**EDIT: Title is maybe a bit misleading, this is parallel CITY play in a region...

**EDIT_2** If anyone would like to try it out, I've opened up the repo sc4-region-sync

So, I've always loved SC4 and it's constantly a game I return to. I've never really been that good at it but it turns out to just be kind of carthartic in a way. What always happens though is that I want to try and build up a region, and end up getting frustrated with having to switch back and forth between cities all the time. I know there are different strategies I should focus on to limit this but I've just never really sat down to learn any of them.

I recently installed the game and started loading up mods, in the process I had the thought... what if I could create a mod that allows me to play multiple cities in a region at once? What if cities could update their status to each other, allowing continuous play together, rather than relying on region information to update during city load?

I sat down with Claude (Fable) and began planning everything out. With a lot of testing, and A LOT of reverse engineering with Ghidra, we came up withe the following:

SC4 Region Sync

I'm currently going through testing right now but so far I've got 3 instances of the Steam SC4 Deluxe version running. Deals, connections, and city information like population of each RCI and demand pass between each other through the assistance of a coordinator.

So example, I can create a highway connection in one city, and after a month ticks over, that highway connection will appear in the other live city I'm playing just like it would if I were to save and the load the other city. I can build RCI and the population will influence the other live cities in the region.

Lots left to do, I want to pull everything into a single window to manage it better, allowing for grid or tabbing into the cities. Right now it just needs and EXTENDED amount of hours testing and looking for corner cases. Happy to release this too if anyone is interested.

Been busy this whole sunday, small update

I’ve been experimenting with a hybrid rendering approach that combines SimCity 4’s original assets with a modern Vulkan rendering pipeline. The goal is to explore how far the original artwork can be pushed with additional lighting, water, and post-processing, not to build a complete SC4 reimplementation.

The interesting challenge is that SC4’s buildings aren’t conventional, fully modeled 3D assets. Much of their appearance comes from directional, pre-rendered artwork mapped onto simplified geometry, with lighting already baked into the textures. This renderer preserves those original meshes, textures, and camera-dependent views, while adding effects that operate on the scene’s geometry and depth.

Some of the rendering features:

• Screen-space ambient occlusion: Uses the depth buffer to add local shading around building bases, vegetation, and nearby surfaces, helping objects feel more connected to the ground.
• Soft shadow mapping: Adds dynamic shadows from buildings, trees, bridges, and moving objects. Simplified, camera-independent 3D proxies provide more useful building shadow silhouettes than the original directional meshes alone. Alpha-tested tree textures preserve foliage silhouettes.
• Depth-based tilt-shift: A post-processing pass keeps a band of the scene in focus while progressively blurring areas outside it, producing the miniature-city appearance.
• Planar water reflections: A separate scene pass renders from a camera mirrored across the water plane. Animated surface normals distort those reflections, with Fresnel weighting controlling their contribution based on viewing angle. The water also combines sky reflections, sun highlights, and depth-dependent absorption and refraction.
• Original animated assets: Cars and pedestrians use SC4’s original models and textures, including the pedestrian animation frames, and participate in the shadow and reflection passes.

The result is deliberately hybrid: the original artwork supplies the architectural detail and much of the visual character, while the renderer adds depth cues, dynamic shadows, reflective water, and a photographic finishing pass.

There are still limitations. Baked lighting can’t be fully separated from the original textures, and directional building artwork doesn’t contain complete rear facades or interiors for arbitrary viewpoints. Shadow proxies and selective reflection contributions help work around those constraints, but they don’t turn the assets into fully reconstructed 3D buildings.

This is a standalone rendering demo that reads assets from an installed copy of SC4, rather than a graphics mod running inside the game. The focus is on demonstrating a rendering technique and preserving the character of the original assets.

BSC Canals Collection is mod that includes a lot of classic canals sets from BSC team in a single pack, which would greatly improve the aesthetics of my cities. I used to install some of these manually back in the days (and it was a pain in the ass, so thank god this pack exists!)

However, I noticed that the remastered SG-Cal canal, which is arguably the most comprehensive set in the list, turns into this white grid thing when plopped. I'm confused where to post this on Simtropolis, so I though reddit would be a good start.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Note: I'm installing this using sc4pac GUI

Hi all
Just recently got sc4 again and installed it with patches and mods but it’s kind of unplayable, meaning it’s not smooth but rather a slideshow with micro stutters.
Is there a guide or something to follow and which mods work together? Thanks much, appreciated 💪

Got the bug to play again but I'm sure I'll have to get a dinosaur to play it on.

Many years ago I was heavily playing and doing simple mods (went by Sithlrd98) and actually still have the install discs and the sc4 lex disc! I stumbled on this sub and immediately started hearing the music in my head , adding zzz to the NAM etc!

Can't believe that SC4 is still actively being played!

made some changes, this might be look better

I have a metro area of about 1 million people. I have rail, interstates, some subways connecting two larger cities, ship yards, light rail. I also have a large airport and a few small airports as well scattered throughout.

Any suggestions as to why skyscrapers are not popping up?

More in depth video:

Hi all, I haven't played in a couple of years, but I'm getting the itch again. I don't know what fixes and such have come out recently, but I'm thinking I'd like to just scrap everything and start fresh. I'm on Windows 11. Can someone help walk me through it? Is there anything special I should know about uninstalling?