sc4-growify

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that adds a cheat code to convert plopped buildings to a growable RCI zone type.

This mod is an in-game equivalent to the SC4 command line tool's growify command for editing save games (and the website version).

One of the differences between the two tools is the building exemplar property that is used to detect the RCI building type.
The SC4 command line tool uses the Capacity Satisfied property from the savegame's lot subfile.
This plugin uses the Purpose property from the building's exemplar.

Before:

After:

The plugin can be downloaded from the Releases tab: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-growify/releases

System Requirements

• SimCity 4 version 641
• Windows 10 or later

The plugin may work on Windows 7 or later with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute installed, but I do not have the ability to test that.

Installation

1. Close SimCity 4.
2. Copy SC4Growify.dll into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
3. Start SimCity 4.

Using the Plugin

The plugin adds a Growify cheat code with the following syntax:

Growify <zone type> <zone density> [make historical]

The <zone type> parameter is one of: Residential, Commercial, Agriculture or Industrial.
The <zone density> parameter is one of: Low, Medium or High.
The [make historical] parameter is optional, when not present it will default to true. This behavior is intended to prevent the game from replacing the plopped building as part of its normal zone redevelopment process. Setting the value to false will preserve the game's existing historical option for that lot.

All commands are case-insensitive.

Examples Commands

The following command converts all commercial plopped buildings to the Commercial Medium-density zone: Growify Commercial Medium To save typing, you could also use: Growify Com Med or Growify C M. This works with any zone or density value.

Because the Agriculture zone only has 1 density, it can be used with just the zone name: Growify Agriculture.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4Growify.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.
See LICENSE.txt for more information.

3rd party code

gzcom-dll Located in the vendor folder, MIT License.
EABase Located in the vendor folder, BSD 3-Clause License.
EASTL Located in the vendor folder, BSD 3-Clause License.
Windows Implementation Library - MIT License
SC4Fix - MIT License
Boost.Algorithm - Boost Software License, Version 1.0.

Source Code

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2022
• VCPkg with the Visual Studio integration

Building the plugin

• Open the solution in the src folder
• Update the post build events to copy the build output to you SimCity 4 application plugins folder.
• Build the solution

Debugging the plugin

Visual Studio can be configured to launch SimCity 4 on the Debugging page of the project properties. I configured the debugger to launch the game in a window with the following command line:
-intro:off -CPUcount:1 -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32

You may need to adjust the window resolution for your primary screen.