Sim City 3000 Random Crashes

[SCaddicted 15]

Didnt know where to post so i decided simtropolis was the best place to ask SimCity stuff.

After all those past years Ive decided to play Sim City 3000 WE again

Ive installed the game, downloaded the patch and set windows XP compatibility

It took me some work but now game run as normal (apparently) on my windows vista, except some crashes after 20 min or so playing. Theres no error message, screen just turn black and close the game.

Any ideas of what could be? =/

Thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Poor old game, written sometime in the last century. If your system has multiple cores, you should probably start the game, press CTRL+ALT+DEL and set the affinity to only one of your cores.

I don't know if anyone is aware of that game technically any more? Did it create a dump in the game residency? If you have a dump, the panel section (up to where the memory dump starts) might give us a clue to help you. Legacy games are always tricky to run, but I do manage to run a couple without problems.

Please open the short-cut to the game and post the contents of the target line. We might be able to add something to it, but we may not have the right set of options for that program.

A nice moderator could move this to Bugs and Technical Difficulties where the more technically oriented of us will have a better chance of seeing it.

[z1 566]

I know it ran fine with no switches on a dual-CPU machine running Windows XP, so it's probably salvageable.

[DavidB_ 83]

Poor old game, written sometime in the last century. If your system has multiple cores, you should probably start the game, press CTRL+ALT+DEL and set the affinity to only one of your cores.

I don't know if anyone is aware of that game technically any more? Did it create a dump in the game residency? If you have a dump, the panel section (up to where the memory dump starts) might give us a clue to help you. Legacy games are always tricky to run, but I do manage to run a couple without problems.

Please open the short-cut to the game and post the contents of the target line. We might be able to add something to it, but we may not have the right set of options for that program.

A nice moderator could move this to Bugs and Technical Difficulties where the more technically oriented of us will have a better chance of seeing it.

Shouldn't this go into the City-Building Games forum? Nice to see someone talking about SC3000, I don't suppose there was a NAM-esque addon for it? I gave my copy to charity! (Albeit, it was only the basic, original version.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Maybe. But a little nostalgia is good for the soul. It might also give us some insight into the failings of the same programmers that wrote SC4.

[Wiimeiser 434]

All SimCity games up to RH use the same base engine, 3000 and 4 are the closest since they're in full 3D technically speaking, SC2K was (sort of) isometric (don't know the exact term)

[PBGV103 729]

3000 and 4 aren't even close to being full 3D.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

3000 and 4 aren't even close to being full 3D.

SC4 is 2 1/2 D. That is, full 3D but with only 4 orthogonal views at five magnifications. Good enough for a city simulator. When you create a model for a BAT, I assure you, you are doing 3D modeling. A full panning camera would make the game even slower than it is.

  Edited October 25, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[DavidB_ 83]

3000 and 4 aren't even close to being full 3D.

SC4 is 2 1/2 D. That is, full 3D but with only 4 orthogonal views at five magnifications. Good enough for a city simulator. When you create a model for a BAT, I assure you, you are doing 3D modeling. A full panning camera would make the game even slower than it is.

I've used SolidWorks (professional CAD software) but I haven't yet tried gmax/BAT! I'm assuming that it's somewhat similar to CAD?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Being as how you are on a MAC, check to see if there is a MAC version of gmax. If not you'll have to run it in your windows environment. gmax is a cut down version of 3DS-Max for gaming. BAT is a gmax game-pack.

I'd suggest you pick up the library, help files and tutorial with gmax, and run the tutorial for the mace. It will give you a good feel for gmax. Then add the BAT and run though the BAT ESSENTIALS tutorial from the omnibus. Covers pretty much everything.

A good big screen will help.

  Edited October 26, 2011 by A Nonny Moose