Help with SC4 on Windows 8.1

[antsel 841]

Hey guys. I've had an older laptop with Windows 7 that ran SC4 fine. Over the summer my disk was started to act funny (bought the game way back in 2003), so I picked up SC4 during the Steam summer sale. Now I play a lot of SimCity. I've put 308 hours in this game since I picked it up on Steam over the summer, and I'm a full time PhD student working a part time job. As you can see I put a lot of time in this game. A couple weeks ago my laptop died so I had to pick up a new one.

Acer V3 572PG
Windows 8.1
Intel Core i5-4210U 1.7GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.7Ghz
Two graphic cards: Intel HD Graphics for general stuff
NVIDIA GeForce 840M with 2GB dedicated VRAM for gaming
8GB DDR3 L Memory

1TB HDD

It's a decent enough computer and can run a lot of modern games. I finally got a HD enclosure for my old laptop HD and loaded all my old SC4 regions and plugins, excited to try the game on my new system. And now I'm having all sorts of graphical glitches that make the game unplayable. I've read so many posts regarding how to fix it, and it seems one of the best solutions is to have the game render in software mode. Except my game refuses to load under software mode. I've gone into the game, opened the graphics options and checked the software box in-game, quit and tried to restart the game. But when I load the game, the screen would go black for a split second as if trying to load the game, but then it goes back to the desktop with SC4 not responding. I've put -d:Software into the command line, but that gets the same result. I'm really not sure what else to do.

 

I've edited the Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr files as required for my NVIDIA card, I've tried all sorts of combinations of command lines for the game, I've tried using the SC4 launcher, I've managed program settings through the NVIDIA control panel, but nothing has worked. I really don't know what else I can try! Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

  Edited December 12, 2014 by Cyclone Boom  
Moved to a new topic.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Yep, common problem if you would search recent topics! Check the link in my signature ("Graphics" section of the guide). If the steps don't work, feel free to ask again and we'll work through it with you.

[Charlie_Zane 963]

I had the same problem before too, you should read through the responses in the thread I posted to get a good idea on how to fix it, or at least make it more playable. 

 

I still get some glitches in new cities, but they're far less disturbing in gameplay than before. 

 

To get the game to run on software mode download and install the launcher  which gives you an option straight away to run the game in either software, DirectX or OpenGL. Some other features including selecting how many cores the game runs on. 

[antsel 841]

Hi Joe, thank you so much for all the effort you've put into your guide. Unfortunately I did come across your guide already, and none of your suggestions seem to work for me. I have already tried all the suggestions put forth in the threads regarding this sort of graphics problems.

 

But I think I have narrowed down the problem, even though I've added SC4 into the NVIDIA control panel, the game still isn't using my NVIDIA card, and is using the integrated Intel card instead. I have even used NVIDIA Inspector, which I heard is better at forcing games to load with the NVIDIA card, but that still didn't work. I also saw an old post of yours in SC4Devotion about right-clicking SimCity 4.exe and selecting 'run with graphics processor' -> High performance NVIDIA processor, and that didn't work either.

 

I then came across a suggestion to add -d:OpenGL to the command line is the only option I didn't come across. The game loaded, but all my terrain textures were solid white, and the buildings would alternate from being drawn to disappearing. I alt-tabbed to the desktop and found that it was finally using the NVIDIA card!! But, my graphics were even worse than when the Intel integrated card was being used.

 

Here's what the graphics look like with -d:OpenGL in the command line:

 

 

I did add my graphics card info to Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr, so I don't think that's the problem.Any idea where I should go from here? Again, I thank you for all the time you've put into helping people with their problems.

[michaelkourlas 0]

 

Hi Joe, thank you so much for all the effort you've put into your guide. Unfortunately I did come across your guide already, and none of your suggestions seem to work for me. I have already tried all the suggestions put forth in the threads regarding this sort of graphics problems.

 

But I think I have narrowed down the problem, even though I've added SC4 into the NVIDIA control panel, the game still isn't using my NVIDIA card, and is using the integrated Intel card instead. I have even used NVIDIA Inspector, which I heard is better at forcing games to load with the NVIDIA card, but that still didn't work. I also saw an old post of yours in SC4Devotion about right-clicking SimCity 4.exe and selecting 'run with graphics processor' -> High performance NVIDIA processor, and that didn't work either.

 

I then came across a suggestion to add -d:OpenGL to the command line is the only option I didn't come across. The game loaded, but all my terrain textures were solid white, and the buildings would alternate from being drawn to disappearing. I alt-tabbed to the desktop and found that it was finally using the NVIDIA card!! But, my graphics were even worse than when the Intel integrated card was being used.

 

Here's what the graphics look like with -d:OpenGL in the command line:

 

 

 

I did add my graphics card info to Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr, so I don't think that's the problem.Any idea where I should go from here? Again, I thank you for all the time you've put into helping people with their problems.

 

 

Just wanted to jump in and say that you have exactly described the problem I'm having with my NVIDIA Optimus laptop, including the failed solutions, the weird OpenGL graphics issues, etc.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The final solution for this is probably to dual boot a Linux distribution (Ubuntu, for example) and run the game under wine.

 

It can run along side Windows, or if all you do is gaming and social stuff, you could replace Windows entirely.  You do have to add wine since it is not a default on the standard distribution.  All of this is free and supported of course.

 

You can run a Linux distribution in any case if you don't need any Windows specific software.  Ubuntu has Libre Word for office stuff, and generally anything else you might want, plus you can run Windows applications with wine.

 

Ubuntu's file system (gvfs) happily handles the Windows file system (NTFS) plus a couple of dozen others.  The main difference that is visible is that there are no drive letters except with wine (which pretends to have some).  All on-line storage is kept in one tree based on the root symbol (/).

 

You can download and make the hot boot ISO disk, and test without any effect on your system.  It runs entirely in memory.

[michaelkourlas 0]

 Ubuntu doesn't exactly have stellar support for Optimus. How would running SC4 in Wine help?

[antsel 841]

Hi everyone. I finally figured what my problems was. I still can't get SC4 to load with NVIDIA, but I was finally able to run the game in Software mode. The game takes longer to load the region view in Software mode, but my problem with the game crashing during loading was because I was using HD terrain mods. I had changed my terrain mods to non-HD ones and everything is back to normal. Doesn't look nearly as pretty, but I'm willing to forgive that in order to play the game again!

Thanks for all your help.