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I don't know of any mods that do so, even DLLs that write their own save game data generally do so using a new records with a custom format instead of modifying a game object. SC4 itself stores all kinds of private data as properties that get added to the object's save data. Custom names attached to a lot's building are just one example of that.

The Lua extensions DLL wouldn't cover something like this. So basically a building that happens to have a built-in transit station? SC4 only supports one building per lot, so the WinTextEdit field is used for the main building. Internally the custom name property is stored as the item name. While my Query Tool UI Extensions DLL adds additional features to the query dialog, it is not set up for this kind of custom dialog editing.

It is supposed to be a BOOL, with a rep count of 0 in the Reader. I have always used Reader v0.93 for editing exemplars, as the later versions are unstable. I am not familiar with PIM-X, but looking at New_Properties.xml, it looks like the templates should correctly set that property to a Boolean.

I just checked, and the property was working for my test file. Could you post a screenshot of the building exemplar? While I think it is unlikely, I am wondering if the property has the wrong type. Currently the DLL would treat that as a silent failure, with the building being considered non-W2W.

From what someone pointed out to me, it looks like whoever wrote that code made a typo in the longitude by failing to make the number negative. Latitude 37.91 Longitude -122.06 is Walnut Creek, California. Maxis had offices there at the time of SC4's development.

That or no one bothered to register it in a way that would make it available to DLLs, that would be far from the first case where Maxis made APIs without considering how it would work for DLL plugins. I expect that wasn't helped by the fact SC4 was built as a single executable, wheres they would have had to be more careful with the API design in SC3K and other earlier games that were split across multiple DLLs. WinGen (or cGZWinGen) appears to be the core class for most/all of the game's UI, WinGenDlg is a subclass that only appears to be used for the cheat code dialog.

No idea. That would be a question for Ocean Quigley or others who worked at Maxis at the time.

That makes sense, a lot of the UI code is from a common framework shared by many Maxis games. The game also has an unused Pie Menu, which isn't surprising given how The Sims used them. I took a quick look at the code, the supported graph types for the game's graph view appear to be: Type 1 - Line graph Type 2 - Bar graph Type 3 - Pie graph There is also a scatter graph, but it doesn't appear to be accessible for user code. It is only used by an internal cGZWinGenDlg class and the built-in editor for general response curves. No idea why cGZWinGenDlg wasn't exposed publicly.

I have never managed to figure out the general response curve, other than it being used in a bunch of places and Maxis having a visual editor for it. I have never seen a pie graph used in SC4.

It just asks the weather simulator for the current season. The season calculation is fairly basic, it just divides the month number (0-11) by 3 and adjusts for the hemisphere. Replicating that calculation gives the following table: Northern Hemisphere: January - Winter (0) February - Winter (0) March - Winter (0) April - Spring (1) May - Spring (1) June - Spring (1) July - Summer (2) August - Summer (2) September - Summer (2) October - Fall (3) November - Fall (3) December - Fall (3) Southern Hemisphere: January - Summer (2) February - Summer (2) March - Summer (2) April - Fall (3) May - Fall (3) June - Fall (3) July - Winter (0) August - Winter (0) September - Winter (0) October - Spring (1) November - Spring (1) December - Spring (1) As the game doesn't show the season in the UI, that calculation was probably a close enough approximation. IIRC SC3KU uses the same calculation. Regarding SC3K, someone posted part of the design documents for the 3D version of SC3K to the ST Discord (GURU.pdf in the sc3k-and-older channel). In the unlikely event a build still exists, I doubt anyone who has it would be eager to share due to how easy it would be for EA to narrow down potential sources. As much as I would like to get my hands on an internal development build of SC4, those will probably never be leaked for the same reason. AFAIK Maxis has only had a handful of internal builds leak, Sim Copter, one or two early Sims games, and Spore at the end of last year.

Most likely. It is crazy what Maxis used the effects system for, according to a former SC4 developer particle effects were one of Ocean Quigley's specialties. Sadly Maxis never publicly documented the binary effects format, but there have been people who have used the built-in effect script development features to compile new effect directory resources. The weather simulator tracks moisture, but I don't think effects can alter that table. AFAIK the moisture system just affects flora and the seasonal flammability. The weather simulator also has wind, but I think it is just static for the whole tile. My Query UI Extensions DLL exposes the moisture, wind, and a bunch of other info as part of its advanced terrain query tool tips.

I was referring to the change history, e.g. how Maxis implemented bug fixes in their patches.

Doubtful. I expect a lot of those features would be hard to restore even if EA released the full source code, as they obviously wouldn't be releasing the internal design documents describing those features. Based on the CnC source code releases, the source code would also have information lost in a public release due to EA stripping the internal commit history. It looks like Maxis planned a water erosion terrain tool at one point, it has an operation id handled in the same block of code as the rain and spring tools. But I have no idea if it actually works. The full list of terrain brush operation ids appears to be: RaiseLower = 0 Flora = 1 Smoothen = 2 Paint = 3 PlaceEffect = 4 Level = 5 WaterErosion = 6 VolcanoAsh = 7 LakeBed = 8 Rain = 9 Spring = 10

Removing exemplar properties is hypothetically possible, but I have never tested it. I also have no idea how to test it or go about implementing it in an exemplar patch. In the case of those flora separators, I suspect it would be enough to change the Exemplar Type to 0 (although removing the property would be cleaner). Either one would make the game's flora exemplar scanning code ignore the exemplar.

What do you mean exemplar deleting? Deleting an exemplar at runtime likely isn't possible due to the way SC4 works.