sc4-query-ui-hooks

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that extends the query UI.

The plugin can be downloaded from the Releases tab: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-query-ui-hooks/releases

Features

Shift + Click Object Copying

Some objects can be copied by holding down the shift key and clicking on them with the query tool.

Buildings

Clicking a building will activate the Place Lot tool with the building's lot selected. Note that the exact building may be different if the lot uses Building Families.

Flora

Clicking certain flora types will activate the Place Flora tool with that flora type selected. Note that this only works with the flora objects that have a hover query tool tip.

Additional Building Query Dialog Variables

The DLL provides a number of new variables that can be used in the LTEXT files of a building query dialog in the form of #variable_name#.

Variable List

Name	Description
building_full_funding_capacity	The cost for Education, Fire, Health, Police and Power buildings at the full (100%) capacity. For Fire and Police stations this is the coverage radius.
building_full_funding_coverage	The cost for Education, and Health buildings at the full (100%) coverage radius (School Bus/Ambulance).
building_is_w2w	Shows a 'Yes' or 'No' value based on whether the building has a W2W occupant group.
building_styles	Shows a building's styles in a pipe-separated list.
building_style_lines	Shows a list of the building's styles, with each style after the first one on its own line. E.g:Chicago 1890 New York 1940
building_summary	The building summary the game shows in its hover tool tips. E.g: Low-Wealth Residential
growth_stage	The growth stage of the building's lot.
mysim_name	The name of the MySim that lives in the selected residence.
r1_occupancy	The current number of R§ occupants.
r1_capacity	The R§ occupant capacity.
r2_occupancy	The current number of R§§ occupants.
r2_capacity	The R§§ occupant capacity.
r3_occupancy	The current number of R§§§ occupants.
r3_capacity	The R§§§ occupant capacity.
cs1_occupancy	The current number of Cs§ occupants.
cs1_capacity	The Cs§ occupant capacity.
cs2_occupancy	The current number of Cs§§ occupants.
cs2_capacity	The Cs§§ occupant capacity.
cs3_occupancy	The current number of Cs§§§ occupants.
cs3_capacity	The Cs§§§ occupant capacity.
co2_occupancy	The current number of Co§§ occupants.
co2_capacity	The Co§§ occupant capacity.
co3_occupancy	The current number of Co§§§ occupants.
co3_capacity	The Co§§§ occupant capacity.
ir_occupancy	The current number of I-R occupants.
ir_capacity	The I-R occupant capacity.
id_occupancy	The current number of I-D occupants.
id_capacity	The I-D occupant capacity.
im_occupancy	The current number of I-M occupants.
im_capacity	The I-M occupant capacity.
iht_occupancy	The current number of I-HT occupants.
iht_capacity	The I-HT occupant capacity.

Multiple *_occupancy and *_capacity variables can be combined in a LTEXT query to show the filled/available occupancy. e.g. #cs1_occupancy#/#cs1_capacity#.

Extended Terrain Query

The TerrainQuery command now shows the x, y, and z variables without truncating to the first decimal place, and the cell moisture value is now provided as part of the standard query info.

Alternate Terrain Query

This mode is accessed by holding the Alt key. It shows the humidity and ambient wind information, this data appears to be for the entire tile instead of varying per-cell.

Advanced Query Tool Tips

These tool tips are accessed by holding Control + Alt + Shift when hovering over an appropriate item.

Flora

This tool tip provides the flora object's exemplar name, birth date, and last seeding date.

Network

This tool tip provides technical info about the transportation networks, excluding power lines and pipes.

Props

This tool tip provides the prop object's exemplar name.

SC4QueryUIHooks INI File

This file contains the following options.

EnableOccupantQuerySounds

This option controls whether the query sounds are played when clicking on an item to open the query dialog or copy the lot, the default is true. The occupant query sound properties affected by this option are SFX:Query Sound, SFX:Query Sound Abandoned and SFX:Query Sound Decayed.

LogBuildingPluginPath

This option controls whether the building name and plugin file path will be written to the log file when the building is queried, the default is false.

Using the Code

1. Copy the headers from src/public/include folder into your GZCOM DLL project.
2. Implement cIBuildingQueryDialogHookTarget, cIBuildingQueryToolTipHookTarget, cINetworkQueryToolTipHookTarget and/or cIQueryToolTipAppendTextHookTarget as additional interface(s) on your GZCOM DLL director.
3. Subscribe for the notifications in PostCityInit and unsubscribe in PreCityShutdown.

Notes for Developers

cIBuildingQueryDialogHookTarget

An implementation of this callback interface receives a message before and after the building query dialog is shown.
The intended use case for these callbacks is that the implementer can use the game's cISCStringDetokenizer::AddUnknownTokenReplacementMethod function to register a function to handle occupant-specific string tokens in their BeforeDialogShown method, and unregister it in their AfterDialogShown method.

Tool Tip Advanced/Debug Query

The Tool Tip hook callbacks have a debugQuery parameter, this parameter is set to true if the user activated the game's advanced/debug query mode by holding down Control + Alt + Shift before hovering over an item.

cIBuildingQueryCustomToolTipHookTarget, cIFloraQueryCustomToolTipHookTarget, cINetworkCustomQueryToolTipHookTarget and cIPropQueryCustomToolTipHookTarget

An implementation of these callback interfaces should try to target a narrow set of activation conditions to avoid conflicts between different callback subscribers.
The tool tip callbacks for a specific occupant will be stopped after a subscriber reports that it handled the tool tip, the order that the callbacks are executed in is unspecified. If no subscriber set a custom tool tip for the specific occupant, the game's default tool tip will be shown.

cIQueryToolTipAppendTextHookTarget

An implementation of this callback interface allows callers to append one or more lines of text to the end of the current tool tip. Multiple lines of text can be added by separating them with \n.
The number of lines added to the query and the length of each line should be kept as small as possible. SC4 has a limited amount of space that it reserves for the query tool tip text, and it may fail to display a tool tip that exceeds its limits.

Sample Implementations

See BuildingQueryVariablesProvider.cpp and QueryToolTipProvider.cpp.

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 SC4QueryUIHooks.dll and SC4QueryUIHooks.ini into the top-level of the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory or Documents/SimCity 4 directory.
3. Start SimCity 4.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4QueryUIHooks.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.
Windows Implementation Library - MIT License
SC4Fix - MIT License
Frozen - Apache 2.0 License.
Boost.Algorithm - Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
Boost.PropertyTree - Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
sc4-more-building-styles - 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 window resolution for your primary screen.