I have been in Simcity 2000 since its release and since then I have never dropped. I still play regularly and I love it. It’s like an old love story that refuses to go out & mldr;
On the other hand, it is true that Simcity 4, even if I expected a lot, well I did not hang at the time. Too complex, less intuitive than its predecessor & mldr; But it might be worth it that I am interested in it again, because it was still released 22 years ago now and that since then, the game has never stopped ripening. And not just a little! Imagine being able to build motorway exchangers at 5 levels or suspended metros that even Cities: Skylines 2 cannot reproduce & mldr;
So, no, no active development on the part of Maxis, swallowed for a long time by EA, but rather by an international community of modders which has done something really magnificent! They decomposed the code, exploited abandoned features, and integrated homemade DLLS to push the limits of the game engine. And the result is crazy since we have an old title which technically surpasses its own successors and continues to evolve.
Released in January 2003, Simcity 4 should have logically restored to the cemetery of games forgotten for a long time. But now, while the spotlights turned to Cities: Skylines (released in 2015) then its suite (released in 2023), a fierce community persists in maintaining this dinosaur alive.
I start with the Network Addon Mod (NAM), the real cornerstone of this Renaissance, which has just released its 49th version in March 2025. While EA abandoned the franchise after the failure of Simcity 2013 (this Simcity without a number that everyone wants to forget), enthusiasts continued to refine a game released when ADSL was still a novelty.
And this is not a simple cosmetic update, because as you can see in the videos that drag on YouTube, players building metropolises with completely crazy transport systems! Multi-level exchange, complex rail networks, canals, tunnels, bridges & mldr; All operating on a fully revised traffic simulation which, according to many experts, remains deeper and more realistic than that of Cities: Skylines 2.
The most fascinating in this story is the way in which this community has proceeded such as digital archaeologists excavating in the game code as in old ruins, in search of hidden treasures.
And they found some crazy things! The first major hack dates back to the start of the game, namely, the discovery of an “earth road” not used in the code. This route, a vestige of a feature abandoned by the developers, was transformed into what the community calls the “Real Highway” (RHW), opening the door to customizable motorways that the original game did not allow.
And then it never stopped! Paul Pedriana, the original programmer of the game, ended up hearing about these efforts and even provided a bit of the source code to the community. Then, in 2019, the release of a 64-bit port for MacOS revealed readable code allowing new manipulations.
The use of Customs DLLS was also a revolution. For non-technicians, imagine it as organ transplants for the game. Modders inject their own code into the body of the game, allowing it to do things for which it was not designed. For example, they completely replaced the water system (bugged in the original version) and added a 3D camera to a game initially limited to a fixed isometric view.
The icing on the cake, they corrected the infamous “Prop Pox”, a bug that corrupted the backgrounds of big cities and scared the players. EA has never corrected this problem, the modders, if 💪.
The Network Addon Mod team has about 25 full -time members plus occasional contributors, spread over the four corners of the world and some are professionals in their fields, such as Lucario Boricua, a civil engineer from Puerto Rico who brings his real expertise to simulation.
Tarkus, the main developer of the NAM, joined the community in 2006 after having come across a primitive version of the highway mod. Seeing the unexploited potential, he decided to take matters into his own hands and 19 years later, he still coordinates the community’s effort on the project.
What strikes in this community is its maturity. According to testimonies, forums and discord are free from tribal wars and “political bullshit” which often poison online communities. It is a haven of peace for enthusiasts of virtual urban planning, a space where you can discuss traffic models and motorways without unnecessary drama.
Current developers even say modesty that they “stand on the shoulders of the giants”, That is to say on the shoulders of those who laid the technical bases in the first years of the game. It is a beautiful metaphor for this patient accumulation of knowledge that, layer after layer, to transform the game into something that its creators would never have imagined possible.
But then, why does Simcity 4 continue to be actively developed while much more recent games are abandoned?
Well part of the answer lies in the very design of the game. Simcity 4 was a deep title, with a complex simulation which offered a fertile terrain for experimentation. And unlike many modern games optimized for “Eye Candy” rather than depth, there was room to grow. The other factor too is the opening of the game. Even unwittingly explicitly, Maxis has created a program relatively easy to modify. And modern developers understood this lesson & mldr; For example, Cities: Skylines was designed from the start to be a modestable, which has also greatly contributed to its success.
We see the same phenomenon with other classics like Doom, which still benefits from impressive mods two decades later. These games become creative platforms, transcending their status as a simple commercial product and for us, players, this is excellent news because it means that a game can continue to evolve far beyond its official “expiration date”. Obviously as long as there is a passionate community behind & mldr;
Now if you want to embark on the Simcity 4 adventure, download the Network Addon Mod, join the Simtropolis forums, and find out why this game refuses, like me, to retire !! Here’s how to do:
1. Buy the game : Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition is available on Steam, Gog or Origin (about 10 balls on promotion)
2. Install the basic fixes : Download SC4FIX To correct the main bugs
3. Install it Network Addon MOD : Go to SC4nam.com and download the latest version
4. Create an account on Simtropolis : This is the main hub to download buildings and other mods
5. Mods recommended to start ::
– Cam (Colossus Addon Mod) to improve the growth system of cities
– BSC (Catalog style building) for more varied and realistic buildings
– HD MOD terrain for improved textures
I tell you, it’s worth throwing a look & mldr again; It’s really for this kind of thing that I like computers. The hack, hands in the cuddly and keeping the softs that have long been forgotten if we rested only on his publisher.
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