Lit up buildings for mac

[Cuppa79 0]

Hi, I was wondering if there is a patch available for mac to enable downloaded buildings to light up? I found one but it was an .exe file for windows.

Thanks in advance.

[His Divine Hand 244]

The simple answer to your question is no. There is no patch for Mac versions of SC4 to allow custom building nightlights.

On the other hand, if you have access to Windows, there is a fairly complicated process that can be used to add the ability to night light buildings for the Mac version of the game. Of course, it is time consuming, and did I mention complicated?

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

Originally posted by: His Divine Hand

did I mention complicated?quote>

I do belive you did, i read the process you are talking about and i can confirm that it is complicated.

Another alternitive is using "Paralells or Bootcamp,  You can then install sc4 within the windows emulator.

[Hamish 1,369]

Well, no, as others have said, there is no patch. Disappointing? Well then, once I figure out how to upload to the STEX, it hasn't been taking my files recently, I am going to upload a few BATs that I have created, all of them are fully mac compatible.

I think I might also revive the old mac pack thread, and start uploading nightlight fixes of popular STEX buildings.

i am also making a new tutorial for the omnibus, a more detailed and easier to follow tutorial, so if you do have windows, then you can create your own.

I will update this post when those buildings are uploaded.

[thingfishs 416]

how do you make a building mac compatible? (you mean the lights, right?) I though night lights were an all or nothing affair...

[Cuppa79 0]

Thanks for all the help! Think I'll avoid any complications and leave it for now.

[His Divine Hand 244]

Originally posted by: thingfishs

how do you make a building mac compatible? (you mean the lights, right?) I though night lights were an all or nothing affair...quote>

The night lighting patch for SC4 apparently corrected a flaw that either Maxis had ignored or forgotten about when designing custom creation tools for the game, in that the game only used the night map thingies of buildings produced in a supported TGI hex range, of which the BAT does not use to avoid conflicts with game material.  As the Mac port never got this fix, the only way to get BATs to light up is if you manually adjust the hex coding of the files TGI's.  Of course, you need to know which ranges of numbers aren't used by the game, but are still supported and then manually change all of the BAT''s .fsh and .s3d files TGIs, of which there is always twenty(?) .s3d files, and at least the same of .fsh files; but with larger buildings the number of .fsh files increases quite a bit. . .  

Or something like that, the last time I did that was two years ago, so my memory is a bit rusty.

[thingfishs 416]

yikes... thanks for that. I myself am on a macbook, and run the windows version through bootcamp. As a past user of the mac version I have to recommend (assuming cuppa has a intel chip), getting the windows version. It really does run a lot better than the mac one and you'll get your nightlights (without the aforementioned agony)