SC4 RH Universal Binary Patch Released!

[jeepboy 1]

HI Everyone, Aspyr today released a public beta of an updater that brings Universal Binary support (native Intel-Mac support) for SC4 Rush Hour/Deluxe. You can download it here: http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18397 Notes that accompany it: Aspyr Media today released a free open beta patch for SimCity 4 Rush Hour. The open beta status of this patch is intended to let the user of this patch provide Aspyr with feedback as to how well it works. For now, Simcity 4 Rush Hour is still not supported for play on Intel Macs. "Feel free to provide us with feedback as to how well it is working, or what you would like fixed in the patch," says the company.

[Qaxpla 0]

just took the UB for a test spin. haven't noticed many changes between using it with rosetta and having it universal. whilst that's a good thing for apple's rosetta, not such a good thing for me haha. having said that though, my menus are faster and there isn't so many bumps/laggy moments within the game when zooming or travelling/scrolling.

things appear to be a little smoother but nothing drastic anyway. maybe i'd of noticed more of a difference if I had more RAM, i'm only powering my macbook with 512mb atm. which reminds me, i must upgrade this at some point!!

[mduser63 0]

So is this just for Rush Hour? I have the original non-Deluxe Sim City 4 and don't have the Rush Hour expansion. How does that work?

As an aside, I emailed Aspyr earlier this week asking about a Universal patch for SC4 and was told they were working on it but had no release date yet. I didn't think they'd have it out so soon. EDIT: Looks like you must have Rush Hour installed for the patch to work. That's mildly annoying.

[bwatterud 7]

Wow this is great. I've been waiting for this ever since I got an Intel Mac. I'm also glad that It's free. MacSoft is charging 5 bucks (not much, I know, but it's hard to get my dad to buy anything for me online, even if I pay him back) to get the binary patch for Halo.

@mduser-Well, I'd suggest getting Rush Hour. The additions are well worth it, and most of the stuff here (including NAM, the greatest mod of all time) won't work without it. It may be hard to find a copy, but if you did find one, it would be dirt cheap (there's one on ebay right now for $7.00).

[brod7 0]

Long time lurker/mac user here...bwatterud, have you (or anyone else) tried it out yet to gauge performance increases?

Thanks.

[GoaSkin 2]

Has anybody tried if night-lighting is fixed with that patch?

If not, this BETA may be a way to nerve ASPYR with that. If there is a debug message console after crashes for example, you can write in there that night-lighting does not work. May be, there are other contacts to ASPYR given. Through the form on the web-page you send to the distribution and they only donate pills. Maybe we can contact other people now.

[bwatterud 7]

The night-lighting hasn't been fixed, so I guess I've got to get back to work. From what I can tell, the loading times have been cut down, which was good news, because the load times were really slow (I can't say for sure, but from what I understand, they were a lot slower than on the PC version).

[rshohara 0]

Now that the patch has been out for awhile, are there any brave souls who installed the patch who could comment about how well the patch works? The reviews on the Aspyr site are pretty mediocre and it sounds like waiting for the next release would be a good idea. Thoughts?

[GoaSkin 2]

With the universal version, I have lines and arrows with wrong colors when using the traffic query tool and sometimes the game freezes when plopping custom railway stations. Same problem here?

[schro440 0]

Hmmm... I will offer up my opinion of the new Universal Binary SC4. Well... menus, scrolling, and general game play feel a touch faster. But, the game now crashes unexpectedly -- sometimes when when plopping tranist-enabled lots... sometimes when plopping parks... its totally unpredictable.

BTW, I am running SC4 on a new 24" iMac (1 GB RAM, NVidia graphics card with 128mb). So, my machine isn't THAT much of a slug (considering it is newly minted and the game is... well... 5 years old!).

Hope that helps -- maybe someday we'll actually be able to run things like all those Windows users out there.

**ALSO** Maybe someone out there could do a comparison of all the different graphics settings for maximum speed? OH OH! One more thing, I used to be able to select "software rendering" but now it will only allow me to use the "hardware rendering" option... who honestly knows.

[GoaSkin 2]

On my system it crashes when plugging any transit-enabled LOT. What I can do is to pause the game, build it, save it and then re-open.

[Crissa 1]

Can someone describe the night-lighting bug?

I'm not sure if I fixed it or not.

-Crissa

[bwatterud 7]

Basically, any BATs that you download will not light up at night.