Vista trouble !

[TheNachoFan 0]

Ok, here's how things are going.

My mom bought a brand-new laptop somewhere late november (not the most powerful), and I get to use it more than she does, being a novice at using a computer It has Vista Home, alright, I could install SimCity 4 Deluxe without any glitch, it starts, it loads a city (say, Making Money tutorial), I pause it, but once I start to zoom in and out, a flurry of colors comes into play : skyscrapers' façade, colored spots... I don't know what the problem is. 1 GB RAM, Core Duo T2350, intel GMA 900 something, no plugins installed or anything : I just wanted to run the game to see what kind of performance it could deliver.

Editing this post from an XP-running P III 650, 256 MB RAM (I run the game on a separate, old, small 6GB HD with 98SE), bought in the summer of 2000 with a couple of hardware updates since, I feel due up for a change. I think of buying a laptop (even if I would get a better bang for my buck settling for a desktop CPU) within the next weeks, and wonder if I'd be better off to ditch Vista in favor of XP...

For what my mom will do, I don't consider switching her OS, but I'd like to know if anyone has an answer for the video trouble.

Thank you

(If someone here wishes to PM me in French about this matter, don't hesitate!)

[SC4BOY 20]

Based on your description, I seriously doubt your problem relates to Vista. instead I'd bet it relates to either the video driver (maybe) or your screen size/ratio and what makes SC4 happy. If you download the latest video driver and take a look, a number actually have an SC4 setting. If your screen size is the new 16:9 ration instead of the old 4:3 than you probably will have to make some accomadation for SC4. Portable screens (usually LCD) cannot easily be changed to other resolutions without having poor video images. There are 3rd party (free) solutions that would work on XP .. dunno about Vista.. Do a google on SC4, "Wide screen" and maybe "drivers" or "resolution".. You can also try running SC4 in a "WINDOW" by adding -w to the end of the properties on the shortcut for SC4 and setting that to run at 1200x900 or 1024x768 etc.. good luck with it.. Sorry I don't have Vista or i'd be more specific.

[tungston 19]

I find that Vista is more stable than XP, also the Core2duo, and quad also seem to be more stable than the high end P4's.

The video problem might well be as SC4boy mentioned, as a resolution issue. You can set the resolution to the laptop screen size with a custom resolution tag on the shortcut target.

[screamingman12 30]

It's a laptop, is it using shared video memory? if it is, check the ammount. Make sure it has enough to run SC4, I'm not sure, but I think it requires a 64MB card.

[TheNachoFan 0]

I wonder if the N_O_Body topic about updating the game could be related to my situation... could be the anti-alias thing which I don't know much about now, but I'll look at it later.

As for resolution, I had tried a custom tag in the shortcut target before posting the topic... but I think I did it all wrong ! I set the custom tag as 1440x900 or something like it, just the way my screen is (I didn't get it right when I read a related topic on custom resolution), instead of writing, say, 1200x900. Writing 1440x900 made the game even more stretched horizontally !

Desktop, right click, properties ... Maximum Graphics Memory : it says 224 MB, and 73 MB in use.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, the resolution parameters are -rwwwxhhhxcc where:

www

is the width of the screen in pixels

hhh

is the height of the screen in pixels

cc

in the number of bits to use for color.

For example:  -r1200x900x32

I believe there is another parameter that enables odd sizes like this, but I can't remember it.  anyone?

[tungston 19]

This is an example, edit to the correct path, and resolution.

"C:\Program Files\Games\simcity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1440x900x32 -f -intro:off 

[TheNachoFan 0]

Yesterday I tried both 1200x900x32 and 1440x900x32. While the latter looked perfectly natural, the graphics go crazy as descried when I do a very quick zoom-in. 1200x900x32 has given me a stretched look, but it worked good. I still haven't played really, just entered into one city and one undeveloped territory, once again. Upon verification, I had put a folder in the plugin folder, plus 2 more plugins (bldgprop_vol1 and 2).