Cheeta on steroids?

[Korrente 0]

Other than the game occasionally, randomly crashing which seems to happen to everyone with this game, it has suddenly started being...twitchy. As in, the game runs at about 10 times the normal speed, clouds fly in and out, cars moving at hundreds of miles per hour, wind-powered generators are doing hundreds of RPM's, etc.

I checked the Direct3D in the diagnostic, it Works, but the cube with the logo on it is also spinning at hundreds of RPMs, with the version v.7 render going pretty fast, and v.9 going increadibly fast. I turned the hardware acceleration down to the point where it turns off Direct3D, nothing changed. I turned off 'Write Combining' and i got one hour-long session that ran well out of the game before it crashed, and I haven't gotten it to work normally since.

I recently put XP Pro. on here from XP Home, which also had the game, and it ran prefectly. Other than that, Nothing has changed on the system.

As you can see, I'm assuming there is a problem with the Direct3D or something...has anyone seen this happen before? Anyone know of how to fix it?

Here are my specs:

Time of this report: 7/12/2007, 01:49:32

       Machine name: SILVER

   Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)

           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: System manufacturer

       System Model: System Product Name

               BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG

          Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+,  MMX,  3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz

             Memory: 2046MB RAM

          Page File: 606MB used, 3332MB available

        Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS

    DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

     DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT

[Cockatoo 2,256]

I think you have clicked the 'Variable automata speed' box in the graphics section (Which changes the speed of some of the visual effects to go with the simulation speed). You could have the best computer in the world and if you didn't have this on things would still move a realistic pace.

Ouh, and welcome to Simtropolis by the way, I see this is you're first post.

[Cob92 360]

This is no bug. As C0ckatoo-210893 stated, the variable speed automata option is the cause. It is enabled by default and turning it off will eliminate the speed effects. The automata will move at turtle speed no matter what the simulation speed once this is done.

[Korrente 0]

Is that an in-game option? If so, I don't see it anywhere. I don't have Rush Hour if that helps, I forgot to mention that. But this problem happens no matter what setting I have it on, even paused. And scrolling is almost impossible with this, as it's refreshing so fast it apparently doesn't think my mouse has moved, so it will either get locked, and keep scrolling no matter what I do, or scroll very choppily and slowly. It also does that one the region view. It does it no matter if the software or hardware renders, and no matter what detail I set anything to. However...I just opened the game and it was working again on the region view, and when I opened my cities, the clouds started doing that...super cycling thing, meaning it had started again.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There is a known problem with this game and the Athlon dual processor system.  You should set your game to run in only 1 cpu, as it can't handle the multithreading properly with more than one processor.  To do this, use the task manager to set the affinity to one or the other of the two processors after the game has reached the region display.

[Korrente 0]

Yeah, I just got a support email from EA that said the same thing. Thanks for trying though.