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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.

This DLL mod is intended as a dependency for other mods that add new building styles beyond the 4 that Maxis included, it does not add any building styles to the game by itself. Maxis programmed the Building Style Control UI to only recognize the check boxes of the 4 built-in styles, no matter how may check boxes are actually present. This mod patches the game's memory to remove that restriction. Build all styles at once The DLL fixes a game bug to make this feature work as Maxis intended. Adding More Building Styles into SC4 The building style IDs are assigned in the SimCity 4 Building Styles Index thread, you will need to use the Maxis/community styles or request your own public and/or private building style ID range in that thread. Modifying the Building Styles UI The easiest way to get started is to download the Building Style UI template, but you can also create your own Building Style Control override plugin. Building Style UI Template A UI template is available here, which supports all of the new controls the DLL adds. The UI Template can be configured using either BuildingStyles.ini or the Building Style exemplars. Once you have configured your styles in BuildingStyles.ini or the style exemplars, see the section below on assigning buildings to custom styles. Creating a Custom Building Style UI Create a patch that overrides the default Building Style Control UI, TGI 0x00000000,0x96a006b0,0x6bc61f19 in SimCity_1.dat. Edit the UI to add the style check boxes, and optionally the new check boxes and radio buttons that the DLL supports. The check box or style ID (e.g. 0x2003) identifies the building style to the game. See the section below on assigning buildings to custom styles. Adding Buildings to Custom Building Styles This process is performed with ilive's Reader or PIMX. The building's intended styles should be added to the building exemplar using the Building Styles property (property id 0xAA1DD400). The building will only grow when one or more of the custom or Maxis styles in that property is selected in the game's UI. The DLL will ignore the building styles in the Occupant Groups property (property id 0xAA1DD396) when the Building Styles property is present. For compatibility with players who are not using the DLL, the Maxis styles in the Occupant Groups property should be left alone. If you are creating a new building, add the Building Styles property for users with the DLL and set the Occupant Groups property to one or more of the 4 Maxis styles for users without the DLL. For Wall-to-Wall (W2W) buildings, add the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property (property id 0xAA1DD401) to the building's exemplar with the value set to true. If the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property is not present or the value is set to false, the building will be treated as non-W2W. See the Building Styles Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD400) and Building Is Wall-to-Wall Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD401) sections for more details. New Building Exemplar Properties Building Styles Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD400) This property allows the building styles that are active when the DLL is installed to be specified separately from the Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396). Residential and Commercial Buildings The Building Styles property is optional for custom building style support in residential and commercial buildings. When the property is present, the building will use custom and Maxis styles specified in the property and ignore the styles in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396). When the property is not present, the building will use the custom and Maxis styles specified in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396). Industrial Buildings The Building Styles property is mandatory for custom building style support in industrial buildings. When the property is present, the building will use custom styles specified in the property. When the property is not present, the building will be treated as compatible with all styles. Building Is Wall-to-Wall Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD401) This is a Boolean property, a value of true indicates that the building is W2W. If the value is false or the property is not present, the building will not be considered W2W. This is the preferred method for identifying W2W buildings that do not already have one of the W2W occupant groups. Building Style Check Box Tool Tips The individual building styles can have a tool tip that describes the style when the user hovers over that check box. When defining styles in a Building Style exemplar, the tool tip can be set with the Building Style Exemplar: ToolTip Key property. For styles that are defined in BuildingStyles.ini, the tool tips must use the LTEXT group id 0x3EE5B610 with the style id as the LTEXT instance id. The group id supports the standard language offset scheme. The style id is used as the LTEXT instance id. For example, the 0x2004 building style in would use the following TGI in German: 0x2026960B, 0x3EE5B614, 0x00002004. Tool tips can optionally have a title in addition to a body, this is done by placing both on a single line with a pipe separator. For example: ToolTip Title|Tool tip body Note that how the game displays tool tips with both a title and body will depend on the user's game settings. If the user has unchecked the expanded tooltips check box in the play options dialog, the game will display the tool tip title (if present) or the body, but not both. Building Style Exemplars These exemplars provide a way for building style mods to define the style check boxes without requiring the user to edit BuildingStyles.ini. See the Building Style Exemplars page for more information. Cheat Codes The DLL provides the following cheat codes: ActiveStyle shows an in-game message box with the ID of the currently active style when Change building style every N years is selected. When Build all styles at once is selected, using this cheat will display a message saying that mode is active. DebugActiveStyles writes the IDs of all the active/checked styles to the plugin's log file. BuildingStyles INI File This file allows styles to be defined without editing the Building Style Control UI file. When the check box button ids for the Building Style Control are in the range of 0-127, these ids can be mapped to a specific style and style name in BuildingStyles.ini. The style entries are placed under a BuildingStyles section and use the following format: <UI button id> = <style id>,<style text format>[,<style name>] <UI button id> is a style check box id in the range of 0-127. <style id> is the building style id assigned in the Building Style Index, or the text Show (case-insensitive) to display a disabled placeholder check box. <style text format> is one of the following values: N (normal text) or B (bold text). <style name> is optional, when present it uses one of the following formats: <name> or CaptionRes:<LTEXT group id>,<LTEXT instance id>. If <style name> is not present, a default name will be used. Examples: 0 = 0x2005,B,Mediterranean & Tropical 1 = 0x2006,N,CaptionRes:0x6a231eaa,0x6bbbd875 2 = Show,N,Placeholder Check Box 3 = Show,B SC4MoreBuildingStyles INI File This file contains settings that control whether the growable debug logging code will write to the plugin's log file. It is recommended that you only enable these options for experimentation. They will slow down your game and quickly produce a large log file. As an example from one of my tests, a 22 second run with the BuildingStyleSelection and LotStyleSelection options enabled produced a ~2 MB log file with ~15,500 lines. Lua Functions The DLL provides a number of building style related functions for use by Lua scripts. See building_style.lua for a list of the provided functions, and building_style_tests.lua for examples of their use. Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36112-allow-more-building-styles-dll-plugin/ Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-more-building-styles System Requirements SimCity 4 version 641 Windows 10 or later Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute The plugin may work on Windows 7, but I do not have the ability to test that. Installation Close SimCity 4. Copy SC4MoreBuildingStyles.dll, SC4MoreBuildingStyles.ini and BuildingStyles.ini into the top-level of the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory or Documents/SimCity 4 directory. Start SimCity 4. Troubleshooting The plugin should write a SC4MoreBuildingStyles.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin. If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054 Thanks to the few people who have donated to me.

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.

AFAIK it is a cut feature, along with other things like the river/stream tools.

I saw something like that reported on Rob's Discord and passed it on to @CasperVg on the SC4E Discord. From a brief look at the SC4Mapper source code, it appeared to possibly be a bug in the 16-bits-per-channel check SC4Mapper is using. A lot of imaging software and monitors are 8-bits-per-channel, so would have to down sample the image data to display it. Besides GIMP, another free and open source tool that supports high bit depth images is Krita. Krita is more focused on digital art, but IMO its UI is miles ahead of GIMP. I have mostly used Krita to generate test images for my Paint.NET AVIF and Jpeg XL FileType plugins. While Paint.NET currently lacks high bit depth support, it is on the roadmap for a future version. IIRC 10-bit color is the limit of common monitor/display tech, although I expect that there are studio-grade displays with the full 16-bit range or higher. When dealing with an image format that is 10-bit or 12-bit, most image editors would just promote it to the larger 16-bit or 32-bit range and deal with the down sampling to 10-bit/12-bit when saving/exporting.

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that allows other DLLs to modify resources as the game loads them. This file is a dependency that is used by other DLL plugins. The instructions for using the DLL as a dependency are in the GitHub Readme. Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36242-resource-loading-hooks-dll-for-SimCity-4/ Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-resource-loading-hooks Exemplar Patching Exemplar patching is a technique to change the behavior of Exemplar files on-the-fly at runtime, without altering the original DBPF files. An Exemplar Patch is a Cohort file with Group ID 0xb03697d1 (and arbitrary Instance ID) containing the property: Exemplar Patch Targets (property id 0x0062e78a): list of Exemplar files this patch applies to (format: Group ID 1, Instance ID 1, Group ID 2, Instance ID 2,…). The list must contain an even number of IDs. All the other properties of the Cohort file (except for Exemplar Name) are injected into these target Exemplar files whenever the game loads an Exemplar file from this list. This allows to add or overwrite specific properties of Exemplar files without affecting any unrelated properties. You can think of an Exemplar Patch as a "Child Cohort" file, mirroring the usual Parent Cohort structure. An Exemplar Patch can target multiple Exemplar files simultaneously. Conversely, multiple Exemplar Patches can be applied to the same Exemplar file. Parent Cohort / \ / \ / \ / \ Exemplar A Exemplar B | \_____ / | | _____\_____/ | | / \______ | | / \ | Exemplar Patch 1 Exemplar Patch 2 If two Cohort files have the same Instance ID, only the one loading last has an effect. Therefore, you should usually change the Instance ID whenever you copy an existing Exemplar Patch Cohort file. System Requirements SimCity 4 version 641 Windows 10 or later The plugin may work on Windows 7 or later with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute installed, but I do not have the ability to test that. Installation Close SimCity 4. Copy SC4ResourceLoadingHooks.dll into the top level of either plugins folder (place it directly in <Documents>\SimCity 4\Plugins or <SC4 install folder>\Plugins, not in a subfolder). Start SimCity 4. Command Line Arguments Exemplar Load Logging The plugin adds an -exemplar-log: command line argument that controls what data is logged, the argument supports the following values: error - Only exemplar load errors are logged. TGI - Logs the exemplar TGI. type - Logs the exemplar TGI and type (if present). debug - Logs the exemplar TGI, type (if present), and the name of the method used to load the exemplar. <exemplar type id> - Logs the TGI of exemplars matching <exemplar type id>, e.g. -exemplar-log:0x21 would log the TGI values of all 'Type 21' exemplars. The log will be written to a SC4ExemplarLoad.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The logging will also slow down your game. Exemplar Patch Debug Logging The plugin adds an -exemplar-patch-debug-logging command line argument that enables more detailed logging of the exemplar patching process. By default, the plugin will only log the number of exemplar patches and total number of exemplars that they target, e.g. 'Loaded 10 Exemplar patches targeting, in total, 41 Exemplar files.'. The log will be written to a SC4ResourceLoadingHooks.log file in the same folder as the plugin. Troubleshooting The plugin should write a SC4ResourceLoadingHooks.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin. If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054 Thanks to the few people who have donated to me.

There would not. If the game never loads the target exemplar, the patch would do nothing.

Credit for creating the exemplar patching system goes to @memo, who originally created it for their sub menu DLL. I wrote the resource loading hooks support DLL that feature relies on, and ported memo's exemplar patching code over to it to allow exemplar patching to be used independently of sub menus. Because exemplar patching allows individual exemplar properties to be overridden, it has been used to create various 'universal' mods, Universal Sea Level Mod, Colossus Addon Mod - Universal Commercial CAP Fix, etc. Plus other things like fixing a Maxis I-R bug without editing SimCity_1.dat and Building Style packs for use with the More Building Style DLL.

No, the Phantom Slider bug will occur regardless of the method used to patch the exemplar. I don't think so. The performance difference between overrides and exemplar patching would likely be insignificant when compared to things like the overall disk I/O that comes with loading a city. The main advantage of exemplar patching is improved compatibility with content that has numerous mods overriding the same exemplar, but you still could have compatibility issues depending on the properties being modified. It would not make any difference. But that DLL is required when using sc4pac due to fixing other limitations the game has with very long file paths.

IIRC @rivit had a version of SC4DataNode that was patched with long file name support, but that version was posted after March 1st. There are also a few file comments related to the long file name support that were lost.

That is a SC4DataNode bug. IIRC rivit released an update to fix it, but that version was lost when ST went down along with all the file comments related to the patching process.

Features Custom resolutions can be configured without command line arguments. Supports borderless full screen mode without requiring a launcher. Supports changing the game's rendering driver without a command line argument. Allows full screen mode to use 32-bit color. Allows the game's intro to be disabled without a command line argument. Allows pausing on focus loss to be enabled without a command line argument. This DLL cannot change the game's full screen resolution, it will always match your monitor. If you want to run a full screen window at something other than your monitor's resolution you need to use an external window scaling program such as Magpie. Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36091-sc4graphicsoptions/ Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-graphics-options System Requirements Windows 10 or later Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute Installation Close SimCity 4. Copy SC4GraphicsOptions.dll and SC4GraphicsOptions.ini into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory. Configure the graphics options, see the Configuring the plugin section. Configuring the plugin Open SC4GraphicsOptions.ini in a text editor (e.g. Notepad). Note that depending on the permissions of your SimCity 4 installation directory you may need to start the text editor with administrator permissions to be able to save the file. Adjust the settings in the [GraphicsOptions] section to your preferences. Save the file and start the game. Settings overview: EnableIntroVideo controls whether the game's intro video will be played on startup, defaults to true. Setting this to false is equivalent to the -Intro:off command line argument. PauseGameOnFocusLoss controls whether the game will be paused when it looses focus, defaults to false. Setting this to true is equivalent to the -gp command line argument. Driver the driver that SC4 uses for rendering, the supported values are listed in the following table: Driver Notes DirectX SC4's default hardware renderer. Because this renderer targets DirectX 7, a DirectX wrapper (e.g. dgVoodo 2 or DxWrapper) is required for resolutions above 2048x2048. OpenGL An unfinished hardware renderer. simmaster07's SCGL project aims to replace this renderer with a new one targeting OpenGL 3.0. SCGL simmaster07's replacement for SC4's OpenGL renderer. This is an alias for the OpenGL entry above. Software The renderer SC4 uses when no supported hardware renderer is available. WindowWidth the width of SC4's window when running in windowed or full screen mode. This is ignored for the borderless full screen mode. The minimum value is 800, values above 2048 with the DirectX driver require the use of a DirectX wrapper. WindowHeight the height of SC4's window when running in windowed or full screen mode. This is ignored for the borderless full screen mode. The minimum value is 600, values above 2048 with the DirectX driver require the use of a DirectX wrapper. ColorDepth the color depth that SC4 uses, in bits per pixel. The supported values are 16 and 32. WindowMode the window mode that SC4 uses, the possible values listed in the following table: Window Mode Notes Windowed Runs the game in windowed mode, the window size is set by the WindowWidth and WindowHeight values above. Equivalent to the -w command line parameter. Screen resolutions larger that 2048x2048 in DirectX mode require the use of a DirectX wrapper. FullScreen Runs the game in exclusive full screen mode, the window size is set by the WindowWidth and WindowHeight values above. Equivalent to the -f command line parameter. Screen resolutions larger that 2048x2048 in DirectX mode require the use of a DirectX wrapper. BorderlessFullScreen Runs the game a window that covers the entire screen. Screen resolutions larger that 2048x2048 in DirectX mode require the use of a DirectX wrapper. Borderless An alias for the BorderlessFullScreen option above. Troubleshooting The plugin should write a SC4GraphicsOptions.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin. If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054 Thanks to the few people who have donated to me.