sc4-auto-save

A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that automatically saves a city at user-specified intervals.

This auto-save plugin does not require any launcher and will work with any digital Windows version of the game, Steam, GOG, etc. The disc-based versions are not supported due to the fact that they are incompatible with Windows 10.

If you use a 3rd-party launcher that has its own auto-save setting you will need to disable that option when installing this plugin.

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

System Requirements

• Windows 10 or later

Installation

1. Close SimCity 4.
2. Copy SC4AutoSave.dll and SC4AutoSave.ini into the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory.
3. Configure the auto-save settings, see the Configuring the plugin section.

Configuring the plugin

1. Open SC4AutoSave.ini in a text editor (e.g. Notepad).
   Note that depending on the permissions of your SimCity 4 installation directory you may need to start the text editor with administrator permissions to be able to save the file.

2. Adjust the settings in the [AutoSave] section to your preferences.

3. Save the file and start the game.

Settings overview:

IntervalInMinutes is the number of minutes that elapse between auto-save attempts, defaults to 15 minutes. Note that the save timing may not be exactly this value depending on what the game is doing. For example, auto-save is disabled when the game is paused.

FastSave controls whether the game skips updating the region thumbnail when saving, defaults to true. With this option enabled the save operation is equivalent to the Ctrl + Alt + S keyboard shortcut, when disabled it is equivalent to the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut.

IgnoreTimePaused controls whether the time the game spends paused is ignored when counting towards the next auto-save point, defaults to true.

LogSaveEvents controls whether the save events for the current session will be written to the log file, defaults to true.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4AutoSave.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.
Windows Implementation Library MIT License
.NET runtime The Stopwatch class is based on System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch, MIT License.
Boost.PropertyTree Boost Software License, Version 1.0.

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 a window with the following command line:
-intro:off -CPUcount:1 -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32

You may need to adjust the resolution for your screen.