sc4-disable-lot-plop-smoke

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that disables the smoke that is shown after plopping a lot.

The method that the game uses to place a lot takes a Boolean parameter that controls whether the smoke effect is shown. When that method is called by the lot placement UI tool it hard-codes that parameter to true, we patch the game's memory to change it to false.

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

System Requirements

SimCity 4 version 641
Windows 10 or later

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

Installation

Close SimCity 4.
Copy SC4DisableLotPlopSmoke.dll into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
Start SimCity 4.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4DisableLotPlopSmoke.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

License

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

3rd party code

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

Source Code

Prerequisites

Visual Studio 2022

Building the plugin

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

Debugging the plugin

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

You may need to adjust the resolution for your screen.

0xC0000054 / sc4-disable-lot-plop-smoke