WARNING: THIS MOD IS HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL. YOU MAY DOWNLOAD IT FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. FOR EFFECTIVE USE IN GAMEPLAY, YOU MUST WAIT FOR AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT. 

UNTIL WE SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, IT IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN TO RELEASE CUSTOM UIs WITH CUSTOM IDs.

THE MOD IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CAM 1.0 AND CAM 2.1.1.

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that allows the game to use more than 4 building styles.

This DLL mod is intended as a dependency for other mods that add new building styles beyond the 4 that Maxis included, it does not add any building styles to the game by itself.

Maxis programmed the Building Style Control UI to only recognize the check boxes of the 4 built-in styles, no matter how may check boxes are actually present. This mod patches the game's memory to remove that restriction.

Cheat Codes

The DLL provides the following cheat codes:

ActiveStyle shows an in-game message box with the ID of the currently active style when Change building style every N years is selected. When Build all styles at once is selected, using this cheat will display a message saying that mode is active.

DebugActiveStyles writes the IDs of all the active/checked styles to the plugin's log file.

Adding More Building Styles into SC4

This is a brief overview of the process required to add new building styles into the game.

1. Create a patch that overrides the default Building Style Control UI, TGI 0x00000000,0x96a006b0,0x6bc61f19 in SimCity_1.dat.
2. Edit the building style UI in the patch to add a check box for your new style(s).
   • The check box ID (e.g. 0x2003) identifies the building style to the game, these IDs should be in the range of 0x2000 to 0x2fff.
3. Update the building OG values to use the new style.

@CorinaMarie has a post with more details on how to update a building to a new style. Note that you only need to follow the steps in that post up to step 8. The additional steps in that post are not required with this mod. It is not necessary to edit the Building Development Simulator when using the edited Building Style Control UI.

System Requirements

• SimCity 4 version 641
• Windows 10 or later

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

Installation

1. Close SimCity 4.
2. Copy SC4MoreBuildingStyles.dll into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
3. Start SimCity 4.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4MoreBuildingStyles.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

Source Code and Support

Plugin thread: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/762969-allow-more-building-styles-dll-plugin/

The plugin's source code and issue tracker are located on GitHub: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-more-building-styles