SimCity 4

SimCity 4 is the fourth installment of the ever-so-popular series, adding so much content that trying to understand everything is on par with learning Ancient Greek from scratch.

Debug mode
A DLL file has been leaked which can be added to the Plugins folder to add some debug options. It can be downloaded here:

Once the plugin is installed, when you use Ctrl+X to open the cheat window, you can right click to get a list of all available commands. Also, when you hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift and use the Query tool to hover your mouse over any building, you will get detailed statistics about the building including wealth, desirability, pollution and more.

The commands added by the plugin are as follows:


 * Barstuck stops the news bar at the bottom.
 * BuildingPlop allows you to "plop" all RCI buildings in the game whereever you want. Once you enter the command, a window will open with the internal names of all the in-game buildings. Select a building and press the X button to close the window and another window will pop up where you can choose from all available footprints. Select one and press the X button again and you will now be able to build the building (for free). Be aware, though, that there are some issues with plopping buildings. Commercial buildings will generally work perfectly fine, except for minor display issues (they're displayed as city-owned area). Industrial buildings work too but never produce freight. Residental buildings, however, do not work at all. They'll abandon immediately.
 * CreateException crashes the game. Yeah. It was used to test the exception report.
 * DrawPaths draws traffic paths on the roads, allowing you to see what constitutes a valid pathway for commuting purposes and how they are linked together. This was used by the developers to diagnose traffic problems with certain roads and junctions.
 * FPS allows you to adjust the game's frame rate.
 * GOL begins the Game of Life. Observe how green life beings traverse through your city.
 * HidePaths will hide the traffic paths enabled by the DrawPaths command.
 * LotPlop does the same as BuildingPlop above, but for lots (like schools etc.)
 * Moolah, followed by a number, sets your amount of money to the specified value. This was probably used by the developers as an easy money cheat, and also to test various situations a player may face such as bankruptcy.
 * PlopAllBuildings plops all RCI buildings in the game on the current map. This is very resource intensive, and will crash the game if the map is too small to hold all in-game RCI buildings. This was probably used to quickly test appearance, i. e. checking for missing model files.
 * RiskyMoney gives you $10,000, but there's a catch. There's a random chance your city will be subject to a disastrous earthquake when you use this command.
 * ShowTime adds a clock showing the system time to the game.
 * SimDate allows you to set the in-game date. However, it will always set the date to one day after what you type in. Therefore, SimDate 12 31 1999 sets the date to 1/1/00, the first day in the game.
 * Snow adds snow to the terrain based on the terrain height and the in-game date (more snow in December, less in July). This is an in-game easter egg which is normally triggered if the real-life date is set to Christmas, but this code triggers it too. Note that the snow is a purely visual effect, it does not affect traffic in any way.
 * Stopwatch stops the in-game time.
 * udriveit allows you to control any vehicle in the game by clicking on it. This also includes vehicles which cannot normally be controlled in U-Drive-It mode. These usually work fine, more or less, but have various problems. The vehicles you can control this way are listed here:
 * Large cargo ship (seaport): Works perfectly fine, and you can crush all other boats.
 * Cruise ship: Works perfectly fine too, but detonates by itself after some time, for whatever reason.
 * Sailboat: It is very slow (as is typical of sailboats), but strangely you can reverse at full speed, like a car.
 * Green rail vehicle: It works, and you can drive at full speed without it derailing (like it is supposed to).
 * Articulated truck: Rather buggy. If you select the head, you can drive around normally but the trailer looks totally wrong (it is detached and does not follow the head around). If you select the trailer, the head automatically detaches and you can't move. After a while, it disappears on its own.
 * Concrete mixer: Works perfectly fine.
 * Pedestrians: You can't move at all. It's surprising this is a valid vehicle to begin with.

Some commands are not listed, but still work:


 * SetSeaLevel, followed by a number, allows you to set the water level. You can either make the entire map dry, or flood it. The water level will reset itself when you reload the city.

Upgradable buildings
In the final game, the three airports can upgrade when their capacity is reached. The seaport and the city hall was meant to be upgradable like that as well. The coding for the upgradable seaport still remains, and you can easily make seaports upgradable. The city hall, however, cannot upgrade in the game no matter what, but the model files are in the games nevertheless.

Dirt road
Dirt roads were planned for the game but not implemented for reasons unknown. Perhaps the developers thought that it would have such a low capacity it would be rendered entirely useless.

The following unused text in the game directly references this unused feature:

Unused cap
There's an unused cap that prevents RCI buildings from progressing unless it is within range of a fire station.

Ordinances
All the ordinances from SimCity 3000 are still coded in the game, but never used. The Smoking Ban Ordinance even has unused text relating to it, which is formatted differently from all the other text in SimCity 4:

The following text appears to be from a later date in development, as it uses the "new" text format:

Additionally, these two properties were supposed to be used by ordinances. They're present in the code but never actually used:


 * Year available would make the ordinance available only after a certain year. This property is only set for the Power Conversation ordinance, to the year 1970.
 * Monthly Chance set the chance this ordinance would become available. This suggests not all ordinances were available immediately, as in the final game, but they would randomly appear during the course of the game.