Running the Windows version of Simcity 4 on Mac in a virtual machine

[bmag_20 61]

 

Out of curiosity, has anyone been able to run the NAM installer with a Wineskin or Winebottler wrapper?

 

-Tarkus

I have, with success.

 

The only thing that it has trouble with is the controller compiler.  It will give an error saying I don't have java installed and that it will install the full-featured controller.  I tend to go with a heavy NAM installation so I don't really have an issue with that seeing as I'd probably end up with most of it anyway.

 

 

Same. Did a re-install just to see if something was amiss but, got the same error message - which for me is also not an issue as I also tend to go with a full-featured controller

[Sabretooth78 808]

Same. Did a re-install just to see if something was amiss but, got the same error message - which for me is also not an issue as I also tend to go with a full-featured controller

 

 

It just so happens that last night I tried installing Java into a copy of my SC4 app (version 1.7 update 51, which is the last which supports XP).  While it will install without a hitch, it doesn't seem to make a difference to the NAM installer - I still get the dialog.

[BuffaloMaine 4]

OK, I'm banging my head against a wall in frustration at the moment. I have given up on the Aspyr release and have a 2 CD copy of the Windows version. I have tried Sabretooth78's instructions on porting to Wineskin but still can't seem to get the game to run. It will install, but when I go to launch it I get an image (looks like an SC4 graphic) of a bridge with cars on it, but then it just hangs... I've tried -intro:off but that doesn't help. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[Sabretooth78 808]

Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

That sounds like the splash screen you get on a PC when loading a CD-based copy of the game, which correlates with what you said you installed with.  More than likely this just means Wine isn't seeing that you have the disc inserted (it was Disc 2 if I recall).  I've never tried my CD version in Wine, only digital copy so I can't say for certain.

 

I'm going to suggest you purchase a digital copy.  Look at GOG.com or Amazon (I've purchased games from both, SC4 from Amazon and the RCT series from GOG).  You won't pay more than $15, which is well worth not having to deal with a CD drive.  (Not to mention an excellent price for a game that'll steal every waking free second you have if you let it.)

 

If I was to boil it all down, aside from real life getting in the way the nuisance of having to carry that CD around with me to play is the number one reason I disappeared from the game (and this community) for nearly 7 years!

[BuffaloMaine 4]

 

Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

That sounds like the splash screen you get on a PC when loading a CD-based copy of the game, which correlates with what you said you installed with.  More than likely this just means Wine isn't seeing that you have the disc inserted (it was Disc 2 if I recall).  I've never tried my CD version in Wine, only digital copy so I can't say for certain.

 

I'm going to suggest you purchase a digital copy.  Look at GOG.com or Amazon (I've purchased games from both, SC4 from Amazon and the RCT series from GOG).  You won't pay more than $15, which is well worth not having to deal with a CD drive.  (Not to mention an excellent price for a game that'll steal every waking free second you have if you let it.)

 

If I was to boil it all down, aside from real life getting in the way the nuisance of having to carry that CD around with me to play is the number one reason I disappeared from the game (and this community) for nearly 7 years!

 

 

I actually made images of each CD so I'm running from those since dealing with the drive itself was a pain. If I point Drive D: (which is set to CD-ROM) at the folder holding the CD1 files, it hangs. If I point it at the folder holding the CD2 files, it claims the disc is not inserted.

 

Anyway, thanks. I was afraid you were going to say that since I spent $20 on the Aspyr port earlier this summer and didn't want to shell out more money. I originally stopped playing (and drifted off from this community, which I always kind of lurked in anyway) once I upgraded to Mavericks. I was so psyched to get back into it and now I'm a bit deflated.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I actually made images of each CD so I'm running from those since dealing with the drive itself was a pain. If I point Drive D: (which is set to CD-ROM) at the folder holding the CD1 files, it hangs. If I point it at the folder holding the CD2 files, it claims the disc is not inserted.

 

Anyway, thanks. I was afraid you were going to say that since I spent $20 on the Aspyr port earlier this summer and didn't want to shell out more money. I originally stopped playing (and drifted off from this community, which I always kind of lurked in anyway) once I upgraded to Mavericks. I was so psyched to get back into it and now I'm a bit deflated.

 

 

I had forgotten until you mentioned it, but a while before searching for a digital copy (which I did on a whim prompted by I-don't-know-what) I had tried that route in order to try to get the game to run off a disc image in Parallels.  The images created with no issues, but I may or may not have had the same exact result you got.  In any event it didn't work.

 

Digital copy is a far more elegant solution anyway.  And assuming Wine keeps with the times and continues to support Windows XP apps you'll be future-proofed.  You could explore asking for a refund from Aspyr - I thought of it but didn't.  It cost me $20 in App Store credit that had been sitting around for at least 2 years and I never buy anything else off it so maybe that sapped my motivation.  The fact that it was released unpatched (and with no way to patch it) is ridiculous.

[BuffaloMaine 4]

 

I actually made images of each CD so I'm running from those since dealing with the drive itself was a pain. If I point Drive D: (which is set to CD-ROM) at the folder holding the CD1 files, it hangs. If I point it at the folder holding the CD2 files, it claims the disc is not inserted.

 

Anyway, thanks. I was afraid you were going to say that since I spent $20 on the Aspyr port earlier this summer and didn't want to shell out more money. I originally stopped playing (and drifted off from this community, which I always kind of lurked in anyway) once I upgraded to Mavericks. I was so psyched to get back into it and now I'm a bit deflated.

 

 

I had forgotten until you mentioned it, but a while before searching for a digital copy (which I did on a whim prompted by I-don't-know-what) I had tried that route in order to try to get the game to run off a disc image in Parallels.  The images created with no issues, but I may or may not have had the same exact result you got.  In any event it didn't work.

 

Digital copy is a far more elegant solution anyway.  And assuming Wine keeps with the times and continues to support Windows XP apps you'll be future-proofed.  You could explore asking for a refund from Aspyr - I thought of it but didn't.  It cost me $20 in App Store credit that had been sitting around for at least 2 years and I never buy anything else off it so maybe that sapped my motivation.  The fact that it was released unpatched (and with no way to patch it) is ridiculous.

 

 

Actually just found a copy on GOG.com for $8.

[BuffaloMaine 4]

OK, got it working via Wine BUT I'm having trouble loading my previously built city. All my plugins are loaded and the city and region appear, but when I go to open the city it crashes. It does NOT do this for a newly created city. I have no trouble starting a new city. I also can see all the appropriate plugins when creating a new city.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Well, it's nice to have another Wine convert.  What engine are you running?  I'm running 1.7.20; I would expect you have something even newer than that.

 

Some things that come to mind regarding the CTD...

 

Most likely cause:

• Do you have any HD textures (terrain mods come to mind) or anything else that would require hardware mode?  That's a dead ringer for a CTD.  Unfortunately you can only run software mode in Wine (I've been able to get hardware mode to work with some coaxing but it's virtually unplayable).  Of course if you can load a new city it wouldn't be a terrain mod causing the issue.  But perhaps you have something HD in that city which only causes a problem because it's been placed - i.e. something that doesn't cause a problem until you try to plop it/you try to open a city with it preexisting?  If this is the case, then it's quite possible that your new city will go bad at some point as well, just this time you'll have the benefit of not locking it in with a save and you might have a chance at pinpointing the culprit.
• Painful as it sounds you might want to audit your plugins.  Especially if you haven't played the game in a while since amassing them.  It's worth it though.  I'm actually doing it myself just to compile an index what I have and what files require which dependencies and vice versa.  It'll make it easier whenever I decide to give something the axe and not have to worry about leaving megabytes of vestigial junk lying around.  Of course in this event you almost have to start with a fresh region, unless you already know what's in the old region to try and maintain some continuity.

Less likely:

• Did you do the modifications to the graphicsrules.sgr and videocards.sgr files as well as the appropriate VRAM winetrick I mentioned in   I don't think that not doing those would cause a CTD but they will improve your default settings.

 

I've posted additional information in as well, make sure you've gone through those notes as well (much of the same things).

 

Aside from the CTD issue, how well is it running?  FWIW, I've found it runs better windowed (my preference is a Wine virtual desktop running close to full screen) vs. full screen; in full screen it'll technically run just as well but I get some weird cursor behavior.  Certain cursors like to "stick" despite changing tools (the tools still work, it just doesn't always show the right icon).  It also makes multi-tasking easier; you don't have to hit command-option-A or whatever the key combo is to release focus from the session in order to switch desktops.

 

Also, if you didn't already, "burn" your disc image that you downloaded from GOG to a DMG.  It'll make things easier in the future when you ever might need/want to reinstall.

[BuffaloMaine 4]

Hmm. How do you set it to windowed mode? Do I have to add a flag to the EXE command (like turning off the intro or setting the resolution, etc.)?

 

Update: I just found the settings for windowed mode, though it doesn't seem to want to work for some reason.

 

Once I actually start playing it for real, I'll let you know how it is going. So far I have just tried to load this city that I've been working on since I bought the Aspyr version earlier this summer. It would really bum me out of I couldn't get it to load. I spent a week or two on a single highway interchange.

 

Early indications are that it's running a bit slow. Here are my machine specs:

 

RAM: 32 GB

VRAM: 4 GB

Native resolution: 2560x1440

[Sabretooth78 808]

I like running in a Wine virtual desktop; if you do that make sure that you set a command line modifier with the equivalent resolution to the one you set in the screen options dialog.  I don't really have any experience with running in a window.  One issue with the virtual desktop though is sometimes after a system restart it seems to forget its settings and will boot full screen.  If that happens just quit out, reopen the screen options dialog, re-click one of your settings (it'll already be selected) and close out.  It'll now boot normally.  Must be some kind of bug with Wineskin.

 

I can post my command line string later when I get home, but basically I use the following tags:

 

-Intro:off

-CustomResolution:enabled

-r1600x900x32

-d:DirectX

-CPUCount:1

 

Seeing as you're running retina, I'm not exactly sure how that factors in.  If you're running SC4 in full native, I would expect it to be sluggish with that size of a window to draw.  I run, IIRC, 1600x900 on a 1680x1050 non-retina mid-2012 MbP which is well below your specs (8GB, 512 MB VRAM) and it runs beautifully.  When I ordered mine, I explicitly did not want retina.  What can I say, I'm a contrarian sometimes.

 

I honestly haven't experienced a difference with the CPUCount tag; but I set it because it's recommended.  FYI, you can physically reduce your Mac to only using 1 CPU if you download XCode from the AppStore.  It's free and has some neat diagnostic/debugging tools.  I don't recommend actually running the game for any purpose other than testing while having just one CPU going because it understandably will lag your entire system.

[BuffaloMaine 4]

OK, so there is a definite improvement. One quirk I'm still trying to figure out is, while running in windowed mode, how do you get edge scrolling to work? I like to be able to pan around my city by moving my mouse around (edge scrolling). It doesn't work in windowed mode since Wine doesn't "capture" the mouse. Any ideas or am I stuck with it as is?

 

Update: OK, figured that one out.

 

Still having trouble when I do edge scroll whether or not I'm in windowed mode. Basically I get ghost images (best way to describe it) as I pan around. It's almost as if the renderer can't keep up with the speed of edge scrolling.

[Sky Guy 163]

Hello all, I have a unique problem. 

I recently have been attempting to install SC4 from gamersate on my macbook pro with Parallels as my virtual machine. Everything went smoothly, but I when I change the preferences to software rendering and boot the game again, all I see is a black screen. I can hear the music in the background as well as see the sc4 mouse- and even click, but I can't see anything. I am not sure where to even start to correct this issue. Any suggestions?

 

Thanks.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Do you have anything in your command line string in conflict with software rendering or an inconsistency with your resolution?  Try deleting the simcity4.cfg file and see if that clears up your issues.  If not, there's some deeper problem to diagnose.

[Sky Guy 163]

Thanks, yeah I can delete the simcity4.cfg file and all is well, but that just bumps it back to default settings (hardware rendering). I would like to find a way to keep it on software rendering, if I can ever find the solution to the black screen. On parallels options, I disabled 3d acceleration, and it solved the black screen, but it was so choppy and slow that it was unplayable, so I set it back to DirectX10. 

 

Also, which command line string? Parallels, mac, windows 7... sc4? Im not very tech savvy, although I try to be...

[Sabretooth78 808]

Also, which command line string? Parallels, mac, windows 7... sc4? Im not very tech savvy, although I try to be...

 If you do a right click -> Properties on the shortcut that you use to open the game, in the first field, target, after the ...\SimCity4.exe", you can enter a space and then any of several startup commands to modify how the game is displayed - i.e. custom resolution, force software mode, disable the intro video, etc.

 

More info here.

 

FYI, I've posted the flags I use a few posts above.

 

You might want to at least try the "-d:software" and see if that does anything for you.  Personally, I never had an issue running software with 3D acceleration enabled.  You may want to eventually explore running the game in Wine, which will give you the benefit of being able to run "natively" under OS X.  One of the disadvantages I have with Wine is that I can only run in software mode, actually.

[Sky Guy 163]

 

Also, which command line string? Parallels, mac, windows 7... sc4? Im not very tech savvy, although I try to be...

 If you do a right click -> Properties on the shortcut that you use to open the game, in the first field, target, after the ...\SimCity4.exe", you can enter a space and then any of several startup commands to modify how the game is displayed - i.e. custom resolution, force software mode, disable the intro video, etc.

 

More info here.

 

FYI, I've posted the flags I use a few posts above.

 

You might want to at least try the "-d:software" and see if that does anything for you.  Personally, I never had an issue running software with 3D acceleration enabled.  You may want to eventually explore running the game in Wine, which will give you the benefit of being able to run "natively" under OS X.  One of the disadvantages I have with Wine is that I can only run in software mode, actually.

 

Oh, gotcha. yeah,I actually did that, as well as the -d:software extension and got the same results. I have considered wine- and maybe I will look more into it, but considering the fact that I payed for parallels, I would like to be able to use it for all my windows, etc needs.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I've recently done a little testing running SC4 in Wine and I've discovered a few things and while I've posted some bits and pieces here and there in various threads in this forum I figured this might be the best one to place it under.  Maybe I ought to try submitting another Omnibus article since the original attempt never went through for some reason...

 

Some background:  Late last year I gave up on Wine because of consistent CTDs.  I decided to get back into part-time BATing, and since I couldn't get 3dsmax to run under Wine, I resurrected my Parallels VM.  Curious, I ran a test city to see if it would bomb out, and 2 hours later after building, aggressive zooms and pans, etc., it was still alive.  Oh, and with 4 GB of plugins loaded and no saves.

 

Recently, perhaps because I just can't ever leave anything well enough alone, I was trying to find ways to squeeze more performance out of my Parallels VM.  I discovered that for some reason, no matter what I set my VM settings to, it won't "see" more than 256 MB of VRAM.  Well, there's no such limitation in Wine - so I brought my Wineskin wrapper back from my archive HD and decided to have a go with it.

 

I've come to the conclusion that the -CPUCount:1 tag in Wine on Mac is useless.  I haven't tested it in this go-around, but previously I had also tried a Wine installation using Homebrew and encountered the same behavior, so it isn't just exclusive to Wineskin - it must be something in the OS X architecture.  There is a setting in Wineskin to the effect of forcing the process to 1 CPU but it only works if "hwprefs" is installed - Apple removed hwprefs with 10.7 Lion, I believe.  Therefore, it doesn't work in newer versions and I've tried it and haven't noticed a difference in behavior.  As to why this hasn't been updated - no idea - maybe just a legacy option for those still running 10.6 and previous.

 

So, there are two ways around this issue.

 

• Ditch Wine and run SC4 under a Parallels (or equal) VM.
• Throttle back the CPUs on your Mac.

 

The first option is self-explanatory.  The second option might seem technically complex, but it's not really too bad:

 

1. You need to download XCode from the App Store - don't worry, it's free.  It gives you a bunch of new command line tools as it is intended as a diagnostic tool for testing applications.  The drawback is it'll take up nearly 6 GB for something you might not use 99% of (on the other hand, just getting a Parallels VM operational is going to cost you at least 8 GB, so there may be some savings to be realized).
2. XCode includes an application called "Instruments", and this is what you want.  It can be started either from with XCode (XCode Menu -> Open Developer Tool -> Instruments) or by "Open Package Contents" on the XCode.app file, finding Instruments.app and either putting it in your dock or making an alias/symlink on your desktop or elsewhere.
3. Once in Instruments, open the preferences dialog and click the "CPUs" radio button.  Here it will give you a slider to control the number of active CPU cores as well as a checkbox to disable hyper-threading.
4. Set it to what you like (you can quit Instruments if you like) and start your SC4 Wine wrapper.
5. You can restore the CPUs when you're done, or just restart as the changes are temporary.  (There are ways to change the defaults but that's outside the scope of this post and probably not the best idea anyway.)

 

I have looked around for (and tried to write myself) an Applescript that will automate this process but it doesn't seem to be possible.  Apparently Apple hasn't set Instruments up for scripting, which seems to follow a pattern of poor support in other applications as well.

 

Here's a summary of my experience (running with my full plug-in suite - 3.6 GB datpacked):

 

• It doesn't seem to matter if hyper-threading is on or off.  I've run it a few times either way (without changing the CPU slider) and have not noticed a significant difference.
• Running with 1 core will provide a stable experience**, but performance-wise it'll be a bit inferior to the Parallels VM.  Multi-tasking will be a bit sluggish but "comfortable".
• Running with 2 cores will provide a substantial performance boost - the biggest single boost you will notice if you play with the slider with SC4 open (which makes sense).  Performance seems to exceed that of the Parallels VM.  Stability is pretty good, but it'll still crash.  I've run it twice so far and just let it go.  Both times it has crashed, but according to the exception reports it ran for a little over 6 hours the first time (granted with no "stress testing" - zooms, pans, etc., i.e. actually playing it) and last night I got just under 4 hours out of it (with minor "stress") while running it in the background while i did other things.  I don't generally go that long without quitting manually for whatever reason, so maybe even the Parallels VM will crash eventually as well - I haven't tested that exhaustively.  Either way, a duration of 4 hours might just be good enough to put up with.

 

** A note on "stable experience":  I had tried this under 10.10 Yosemite and performance with 1 core was terrible.  The game was sluggish and the sound/music was actually garbled and stuttering.  Multi-tasking was slow.  I've since given up on Yosemite and reverted to 10.9 Mavericks (under which the above tests were run) and the performance is noticeably improved.  I'm curious to know how this performs under 10.11 El Capitan - most reviews and forum posts I have read with regard to this new iteration is that it is already significantly improved over Yosemite even in its early beta stage, so much so that many of them are already permanently migrating to it.

[Zelgadis 638]

After years of running SC4 on Windows Bootcamp, I think I'm going to attempt to run it via a virtual machine. I'll be using Windows 7 for this.

What's the recommended VM? VMware? parallels? I want to get this right.  

[DavidB_ 83]

After years of running SC4 on Windows Bootcamp, I think I'm going to attempt to run it via a virtual machine. I'll be using Windows 7 for this.

What's the recommended VM? VMware? parallels? I want to get this right.  

Although the original post in this thread was written for VMWare Fusion, I reckon you should give VirtualBox a try. It provides all the same functionality as the big two, and it's totally free!

[Zelgadis 638]

After years of running SC4 on Windows Bootcamp, I think I'm going to attempt to run it via a virtual machine. I'll be using Windows 7 for this.

What's the recommended VM? VMware? parallels? I want to get this right.  

Although the original post in this thread was written for VMWare Fusion, I reckon you should give VirtualBox a try. It provides all the same functionality as the big two, and it's totally free!

 

Thanks for the info. I've finally gotten around to installing VirtualBox.

I'm having an interesting problem with it, however. I can only set the display memory to 128 MB. That is awfully low and it's restricting me to very low screen resolutions. Is there a way to bump that up?  *Edit: I got it up to 256. That's still much too low.

  Edited September 24, 2015 by Zelgadis  

[Zelgadis 638]

After having tried VirtualBox, Parallels, and VMWare, it is my opinion that VMWare is far superior to the others.

VirtualBox had issues with very limited options on screen resolution and memory allocation.

Parallels was awful. Buggy as all hell. I don't know where they get off asking for an $80 per year subscription.

VMWare runs smoothly and reliably so far. I'm sticking with that.

[Sabretooth78 808]

To follow up on my previous post about WINE v. CPUCount=1, I've uncovered an alternative to throttle your Mac down to one CPU without needing the 10 GB overhead of XCode.

It was that overhead that originally made to decide to hunker down with Parallels after upgrading to El Capitan, but the update to the Aspyr version along with the recollection that my main region is so big it crashes the Parallels version prompted me to rebuild my Wineskin wrappers.  (Apparently, wrappers created in prior versions of OS X, or at least Mavericks and earlier, will not run under El Capitan.)

Warning:  If "sudo" scares you, please do not read further.

To accomplish the feat, open Terminal from an admin account and enter:

sudo nvram boot-args="cpus=1"

Hit enter, enter your password and then reboot.  Note that a drawback is that this change is persistent, i.e., unlike XCode it'll persist across reboots until you either reset your NVRAM manually or clear the boot arguments in Terminal, again from an admin account by entering the following:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

Same deal here, hit enter, password and then reboot.  Note that this will reset any other boot arguments you may have set (which for 99% of users is probably not an issue).

Also with XCode, I had noticed disabling hyperthreading may have a positive impact on the game's stability (I never tested it conclusively).  This can apparently be done via similar procedure (I haven't tried it yet to confirm:

sudo nvram SMT=0

Which is cancelled by: 

sudo nvram -d SMT

The whole process seems to be a bit of a Rube Goldberg Machine, but seeing as Apple has decided none of us need to be able to confine apps to a particular core, we're not exactly overflowing with options, either.

[Sabretooth78 808]

So I finally bit the bullet last night and departed from Windows XP for my VM needs.  I've had a suspicion for a while now that I was being held back in performance (both with SC4 and a few other games) by the RAM and VRAM limitations of XP so I found and purchased a [legitimate] Windows 7 license (64-bit Pro) on the cheap (let's just say similar in cost to buying the SC4 digital copy).  After downloading the ISO and installing...holy carp.  SC4 absolutely flies, smooth as silk, even blowing Wineskin out of the water.  Haven't put it to a real stability test though, so we'll see.  Among other things, my MSFS X frame rates at least tripled as well, so maybe I can finally pass that darn IFR course!  I think I'm going to forego the free upgrade to 10 based on feedback I've seen mostly with other games - don't want to lose my license to something that by all accounts seems to work quite well for myself and others.

I just knew my machine wasn't as sluggish as these things were making me perceive it to be.  Just wish I hadn't waited so long to act!

[rsc204 21,868]

I'm quite the hold out when it comes to installing new O/S. I held on to Windows XP, probably like many others because it was the first really decent version of Windows.

Then my HDD died, as a quick fix I switched to a second drive I'd test installed Windows 7 on. During the 6-8 weeks it took to get the machine back normally I came a similar conclusion. In my case it was specifically graphical fidelity and USB performance. I mostly used my PC for watching videos output to a TV at the time. Seeing the difference upon going back to XP after so long, I simply uninstalled it right away and never looked back.

I keep XP on a laptop and my Mac Mini because they are a little under powered for Windows 7. XP runs well on both, but then I don't use them for anything like playing games.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I had Windows 7 running on my Boot Camp partition yesterday for oh, about 15 minutes.  I learned that there was no way to get it to recognize my discrete nVidia chip (thanks, Apple!) leading to a whopping "Windows Experience Rating" of 1.0 and as a result I couldn't even get Flight Sim to install!  Seeing if there was an appreciable fps gain was the only reason I even attempted it in the first place - I can't imagine SC4 would run noticeably better seeing how well it seems to run under Parallels.  So, word to the wise; cost concerns notwithstanding if you have a Mac with a discrete GPU, you're probably not going to gain anything by choosing VM over Boot Camp because you're going to get stuck with the intergrated chip in Boot Camp, except perhaps with Vista.  But who chooses to install Vista?

I have a mixed history with OS upgrades.  I remember being content with Win 98 - especially after being burned by jumping on that "Me" disaster and quickly reverting back (I was able to sell it on eBay for most of what I paid at least).  I was willfully ignorant of XP for a full year, as I don't recall any cheap upgrade options so I wasn't interested; that and work was all on Win 2000 so it's not as though I could get experience with it there.  After that year I bought a new Dell, which only ever ran XP for the full 10 years I had it, far and away the longest I've held onto a PC (granted I had upgraded/expanded many of the internals).  Bought Vista when I got a Mac, pretty much because I had to to run Boot Camp.  Didn't care for that and went to just using my Dell's XP Pro in the VMs, until now.  So yeah, over 13 years really.

Mac OS, on the other hand, I usually do upgrade due to the price point (been free for a while now).  I can typically get most of the reinstall work done within a few hours now what with backups and such.  The only iteration I abandoned was 10.10 Yosemite because it was a piece of garbage for me.

[bvrulez 0]

Hi,

I am running Sim City 4 with the following setup (took me quite a bit to get it done):

- Macbook Pro 17" early 2011 i7, upgraded to 16GB RAM and SSD

- This model has Intel Graphics plus an extra AMD Radeon 6750M GPU with 1GB of RAM

- Mavericks

- Bootcamp: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/install-windows-on-mac/

- Windows 7 64bit Professional SP1 OEM licence (ebay, 6 euros)

- Installed all the necessary updates to Windows via a previously downloaded file: http://www.chip.de/downloads/CHIP-Windows-7-Update-Pack-64-Bit_69083447.html

- Installed minor updates for Windows 7 via online update

- Definitely use a Fan Control! http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control

- Set CPU state: http://superuser.com/questions/323738/what-is-minimum-and-maximum-processor-state-in-windows-7-power-management

- Set compatibilty for Win XP SP3 in file settings

- Imported a city from my Steam Game: Note that there are two folder structures for the regions and stuff, one in programs and one under user!

 

Before this I played it in the Mac Steam Version: No crashes, but loud fans and macbook getting very hot.

I think the macbook is a bit less hot now. The game is not as fluent as in Mac Steam but it is the deluxe version (with day and night for example) which I had not in the Steam account. So maybe it needs more performance. I had a crash and will try to use just one processor next time to hopefully fix this.

Given the fact that the game is from 2003 and the macbook pro 17 is the top model of 2011 with an extra GPU I dont understand why the macbook gets warm at all and battery life is much shorter than in idle.

Maybe an update of the AMD Radeon driver would make sense.

[rsc204 21,868]

One thing SimCity has always been good at is eating CPUs alive. As the size of your cities and population increase, the number of calculations required to work out where sims should all be commuting too, increases exponentially.

I'm running a Haswell i7, but continual high CPU usage, which in turn is creating heat, is the norm. Whereas in more typical games, which are pushing the GPU and not the CPU, it's the GPU that's generating heat running full throttle. However, if your GPU is powerful enough for an older game, it may barely break a sweat whilst playing. But SC4 is all about CPU usage and not GPU power, so the norms do not apply here. Even with the latest chips, SC4 is hungry for more cycles. Its worth considering too that SC4 was designed for single-core chips, as such it can't take advantage of the modern multi-core CPUs.

Many portable computers are not nearly good enough at dissipating the heat they generate. This is a sure fire way to ensure it's lifespan is drastically reduced, forcing you to buy a new machine. If the heat is leaving the machine, no matter how hot, all is well. But if the heat is building up, you have a problem. That's why even if Laptops can play games, they're really not ideal for doing so.

As for battery life, all that CPU and GPU usage is going to drain a battery, nothing you can do about that.

CTDs are best avoided by setting to run on a single core/CPU. If you are running SC4 with DirectX Hardware Rendering, performance should be decent for the videocard at least. Check through the instructions here:

You might need to help SC4 correctly detect/utilise your hardware. Otherwise drivers can help, but they can also make things worse. So if you are changing them, make sure you have a way back.

[TekindusT 3,809]

I guess you already thought of it, but there's a quite simple solution. You can always use a laptop cooler... There are some really cheap ones out there.