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A read-only topic to view FAQs, latest information, and key progress updates for the Simtropolis Recovery Project. Quick Links Simtropolis Returns! Initial topic commemorating the return of our beloved home. Calling All Volunteers! Interested in helping out with the project? If so, we invite you to post and join the SRT! Delete My File Message Banner! Have you updated a file and need the banner removing. Post here and we'll take care of it. Project Updates A list of posts noting important milestones about ST's road to recovery. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Q: What measures are you taking to ensure such data loss never happens again? A: This is of utmost importance. Dirk has already setup a full daily SQL database dump which is copied externally. We will be implementing full backups of all site content, which is synced to an offsite cloud location I've purchased. Additionally, Cori and I will be making regular local copies of this, which we'll keep updated. We can assure you there are harsh lessons learned from this ordeal. We will not let this happen again. Q: So what data is missing, and what do we have preserved? A: To understand what's safe and what needs recovering, there are three time periods: All Lost: After 28 February 2026 to 26 May 2026: Unfortunately, because 28 Feb corresponds to our most recent database backup, any new member accounts, posts, or files created during these final three months are lost entirely. At best we'll be able to re-post files, and possibly some other site content. Text Only: 17 June 2024 to 28 February 2026: The text-based details of the site are safe. This means all forum posts, member accounts, and the actual STEX description pages are intact. However, the physical download files (e.g. zip) along with image attachments were lost, meaning we will need to restore them manually or programmatically. All Safe: Before 17 June 2024: Everything is completely intact. This includes all forum posts, member accounts, PMs, images, and STEX files. Q: How are we going to rebuild all the missing files? A: This is already in progress, but there's much more to do. Some authors have been diligently working to re-upload their own files, and we estimate ~20% of the files lost have been restored. Then for additional missing files, I'm currently working on a dynamic list known as the Restoration Tracker, which will help us view what still needs doing. This will be revealed soon, and we'll have a dedicated discussion topic where you can ask questions and post feedback. Q: If I see one of my own uploads missing from the STEX, should I just re-upload it myself? A: You're most welcome to re-upload your own content yourself, but please feel under no obligation to. The Recovery Team will be working to go through files and restore as much as we can. Other harder to find items we might need to make a community appeal for. If you do restore your own content, that all helps as part of the process. If you'd like any assistance or unsure what to do, please let us know! Q: I have backups of files but I'm not the original author. Can I still share them? A: Given these unprecedented times, yes. But best hold off for right now, as the Restoration Tracker will have a way to notify us of any files you have. Then as the volunteers begin the restoration, they will contact you if they need your copy. (We have big zips already offered which may or may not cover everything.) Q: Can you tell me about the new host? A: We've since acquired a new server from Hetzner (in Germany), which is at least 10 times more capable than our old one, with twice the RAM and a much more powerful processor. All this too for no more than our old host cost per month, which makes it excellent value for money. Additionally, Hetzner's tech support have been outstanding. When Dirk reported the instability issues, they presented a range of options. When we asked for the hardware replacement, the technicians completed the process within mere minutes (and free of charge). This gives us confidence we're on a much more robust platform. Q: How can we support Simtropolis financially to help cover costs of the new server? A: We want to emphasise how this isn't a crisis, but if you wish to help Dirk fund the hosting, there are 2 options: Donate via Gumroad which gives you access to download the STEX Collections. Donate via PayPal either as a one-off or recurring monthly amount. All donations are appreciated! They each help keep Simtropolis open and freely available.

Hi everyone! Initial progress has been productive in restoring content, but we really need your help. We're seeking volunteers who are able to assist our recovery efforts in any capacity (big or small). We extend this invite to all active Simtropolis members. The Simtropolis Recovery Team (SRT) will be spearheaded by site staff (and led by Cori and me), but this will understandably be a task of mammoth proportions. At first it might seem like progress is slow, but then again we might surprise ourselves? There is absolutely no limit to the number of places on the team at any stage. Every little helps, and we'd be thankful for whatever you can assist with. What can volunteering involve? The main task will be to restore everything missing from after 17 June 2024 to March 01, 2026. That's 622 days of missing content. Logically, the primary focus will cover STEX content for SC4 and the other city-building games. SC3000 files won't be forgotten about here either, as there were a number of new uploads since the cut-off period (June 2024). There are also more niche files from Clubs, including for Banished. Depending on your comfort level and ability, you may request to help with any/all of the following: A) Sharing: Uploading content you have downloaded between the aforementioned time period. There are no worries about sharing files someone else might've already uploaded. It might be your copy is an older version which can later be restored. Having more files gives us a stronger baseline to work from. There might be clutter and chaos initially, but in time order will become more orchestrated. B) Processing: This will be the bulk of the work, spearheaded by staff. We'll be coordinating with volunteers to help physically upload files, ideally as the author originally had them. Instructions will be provided for anyone unfamiliar with the board software tools. C) Verifying: Making sure updates are valid, or if there's anything else which needs fixing or amending. Verifiers will have access to a "Verify" button added to the File Actions menu, which then marks a file as completely restored. I'll be developing a "Restoration Tracker" page to serve as a real-time index of progress. This way we can identify files which need finding, editing, and checking. Additionally, recovery efforts will extend to the forums, CJs, Gallery, and other areas. There will be a number of attachments (images, zip files, etc) which we'll be hoping to restore, many of which will require manual intervention. Every file is a small piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It's important to remember this will be a marathon not a sprint. For this reason, it'll be more important we restore files correctly and accurately as possible. Also we won't frown upon mistakes. This is a shared united effort, so we'll work as a team to ensure everything is done the best it can be. Please reply below, briefly explaining how you'd be able to help (as a Sharer, Processor, or Verifier), or even in other ways not listed. And it goes without saying, there are no rewards for volunteering, other than the humble moral satisfaction of helping rebuild our community. -CB & Cori

Firstly, welcome back! As many of y'all know, ST went down on 16 April, 2026 due to a billing error 2 days prior to that. The pathetic host decided to not only suspend the server, but to immediately delete it entirely, including the live site and both daily backups. There was no forewarning or communication about this sent to Dirk. From initial correspondence with the old host, they claimed the server was merely suspended and data was kept for 6 months. It seemed like the billing issue only needed correcting. However, once Dirk heard back from a higher level support, to our complete shock and dismay it was confirmed the server had been wiped. They offered to restore it if we had backups. But what use were those when they were on the server?! Everything was gone. A full offline backup was about 187 GB last time CB downloaded it and he had to do it in pieces (due to a very slow internet connection in his teeny, tiny town) and it took several days. This contains all the objects (which are all the files and pictures anywhere on the site including attachments and within the STEX) as well as the board software and the forums. There was also a separate full account backup from 2020, but we didn't need that in the end. Now, separately, the database is all of the posts in the forums, STEX, omnibus, and so forth. That comes in around 6 GB and is backed up and downloaded more often. However, the offline download was just a fallback which should never be needed since we always had full backups run online every single day. (We never anticipated the host would fucking delete everything on the server!) Ofc, in hindsight we'd've kept separate online daily synced backups too, even if those come at a cost. Without any local backup, Simtropolis as we know it would be lost forever to the infinite voids of cyberspace. Thankfully this isn't the case, so it could've been much, much worse. Anyhow, what this means for us now is we have the forums and text of the STEX restored as it was on 28 February, 2026, but all files and pictures (both as forum attachments and in the STEX) are missing from 17 June, 2024 and after. We can recover! (But, we'll need a lot of help.) CB and Dirk have rebuilt the site on a new host. There are some nice positives as a result: Already an outpouring of support from people on Discord and Reddit. We appreciate the encouragement and support. Thank you! We've moved fully away from our old host. They will get nary a nickel from ST anymore ever again (from now till the end of the universe). The hardware is at least 10x more capable, and is no more expensive than our old host. (Depending on your internet connection, the site should be more responsive.) We've got a much more economical and cleaner home (way less server side clutter). We're in more control over the server to manage all aspects of it from the ground up. CB has separately purchased a 1 TB storage cloud for online, but offsite daily backups going forwards. Future potential to upgrade the IPS board software to a newer version, but we're not in a rush to do this. However, a few bad things will be immediately apparent when y'all start looking around: Any pictures or attached files after 17 June, 2024 are missing. Any STEX files added after 17 June, 2024 are gone. All avatar updates or changes after 17 June, 2024 are lost. --------------- All topics have lost any replies after 28 Feb, 2026. Any STEX entries added or updated after 28 Feb, 2026 are gone. Any STEX downloads history since 28 Feb, 2026 is lost. Any new sc4pac tokens since 28 Feb, 2026 are lost (and will need regenerating). Any PMs after 28 Feb, 2026 are missing. Any members who joined after 28 Feb, 2026 will need to re-join Simtropolis. Initial Recovery Efforts: Topic Divider Messages We've added a Topic Divider message to all forum threads which were active as of the last database backup. That's so when reading along now and in the future it'll explain why any given subject might seem disjointed and incoherent if the same peeps aren't able to re-reply. I know one topic in which I'm now the last to reply and my answer was only partially right. I remember at the time someone replied soon later with the real answer. That's lost, but they might re-state it when they have time. Or it could stay missing. (For that particular topic, I'll reply with what I remember of it.) So the divider message serves to explain why many topics might seem choppy for a little while. An example can be seen here. Original Image and File Names for Attachments Since the database info is way more recent than the objects (files and images), we'll often know the name and size of images and files because of their pointer entries in the database, but we won't have the item that points to. So, CB has worked his magic such that a missing pic will show the ST Logo as a placeholder while also showing the original file name for the image or attachment. This will make it easier for peeps to identify and re-upload them. Note: If your image name originally contained spaces, those will be stripped out in the file name which appears as the Original Pic Name. Sample for an image: ^ Original Pic Name: Cori'sWidget.jpg Sample for a file: Attachment Missing (Cori's Exemplar Viewer Output - 2026.02.17.09.37.zip) Additionally, you can go to your own list of attachments and find anything missing. CB plans to add a feature for clicking and re-uploading files directly from that page. STEX Files and Pics (Needs figured out...) We have a separate method for recovering STEX files. That'll be a new forum (or topic) or something where anyone can post a linky to the STEX entry and then also attach the missing files and/or pics. We want to be careful here to not duplicate each other's efforts so searching in there first is a good idea. Then staff (and other peeps recruited to help) will patch up the STEX entries and then move the topic for that item to a Done forum. Or such. We'll reveal more details once we've figured out a battle plan. Also we'll be opening a topic where anyone interested to assist can register as a volunteer to help. Your Own Files and Pics Ofc, any missing STEX entry that you created can be fixed (re-adding files and pics) or recreated (if totally missing) anytime you get a chance. Same for any missing attachments in your posts or elsewhere on the site. When you repair your own STEX entry there is one additional step needed and that is to delete the message banner. (There's some fancy code in it which hides the download button and displays the File Unavailable message.) See this topic to have staff remove the file message banner after you've restored the missing content. Other Notes: Restoration Priority (From CB in Chat) 1) STEX Files 2) STEX Screenshots 3) Attached Files 4) Attached Images 5) Gallery Images 6) Homepage Feature Images 7) Member Avatars 8) Anything Else This order we believe makes a suitable priority for what we'll look to restore first. STEX Screenshots are likely going to need uploading from in-game pics, but for some we might be able to salvage using the Internet Archive (but that depends on which files have been saved to there). Closing Words (for now) We're very glad to be back. We're also pleased to see y'all back. The past month (and a bit) have seemed like many months, and we've missed ST too. While this has been a setback for the community, the key thing is Simtropolis Has Returned. We're determined to rebuild our city stronger than ever before. Oh! One final thing: We might have to put the site in offline maintenance mode for brief periods as some of the tweaks CB is working on cannot be implemented while the site is live. -Cori & CB & Dirk

The SimCity Force homepage and all pages under the domain kamurai.la.coocan.jp are currently inaccessible. It seems the owner (Kamurai?) didn't change the plan. @nifty's Mini Plan was discontinued on October 1st. http://lacoocan.nifty.com/information/2025/10/index.html#a000387 Fortunately, the other domain’s pages are still online. Like https://simcityedit.com/simedit/lev-bbs.cgi?bid=SC4=&style=0&page=0. I hope someone reaches out to the owner to recover their website.

Everyone is welcome to add and expand the lore listed here. Just reply and a mod or myself can edit the list!!! Inspired by this reddit post: --- I decided to make a forum thread for this so it isn't lost as easily. A compilation is below. If you have more to add, or want context for something, reply to this thread and I can add it. Edit: I continue to add more as it comes to my mind or it's sent to me by others, and added a ton of links. You can also google search a lot of this for context. Edit2: this list is now split up into 3 sections: Items / events, members and honourable mentions --- Items / Events: .Dll Files have exposed that all the patches that used to be used to stabilize the game such as launch parameters (CPUCount:1) are completely broken and do not fix the problem .Dll mayhem / renaissance- A DLL (Dynamic Link Library) is a type of file containing code that can be used by multiple programs at once. The advent of DLLs gives the ability to modify the game in ways that were previously thought impossible. $5 sales- SimCity 4 can frequently be found on sale for $5 USD 10mb upload limit- This game came out in the mid 2000s when internet data usage was different than today. Due to the era in which the game came out, sites like Simtropolis had a 10mb data cap on uploads to the site, both due to dialup internet constraints and because of the cost of data storage back then. 2008 Simtropolis Site Hack - A hacking of the Simtropolis website that occurred between May 23 and May 28, 2008. According to the SC4 Wiki, a hacking group originating from China inserted malicious code into the site, and caused data like City Journal entries to be lost or damaged. 3D Camera Mod - For years it has been a running gag to request a 3D camera mod for the game. This was thought of as something that would enhance a 20-year-old game but that was impossible to implement. On April Fools 2024, @memo released a 3D Camera Mod for the game which everyone thought was a joke at first, but when they installed it they realized that it was a real mod that actually added a 3D camera to the game. It's release on April fools was made even better because of the fact it was preceded by a hoax by @pcwhiz24 almost a decade before. 4GB Patch- A third-party patch designed by NTCore to allow old programs to access 4GB of RAM on 32 bit executable files. A lot of programs from the 2000s were designed with 2GB of RAM and this limits how long one can play the game due to data constraints. The 4GB patch doubles the amount of RAM making it easier to avoid crashes and data limit issues. The patch is not limited to SC4 but can also be used on other programs with the 2GB cap. 50 Million Sims Population video- A milestone reached in @Haljackey's mega-region which comprises of cities and regions imported as far back as 2003. It gained noteworthy attention on online gaming circles and the media at large, with many sites reporting on the achievement (one example). While other players have reached regional population numbers far higher, they are less detailed, connected & realistic-looking; often going for sheer population figures rather than appearances. 9-9-9 tax plan- Herman Cain was a candidate for US President on the Republican side in 2012. During his campaign, he proposed 9% taxes for three categories: Personal income, federal sales, and corporate taxes. In SC4, the default tax rate is 9% residential, 9% commercial and 9% industrial. Some accused Cain of copying SC4 for his tax plan. Abandonment, abandoned due to commute time- A common issue that seems to happen constantly in SC4 despite one’s best efforts to avoid the issue. The game is unable to find a path for Sims from residential lots where they live to commercial or industrial lots where they work, causing their residences to become abandoned. There are ways to minimize this issue (such as installing NAM for improved commute routing, and mods such as the Less Abandonment Mod and Industry Quadrupler mod, etc) but the issue is very hard to avoid completely and arguably one of the game’s most frustrating issues. Acronyms / Glossary for in game names, mods, forums. @simmering has put significant effort into his SC4 Dictionary. The SC4 Wiki is also a good place to consult Adding water not at sea level / Waterfalls- Typically in the game “sea level” is hard programmed into it. Water is supposed to only appear when you lower the land a certain amount. But using various water puzzle piece mods you can add things like small rivers, canals and waterfalls at different elevations. Adding your own songs to the game's track list Additional Building Styles- Building on the experiments of the CoriBoom team, a DLL mod was created to allow for additional building styles beyond the 4 Maxis created. But the community was unable to find a consensus on how to organize a set of community building styles. Advisor images actually being really creepy Advisor popups- Just like in a real city, in SC4 you have seven mayoral advisors who give you advice on different areas to improve your city such as utilities, finance, city planning, etc. Whenever there is an issue in your city, there will be a popup window on the screen alerting you of the issue at hand. This can be very annoying, as this is a relic of the 2000s when things like popup ads were more commonplace and can interrupt gameplay. However there is a way to turn off popups in the game’s settings. Advisor reactions when things go to shit- The SC4 advisor avatars are animated, and when something bad happens like a fire or power shortage, the avatars look enraged. It’s very dramatic and funny Air Purification Plant- An exremely popular download which helps players out with air pollution problems in their city Aircraft land nose gear first in SC4, a nono for most planes, including every commercial jet I can think of Airplanes clumping together in region view- Fun visual bug that often occurs in large regions Airport Tram - A small lot created by @joerg that acts like a full airport in your city. This helps your city with cap relief issues and makes your region look more realistic by reducing the number of airports you have close to one-another. It is also a space saver for players who want to cram as much as they can into their city. AmbiguousAmphibian's crazy SC4 scenario videos- Ambiguous Amphibian is a youtuber who does silly challenges in video games, mostly ones from the late 90s and 2000s. He has several videos of challenges done in SimCity 4. Anduin Valley Revisited- A legendary City Journal by @Darmok ANT- Additional / Alternative network tool- this was a network that Maxis created but never completed, with high speculation it was going to be a dirt road. It was left in the game in a locked state, and the NAM team used it as a basis for the RHW. Anyone could upload to the STEX, but not the LEX- Simtropolis had a open policy where any member in good standing could upload files to the STEX. On SC4D's LEX, members had to submit their files to a committee who reviewed the content to see if it was of sufficient quality to be hosted. These members were known as LEX scrutineers, which was mostly comprised of BSC members. Content that passed was often 'LEX certified', whereas content that failed to pass the review either had to be resubmitted or uploaded on sites like Simtropolis instead. April Fools news- Such as EA buying Simtropolis in 2004 or the NAM Team in 2013. April Fools releases- Over the years, there have been many mods that were released on April 1 as a joke, such as the SC4Undo plugin (which just prompted a popup that said “Happy April Fools” when you tried to use it) to a Disaster Addon Mod (DAM) to expand the types of disasters in the game, all of which were fake. The most famous April Fools Joke is the 3D Camera Mod, which subverted everyone’s expectation by being an actual real mod. Area 5.1- If you complete enough UDI missions for Dr. Vu, he will reward you with a special airbase called Area 5.1- a spoof of Area 51 as some of the UDI vehicles you get to pilot include a flying saucer. Arthur Burghardt Expressway- A hilarious modification to some RHW networks created by @Tarkus that removes half of the total lanes on the highway (example a RHW-8S would have 4 lanes, 2 each way), mimicking the 'wide lanes' of the fictional Arthur Burghardt Expressway featured in a Seinfeld episode called The Pothole. It was released as a April Fools spoof, and continues to be updated as additional widths for the RHW mod are released (such as the RHW-12S having 6 lanes, 3 each way) AVGN Loading Text Mod (18+)- A hallarious, exploitive mod by @Terring that adds additional text when loading cities from region view. It was inspired by the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of SimCity SNES. Balloon Man BAT4MAX- Gamma corrections in the alpha channel BATs using stolen models- Early on in SC4’s history, it was not uncommon for some modders to use models from other modders’ BATs without permission and upload them as a new file to download. Stealing other BATers’ models is frowned upon, and many of these lots have been removed from sites like Simtropolis to prevent stealing. BATs with broken / overpowered stats- Since BATers can make the stats of a lot whatever they want, it’s possible for them to release a lot with super overpowered stats that impact the game in unpredictable ways. BATting School Best City Journal- Arguably the most iconic Trixie award, going to the most prominent City Journal of the year. Best of STEX discs- One or more of the STEX discs are given out to people as a small incentive for donating money to Simtropolis. Each disc contains a curated collection of mods from of the STEX from a specific time period, with a small number of mods which were exclusive to the discs. These BATs are made by lots of well known/prolific creators like @JBSimio, @mattb325, @Jasoncw, etc. A similar disc was offered from SC4D for supporting the site for a time. Beta / cut official content- There is a lot of content that was in the game in beta copies that never made it to the final release. One example is how the City Hall was supposed to have three stages of growth, but it was replaced with a singular building. There are also other models and features that were never made available in the final release. Big Dig- This is a mod created by @blahdy (Later enhanced by @Tyberius06) to make underground roads and highways utilizing the game’s subway network. It is named after the “Big Dig”, a major civic works project in Boston that turned a downtown elevated freeway into an underground one. It was the basis to form the failed @freewayexperts splinter group from NAM team and it still has some unresolved issues. Black Hole Bug- When your building / lot has no base texture, usually due to a missing plugin / dependency file. The ground often appears black or transparent. Blank RCI ploppables Blow Your Socks Off NAM teasers- These were hype posts by the @NAM Team that showcased content nearing the end of development prior to a new release of the mod. It often meant that a new version of the NAM was coming soon (@Tarkus often using the word 'imminent') as the features displayed in images appeared complete and fully functional. It was first called BYSOI (Blow Your Socks Off Interchange) by @Ryan B as a way to introduce the MIS network- a ramp component essential to making realistic interchanges with the RHW mod. Bottleneck- Term to describe when a wide road / highway or transit network terminates, causing your sims to continue their journey on lower capacity routes. This leads to congestion where the narrowing / merger occurs, and can cause spillover effects creating a domino effect of congestion in your city. Bonus landmarks, hosted on the official SimCity 4 website- Maxis/EA created several bonus buildings that were not released in the main game, but were available for download on their website. This includes both real-life landmarks (like the Seoul City Hall and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago) and fictitious ones (like Shorty Burger and Lucky’s Hang Ten). Over the years the official SimCity website was updated and the official download links were lost. However, the files have been preserved and can be downloaded today from Simtropolis. Breaking the grid- SC4 has a fixed camera view and only allows zones to face in cardinal directions, even on diagonal streets. As a result the game is heavily based around grid city designs. Breaking the grid is a strategy to circumvent the game’s grid-based core to make more meandering street designs. This is desirable from a realism standpoint as there are lots of places that don’t have gridded streets (such as old European cities, post-WWII US Suburbs, etc.). Some BATers, like @EffTheGrid, specialize in this sort of grid-breaking content. Bridge Building being super annoying. Can't place two bridges together, can't build diagonal bridges (without a hack) Bridge too low for ferries (Despite being really high)- When building bridges, there is an indicator that tells you if ferry boats can go underneath or not. However, you have to elevate your bridges very high to make them compatible with ferries, which makes bridge building frustrating. Brown boxes / Present boxes showing instead of buildings that grow / plop when you don't have all the dependencies installed. A mod exists to eliminate them, but you'll no longer have a visual queue to tell you are missing files to correct the problem(s) BRT for the NAM- Since the version 32, the NAM includes the possibility to build Bus Rapid Transit networks using an adaptation of the RHW which also included stations. BSC becoming elitist / controlling, leading to their downfall- The SC4D LEX had a 'scrutinizing' team mostly consisting of BSC members. They went through files with an overly fine-toothed comb that they burnt themselves out and stopped making their own content as a result. Since the lack of fully-certified non-BSC uploaders on the LEX was virtually nil, that entire content ecosystem was almost entirely dependent on the BSC assembly line running full steam ahead. When it started grinding to a halt, it irreparably reversed the balance of power between SC4D and ST in ST's favor, leading to the downfall of the BSC team BSC Cleanitol- A tool for removing nonessential filies from your SC4 Plugins folder. A new version of the tool was released in December 2023 with expanded functionality. Cleanitol is a popular tool that improves game performance. Bugs caused by playing SimCity 4 at its minimum specified RAM (512MB) Building a City From Scratch- Popular YouTube series by @Haljackey, a prominent SC4 player. Bullet Train Mod (BTM) / Shinkansen- The monorail network is rarely used by players, becoming more of a novelty network than an efficient form of mass transit. The latter is very much true, as Maxis developers gave it an insane base speed of 225km/h. This is around the minimum threshold for high speed rail (depending on which source you consult) and close to the operating speed of the 0-Series Shinkansen (bullet) trains. This mod completely replaces the appearance of the monorail to look like a elevated bullet train line, and spawned associated projects including the HSRP and HRW. Can't find it? Ask here!- All-encompassing thread where members will ask were to find certain items from the game- giving whatever screenshots / clues they can to help others assist. Since the thread is so frequently visited, what is asked for is almost always found. If it can't be found, due to the item no longer being hosted on a site that no longer works, BUT someone else still has it on their own computer, STEX moderators will often work with that member to upload the file in good faith, providing as much information as possible to credit the original creator(s). Cannot place over occupied tiles- But there's nothing there??? Capitalsimcity- A Spanish-language city-builder fan site that is still active to this day. It has several BATs that are only available on this site. Car-free cities- A method of building your city without road networks, forcing your sims to walk or take transit to work. Industrial zones are not possible in these cities, as they require a road network for freight trucks to reach freight rail stations, seaports or the edge of the city tile. CDs being so scratched your PC wouldn't read it, necessitating multiple purchases of the game. CDs no longer working- Due to the advancement of technology, CDs from the game’s release do not work on modern hardware (plus many modern computers don’t even have CD drives). Most modern players use digital copies of the game to play. Census Repository- A building that you can plop that gives you expanded city statistics, as well as some regional stats Cheat Code History - It appears that SC4 was intended to remember used cheat codes in the city save file, similar to how SC3K tracks the number of cheat codes the player uses. A Maxis typo broke that functionality. Christmas lights on Simtropolis site, breakable by hovering the mouse cursor over them. Spawned an intense competition in 2024 for who could break the most bulbs, complete with it's own story line and lore Cityplannerplays- A spinoff from the urbanist Youtube channel City Beautiful, who is a real-life city planner. This showcases how to build cities realistically, with an emphasis on pedestrian and transit networks over car infrastructure. Cities Skylines release- The bar was set low for a new entry in the city building genre after SimCity (2013)'s disastrous release. Cities Skylines filled this void, but many still consider SimCity 4 the best city simulator (still true after Cities Skylines 2 release). Paradox sought to seek notable SimCity 4 players and modders to help test the game, and incentivized them to continue playing. A fresh, modern game in the genre attracted many SimCity 4 players to it and the community experienced its single biggest drop in activity to date. While some have returned to SimCity 4 after finding Skylines somewhat repetitive and boring, the scar left on the SimCity 4 community is permanent, with most Skylines players and modders using sites like Steam, Reddit & Patreon to share their creations rather than forums like Simtropolis. City Journal- A visual documentation of SimCity 4 players' endeavors in the game. City Journal Hall of Fame City Journal pages vs forums- Originally this was just a section of the Simtropolis forums. But City Journals later became their own section of the Simtropolis website. There was (and still is to a certain extent) competition between the two formats. City Journal unions / alliances / nations- A collaboration where people use SC4 images to narrate an imaginary nation and conduct diplomatic role play. An example is the Alliance of Independent National (AIN), one of the first CJ unions. As time went by, City Journal Unions went out of fashion and only a few active unions remain City Journals with Photobucket hosted images- Sites like Photobucket and Imageshack were some of the more popular image hosting websites. However, over time due to link rot, many of these old images have been lost to time, making these old city journals incomplete. Today, Imgur and Imgbb are the popular image hosting sites. The main reason, more than link rot, was photobucket ending their free hosting service, which most people here used City Spread means trouble ahead (Advisor note about sprawl being bad)- This popup annoys people because there isn’t really any issues in the game with building a sprawling city, and it’s actually advised to build out before building up. It's become a prominent message of anti-car culture which aims to curb sprawl. City states - A trend, especially in city journalism, in which players present / consider their cities as small, independent nations, republics, duchies etc. Clicking around like a madman- There are stability issues with many of the new networks introduced in the NAM, although they have become much more reliable in recent years. At times the network will fail to properly override- such as a TLA-3 reverting to a road, or a Level 2 RHW-10S showing as a level 0 RHW-2. Sometimes clicking on the network you made close by is enough to force the game to recognize what network it should be, but clicking on the problem spot will not. You will often need to click all over the place to see if one specific tile will override the network correctly. CMLs (Custom Member Labels) on a lot of members on Simtropolis and SC4Devotion Compatibility glitches With a certain generation of nVidia GPUs Constantly posting on City Journals On the forum to put them on top of others CoriBoom Team saving Simtropolis- @CorinaMarie and @Cyclone Boom are two prominent Simtropolis members who have a joint modding team called CoriBoom, and are currently site admins. Without them stepping in to take over, Simtropolis would have probably went offline like so many other SC4 fan sites have over the years. Covid-19 pandemic popularity boom- During the Coronavirus pandemic, lots of people were stuck at home with nothing to do. A lot of new and returning players turned to SimCity 4, which saw a surge of activity on Simtropolis and other social circles like reddit CPUcount: 1- Refers to commanding your game to only run with one core to help prevent crashing. Multiple cores were found to not be the problem with CTDs, but rather the multi-threading related to the game's processes. Crazy traffic crashes / train derailments- - If you are playing the game and sit still and watch traffic, sometimes you will see crazy automata car crashes at intersections with high traffic usage. This might occur with trains as well, but if you go into U-Drive-It mode, select a train and go as fast as possible, you can create your own crazy train derailment. CTD hovering a puzzle piece over a TE Lot (fixed) CTD on Zoom- If a player zooms out too quickly, such as multiple zoom levels using your mouse's scroll wheel, it risks a CTD. Custom content on STEX from banned users Custom queries (& crashing custom queries) Cutting funding Results in visuals like potholes, striking workers, criminals, etc DAMN - Daely's Advanced Menu Navigator - Used advisor messages to create searchable and hierarchical menus for ploppable lots, but was terribly hard to configure, using an external tool, either the SSPtool or the DAMN manager, to modify .sc4lot files to remove ploppables from their menus and make them appear on the DAMN. @Daeley DarkNite- A popular mod by @SimFox that alters the look of night mode in the game. There are a lot of BATs that are designed to work with this mod specifically. Datpacking- The process of packing many small mod files into fewer, larger, files, with the main goal of increasing the loading speed of the game. This is optional for Windows and LInux users but is required for Mac users, as their game can only have a certain number of files in the Plugins folder before it crashes Defunct English language sites - In terms of English-language sites that no longer exist: SimPeg, Working Man Productions (WMP), SimCity 4 Mods (AKA Gizmo's site), CSGforums, SimCityCentral, Simphoni, SimCity Community, SimVision, SimMania, SimCities (the old BLaM-run site), The Planning Pages, SimCity Mild Enthusiasm, City Builders, and TG Columbia. Demand cap, cap relief- After reaching a certain figure / number, demand for certain types of jobs (such as high wealth commercial office) will plateau and it is difficult to grow new buildings of this type. This is known as 'demand cap' and it is a major annoyance for players. Some buildings, such as airports, can provide cap relief and alllow you to grow more, but it is unrealistic to have an airport in every city tile in a region (even moreso if they're medium or small city tles). Mods exist to raise or outright eliminate cap, but this often leads to way too much demand, which can cause problems of it's own. Demise of SC4D, rise of SC4E- SC4Devotion was one of the main English-language SC4 fansites, alongside Simpeg and Simtropolis. In June 2023, the website went offline. The new website, SC4Evermore, and has been slowly uploading files that were hosted on SC4D. Interestingly the new site’s name is very similar to SC4Ever, an old SimCity fan site that closed down over a decade ago. Dependencies needing Dependencies needing Dependencies, & so on (Inception) Dependencies? None! A phrase commonly added to items on the STEX where the creator did not use any external dependencies on their file. This was a marketing ploy advertising the ease of downloading since most files on the exchange require several dependencies to work, which was very frustrating to people wanting to download buildings quickly and easily. Other variations include 'this file has no dependencies' or 'no dependencies required' Dependency- A file that is required by that Lot for it to appear in the game. Without that dependent file(s), the lot will either appear as a big brown box, or show up with strange or missing props or textures. Dependency debate- A discussion so heated the thread got locked. It surrounded who was allowed to use / own certain files in their own BATs / mods and what the 'legal' rights were in terms of crediting someone, or directing them to a related file to download a requirement / prerequisite dependency there. This sometimes led to a long string of downloads where if a player wanted to download a new building, they would need to also download related files that also needed other props/dependency files of their own elsewhere, sometimes those needing their own additional dependencies. Destruction De Saint Orano- A YouTube video from 2011 by showing the destruction of a city called Saint Orano. Utilizing both SimCity 4 and The Sims 3, the animation is very impressive and looks great to this day. Diagonal Bridge Enabler (DBE) removing all water- People ignored all the warning text that the DBE removed water, even as the warning was made larger, bolder, redder, more underlined and then bombarded the NAM Team with "where's my water?" questions for at least a couple months straight (one example). Eventually, what stopped it was actually changing the name of the file to "Diagonal Bridge Enabler (Removes Water)". Digging a 'hole to China' if a puzzle piece isn't placed on flat terrain- Mostly affects fractional-angled RHW puzzle pieces, both regular stretches and ramps. If the defined terrain isn't perfectly flat, there is a risk a sinkhole to the bottom of the lowest allowed elevation in the game will be generated. This is due to the 'ConsLayout' section- which deals with terrain behavior under the vicinity of the piece. The easiest way to fix this is to use the level terrain tool which will eventually raise the sinkhole back to your elevation, and then continuing to use it to flatten the area you want the pieces to be. Using a restrictive slope mod can also help prevent the issue, as the variation in terrain is less per tile, but it isn't guaranteed to fix the problem. Dirk / Dirktator Having to personally upload mods larger than 10MB. This included every new NAM version which had to be coordinated with his availability @Dirktator Disappearing cars- Road traffic in SimCity 4 randomly seems to spawn and despawn, which makes it difficult for players to follow vehicles or create large traffic jams. This was done as a way to reduce the demand the game had on your computer, as SimCity 4's minimum system requirements were quite high at release. This 'bug' continues to this day, with no solution found. Some mods to exist to help extend the time traffic is on the road, and the NAM also improves this somewhat. Traffic generators can also be plopped to generate additional congestion, but this automata is random and unpathed. Disasters- In the game you can inflict a number of different disasters upon your city. Some are realistic, like earthquakes and tornadoes, whereas others are more fantastical, such as UFO invasions and automotive dinosaur rampages. DollyLlama- Cheat code that turns the in-game advisors’ avatars into llamas. Double Network Override Dr Vu- A madman / evil genius / supervillain introduced in the Rush Hour expansion. He is the subject of various “evil” UDI missions that you can do in your city. He is likely based on Dr. Evil- a character from the Austin Powers movie series which was popular at the time of SC4's development. Successfully completing UDI missions for Dr. Vu will unlock certain reward buildings, such as Area 5.1 Dr Vu's breasts- Dr. Vu was created for the Rush Hour expansion, whereas the advisors were created for the base game. For some reason, Dr. Vu was based on a female advisor's persona, and his character model actually contains breasts and other female characteristics. Dr. Vu fake Twitter / X Account by @PlanetOfHats. He's now on Bluesky!!! Draw paths- “Drawpaths” is a cheat code that shows automata paths on transportation networks. This is heavily used for NAM debugging as the team was using inefficient features like UDI mode for pathfinding previously Drive-ins being built right next to skyscrapers- Since there are only three levels of zoning, you don’t have a lot of control over what exact buildings get built in your city, leading your city to have weird buildings next to each other. EA's official version not being properly patched on Origin for about a decade EA SimCity Exchange Web Browser Plugin - This was installed when visiting the site and allowed Maxis to implement the city download/upload functionality. It was written in C++ using Microsoft's ActiveX technology, and as a result likely only worked on Windows OSes of that era. EA paying to fly early SC4 modders to San Francisco to learn more about the game code, and mentioning that DLL mods could be made. Early NAM puzzle pieces Easter eggs- Snow on Dec 25 being one Eaton- One of the earliest and most popular custom regions ever made. Players like it due every city tile being large, it's relatively large size compared to the default region, and it's good use of water, flat areas for farms / cities and more rugged landscapes. Many early City Journals used this region and it was interesting to see how different the play styles were when comparing. Empty highways yet clogged roads- In the base game, sims prefer to take the shortest route (in number of tiles) instead of the fastest route. The NAM largely fixes this issue. ErwinNegentig's crazy techno Youtube tutorials @ErwinNegentig Eternal Commuter Loop- A glitch in which sims near the city border will go to an adjacent town to look for work, then go from that town to the next town over, etc. until they are traveling in an eternal loop instead of going to work. This is because the game only looks at the current tile being played and not the region as a whole. The glitch can lead to commute time abandonment. One solution is to build more job centers near city borders. Euro textures Being demanded every time a new road network is created Executable installers For most mods- In the early days of SC4 modding it was very common for BATs to have executable installers. While it may have made sense at the time, today it is a major nuisance as these take significantly more time to install compared to simply extracting a file to your plugins folder, especially for simple BATs with small file sizes. Most modern BATs don’t have this issue, but downloading old content still presents this frustration. Exporting A SimCity 4 small tile to make a Sims 2 map- While there are restrictions as to what exactly can be carried over, it is a clever piece of cross-collaboration between games. Extra Cheats- Source code hinting that SC4 may have been planned to release on Dec. 25th, 2003 at some point in its development. Fireworks on New Years / city founding Flexfly Franklin County By Patricius Maximus @Patricius Maximus Freeland- Term for landfill / extra land in SimCity SNES and a polerific SimCity 3000 modder who convinced others to make their way over to SimCity 4 when the game was released. This list includes prominent members such as @mikeseith, @Vanderaap, @oppie, @Pegasus & others. @fredfree Freeway Experts- A failed spinoff that attempted to divide the @NAM Team (and ultimately failing to release any of it's own content) @freewayexperts Fun bugs (see some here) Fun sound effects when querying specific buildings- Usually things like hearing a doorbell when clicking a residential lot. It can be annoying with some BATs that have custom sounds Garbage chute pushing your trash off the city tile edge- A fun classic mod by @Pegasus that creatively utilizes the game’s tile system to create a visual gag. Giant farm structures that look nothing like real life Giant wild life- The scale of the animals in this game is very disproportionate. God Mode in Mayor Mode Golf Course Clubhouse being modeled after SimGolf Graphical bugs with certain Intel and ATI integrated graphics (Windows XP era) Haljackey's SimCity 4 Archives- Repository for content that was in development either at the very early stages or not released at all. @Haljackey Healthare funding? This game is pandering radical left socialism! Healthcare is a public service in SimCity 4 (and all the other SimCity games) just like fire, police, education, etc. Thus there is no way to operate a private healthcare system since if funding is cut, your sims will suffer. This leads to frustration for players who want to have a right wing / libertarian style government, and some argue it puts a political spin / is propaganda for socialism / left wing government. Helpdesk / Simtropolis Help Squad- A member title given to some members of Simtropolis who were well respected in giving help & advise to newbie players. There was also a separate chatroom known as Helpdesk to aid simple questions that often did not require a new thread of forum post. This still exists on the SC4E Discord server. Largely replaced on Simtropolis with the Got a Quick SC4 Question?... Ask Here thread. Hitting Reconcile Edges by mistake and losing half your city- This is a popup that generates once your city is loading from region view when the terrain of your city tile no longer matches that of one of your neighbours. The game can automatically make adjustments for you to help adjust your city edges, but if you have development near the edges they might be lost. Sometimes the area exists far beyond your city boundaries and can cause widespread civic destruction. Hole Digging lots HSRP (High Speed Rail Project) I-HT jobs bug / fix Ice cream truck plays the SimCity 2000 theme in UDI mode Ilive reader- Modding tool @ilive Immortal lots / Immortal Lot syndrome / Immortality Killer- A modding error with some lots / buildings that make them impossible to demolish. A method to eliminate them was later developed, and it works with moderate, not complete success (better than nothing) Infinite / Eternal Commuter Loop- Major bug that causes your Sims to commute to an adjacent city, only to have them go to another adjacent city, a third, and a 4th, back to their original city, just to go back to the next city. This usually occurs in the corners of city tiles, where commuters will generate heavy traffic congestion going in a loop juggling as many as 22 or more city tiles. This bug has never been fixed since launch INFO file - A file the built-in screenshot tool generates, likely as metadata for the now-abandoned EA SimCity exchange. Contains the OS user name, city name, mayor name and various other city statistics encrypted with an XOR cypher (the XOR key is 0x7B). Inability to install mods and custom content on old MacOS versions for some time Industrial Thingamajig Japanese BAT Thread Japanese BATs and dependencies Japanese version had Japanese-looking advisors, And they are all male as well Jenquai Alchmey- Base industrial building named after the Jenquai- a playable human race in the game Earth & Beyond, a popular MMO at the time of SimCity 4's release JIM / Mr. Jim- Japanese modder. Sadly his site is down but he did operate a twitter/x account and shared creations on a Dropbox account. He specialized in automata mods, car/truck props, full parking sets, etc Jupiter and Aurora Mod- Predecessors to the weather mod LD files - Subfiles within a lot file which are automatically created by the Maxis Lot Editor. LD files contained the basic information for mods that were to be uploaded to the official SimCity 4 Website. They are completely useless today. Linux compatibility, either via Wine or Proton, the game is totally playable, including mods, using these compatibility layers. Llama everything- SimCity 4, along with all Maxis games, has a fascination with llamas for some reason, a running gag in the game. Will Wright stated Llama won a company-wide vote for Maxis' corporate mascot. The Tourist Trap reward building is shaped like a Llama. Even the game's medium speed, between Turtle and Cheetah, is called Llama. It continues on fan sites like Simtropolis, which even has its own custom llama emojis Loading text mod (gives you wacky tool tips when loading a city from region view) Lot Editor lots hosted on the official SimCity 4 website Kane Tiberium- Base industrial building named for Kane, the leader of the Brotherhood of NOD in the Command & Conquer games. Tiberium is the main resource needed for building a base and army KREW (Klyte's Region Exporter as Webpage)- Exports your region as a HTML format webpage and includes lots of stats and can even render region transport view. It's one of the few ways to export large regions as they often crash in SC4Mapper, even with the 4GB patch applied to mapper's EXE. One such example of the webpage can be found here (horizontal scrolling is needed) @Klyte45 Mac users constantly complaining nothing works MacOS Rep 0 bug - A bug that occurs on transit lots that uniquely affects Mac users - Windows and Linux users are unaffected. Mayor's Diary (MD) & the hall of fame- Mayor's Diaries (MD) were SC4D's equivalent to the City Journals of Simtropolis. While many showcases were posted on both sites, there were some exclusives- many of which can be found on their hall of fame. Unlike City Journals, MDs were separated into different subfourms based on how many replies they had. There was recently published, Best Sellers and Classics. Inactive subsections were also created for MDs that had not had new activity from the creator after a certain amount of time. Member of the Month / Employee of the Month- An award given out every month to a member of Simtropolis as well as a staff member for something noteworthy they did on the site or in the SimCity 4 community, usually happening in the previous month. Members could suggest nominations by sending a message to the @MOTM_inbox which was reviewed by a select committee before ultimately deciding who would receive the award. It would be added to the user's avatar, similar to Trixie awards. This effort was lead by @Mikeaut1. Memes (see some here) MMLs - Menu Management Lots - A special kind of lot, that while placed in the city, will reveal other lots in the menu. These were created in an attempt to limit the number of items that would show up in menus and thus the amount of scrolling. They were largely obsoleted with the invention of the submenus dll. Menu scrolling - If you add lots of custom content, the menus in game get longer and longer, meaning lots of scrolling to find what you want. You had better have a good mouse wheel if you liked to add lots of mods. Modding squads / teams Modpacks / Modpack requests- Large folders of plugins (even even regions / cities) have been constantly requested by players since the game's inception. Due to the community rules & the amount of bandwidth this takes, it has never been supported on any site. Players resort to going to more 'dark' areas of the internet if they still want to find them, or find torrents. Issue is these downloads may contain a lot of incomplete / conflicting / obsolete files and have no support. In recent years, community-supported modpacks have finally been released to help group like-content together, making it a easier one-stop-shop vs downloading lots separately and as well as all their associated dependencies. Money tree- An exremely popular download which helps players out with financial problems they have running their city Monorail generates air pollution- Despite being electric. This is frustrating for players who might be using the monorail as a way to reduce air pollution in their cities. Moolah Cheat- Gives you almost infinite finances for one one mayor to do whatever they want in their city Multi Highways- A discovery by @lakeyboy that basically splits a MHW in two by dragging rail through one of it's two tiles. A similar setup was discovered for the RHW by @Haljackey when these configurations were thought to be impossible (before starter pieces were created) Multiplayer attempts - Early efforts towards setting up multiplayer regions involved syncing plugin files and regions over Dropbox. Must place partial land, partial water not often working MySims mode- Importing your characters from The Sims to live and work in your city NAM 17- The only version hosted on a site not under control by the @NAM Team, being downloadable from Capitalsimcity due to a Spanish translation agreement NAM 20- The first 19 NAM releases came out in an 18 month span. The gap from NAM 19 to NAM 20 was 15 months.This was due to a lot of the founding NAMites going into retirement or becoming less active, leaving large voids that the team had trouble filling. NAM 31 release date fiasco- This was the first (and likely only) time the NAM Team released a new version of the NAM on a date that was known to the public. The hype was palpable, with many players eager to play on the day it was released and some even moving their real life schedules to make time for it. Internally it was a disaster for the team, as issues found during development slowed down progress, with many team members experiencing burnout and felt the pressure applied. While it did launch on schedule, it did not contain all the features intended and what new content existed had a lot of bugs and other unresolved issues. Two patches for this version came out not long after, and NAM 32 was released rather quickly to get the sour taste to go away. It was quite a while before the next full version was released. NAM Team policy changed back to 'when it's ready', ensuring a higher quality product for later releases. NAM 36 holdouts- The last 'monolithic' version of the NAM with an installer that contained items that have since been separated like the BTM. Last version that did not require the 4GB patch. Some players refuse to update their version due to installation complexities, despite the fact that a ton of additional fixes and new content has been created since, and that the NAM Team will only provide support for current version NAM 37- The first version where subsequent updates were delivered faster than their predecessors. It adopted the so-called agile development. NAM 48 containing a virus On the ModDB site, team cut ties with hosting the mod there afterward NAM 50- First version of the NAM to include .dll files NAM 69- Estimated version number for some long awaited content on the NAM team's back-burner would be released NAM 420- Estimated version number for some extremely niche features requested over the years to be released NAM 666- Estimated version number for the really devilish and not currently feasible content NAM DLL- A breakthrough in transportation network modding, allowing the NAM Team to correct the functionality of transportation networks such as RHW, native diagonal draggable streets, or enabling new tunnels, as well as introducing new keyboard shortcuts, & reducing the mod's code overhead. Previously impossible configurations are now a reality with this newly-unlocked functionality. NAMdoc / NAM website NAM Lite- Compromise version for those who want the core game fixes only. No 'networks' to 'add on' NAM release hype- Whenever a new version of the NAM released, there is celebration in the SimCity 4 community, with the news often spreading to other gaming sites and the media. Many players are eager to show their creations with the newly added content or how they incorporated / retrofitted them into their cities. A surge of activity floods social media, the forums and chat rooms which continue to prove SimCity 4 is still relevant / has gas in the tank despite it's age and newer competitors on the scene. @NAM Team NDEX mods @NDEX Neighbour deals- Exploiting them by having a super polluted city handling your garbage, power, dirty industry, etc Nested dependencies - Dependencies that have dependencies that have dependencies. Also referred to 'cascading dependencies'. Many a player's nightmare. News ticker Obscenely large regions Obsolete guides and broken images, along with 404ing links Ocean Quigley's Blog - Ocean Quigley was an artist at Maxis who played a significant role in the development of SimCity 4. His blog contains early SC4 concepts and renders. Of Special Interest This Month (OSITM)- a showcase of select Mayor's Diaries (MD) on SC4Devotion that rotated from month to month. It was created by a select committee to feature new and/or upcoming MDs to put them in the spotlight in order to showcase the creator's creativity to a broader audience. Official EA lot and BAT exchange Official EA site using screenshots containing 3rd party content / plugins / mods Oldshoes- His TruFax series of image guides helped many 4chan members start their first realistic looking cities. One more lane / track bro- Catchphrase to describe the concept of Induced Demand, where if you build it, they will come. Expanding the capacity of a network might cause a drop in congestion for a time, but the extra capacity will eventually be used up making the problem even worse than before. Road widening / transit line expansions are often very costly and disruptive and are seen as a waste of time and money if they don't fully fix the problem. Open SC4 - An open source initiative to re-implement SimCity 4 from the ground up in the Godot game engine. Development lasted approximately a year. There have been numerous other independent attempts at re-implementing the game, none of which have made any substantial progress. This is something that everyone would love to have but no one wants to work on. Open source tools - Many modding tools have been made open source, but some of the most important tools used today are either closed source or have had their source code lost, like PIMX. Opera House bug / fix Page flip bug- Issue on the Simtropolis website where threads failed to properly load the next page. Sometimes a member would need to post several times to flip the page. This could artficially increase a member's post count and this, along with double posting, was closely monitored by staff to clamp down on inflated post numbers Paradox campaigned on buying Simtropolis and SC4D In order to run the Cities Skylines 1 forums Patreon / paid content being blocked Paul Pedriana / Pedriana Pharmaceuticals- Lead Architect and Engineer on SimCity 4- leaking some source code to help the community create DLL mods, and encouraging reverse engineering to recreate the code he couldn't share. Pegasus Productions @Pegprod @Pegasus Peridoic Table of Trixie Awards by @Benedict, such as this one from 2011 Phantom Slider Bug- A mod that contains a funding slider in the query (such as a funding bar when querying a police station) improperly. It can cause the department to be defunded causing a halt in city development PIM-X'd - A term coined by BSC member @xxdita to refer to lots that have been created with the PIMX program, specifically around an effort to make existing lots compatible with CAM. Today, it typically refers to any lot whose stats were generated by PIMX, which is a good way to know if a lot has been properly modded with the correct stats. Pirating / Illegal downloading / Torrents - The major forums take a strong anti-piracy stance and do not provide support for these versions of the game. For a long period, major torrents were distributed without the EP1 Nightlighting patch, rendering these versions of the game largely incompatible with custom content. Players asking if their computer made 20+ years after SimCity 4's launch is good enough to run the game Players discovering that their computer made 20+ years after SimCity 4's launch effectively isn't good enough to run the game (Chromebooks) Ploppable Residential Lots - While ploppable commercial and industrial lots were created early on and worked to create jobs in the game, for the longest time residential buildings could not be plopped as they would soon become abandoned due to commute time since the game never saw them as connected to the transportation network. @smf_16's work in modifying save game files led to the Growifier website, where save game files with plopped residential buildings could be converted to working residential buildings before becoming abandoned. Later, @Null 45 built on this functionality to create the Growify DLL mod to plop residential lots with the BuildingPlop cheat that could be further growified. Finally, @Kel9509 discovered how to create ploppable residential lots (to be growified) outside of the BuildingPlop cheat selectable in the menus, and also worked to create the functionality in PIM-X (with help from @memo and @Ulisse Wolf). Ploppsville- Creating a city by only plopping buildings and other downloaded content. No zoning. Very time consuming but gives you full control of what you want your city to look like Plugin folder confusion- My documents? C/program files? Players would often install downloads into the incorrect directory and then complain nothing works Plugin pack warning- Popup generated when loading a city that failed to find specific plugins, spewing gibberish and giving the player no clue what plugin is missing. Example being Plugin Pack 0xeeb43b9. The warning states: "Warning: The city you are loading refers to the following plugin packs which aren't available on your machine. You can continue the game in the absence of those packs, but some of the graphics and other information may be incorrect." Plugin sharing- An extremely sensitive, intense discussion started by @Haljackey regarding the ownership of custom content that was created or downloaded and who should own the rights to share what to curb the increasing use of 'illegal' plugin sharing and torrents. After years of heated debates from one side trying to protect the established system and those who wanted progressive change to make things more free, open & available, the latter won after staff finally agreed to ease some rules and regulations. For content made before policies were changed, good faith is assumed that the creators, many of whom have been inactive for quite some time, would be ok with this and could resent any creative control by sending a reply to the notice of policy change. This later led to the creation of Modpacks, created and fully supported by site staff and content teams, a first for the SimCity 4 community (legally, anyway). The ability to share plugins has just recently been implemented in sc4pac via a configuration file Plugins folder size being bigger than the game itself Police helicopter always over airport- Airports generate a lot of crime and are large lots, with players often putting them in the far corners of their cities. This makes them less connected to the road network which makes it harder for police to cover the area. If you have a deluxe police station (which contains a helicopter), it will often be found hovering over your airport, holding position and shining it's spotlight down even in the daytime. Praiodan's Bank- A mod that allowed you to plop a bank building in your cities and use it to lend money from cities across the region Pre-2006 Simtropolis Prima official guide Project57- A NAM Team project regarding restructuring the RealHighway and Network Widening Mod, respectively, in a way that's organized and thorough in supporting stable overrides. The downside is this code required a lot more memory overhead, which is partially responsible for NAM 36 holdouts, the birth NAM Lite, and a drastic increase in loading times for the game with NAM installed. Progen Production- Base industrial building named after the Progen- a playable human race in the game Earth & Beyond, a popular MMO at the time of SimCity 4's release Project ZIP - An initiative largely started and spearheaded by @Tyberius06 to remove exe installers from downloads and replace them with standard zip files. Prop Pox (Fixed)- An issue many players run into when they have too many plugins installed, but can be caused by other reasons as well. The symptoms include props failing to load on many lots and networks, which includes the little details like flower pots, light poles & benches. This makes your city look bland and dull. Sometimes it may only affect a section of your city, but it might become worse with subsequent saves and loads over time. Like some other major bugs, many thought this was something that could never be fixed, but a solution was found that mostly corrects this problem, and even 'heals' cities that suffered from it before the fix was made. Prop / building family exemplar regulation and management Puzzle Piece Puzzle piece mayhem for RHW (pre-flex piece era) r/simcity4 (top submissions) Radical Ordinance Mod Rage Face region Rain Tool Rare advisor messages Rare song- Primordial Dream (God Mode)- Usually played only when a city is obliterated and returning to region view, or selected manually in the track list Rarely seen animations- Cars falling when you demo a bridge, zombies at the graveyard, graffiti being made, etc Read the readme - A running gag by many content producers to try and encourage users to consult the readme files they create with their files before they complain on a public forum for support, often about things that are addressed in the readme. See also: and . Recycling centres generate air pollution- The whole point of a recycling centre is to reduce the pollution generated with garbage. While not as bad as the incinerator, it is an annoying quirk players have with the game. Rednecking- Creating a solution to a problem your city has in a way that is quick, not aesthetically pleasing & often overkill. It may not look the nicest, but it will fix it just like how rednecks stereotypically use items like duct tape and chewing gum to fix things instead of repairing them properly. These fixes can be temporary solutions and cleaned up in the future. Region Census Reticulating splines- One of the loading messages, callback to the message in SimCity 2000 that was audible when loading a city in that game RHW Interchange Guide- An entire section of SC4D split up into separate entries created by @Haljackey showing how to create different interchange setups with the RHW. They ranged from very basic junctions with a minor road to large, complicated freeway-to-freeway designs. Nearly all of these guides are heavily outdated or outright obsolete due to advances in subsequent NAM releases (such as the release of 7.5m overpasses and flex pieces), and a lot of images are no longer available as they were hosted on sites like imageshack and photobucket RHW Originally stood for Rural HighWay, as the initial releases were catered to have a more realistic-looking highway in rural environments. Two lanes each way and the ability to separate the directions with a grassy median were key goals of the project. As the mod grew in size, scope & complexity, it rebranded to RealHighway as it could now be used as a realistic replacement for the MHW in urban environments as well. RHW Side-by-side drag method (initial versions which didn't have starter pieces) RIMP 3.0 never being released (large airport pack hyped for years) Roads rule but streets becoming endangered (Advisor message) Rob's Guide to SimCity 4 RTFM - A less polite version to tell someone to read the manual. RTMT (Road Top Mass Transit)- Bus stops and subway station entrances could now be placed right on your roads, rather than needing a separate tile to the side to plop them. RUL / RUL2 file Run for Senator (AKA Losing the game due to poor mayor rating, 100k+ Simoleans in debt, etc) Sandbox- Gaming term for freedom and creativity. In SimCity 4's case, it applies to mods giving you infinite simoleons and perfect mayor rating, allowing one to express full creative freedom without the risk of losing the game or running short on funds. Savegame SC4 standing for Soul Calibur 4- When you search for the accronym SC4, the first gaming result is for Soul Calibur 4 instead of SimCity 4. SC4 still the GOAT city simulator despite Skylines 1 and 2 releasing SC4 stories making the news SC4 Wiki SC4's surge post-SimCity (2013)- Lots of new / returning users after that game flopped in 2013 SC4D Podcast- This was a podcast that came out every few weeks, usually hosted by @patfirefghtr & @threestooges along with associated cohosts. The podcast often had guests from the community on to give updates on what they were working on- usually new mods, BATs or CJs. Players might also open up and talk about where they live, what they do for a living, what other past-times they enjoy, etc. SC4D reputation system- Unlike the reputation system on Simtropolis, reputation / karma could only be given by staff and select members on SC4D, making each 'point' more noteworthy. Regular members could request to award points to someone by messaging a moderator and giving a reason why. If agreed, they would receive it. Originally, it was possible for regular members to give out karma points, but that ability got shut down fairly early on. SC4D subscriber system- A custom avatar given to members on SC4Devotion who donated a certain amount of money to the site, usually monthly. It created a bit of a paywall where only subscribers had access to certain content / areas of the site, leading to some disputes regarding site functionality between user levels Sc4ever.com- Defunct fan-site now absorbed by Simtropolis SC4Fix & other major game fixes SC4Mapper SC4pac SC4 Picture Competition- One of the most active threads on SC4D. Two players would submit screenshots and members would vote to see which of them they liked the best. Photoshop was allowed. Tournaments and spinoffs were spawned from this thread as well. SC4 Terraformer Schulmania- A popular City Journal by @Schulmanator that holds the record for the most views and replies Scrabblebox- Contains the notes that @paeng made for the forum attachments he had over at the now defunct SimPeg website Submenus Sculpting Columbia River By jeronij @jeronij Screen resolution, Line glitch on region view (fixed now) Seasonal MMP flora Causing CTD Several modders being under a Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) With EA specifically for the purpose of furthering file modifications Short runways- Ex the fire department landing strip being absurdly short for water bombers Show Us What You're Working On- A thread created by @Haljackey inspired by Show Us Your Current Projects on SC4D. For many years, especially during the slump of SC4 activity following the debut of Cities: Skylines, this thread became the only place where many members would post their updates, barely touching the topic-specific showcase threads. It turned the thread into a one stop shop, making other 'show us your' threads a ghost town. Why bother posting the screenshots on the dedicated topic where 'no one' would notice, as opposed to publishing them where everyone's guaranteed to be present? This required an overhaul of the site, which removed the pinned status of the general showcase thread and started marketing the other threads to distribute the activity more evenly across the site. Shut Up Advisors- A somewhat controversial mod that turns off advisor popup notifications. Not really necessary since you can just turn this off in the game settings. SimCity China, that website where downloading was an absolute odyssey. SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, The Sims 2 and Spore use the same game engine called Gonzo-Rizzo - This framework was presumably named after the two muppets of the same name. SimCity 4's Longevity- Despite coming out in 2003, SimCity 4 continues to be relevant in the gaming world, proving that there has yet to be a true successor. It often still makes headlines about breakthroughs and explaining why so many continue to enjoy a game over two decades old and lacking many of the features more modern games have. SimCity 4 TV Commercial (& teaser with the flying cow in the tornado) SimCity 4 vending machine In one of The Sims expansions SimCity Central SimCity 4 Community- Refers to the entire online presence of SimCity 4 content, discussions and creations. Since SimCity 4 is a offline single player game and was released at a time the internet was still relatively new (predates Steam, Facebook & Youtube, for example), the creation of online forum community sites like Simtropolis allowed players who had a common interest in the game collaborate, share creations, discuss the game & led to the modern state of the game's online presence. SimCity 4 lore list- This counts, right ? It's been mostly led by @Haljackey but I've been harassing various members to aid me with this task. Big thanks to all who have helped in some way! SimCity Polska - A now defunct Polish language forum. Most of it's content has been preserved and re hosted on the STEX SimCity4 has a realistic simulation of water resources But they are incomplete because they were supposed to come out in the Nature DLC that never came out SimCity4 has the LUA module That allows you to define certain gameplay behaviors so you can create complex mods like CAM and AMPS that increase the realism of gameplay as well as the potential to create new tutorials SimCity4 has working incinerator properties But for some reason a generator of the incinerator exemplar was not created SimCity4 is used as a tool to generate The Sims 2 cities, and you can import Sims from The Sims 1 and have them live in your city. SimCityBrazil SimLabs Simlympics- The Olympic games in SimCity 4. Sometimes a City Journal would host the games, or multiple CJs would host different venues. Large stadium districts would be created in various cities to host the games, for example. SimMars- A major fan project started not long after SimCity 4 released to give it a 'out of this world' look and feel, like you were working on a city on another planet with a more futuristic setting. SimMars / Memories of the Colonists, the sci-fi mod that attempted to bring a Martian environment to the game. It is a spinof of SimMars developed by @Terring for "terrestrial" environments. Simpeg- Defunct fansite now absorbed by Simtropolis Simish language heard by some queries and UDI vehicles such as mayor limo, police car / van / helicopter, news helicopter, etc Sims have no life / Sims are Workaholics- In the Rush Hour expansion / Deluxe Edition, the vast majority of your sims commute from home to work and back, but don't do anything else in your city. This leads to congestion on roads and transit lines that connect residential areas to commercial / industrial areas, but little to no use on roads that connect to other areas of your city like parks, recreational facilities, attractions, etc. SimTarkus Blog- A opinion piece regarding various on-goings in the SimCity 4 community by @Tarkus, a prominent member that just about every SC4 player knows about. Some of his entries, such as the one about Origin selling an incorrectly patched version of the game with no way to legally fix, made headlines in the media. Simtrop- Slang for Simtropolis. Easier to type and readers understand what it is referring to. Simtropolis Help Squad- A group led by Cheese89 / Kevin @Kevin which aimed to help new members out with basic questions about the game. It was also a seperate chat room. Simtropolis Omnibus- A early resporitory for turorials, guides, definitions and player support. This has mostly been subplanted by wikis and video format guides these days. Simtropolis reputation system Simtropolis Social Lobby (chat room before Discord) Simtropolis vs SC4D Rivalry- Simtropolis is the largest and most active website in the SimCity 4 community, with a focus on more casual city building topics. SC4D came along later and intended to focus on 'hardcore' SC4 content and discussions only. Many community members did not like the contrast between the two sites and often took a 'side', supporting one site over the other and becoming less active or completely inactive on the site they did not support. This created a rift in the SimCity 4 community, with users often having to go to two sites to find content and discussions of interest to them. It led to a lot of confusion as to where to find what, and there was not a lot of cooperation between the two sites. As the SC4 community shrunk in size over time- having two sites seemed excessive (although important from redundancy standpoints). SC4D eventually collapsed due to some controversial management decisions by the webmaster, and an effort to save the site was undertaken and eventually became SC4E. SimVision- Was a small site owned by @BarbulaM1, complete with it's own exchange- called the SVEX Sketchup -> GMAX pipeline Slopes so steep train tracks are pretty much roller coaster tracks Solid State Drives (SSD)- The single major hardware improvement that keeps heavily modded SimCity 4 playable, by speeding up the loading process of game assets into the computer's RAM SOMY- Legendary Japanese modder and BATter. His site is still up, and many of his creations have been hosted on the STEX SPAM- Make your agricultural zones actually decent looking Speed Limits- Each network in the game has a set speed limit sims travel at. For example car traffic travels at 30km/h on streets, 50km/h on roads & avenues, 75km/h on one-way roads & 150km/h on highways (MHW & RHW). Transit networks include subway at 105km/h, elevated rail / GLR at 115km/h, rail at 140km/h & monorail at 225km/h. The absurd speed of monorails is what promoted the creation of the BTM reskin, and led to the HSRP and HRW. Spending a full day manually downloading files & dependencies- It is an extremely tedious task to download custom content for SimCity 4, however this has made progress in recent years. The amount of time it would take a competent player to download and install enough content to have their cities look vastly different from the vanilla tile set is absurd compared to other games. This is a major pain point for players, especially those who are trying to get into custom content for the first time. Even veteran users need to take time every now and then to keep up as what they have downloaded may be outdated or obsolete, requiring replacements (and often manual removals). SSPTool Start-up Time and Loading Optimization DLL- Software improvement that reduces the time it takes to load components, significantly reducing the time it takes to load the game and cities from region view Steam forum topics are mostly about getting the highest population or the game crashing STEX Custodian @STEX Custodian STEX Features @STEX Features Strictoaster's gameplay videos @Strictoaster Stupid street grids when zoning- When laying out zones, streets automatically generate when dragging out a area. These streets are often terribly laid out, causing many players to rework their zones, or zone one item at a time, to mitigate this. The streets generated get insanely wacky in diagonal areas, making it almost impossible to quickly zone these and have them look right. Super Demand Mod Super Demand Ordinance Supergrid- Pressing G will temporarily create a 2x2 grid, making zones appear 4x larger Taking 45 minutes to download 15mb patches off the official SC4 website Terrain too steep- A common annoyance when trying to build a road or plop a building on a hill that is too steep for the game to resolve on it's own. You'll have to build it somewhere else, or use a tool like level terrain to reduce the slope issue The Chief The developers abandoned doing realistically scaled parking For car-centric buildings because they realized just how obscene the amount of parking was. This fact is commonly shared in anti-car / pro-transit advocacy groups demonstrating just how space-consuming car culture is on cities. The Draggable Revolution (ex drag GLR, no need to plop every time) The drive-in theatre Plays a film showing flying saucers making crop circles from the SimCity 3000 intro The game's camera using an axonometric, trimetric projection, and the artists annoying Paul Pedriana by calling it isometric. The Greater Terran Region- A notable City Journal by @Haljackey The eternal battle of grid (planned) vs organic growth The hype & then disappointment that was SimCity Societies, then Cities XL, then SimCity (2013) The OST and remixes The Planning Pages (TPP)- A site that was run by @zane900 and @sixers33, which faded in and out of existence multiple times in the mid-2000s. Eventually merged with SimVision The Ring of Fire- A 'mega region' created by mashing up several regions together. It requires a powerful PC to render and a patched SC4 mapper / terraformer. It is the most popular large region (over 100km²) downloaded. The Sims maid robot, Servo, Is one of the disasters you can trigger in the game. It a giant sized version, and destroys your city by walking around and shooting dirty dishes it was tasked to clean. Three Rivers Region / 3RR- a City Journal created by @dedgren that later evolved into a greater project. It was a planned collaborative effort, but didn't really get far due to multiplayer limitations with the game. It also somewhat morphed into being a custom content creation effort, with the various BATs and Mods developed specifically for 3RR. Top 10 weekly CJs By Benedict. One was also made for the specific CJ section @Benedict Toutsimcities Toxic waste dump Traffic generators- A lot plopped next to a road network that would spawn automata, making roads look far busier than the game displays on their own. This was 'dumb' traffic, with no real destination programmed so they just drove around town, taking random turns until they disappeared. For multi-tile networks, such as wide RHWs and NWM networks, automata created from traffic generators would often weave dangerously between lanes- an unrealistic but humorous glitch. Traffic generators usually just spawned cars, but specific lots were created to spawn freight trucks, freight trains, etc. Traffic simulator being garbage - need NAM to fix. Transfer money between cities True Earth by Korver @korver Trixies Tunnel building being super annoying- Building tunnels will often never work the way you want. Sometimes one will form while dragging a road through bumpy terrain, but not really bumpy enough in one's mind for tunnels. At other points when you want a tunnel, the game will instead dig a massive trench through the hill- looking very unrealistic or give you the 'terrain too steep' message. Type 21 / T21 Retaining walls for elevated NAM networks, highway pieces, etc that were showcased plenty of times, but sadly never released. Some plops were made that cover the area(s) such as this one, but they weren't based on the models themselves. Tyle 21 Exemplar / model- used to add props rendered in BAT (isometric) to networks, such as traffic lights and lamp posts. U-Drive It' / UDI mode, Missions, special vehicle abilities (money from Mayor limo, police siren, etc) UDI tank- Mayor destroying their own city UDI videos / City / Region driving tours Unreleased expansion packs- Maxis was apparently working on 2, possibly 3 expansion packs for SimCity 4, but only 1- Rush Hour, was ever released. Speculation is that one of these packs would expand more rural / natural features in the game, containing items like a dirt road (which was a unfinished network in the game's code) Urban Walrus Award- Similar to the Trixie awards on Simtropolis, but handed out on the now defunct CSGdesign website Value of Simoleons compared to US Dollar Victivas (ancient lore) Vinnie- Cheat in SimCity 3000 where you 'call cousin Vinnie' to get extra Simoleans for accepting a shady ordinance. There are some UDI missions in SimCity 4 that surround Vinnie as well. Wall of fog- fun glitch in region view that usally happens when the game has been left running for an extended period of time Wanting to become a urban planner / civil engineer / politician After playing Water skiing mini game (via Flash) Weaknesspays cheat- Cheat code you can spam copy and paste to give you 1,000 simoleans. It was one of the only ways to get sufficient cash in the game's early days until other financial aid downloads and extra cheats came onto the scene Weather Mod Wealthing- Refers to the appearance of road networks depending on what kind of development is on it. A vast majority of low wealth buildings will have basic sidewalks and cheap wooden lights for example, but a higher wealth texture could have flower pots, shiny lights and all that jazz. Industrial and airport areas also had their own wealthing appearances. Wern Insurance / Wrenageddon- A building included in the base game with broken stats, making it grow far more commonly than other commercial buildings. This can make your city covered in repetitive Wern Insurance buildings. A fix exists to correct this so the building grows less commonly, called Go Away Wern. Will Wright Liking SimMars Mod, but never publicly stated he liked any other mod for the game Windows Update KB3086255 Winwar Asking you to buy their program after downloading each and every file off the exchanges WolfZe Controversies- His BAT work, while much revered, is no longer available on Simtropolis due to events too spicy to list here. Y U NO USE SLOPE MOD?- A common catchphrase supposedly started by @MandelSoft critiquing users for their extremely steep / horrendous / unrealistic slopes for their road and rail networks. These messages were often constructive, with the member usually recommending a slope mod or to manually reduce the slope a bit to help smooth things out. Youdontdeserveit Cheat- unlocks all rewards buildings Youtube Video series, time lapses, let's plays, showcases, guides/ tutorials, etc Zone too large- when zoning there is a hard limit in the game's code as to how large a zone can be when dragging it out. Interestingly, the I-AG (agricultural) zone size is much larger than the others Zots- Symbols that appear over buildings when there is a problem with them including no power, water, or road access. These can be annoying to players, and a cheat exists called 'tastyzots' to get rid of them ZZZZZ_- Plugins that have to be loaded in last, with a ZZZZZ_ prefix if you don't want the game to break. --- Lore-worthy Members: 6underground @6underground A Nonny Moose- A prolific member of Simtropolis who was always kind and eager to help others with their SimCity 4 questions. He passed away in 2016, and many remember him fondly and miss him dearly. @A Nonny Moose Andreas Roth- Longtime BSC and NAM Team member @Andreas Roth APTX- Japanese modder @APTX Art128 @art128 B22rian- Founder and leader of the Simtropolis Help desk, a channel in the chat room to separate basic SC4 questions way from the social lobby's conversations, which can be very non-SC4 related at times. He also led several tutorial seminars showcasing how to build certain things, or fix common problems in the game. @b22rian Barroco Hispano @Barroco Hispano Bat @bat Beebs- Early Simtropols member and moderator @beebs BarbulaM1- Veteran Simtropolis moderator, rocked the boat with Simtropolis and SC4D relations @BarbulaM1 Barbyw- Prominent BSC member, SC4D admin @BarbyW Bigslark @BigSlark Bipin- Created many detailed reskins / cosmetic adaptions. NAM Team member @Bipin Bixel @bixel Blade2k5 @blade2k5 BLANKBLANK / Ln X @BLANKBLANK Blunder- Popular map maker @blunder Bhmantan / Saus Tatar- Creates SC4 videos with a focus on shorts. @bhmantan Boggy1- Helped many newbies out with questions @Boggy1 Buddybud- Prolific transit modder, and worked on, but never finished, a reskin of the elevated rail network. He also helped with the creation of HD props @buddybud Buggi- Had a contact at Maxis who was able to get the extra cheats DLL and its source code released to the public. This mod provides features like the ability to plop any building in the game, and is essential to a lot of SC4 players. @Buggi Callagrafx @callagrafx CaptCity @CaptCity CasperVg- NAM team member, created various lots, starterd early multiplayer attempts @CasperVg Catty-cb- Programer, provided technical support to more difficult questions and solutions @catty-cb Cheese89 / Kevin & Cheese91 @Kevin @cheese91 Cobb32118 @Cobb32118 Cockatoo @Cockatoo Cogeo- The 'father' of RTMT, pioneering transit modding researcher, created the first stations for GLR as well as multi switch hub stations so sims could transfer from one network to another @cogeo Compdude787 @Compdude787 Confused04- Chat room moderator and assisted many newbies in the chat with basic questions in the social lobby. @confused04 CorinaMarie - Simtropolis admin, created mods such as Parks Aura and No Kickout @CorinaMarie Cougar2004 @Cougar2004 Craig-Abcvs @Craig-Abcvs CSGdesign- Had a decently active website mostly centred around his Natural Growth play style. @CSGdesign Cycledogg / cyclepuppy- Created terrain and tree controllers @CycleDogg Cyclone Boom- Simtropolis admin, created mods for the CoriBoom team such as MySimtropolis @Cyclone Boom Daeley- Edited most of the LUA language code for the BSC Team @Daeley Darkmatter @DarkMatter Dcmetro34- Transit modder, station creator, helped create articles and seminars to help others learn modding techniques @DCMetro34 Deadwoods- BSC member, popular BATter @deadwoods Deathtopumpkins- Popular member who dipped his toes into various aspects of the game, including making a CJ called Virgin Sores, making maps, and being on the NAM Team @deathtopumpkins Dedgren- NAM team member, SC4D admin, had an entire section of SC4D created for him to expand the scope of Three Rivers Region @dedgren Dexter @Dexter Dirk / Dirktator- Simtropolis webmaster @Dirktator DocRoelach- Creator and developer of the SC4Tools collection, Working Man Production (WMP) plugins and associated websites @DocRorlach Droric- Developed DAMN2NAM @Droric Drunkapple- Popular map maker @drunkapple Duke87- Extremely active poster on Simtropolis at one time. Called the 'mega fan' @Duke87 Durfsurn @Durfsurn Dusktrooper- Legendary BAT creator @DuskTrooper Ebina- Member of many teams, helped create the underground rail network and other transit-related projects @ebina Eggman121 @Eggman121 Ennedi- Created slope mods @Ennedi Flann @Flann Frogface @frogface Fukuda- Japanese member, helped bridge the gap with the Japanese community and provided a lot of useful feedback on various creations @fukuda Glenni- BATter, wasn't afraid to rock the boat on various topics and go his own way to create new content @Glenni Godzillaman @Godzillaman Haljackey- Some crazy dude who made this list . Nah, I'm a NAM Team member; testing, breaking & manipulating content far beyond what anyone thought they'd be used for. I conduct public relations for the team and can be considered an evangelist or influencer (shivers). I also make videos; mostly tutorials & UDI tours, but also some series & things too. I'm probably best known for the creative, realistic & insane interchange designs I make with the RHW- showcasing it and other NAM content used in complicated, well utilized & often chaotic situations. @Haljackey HamsterTK @hamsterTK Heblem @Heblem Hester @Hester Krio- A somewhat controversial member but did make good quality BATs which are popular and his models are still used for projects to this day @Krio Kj3400 @kj3400 Hym @hym Ilikehotdogsalot / Iamgoingtoeatyou @ilikehotdogsalot Ill Tonkso- Creator of many popular transit stations, including GLR-in-avenue stations and other BATs @ILL Tonkso Indiana Joe- Helped out many new members with questions, NAM Team member @Indiana Joe Jacqulina @jacqulina JakeMD / swat-medic @JakeMD Jasoncw @Jasoncw Jazzmaster / Yoshiisland @Jazzmaster JBSimio @JBSimio Jeronij- SC4D founder and destroyer @jeronij Jmouse @Jmouse Jondor @jondor Jplumbley- Map maker and NAM team member. Created the SAM and was one of the co-founders of the NWM project and NHP- a mapping team called New Horiizons Productions, designed FLOG (a modular golf course set called Freakish Links of Gophers). He also developed Simulator A, and later ended up in the Traffic Simulator Wars. @jplumbley JP Schriefer @JP Schriefer Livin in Sim @Livin in Sim LivingInThePast- Longtime NAM (constructive) critic @LivingInThePast Lucario Boricua / skuncarioboricua / Dragonxander- Best known for tropical landscapes, Pokémon-themed regions, precision terraforming & technical support for novice players aspiring to become experts. He's one of the very few transportation engineers in the NAM Team, contributing through the Traffic Simulator, Slope Mods and founding the Pedestrian Revolution Mod. @Lucario Boricua Kel9509 @Kel9509 Kellydale2003- Popular BATter @kellydale2003 Mandelsoft / Mrtnrln- Modder and NAM member who specializes in cosmetic pieces, alternative textures, lighting and signs @MandelSoft Masochrist @masochist Matias93 @matias93 Mattb325- Very popular BATter, often did not include dependencies in his files, making for simple downloads. Also held the highest reputation count on Simtropolis @mattb325 McDuell- NAM team member known for his crazy interchange builds (one example) (another) (and another). Also made similar creations in Cityscape @McDuell Meg / Skigeek- Former Simtropolis admin and Dirk's right hand woman for many years @Meg Memo- NAM Team member and programmer. Created many useful mods, such as the 3D camera @memo Metarvo- Power line BATer and NAM team member @metarvo Mightygoose- Help Desk co-founder, creator of 'SimLabs' @mightygoose Mikeaut1- Leader of the MOTM (member of the month) team @Mikeaut1 Moonlight- Japanese modder @Moonlight Moonraker0 / is0padre- Created SC4 videos @Moonraker0 Mayormott / Mott - NAM team member helping with traffic simulator development. Also started a popular thread on SC4D regarding transit enabled lots @mayormot Mrbisonm @mrbisonm MrCinatit @MrCinatit Mushymushy- BATter, network transition textures for NAM, admin on ST discord @MushyMushy Nathanthemayor @nathanthemayor Need4Camaro- Made early UDI videos @Need4Camaro Nerdly_dood- Created many vehicles for the game's automata and UDI selection. Also a NAM (constructive) critic @nerdly_dood Newyorkrunnaway1 @newyorkrunaway1 NMUSpidey @NMUSpidey Noahclem @noahclem NOB Japanese modder @NOB from Japan North country dude- Mostly known for railway yards / creations @north country dude Nos.17 @nos.17 Null45- Modder who has created a number of new .dll files such as one that speeds up the game's loading times. Also created texture-related tools (Batch Png to Fsh Tool, the FSHLib Vista fix, BAT4MAX v4.5's fshwrite, etc.) and is on the NAM Team. @Null 45 Onlyplace4 / OP4- Leader of the BLAM team @onlyplace4 Owenluby @owenluby Paeng @paeng Palpatine001 @Palpatine001 Patriots_1228- Involved with several BAT teams@patriots_1228 Pegasus- Legendary modder, owner of Simpeg website @Pegasus Pixelrage @Pixelrage Qurlix- RHW founder @qurlix RalphaelNinja- Legendary modder- created many early mods, stations, etc which are still very popular to this day @RalphaelNinja Redfox85 / Kitsune- NAM Team member who 'Accidentally' solved one of the biggest requests in the early days: lowering bridge clearance for ferries. As of NAM 49 it now is 20m, and NAM 50's dll (and all subsequent versions), it will allow the slider to reflect this height too. Also worked on type-21 items @redfox85 Redlotus- Foundational NAM member @redlotus Riiga- NAM Team member who made experimental puzzle pieces, laying the foundation for further development. Also created functional toll booths for the RHW mod @riiga Ripplejet @RippleJet Rooker1 @rooker1 Rsc204 / MGB- NAM Team member, moderator, helps new and veteran members with questions and troubleshooting @rsc204 Ryan B- NAM Team member, created various sign packs and realistic road designs @Ryan B Rickmastfan67- Pioneered various concepts for the NAM team @rickmastfan67 Ripplejet / Tage- SC4D Admin and BSC team member who helped create the first version of the CAM. Also worked on traffic simulators and RCI mods @RippleJet Samerton @Samerton Shadow Assassin @Shadow Assassin SimCoug @SimCoug SimGoober- Popular modder @SimGoober SimHoTToDDy @SimHoTToDDy SimMaster07- Leggendary member. Created various technical support topics, NAM features & fixed various aspects of the game. @simmaster07 Simmer2- Popular BATter @Simmer2 Smoncrie @smoncrie SIM-ple Jack @SIM-ple Jack Sithlrd98- Created many alternative reskins for networks and curves, very useful at a time when they were less polished / no wealth textures @sithlrd98 Suplado!- Middle East CJ'er @suplado! Swamper77- BSC and NAM Team member, automata / traffic simulator developer. Created several puzzle pieces and pathing fixes @Swamper77 Swordmaster- Creator of the RRW, a realistic reskin of the railway network @Swordmaster T Wrecks- Legendary modder @T Wrecks Tarkus - NAM Team lead for many years. Founder of various NAM projects such as the Network Widening Mod (NWM) and vastly increased the scope of other projects like the RHW. Also created some notable City Journals including Argentum & Tarkusian Cities @Tarkus Teirusu - Helped found some NAM projects such as the RHW and created the Rain tool @Teirusu Terring- Futuristic / Sci-fi creator and player @Terring Thatmonkeysim @thatmonkeysim The7trumpets- Foundational NAM member @the7trumpets TheMurderousCricket @TheMurderousCricket Theteacat @theTeaCat Threestooges @threestooges Throvin- Euro texture creator @Thorvin Thundercrack83 @thundercrack83 Toothless Snitch @Toothless Stitch Toxicpiano @toxicpiano Trar @trar Tropod- NAM Founder @Tropod TV-VCR @TV-VCR Tyberius06- NAM Team member, STEX moderator, modified multiple files to fix them / make them more compatible, helped compile modpacks and restore files from SC4D's LEX. @Tyberius06 Ulisse Wolf / Ulisse- Created several City Journals, NAM member who helped develop draggable Pedmalls and CAM developer who is trying to complete the projects left by Maxis and expand the gameplay of SC4. @Ulisse Wolf Un1- Created very early slope mods @un1 Vahr / Blue Lightning- Father of RHW Flexfly @Vahr Vester_DK @vester_DK Voar Tok @Voar Tok Warrior- Created various tools, continued work on the HSRP, NAM Team member @warrior Wouanagaine- Map maker, programmer of various SC4 tools such as the DatPacker. @wouanagaine Xannepann @xannepan Xxdita- BSC member who was involved in a lot of initiatives involving the CAM and PIM-X, often involved in the modding side of the group's efforts. Well-known for his animated monkey avatars. @xxdita Xyloxadoria- Well known station / RTMT creator and BATter @Xyloxadoria Yarahi @Yarahi your_adress_here @your_adress_here Z1/ Z- Traffic simulator developer for the NAM @z1 Zeddic @Zeddic Zelgadis- The Fabulous, Rainbow-Adorned, Eyebrow-Plucking, Oh-So-Fashionable, Cutest Little Administrator of Simtropolis and Queen of Transylvania @Zelgadis Zezug- Chat room moderator and assisted many newbies in the chat with basic questions in the social lobby. @Zezug --- Honourable mentions: /cbg/ - ' City Building General' term on 4chan. Example being this (non English) post about NAM 32 Arcologies (mostly from SimCity 2000) Angry Video Game Nerd SNES review Bowser attack in SimCity SNES instead of a Godzilla attack in SimCity (1989) due to the game being 'Nintendofied' Braun Llama Dome- Reward building from SimCity 2000, named after Jeff Braun, co-founder of Maxis Cities Skylines 2 Release- Similar to the Cities Skylines release but at a much lower scale. Many believe SimCity 4 still remains the best city building game to date. City Status (Population)- in SimCity SNES, your city state changes with your population size. The music updates and you get some rewards and challenges. There is village (0-1,999), town (2,000-9,999), city (10,000-49,999), capitol (50,000 to 99,999), metropolis (100,000-499,999) and megaopolis (500k+). Megalopolis is extremely difficult to achieve. Dr Wright- NPC advisor in SimCity SNES named after Will Wright, who also appears in Super Smash Brothers Magnasanti - SimCity 3000 max population hellscape Mario Statue- A reward building given when your city reaches a population of 500,000 acheving Megaopolis status in SimCity SNES. It is modelled after the Statue of Liberty, and is considered to be extremely difficult to achieve. Most players do not get past Metropolis status (100k popluation) in the game as you need a city with very little water, carefully laid out cities & a lot of luck to achieve this milestone. Maxis was possibly working on a successor to SimCity (2013) before EA canned the studio MaxisGuillaume @MaxisGuillaume doing his best to do public relations on Simtropolis pre and post SimCity (2013) release Maxisman- glitch in SimCity 2000, superhero in SimCity (2013) r/SimCity (top submissions) SimCity (1989) Had a monster on the game box- and looked very much like Godzillia. Toho- the owners of the Godzillia trademark did not like this and the box art was changed to a tornado instead. SimCity (1989) was seen as obscure and did not sell well until The New York Times worte an article about the game regarding it's 'no win scenario'. Back then all games were very linear and SimCity (1989) was one of the first games that had no ending. This media attention caused the game's sales to skyrocket and the publicity inspired concepts like open world games, along with Maxis becoming a huge brand and spawning spinoffs such as SimCity SNES and sequels like SimCity 2000. SimCity (2013) Honest Trailer SimCity (2013) Q&A hosted by Simtropolis member @Zelgadis SimCity (2013) release fiasco- The launch of SimCity (2013) is arguably the worst in gaming history, competing with others such as Diablo 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. On launch day players had to wait hours to access a server, as the game needed to be connected to one to play (always online DRM), with the game launcher frequently freezing or resetting as players patience waned. The issue did not improve much over the following few weeks, until EA decided to add more servers to handle the demand. However, by then most players had stopped playing, being heavily disappointed by the inferior product produced / small city sizes and a general lack of fun. EA later offered a free game to appease their customers, many who were demanding refunds, but the frustration stuck, tarnishing the reputation of the entire SimCity series. SimCity (2013) was stated it needed to be always online to work, but a offline mode hack proved this to be false SimCity Mayor Collegehumor skit SimCity NES Never being released, reworked into SimCity SNES SimCity vs Cities Skylines skit SimShitty / ShittySkylines Simtropolis Interview with Maxis- During SimCity (2013)'s development, @Dirktator & @hym were invited by EA to visit Maxis' studio and conduct an interview with Maxis. It was split into two parts- one with developers Kip Katserelis and Stone Librande & another with Maxis' creative director: Ocean Quigley Starcraft has a term called SimCity Where your base is constructed in such a way that structures serve more functions than those of the individual buildings; usually for defensive purposes by creating a narrow path that enemy units will have trouble crossing or blocking a pathway entirely. The utterly insane disasters in SimCity Creator for the Wii, including (but certainly not limited to) a giant spiked ball rolling around, hands and hammers smashing your city, and a variant of the monster attack with llamas. YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING, YOU WILL REGRET THIS (Advisor message in SimCity 2000)

Just came across the following information when accessing Hide and Seek!, which currently stands as the largest combined repository of Japanese content: Of course this is using an online translation tool, but it does appear the domain will expire next Feb. However it's not completely clear if the downloads on that site will remain available after that date at another site. The good news I suppose is that we have 10 months or so warning, rather than the site just shutting off one day. But I figured this may have slipped under most people's radar since I never saw it mentioned elsewhere.

Hi all, I thought this might be fun: Combine your Reputation and Rank and share it here. We all started as Clean Slate Freshman here on Simtropolis. Over time, we share our posts which count towards the RANK and fellow members react to them, which counts towards our REPUTATION. Both comes with a label and the combination of them makes me smile and sometimes laugh. For example, it makes me currently a Xyzzy Resident. - I do hope it is not pronounced "sissy". Anyway, we all have a long way to go until we reach the much revered @A Nonny Moose's Iconic Pillar of Simtropolis. But while we aspire to that shining example, maybe you too would like to share your (current and new) Reputation and Rank?

Hello everyone, sorry for the out of the blue post from a complete newbie. I have a Google news alert for Asheron's Call, an older MMORPG that is now defunct (although it lives on in player ran servers). Today I got an odd hit on it... an Obituary. Lee Sojot, who I believe is Odainsaker on this website and known to the SimCity community, passed away earlier this month after a year long battle with... some form of illness. His IRL name is mentioned over here in a reply to Odainsaker, and he created a thread about AC after the game was shut down here. His obituary is available here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sanantonio/name/lee-sojot-obituary?id=57356776 I do not have any additional information than this, but since he was very active in the community over here I felt I should let you all know.

Maybe not the greatest name for this (if anyone comes up with a better title feel free to use it). But the reason for this, is because we have tons of mods and dependencies that we use. Most of them are held in common between Simtropolis and SC4E/Devotion (LEX). While this is wonderful that we've got so much to choose from, but we've got problems with missing dependencies, and even broken links/sites. Currently we're down to 2 major community sites, that of Simtropolis, and the newly updated SC4Evermore site, that was made to replace the older SC4 Devotion. While the Devotion/Evermore team is working to fix many issues that came up with the problems concerning Devotion, and re-uploading all the LEX files, we don't seem to have much going for us in regards to preserving other sites/exchanges. One person was looking for some Japanese lots/dependencies, (over in the SC4E Discord server), and was having trouble. Someone said they may have found them, but the links they came across were dead. While this is rather small, I feel that it can be concerning. Sure, we've got the Internet Archive holding some of this information still, but I think here, we've got a bit of a bigger issue. Many of the foreign mod sites have quite a few good mods that many people are using, yet, none of them even exist in either the LEX or the STEX. My thoughts are that we should try and fix this, sooner, rather than later. I'm aware that the work is a lot, and it will take time, but I think it would be best, if we could work out some way to have multiple sites, host ALL of the SimCity 4 mods. Of course, each would need to be translated to the appropriate language, but, when searching for dependencies for a particular lot, we're not having to run around to find foreign sites that might be holding SC4 mods, and nor will those who aren't well versed in English. I myself have found a few mods on, I believe, a Japanese site, but have had to use a translation extension on my browser to even try to comprehend what was going on. And, honestly, I have no idea what the site is/was, and so I may not be able to go back to it easily. There are other parts to this, which are certainly up for discussion, but I feel that it'd solve quite a few other issues in the process, if only to avoid a recurrence of older problems. But the idea here is that, any mod posted to these exchanges, basically stays up. Older mods would be grand-fathered in, so if they're not currently on places like the LEX/STEX, then they wouldn't be added, but anything added to the newer version, would simply be there, regardless of who made them. Effectively you'd be giving up a right to the ownership of any mods you upload, and they would therefore be held and preserved for others to use. This would mean no removal of the mods by the modder to go off to some other site with them. Of course, a warning would be posted during mod uploading stating as such. To add to this, any mod that's uploaded to one exchange, would then be uploaded to all others. So if someone were to upload a new police station to the STEX, then it would also be uploaded to LEX, the Japanese Exchange, etc., to ensure that everyone would then have access to these mods and their dependencies. Of course, much of this would require cooperation between the foreign exchanges for this to work, and I'm unsure of what the state of relations is between each site. Another thing that would be useful, though most certainly monumental in nature, would be some form of cross-referencing index of mods and dependencies. Basically, a file/table of some kind that would show a mod, and it's list of dependencies, but also a way to view a list of mods that rely on a particular dependency. We already have most, if not all, of the information for this already, we would just need to spend the time. Though, again, I'm aware that this is no small feat. I also think that doing this, may be helpful in regards to tracking various mods, so as to ensure lower rates of conflicts in regards to mod IDs. Basically, some mods can utilize certain IDs to adjust their location within the menus, but many people have a tendency to pick similar numbers (humans aren't great at being random), but a system could be devised to establish what IDs each mod gets. This too would also need to be worked out with the foreign sites, as the goal here would be to make it as universal as possible, so that if someone opts to download a ton of lots that were uploaded from multiple exchanges, then there, theoretically, wouldn't be a conflict of mods. The only conflict with mods at this point would only be those that completely override certain parts of the base game (changing data on the Police Kiosk to alter the default game configuration for example), or parts of the original mod (ex: changing out a custom transit lot so it can fit better with the NAM). Overall, the goal is to ensure that everyone has access to all SC4 mods, so that we can all enjoy them, and to ensure that we can always find everything for each mod, with few, if any, issues. Please do provide feedback, and if there's anything I'm unaware of, let me know, or if y'all have a better idea for what to do, or how to do any of this, please feel free to bring it up. I just don't think that the haphazard way we've done all this is going to be good for us for the future. We're already getting some good traction with improving some things, and we're not plagued by the arguments of old, so I think fixing these issue will go a long way towards keeping the game, and community, enjoyable for everyone.

Since I spend long hours sitting in a chair at work, I have become a huge fan of podcasts. Too much, really. I know a lot about medieval England now, to be sure. I can't be alone in discovering that there's a whole world full of college-level lectures in every imaginable subject... even if they can't pronounce some very important words correctly (eyes Pirate History suspiciously). I'm not big on true crime outside of mafia/organized crime subjects, but True Crime Historian is an all-time winner in my estimation. Sadly, it completed its run some years back. Who's got some to recommend?

The eternal problem of SimCity China, to date I have not managed to access, there are a lot of buildings that I would like to obtain but I have not been able to have access

So, the other day on the SC4D Discord server, there was talk about problems within the SC4 Steam community, and after looking at some of the topics within the Steam community, and how things are, I realized that, we should probably address this directly. Now, I'm not saying we can stop or weed out trolls, but, I realized that, while it would be wonderful to guide people over to both here and the SC4D forums, possibly a pretty serious issue is being strictly limited to these forums, when everyone's got access to so much more. The idea is to open up integration of sorts with places like steam, cause it seems like there's not as much intermingling of the fans of the game from one area to the other. I'm sure this can also be applied to other related sites (I haven't interacted with the GOG community as of yet). I'd also like to note that, my interaction with the Steam community in general, is very small (literally the past couple of days after it was brought up and I began investigating to see how things were), so my thoughts and opinions may not be best for improving things within that branch of the SC4 community. That said, I'm not entirely clear on how to improve this, thus why I created this topic, as I feel everyone here would be better able to bounce ideas around. This initially started with the idea of attempting to establish Steam integration with the game, where we could drop a few, rather simple mods that people could quickly and easily grab, without having to come out to the STEX or LEX. Now this wasn't to say that it'd eliminate the need for sending people back over to both here and the Devotion forums, as I'd love for the fans to join the SC4 community forums in general. During an initial chat over in the Devotion Discord server, I learned that attempting any form of Steam integration would be rather difficult, because, we're either heavily reliant on EA going back to SC4 to establish the integration (and considering their Origin version of the game, I don't think that's going to be a good thing if they did), or, find a way to create some kind of a wrapper program to allow a sort of superficial integration, but, even with that, it's highly likely that we'd need to interact with the game code directly to pull it off, which of course falls under the weird legal issues that come with the game and EA. So, for now, any integration with the Steam workshop of any kind, will be put aside until something's been sorted out with any of the legal issues that could pop up. I forget who it was, but, someone mentioned that parts of the Steam community are out of touch with the SC4 community (which I very much saw with my limited exploration so far; there's a lot, so it's going to take a while), and that many of them often complain about issues with the game, when they could just do some quick searches. This is why I asked about the workshop integration, as we could at least be nice enough to give out the bug fixes and other related patches to help the Steam side of the community out. I know there's tons of mods for the game, and I would absolutely love to see many of them on the Steam workshop, however, I'm aware of the many problems that have been plaguing the SC4 community across both forums sites, which, even if we could add them to the Steam workshop without any particular legal issues, it would still be problematic trying to post the mods there, simply because of legacy code, and weird quirks with the mods. Case in point, it'd be a serious pain attempting to add the thousands of dependencies if Project Zip wasn't already underway. So, if we're ever cleared for it, I'm sure the dependencies will be super easy to deal with adding to the workshop (relatively speaking). My goal, and interest, is to find a way to integrate the Steam community into the rest of the SC4 community, where they don't feel separated or alienated, and hopefully, won't be as aggravated with the game, and just blame the company for "not making SC4 to modern standards" due to it being a 20 year old game. I may very well be misunderstanding the situation, and that in reality it could be that the Steam side of the community is well integrated, but, it just seems like there is a level of disconnect, and I'd love to, at least, reduce it, if not remove it entirely. Would love any feedback on this.

I remember this site was more alive back in its days. I made some contributions recently and posted my first file last month. Hope to see some of my fav modders and addon makers continue sharing their amazing content!

Hope I'm posting this in the right place. I don't post often. For more than 15 years now this site and sc4 community continues to impress and surprise me. Your continued team work, creativity, and willingness to help others is just awesome. That's what makes this game totally amazing still after nearly 20 years. Thank you @NAM Team, @CorinaMarie, @Cyclone Boom, @Haljackey, @Tyberius06, @rsc204, @Dirktator and so MANY others for your ongoing support and involvement in this site and for your help, advice, and the WORK you put into this community and into the different aspects and new additions or improvements to SC4. THANK YOU. Side note to all the unbelievably talented modders/BATters like @mattb325, @Jasoncw, and countless others, your work does not go unnoticed. It's incredible and I thank you for it. The game would not be the same without it.

In light of recent news about Cori's absence and current recovery, I proposed creating an off-topic thread dedicated to mental health. This space would serve as a safe space for discussing life, issues, or seeking conversation, especially for those who may be in a similar space to Cori. In a world where mental health is important, establishing this thread felt necessary. Having personally struggled with mental health and having a dear friend who attempted to take their own life, I believe a thread like this could offer even a small measure of help to anyone in need. Apart from offering a platform to share and seek support, I'll also include valuable links and contact details for UK and international mental health resources for easier access on the site: UK numbers and useful sites: Samaritans Available 24 hours a day to provide confidential emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress, despair or suicidal thoughts. www.samaritans.org 116 123 (free to call from within the UK and Ireland), 24 hours a day Email: jo@samaritans.org Mind Mind offers advice, support and information to people experiencing a mental health difficulty and their family and friends. Mind also has a network of local associations in England and Wales to which people can turn for help and assistance. Lines are open Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm (except bank holidays). www.mind.org.uk InfoLine: 0300 123 3393 to call, or text 86463 Email info@mind.org.uk Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) A helpline for people in the UK who are down or have hit a wall for any reason, who need to talk or find information and support. www.thecalmzone.net Helpline: 0800 58 58 58 Webchat: www.thecalmzone.net/help/webchat/ US and international sites and numbers: https://adelbkorkorfoundation.org/resources/ - Great site for various US numbers and text lines for external help Suicide prevention and mental health: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 or Lifeline Chat Crisis Text Line: Text HOME TO 741741 National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI HelpLine: 1-800-950-6264 or text NAMI to 741-741 Crisis Support Services national helpline: 800-273-8255 SAMHSA’s National Helpline (substance abuse and mental health): 800-662-HELP (800-662-4357) Teen Line for youth in need of support: 800-852-8336

Miraculous News! This afternoon I've received an email from a friend Cori knows in real life from work (which I recall she told me about). They said how Cori "is out of the hospital and is doing okay". Also how it'll be some time before they're back online. There are no other details I'm aware of at this point. I've replied to say about such relief to hear they're alive. Also there's no pressure for Cori to return, but of course the door remains open to do so however they wish (and all in their own time). Thank you again all for the kind and heartfelt messages (inside the initial topic). We now know there's a good chance Cori is aware of our posts, or will be sometime. (As an aside, I'll be giving any rep received on this post directly to @CorinaMarie's profile. I'm only the messenger here passing forth this good news.) -CB

This is without doubt the hardest post I've ever had to make. I had to spend the past couple of days composing myself, and coming to terms with the fact we may never see @CorinaMarie again. I truly wish this wasn't the reality we now face, but everything suggests otherwise. ---------- Cori has been absent from Simtropolis since 18:32 (EDT) on Friday 15 July, 2022. Firstly to give a bit of background context to paint the picture... During the past few months, Cori has been enduring real life turmoil with the passing of a very close relative, and also an untimely turn of events which meant there was no other option but to move house. Big changes in life were set to happen, and an unknown with a new job and how this might affect participation on Simtropolis. I tried my very best to maintain optimism how it could be made to work out, and I'd continue taking care of the site while Cori needed time away. Throughout this time it's been my total focus to provide the support I could, even though I'm many miles away and could only give emotional and not physical assistance. Cori frequently thanked me for giving the support I was able, and understood it was a limitation of our distance for not being able to help more. We were both content, and realised our friendship was integral to their ability to continue along in life. As some of you may know, Cori and I are very good friends, and we chat on Skype on a daily basis. That day on Friday was just like any usual day. We'd been allocating "work time" so she could get on with sorting things for the upcoming house move. Cori returned just after 17:44 that day, and we caught up on site notifications (or beeps as she liked to call them). After doing so, Cori played a SC4 for a bit, before we had a relaxing time prior to calling it a night. Little did I know at 22:09 that evening, it would be the last chat message I'd receive from her (at least to now). Usually I'm a little too quick to become concerned in such situations, although this fear stemmed from a worst case scenario and trying to prevent it. I felt a duty of care to look after Cori in keep providing all the support as able. I encouraged and we still had recent fun times, and during the past few weeks things were looking hopeful with progress for RL things being accomplished. The future seemed brighter. I reinforced how she wasn't alone, and still had me to talk with about any concerns or fears. I tried to give hope for the future in years ahead. The prospects of what can be achieved in both reality and creatively in game. Just that last night we were saying about still seeing ourselves playing SC4 for the next 10-20 years in some form. I believed it too. The following morning (Saturday 16th) I awoke and checked Skype to see Cori had not returned as expected. The time by then was about 14 hours since, and I received an email and written document file from them. The start of the message said "Hiya, CB." but then the following sentence made me realise the theme of what it would be about: "This is devastating news." I knew instantly this was something dreadful. It was tragic. While I'll not post the full details of the message since it's very personal, I can sum it up with this quote: Cori said they planned to not continue on in life. The implication of reasoning was due to the pressures of their situation, and prospects of the future being less than desirable. I can empathise with this position, as it sounded awful. As much as wishing it didn't come to this, and if only there was still another possible pathway. I'm still unsure whether they went through with these plans, but at this point I fear the worst. There were no signs leading up to Saturday how this might become a possibility. Again, I wish with all my heart this wasn't reality. Perhaps there's even a remote possibility they changed their mind. Hope can sometimes be artificial, but I suppose it's a natural trait. We always keep hope. They concluded their message by thanking me for our friendship with very heartfelt words. Cori, if by chance you're still here and somehow read this message, I still wish to chat with you again. You are still a much valued Member, Moderator and Admin, and you'll continue to be treasured by us all. At this point I'm still in a combination of shock and denial. I cannot believe this has happened. Not only to my very best friend, but for how much the absence of Cori will send shock waves through the entire community. About involvement with Simtropolis, she often said much about enjoying being part of this place, and also for the way SC4 was still a focal interest to us both. If this mayoral world was reality, I know you'd still be here now. In the days ahead I'll make another post here which explains where I personally stand, and what this means for Simtropolis. ---------- To end this post, here is a timely beautiful song I remember Cori once mentioned: And an image which Cori and I both particularly admired from the James Webb telescope First Images release: (This is officially named the Carina Nebula, but at the time while chatting, we decided to name it the Corina Nebula.) It seems only fitting to conclude my post here with this very image. -CB

With the STEX approaching 20 years old (containing 23,459 files and counting), we believe the categories are due for an overhaul to make browsing much easier for all players. The current structure is way too broad and we believe that can be improved. Therefore, we've outlined a proposal to enhance the ease of finding SC4 files on the exchange. The poll question is simply whether or not you agree changes would be a good idea without needing to agree specifically with the following suggestions. Then when you reply, you can agree with the outline or make suggestions of your own. The following is a replacement for "Lots" and "Buildings" categories as well as other tweaks: Proposed New STEX SC4 Categories Residential: Houses, apartments, and tall towers with residential use. Commercial: Shops, shopping malls, office blocks, and skyscrapers with commercial use. Industrial: Factories, manufacturing facilities, and high tech buildings. Agricultural: Farms and other rural themed lots, including fields. Civic & Urban: Primary city civic structures, including fire, police, school, hospital, churches, rewards, and stadiums. Also anything urban themed in general, including other misc ploppable structures. Utilities: Power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing facilities. Parks & Plazas: Ploppable lots themed as park sets for city beautification purposes. Transportation: Items themed around transport networks, including stations, road and rail mods, tunnels, airports, and seaports. Automata: Cars, trains, planes, boats, which travel on game transportation routes. Gameplay Mods: Modifications which alter aspects of the simulation parameters. Graphical Mods: Modifications which enhance graphical aspects, including water, terrain, beach, rock, and tree mods, and UI elements (e.g. data views / graphs). Also includes MMPs which add details to the landscape. Cheats: Mods or lots which are designed to radically alter the gameplay, such as for city funding boosts. Tools: Programs to use for working with SC4 data files, along with map making utilities. Maps: Files to allow custom regions to be rendered for use in game. Ready Made Regions: Complete zips of playable pre-rendered regions (~50 MB max). These are either terrain only or with development in place. Dependencies: Files to use which add props or textures on custom lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools. 3ds Models: Gmax source model files which can be used for modifying and rendering as a custom BAT design. Obsolete & Legacy: These files are not recommended for use, but are kept here in case someone has a reason to need them. ---------- By creating this topic, we'd like to gauge community opinion about the idea for these new categories. Do you like these, or have suggestions for other categories which might even be worth adding additionally? Remember, the poll is for a Yes / No opinion meaning: Yes: Make some sort of changes. No: The SC4 STEX categories are perfect as they are already. We also encourage discussion about this so we can refine the implementation. We plan to keep this open for a few weeks (depending on input), and after such to commence the reorganisation if there is a two-thirds majority in favor (Yes) for changes. Thanks everyone. -CB & Cori

For some reason, I often wish that SimCity 3000 modding was comparable in complexity to SimCity 4 (or maybe even Minecraft) modding. Maybe one day, someone at Maxis or EA will decide that the game is too old to be profitable, and release it as open-source software. Highly unlikely, but, you know.

Hey Guys, It's an idea I've been toying with for quite some time now. Do you think it would be possible at all for at least some of us to meet up at something akin to convention? Was anything like that ever planned? Is it possible at all? I could swear I've seen some of the guys posting their photos with some other guys from this 'ere page IRL on "Share your picture" thread or something. So... why not? I don't really know how much of a power or resources Simtropolis has to pull out something like that. I'm really curious though. Or could we perhaps establish a "Travelling around" thread where people could announce where they are headed (holiday or business) and say "I will be in Copenhagen from 1st until 3rd July. Any mayors who'd like to meet up?". What do you guys think?

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