Compare text

Find the difference between two text files

Real-time editor

Hide unchanged lines

Disable line wrap

Layout

Diff precision

Syntax highlighting

Diffchecker Desktop The most secure way to run Diffchecker. Get the Diffchecker Desktop app: your diffs never leave your computer!Get Desktop

Lore thread compare July 22 to Aug 11

Created 10 months agoDiff never expires

153 removals

Lines
Total
Removed

Characters
Total
Removed

To continue using this feature, upgrade to Diffchecker Pro View Pricing

287 lines

70 additions

Lines
Total
Added

Characters
Total
Added

To continue using this feature, upgrade to Diffchecker Pro View Pricing

185 lines

Items / Events:

$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 meme 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.

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 doublies 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.

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 by @Haljackey

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. Too many to list.

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 Style Mayhem- 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.

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

Air Purification Plant- An exremely popular download which helps players out with air pollution problems in their city

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 by Darmok @Darmok

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 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.

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.

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 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)

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- As a reward for people who donate money to Simtropolis, they are given one of five “Best of STEX” discs. This used to be a physical CD that was mailed to you, but today it is a link to secret BATs that are not available on the normal STEX. These BATs are made by lots of well known/prolific creators like @JBSimio, @mattb325, @Jasoncw, etc.

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 project in Boston that turned a downtown freeway into an underground one. This mod allows players to have more space to build on since less of the surface land is being used by roads. It was the basis to form the failed @freewayexperts splinter group from NAM team and it still has some unresolved issues.

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

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)

BSC becoming elitist / controlling

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 Cleanitol- In 2013, BSC released 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.

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 as a replacement for the monorail network no one uses

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 citybuilder fan site that is still active to this day. It has several BATs that are only available on this site.

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

Census Repository- A building that you can plop that gives you expanded city statistics, as well as some regional stats

Christmas lights on Simtropolis site, breakable by hovering the mouse cursor over them

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

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

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- Photobucket was one 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.

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.

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 cllicking 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.

City states - A trend, especially in city journalism, in which players present / consider their cities as small, independent nations, republics, duchies etc.

CMLs (Custom Member Labels) on a lot of members on SimTropolis and SC4Devotion

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.

CSG Design website

CSGdesign Natural Growth @CSGdesign

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 (and crashing custom queries)

Custom queries (& crashing custom queries)

Cutting funding results in visuals like potholes, striking workers, criminals, etc

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

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

Demand cap, cap relief

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 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.

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.

Digging a 'hole to China' if a puzzle piece isn't placed on flat terrain

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

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 robot dinosaur rampages.

Dll mayhem / renaissance- a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) is a type of file containing code that can be used by multiple programs at once.

Dlls 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

DollyLlama- Cheat code that turns the in-game advisors’ avatars into llamas.

Dr Vu- A supervillain in SimCity. In SC4 he is the subject of various “evil” missions that you can do in your city. He is referenced in various builds but surprisingly has not had a huge impact on the Sims franchise as a whole.

Dr Vu's breasts

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 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

Empty highways yet clogged roads- 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

Franklin County By Patricius Maximus @Patricius Maximus

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 fustration 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

Hitting Reconcile Edges by mistake and losing half your city

Hole Digging lots

HSRP (High Speed Rail Project)

I-HT jobs bug / fix

Ice cream truck plays the SimCity 2000 theme in UDI mode

Immortal lots / Immortality Killer

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

Joerg's Airport Tram @joerg

Llama everything

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

Mayor's Diary (MD) & the hall of fame- Mayor's Diaries 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

Mcduell's crazy interchange builds @McDuell

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

Saved diffs

Original text

Open file

Items / Events:

$5 sales-  SimCity 4 can frequently be found on sale for $5 USD

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 doublies 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 by @Haljackey

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. Too many to list.

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

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

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 by Darmok @Darmok

ANT- Additional / Alternative network tool-  this was a network that Maxis created but never completed, with high speculation 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.

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.

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.

Best City Journal- Arguably the most iconic Trixie award, going to the most prominent City Journal of the year.

Best of STEX discs-  As a reward for people who donate money to Simtropolis, they are given one of five “Best of STEX” discs. This used to be a physical CD that was mailed to you, but today it is a link to secret BATs that are not available on the normal STEX. These BATs are made by lots of well known/prolific creators like @JBSimio, @mattb325, @Jasoncw, etc.

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 project in Boston that turned a downtown freeway into an underground one. This mod allows players to have more space to build on since less of the surface land is being used by roads. 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

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.

BSC becoming elitist / controlling

BSC Cleanitol-  In 2013, BSC released 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 as a replacement for the monorail network no one uses

Cannot place over occupied tiles- But there's nothing there???

Capitalsimcity-  A Spanish-language citybuilder fan site that is still active to this day. It has several BATs that are only available on this site.

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

Christmas lights on Simtropolis site, breakable by hovering the mouse cursor over them

Cities Skylines release

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

City journals with Photobucket hosted images-  Photobucket was one 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.

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.

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

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.

CSG Design website

CSGdesign Natural Growth @CSGdesign

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 (and 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

Demand cap, cap relief

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)

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.

Destruction De Saint Orano-  A YouTube video from 2011 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.

Digging a 'hole to China' if a puzzle piece isn't placed on flat terrain

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

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 robot dinosaur rampages.

Dll mayhem / renaissance-  a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) is a type of file containing code that can be used by multiple programs at once.

Dlls 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

DollyLlama-  Cheat code that turns the in-game advisors’ avatars into llamas.

Dr Vu-  A supervillain in SimCity. In SC4 he is the subject of various “evil” missions that you can do in your city. He is referenced in various builds but surprisingly has not had a huge impact on the Sims franchise as a whole.

Dr Vu's breasts

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 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

Empty highways yet clogged roads-  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

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

Franklin County By Patricius Maximus @Patricius Maximus

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

Helpdesk / Simtropolis Help Squad

Hitting Reconcile Edges by mistake and losing half your city

Hole Digging lots

HSRP (High Speed Rail Project)

I-HT jobs bug / fix

Ice cream truck plays the SimCity 2000 theme in UDI mode

Immortal lots / Immortality Killer

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

Joerg's Airport Tram @joerg

Llama everything

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

Mac users constantly complaining nothing works

Mcduell's crazy interchange builds @McDuell

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.

Memes (see some here)

MMLs - Menu Management Lots

Modding squads / teams

Modpack requests

Money tree

Monorail generates air pollution despite being electric

Moolah Cheat

Multi Highways / RHW

Multiplayer attempts (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 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 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 that a ton of additional fixes and new content has been created since, and that the NAM Team will not provide support for  anything but the current version of the mod.

NAM 48 containing a virus On the ModDB site, team cut ties with hosting the mod there afterward

NAM 69- Estimated version number for some long awaited content on the NAM team's back-burner would be released

NAM release hype- Whenever a new version of the NAM released, there was celebration in the SimCity 4 community, with the news often spreading to other gaming sites and the media. Many players were eager to show their creations with the newly added content or how they incorporated/retrofitted them into their cities. A surge of activity flooded social media, the forums and chat rooms which continue to prove SimCity 4 was still relevant / had gas in the take 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

News ticker

Obscenely large regions

Obsolete guides and broken images, along with 404ing links

Ocean Quigley's Blog

Official EA lot and BAT exchange

Official EA site using screenshots containing 3rd party content / plugins / mods

Oldshoes- His 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.

OpenSC4

Opera House bug / fix

Page flip bug

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

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)
 
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).

Plugins folder size being bigger than the game itself

Police helicopter always over airport

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

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

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 symptons 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 mayhem for RHW (pre-flex piece era)

r/simcity4 (top submissions)

Radical Ordinance Mod

Rage Face region

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

Recycling centres generate air pollution

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 stereo-typically 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, photobucket and majhost.

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

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.

Run for Senator (AKA Losing the game due to poor mayor rating, 100k+ Simoleans in debt, etc)

Savegame

SC4 China

SC4 standing for Soul Calibur 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 by @patfirefghtr

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.

sc4ever.com

SC4Fix & other major game fixes

SC4Mapper

SC4pac

Schulmanator / Schulmania @Schulmanator

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 Being a one stop shop, making other 'show us your' threads a ghost town. @Haljackey created this mess!

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 3000, SimCity 4, The Sims 2 and Spore use the same game engine called Gonzo-Rizzo

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 Polska

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 developed World Building & Geopolitical Role Play Communities such as Alliance of Independent National (AIN) and is used in communities such as NationStates

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

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.

SimGoober mods @SimGoober

SimMars

Simpeg

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

Simtropolis Omnibus

Simtropolis reputation system

Simtropolis Social Lobby (chat room before Discord)

Simtropolis vs SC4D Rivalry

Sketchup -> GMAX pipeline

Slopes so steep train tracks are pretty much roller coaster tracks

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

SSPTool

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

Super Demand Mod

Super Demand Ordinance

Supergrid

Taking 45 minutes to download 15mb patches off the official SC4 website

Tarkusian Cities by @Tarkus

Terrain too steep

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 by Haljackey @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 map Eaton

The OST and remixes

The Ring of Fire mega region

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 By Dedgren @dedgren

Top 10 weekly CJs By Benedict. One was also made for the specific CJ section @Benedict

Toutsimcities

Toxic waste dump

Traffic generators

Traffic simulator being garbage - need NAM to fix.

Transfer money between cities

True Earth by Korver @korver

Trixies

Tunnel building being super annoying

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.

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)

Value of Simoleons compared to US Dollar

Victivas (ancient lore)

Wanting to become a urban planner / civil engineer / politician After playing

Water skiing mini game (via Flash)

Weaknesspays cheat

Weather Mod

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

Youdontdeserveit Cheat

Youtube Cideo series, time lapses, let's plays, showcases, guides/ tutorials, etc

Zone too large

Zots

ZZZZZ_- Plugins that have to be loaded in last, with a ZZZZZ_ prefix if you don't want the game to break.

---

Members:

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 @Andreas Roth

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

Beebs @beebs

Barbyw @BarbyW

Bipin @Bipin

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

CaptCity @CaptCity

CasperVg @CasperVg

Catty-cb @catty-cb

Cheese89 / Kevin & Cheese91 @Kevin @cheese91

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

Cougar2004 @Cougar2004

Cycledogg / cyclepuppy- Created terrain and tree controllers @CycleDogg

Daeley-  Edited most of the LUA language code for the BSC Team @Daeley

Dcmetro34- Transit modder, station creator, helped create articles and seminars to help others learn modding techniques @DCMetro34

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

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

Duke87 @Duke87

Ebina- Member of many teams, helped create the underground rail network and other transit-related projects @ebina

Eggman121 @Eggman121

Flann @Flann

Freeland / @fredfree - 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.

Fukuda @fukuda

Haljackey- Some crazy dude who made this list *:P. 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

Heblem @Heblem

Hym @hym

Ill Tonkso- Creator of many popular transit stations, including GLR-in-avenue stations and other BATs @ILL Tonkso

Indiana Joe @Indiana Joe

Jacqulina @jacqulina

Jasoncw @Jasoncw

Jeronij- SC4D founder and destroyer @jeronij

Jplumbley- Map maker and NAM team member @jplumbley

Livin in Sim @Livin in Sim

Lucario Boricua / skuncarioboricua @Lucario Boricua

Kel9509 @Kel9509

Kellydale2003 @kellydale2003

Mandelsoft / Mrtnrln- Modder and NAM member who specialized in cosmetic pieces, alternative textures, lighting and signs @MandelSoft

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

Meg / Skigeek- Former Simtropolis admin and Dirk's right hand woman for many years @Meg

Memo @memo

Metarvo- Power line BATer and NAM team member @metarvo

Mightygoose @mightygoose

Moonlight- Japanese modder @Moonlight

Mrbisonm @mrbisonm

Nerdly_dood- Created many vehicles for the game's automata and UDI selection. Also a NAM (constructive) critic @nerdly_dood

Newyorkrunnaway1 @newyorkrunaway1

North country dude- Mostly known for railway yards / creations @north country dude

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

OP4 (OnlyPlace 4, leader of BLAM team) @onlyplace4

Palpatine001 @Palpatine001

Qurlix- RHW founder @qurlix

RalphaelNinja @RalphaelNinja

Redfox85 / Kitsune- 'Accidentally' solved one of NAM's biggest requests in the early days of 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. @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

Rsc204 / MGB @rsc204

Samerton @Samerton

SimCoug @SimCoug

SimMaster07 @simmaster07

Simmer2 @Simmer2

Smoncrie @smoncrie

SIM-ple Jack @SIM-ple Jack

Sithlrd98 @sithlrd98

Swamper77- BSC and NAM Team member, automata / traffic simulator developer. Created several puzzle pieces and pathing fixes @Swamper77

Swordmaster- Founder of the RRW, a realistic reskin of the railway network @Swordmaster

T Wreks- Legendary modder @T Wrecks

Tarkus - NAM Team lead for many years @Tarkus

The7trumpets- Foundational NAM member @the7trumpets

TheMurderousCricket @TheMurderousCricket

Throvin- Euro texture creator @Thorvin

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 / Ulisse Wolf- 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 @un1

Vahr / Blue Lightning- @Vahr

Vester_DK- @vester_DK

Voar Tok- @Voar Tok

Warrior @warrior

Wouanagaine- Map maker, programmer of various SC4 tools such as the DatPacker. @wouanagaine

Xyloxadoria @Xyloxadoria

Z1/ Z- Traffic simulator developer for the NAM @z1

Zelgadis @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 monster (Godzilla?)

Braun Llama Dome-  a reward building from SimCity 2000,  named after Jeff Braun, co-founder of Maxis

Dr Wright- Advisor in SimCity SNES who also appears in Super Smash Brothers

Magnasanti - SimCity 3000 max population hellscape

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 (2013) Honest Trailer

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

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.

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.

YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING, YOU WILL REGRET THIS (Advisor message in SimCity 2000)

Changed text

Open file

Items / Events:

$5 sales-  SimCity 4 can frequently be found on sale for $5 USD

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.

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

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

Airplanes clumping together in region view- Fun visual bug that often occurs in large regions

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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