SC4 Season Jumper

SC4SeasonJumper is a SimCity 4 DLL plugin that advances the simulation at the game's fastest speed until a target season begins, then pauses the city. Because the simulator is allowed to run normally it does not cause issues with historical city stats, unlike the SC4ExtraCheatsDLL SimDate cheat code.

The plugin is mainly meant to make two common date-sensitive workflows easier: using seasonal flora, which should be planted on September 1st for consistent results, and saving cities on June 1st so region view thumbnails use a consistent summer date.

The DLL also includes an enabled-by-default FixSeasonalPropVisibility patch for the vanilla bug where seasonal props created during their active season can stay invisible until the next time their start date comes around.

Installation

Copy these files into your SimCity 4 Plugins folder:

• SC4SeasonJumper.dll
• SC4SeasonJumper.ini
• SC4SeasonJumper.dat

Controls

The hotkey is configured by the companion WinKey DAT resource:

• Ctrl+F9: jump to the next fall start if the current date is January through August, or to the next summer start if the current date is September through December.
• Press Ctrl+F9 again while a jump is running to cancel and pause immediately.

The plugin also registers these cheat codes through the normal Ctrl+X cheat dialog:

• jumpseason: same behavior as the hotkey.
• jumpspring: next March 1.
• jumpsummer: next June 1.
• jumpfall: next September 1.
• jumpwinter: next December 1.

The keyboard shortcut can be changed by editing SC4SeasonJumper.dat with iLive's Reader.

Configuration

The default INI file is copied to the Plugins folder on first deployment:

[SC4SeasonJumper]
LogLevel=info
LogToFile=true
FixSeasonalPropVisibility=true

LogLevel accepts trace, debug, info, warn, error, critical, or off.

FixSeasonalPropVisibility accepts true, false, 1, 0, yes, or no. When enabled, it fixes the seasonal prop visibility bug for painted props, plopped or grown lot props, and 3D prop previews. The patch only installs on the supported SimCity 4 1.1.641 executable; on other builds it logs a warning and leaves the game unpatched.

Building

This project targets the 32-bit Windows version of SimCity 4.

cmake --preset vs2022-win32-debug
cmake --build --preset vs2022-win32-debug-build

The build deploys SC4SeasonJumper.dll and the default INI to:

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins

Disable deployment with:

cmake --preset vs2022-win32-debug -DSC4_ENABLE_PLUGIN_DEPLOYMENT=OFF