 2003, with the Rush Hour expansion released on September 22 of the same year. SimCity 4 was, and remains, the holy grail of city simulation. Building a small agricultural town and then developing a large metropolis made people happy! At the same time, people began to understand the game mechanics, and how various services and parameters affected growth and made the game even more exciting.
Building a city is no easy task, and that's why we will remember all those cities which were destroyed because we went bankrupt, or abandoned because of the urban management mistakes we made. These cities were a sacrifice that had to be made in order to figure out how to create a more perfect and more functional city.
The first attempts to build cities in SimCity 4 (Image created by @Lucario Boricua )
It was 2003 and we were all happy with SimCity 4; but as time went on, people began to notice problems with the game, and started developing mods and custom content to address its shortcomings. A group of people got together to correct the traffic issues and missing transportation features. On April 24, 2004 the first version of Network Addon Mod (NAM) was released. Back then, just a simple mod to fix bugs in the road system, that no one would have thought would become the complex beast it is today. Made by people using their spare time to improve the game experience, and catering to the massive desire for more realism in the construction of cities and regions. Simulating a region with organic urban development requires various skills, research and development, but eventually mammoth mods such as RealHighway Mod (November 16, 2005), Network Widening Mod (May 9, 2010), up to the current version NAM 46 were born.
The first developments of NAM during the Modular Era (Image created by @Haljackey)
Developing the NAM has never been easy, as evidenced by various turbulent periods throughout the mod’s history, most recent among them being the NAM 37 Installer Crisis. Throughout easy and difficult times alike, the team always worked to bring new content and improve the gaming experience. As many of the earlier players and modders moved on, the NAM Team has essentially become the de-facto modern day caretakers of SimCity 4, contributing not only with city infrastructure content, but also helping other people in the community to make their mods on multiple fronts.
Alongside the NAM Team, numerous other modding groups had been formed: BSC, CAM, PEGProd, NHP, SCAG, AC, NDEX, SFBT, LBT, AMPS, SimPolska, TSC, VIP, WMP, etc., working on several different fronts to improve the quality of the game. These teams, alongside many independent creators, have released new content, improved the game quality, and fully exploited the possibilities of unlimited size regions that allow the building of real scale cities.
A city alive thanks to the extensive use of mods (Image created by @ulisse)
In addition to the modding teams, we should not forget all the players who have posted and published images of their creations, and created stories and histories, using the City Journal and Mayor Diary formats! Some of these authors banded and formed city journal unions, where people used images from SC4 to recreate a nation and perform roleplay between imaginary countries, increasing the fun.
Beyond the fun, the community also faced turbulent times caused by misunderstanding, but in the end everything worked out for the best and the community always came out stronger than before. Even when in 2013 EA released the reboot of the franchise simply named SimCity, which was also supposed to be revolutionary, because of its online component and agent-based GlassBox simulation engine. However, the failure of the online component turned out to be the weapon with which EA killed SimCity and the original iteration of Maxis, with Maxis' studio in Emeryville, California being shuttered in 2015.
The closure of Maxis' original studios and the appearance of Cities Skylines, which is a city-building sandbox, dealt a blow to the community. Many people thought that the fantastic SimCity 4 community was doomed to disappear, but the community has shown great levels of resilience and reconstruction, leading toward a new period of renaissance and new content being created to increase people's enjoyment more and more.
After long adventures, January 14, 2023 arrived, and SimCity 4 turned 20 years old. A game from 2003 that still manages to run optimally despite the need for a few more tricks to be adopted because of its old age. Along the way, and lacking any SDK (Software Development Kit) to make easier adaptations, many people have ventured into analyzing the game code and, with a little patience and ingenuity, have discovered the vestiges of features that, for 2003, were revolutionary: zones for developing ports, airports, military bases, mixed zones, music radio with multiple radio stations, diagonal tunnels and diagonal bridges, a realistic weather system and other features that Paul Pedriana and the other developers included to make his creature the best game ever, even if the pressures of the game-making business didn’t allow them to incorporate those innovations in a functional way. Although Paul Pedriana has passed on to better life, SimCity 4 has become a kind of testament to his efforts in evolving city-building to a still unseen level.
Using 3D modeling tools to create road signs (Image created by @Lucario Boricua )
As we look with some nostalgia at the past, planning for the present and imagining the future, we can stop for a few minutes and contemplate all those moments that SimCity 4 gave us and made us happy.
That's why today we can say this is a special day, when we all come together to celebrate the birthday of SimCity 4. Which, despite being an old game from 2003, is still able to compete effortlessly with modern games.
In commemoration of this 20 Years of SimCity 4, the NAM Team has decided to organize special events as well as to improve the quality of information released for the public:
1. We decided to organize a special Challenges to dress up the 20 Years of SimCity 4, with two categories in which you can compete: Vanilla + NAM and Modded + NAM. The main purpose is to make the most beautiful city to celebrate two decades of our favorite game.
2. We have created an (expanding) list of NAM Tutorials, where you can see the various NAM components in action, and learn tricks from NAM members.
3. Introducing NAM is the new format created by the NAM Team to introduce people to the new features that will be released in the future NAM editions. A great option if you want to understand how the new features will work.
4. We are organizing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) to celebrate 20 Years of SimCity 4 and also the release of Network Addon Mod 46. Stay tuned for further news
5. For experienced players, we have elaborated a comprehensive list of SimCity 4 modding tools with their source code available on Git. The list is expanding and includes advanced tools to inject code on the game through Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs), as well as projects to create the open source version of SimCity 4.
6. We've launched an official hashtag #20yearsSC4 to commemorate 20 Years of SimCity 4. We look forward to seeing your creations and reactions in social networks for this special day
Remembering all the community members and developers who have passed on to better life, and dispelling old grudges, today we all come together and to celebrate that, at the end, we can all say together:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SimCity 4
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