A plug-in for Sim City 4 that allows viewing game metrics in a web browser. The web browser can run on a secondary monitor, smart phone or tablet. This adds basic second-screen/multi-monitor capabilities to the game.
The web interface can be edited by altering the included *.html page. It uses AJAX to automatically update game metrics from the plug-in via JSON.
The plug-in supports pausing the game so it can automatically pause the game based on a metric e.g if available power or population fall below a threshold. That way the game can be run unattended without risk.
Inspiration was taken from
- GitHub 0xC0000054/sc4-legalize-gambling-ordinance-upgrade
- GitHub Killeroo/SC4MessageViewer
Dependencies are in the lib/ folder
- GitHub nsgomez/gzcom-dll
- GitHub Karlson2k/libmicrohttpd
- GitHub arduino/ArduinoCore-avr for WString.c/.h
Copy SC4WebInterface.dll and SC4WebInterface_index.html to
C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins
Unblock port 9030/tcp in firewall. For this on administrator PowerShell:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Open Port 9030" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=9030
Run the game. It may be helpful to run it in window mode (see below).
Then in your web-browser open
http://127.0.0.1:9030/
The JSON state can be directly accessed in case you want to do data analysis/live charts with Python or similar.
http://127.0.0.1:9030/state
{
"timestamp": "xxxx-yy-zz_hh-mm-ss",
"cityName": "n/a",
"cityDescription": "n/a",
"mayorName": "n/a",
"lowWealthPopulation": "n/a",
"medWealthPopulation": "n/a",
"highWealthPopulation": "n/a",
"ytdIncome": "n/a",
"ytdExpenses": "n/a",
"estIncome": "n/a",
"estExpenses": "n/a",
"totalMonthlyExpense": "n/a",
"totalYearlyExpense": "n/a",
"totalMonthlyIncome": "n/a",
"totalYearlyIncome": "n/a",
"pauseAtEndOfMonth": "n/a",
}
You may want to add additional parameters to launch the game in window mode and without the intro video
-w -intro:off
When launching from Steam set these parameters in the Steam game options menu.
The code can be compiled from source on Windows with Visual Studio 2022. Alternatively there is a Dummy-Server that can be built and run under Linux.
Anyone is welcome to contribute, see Guide on Contributing
- additional metrics and plots for residential population and high tech industry
- pause when income falls below expense or at end of month
- improved interface, can now show/hide windows, more responsive
- Performance improvement. Less frequent internal state updates.
- Pause from the interface now works more reliably. It engages/disengages and when engaged pauses the game at the next simulated month.
- Interface now also shows a plot of income/expenses
- Visual Studio project configuration path fixes
- Initial Release
- Interface shows JSON