Goodbye, File Limit!

[BugeyedDragon 412]

We did it.

 

The file limit is no more.

 

Aspyr patched it.

Make sure to ack your plugins file up though.

[rsc204 21,804]

Do be careful with any updates, I've heard reports of it clearing your plugins folder when installing, so make a backup first. Only 12 years , if only EA would consider some bug fixes too.

[Compdude787 916]

If I was on a Mac, I would definitely be singing the Hallelujah chorus!

[Tarkus 6,931]

Aspyr, actually updating things?!  Who'd have thought?  Of course, it's kind of moot at this point, with OS X El Capitan screwing the pooch with NAM installation on the Mac.

-Tarkus

[Sabretooth78 808]

Any chance that extracheats.dll and DAMN work?  Or "Windows NAM" copied into the plugin folder?  Also, is it fully patched, i.e. the BAT night lights issue?

I might have to play with this on an alternative boot volume sandbox - I don't like mucking up my internal boots with junk I end up not using.  But if it did work, I would gladly use it and just use VM/Wine for opening installers and stuff like that.

[Sabretooth78 808]

So i did a little mucking around with a fresh download onto an external boot volume and here are some of my observations (in no particular order of importance):

The Bad:

• Still get a blank map and menus upon loading my raw (i.e. un-DATpacked) plugin suite.
  • To be fair, this will also CTD my Windows VM setup as well.  I had actually found it to be due to some kind of file count limitation.
• Still no night lighting on BATs.  Is there some reason why it can't be the complete, full version available for Windows?
• Won't recognize symlinks.  I hate having things buried inside apps and in the Library folder.  I was hoping I could symlink my plugins and regions like I do with WINE/VM as it allows me to keep control of a clean and easy to back up file system.  Alas, it just blank screens.
  • Again, to be fair, this happens with WINE/VM as well - symlinks to files work; symlinks to folders do not.  So I could theoretically symlink every file in the "My Documents" folder as I've done with my DATpacked plugins, but the file count is probably such as to make this quite tedious.
• extracheats.dll and DAMN do not work.
  • I get why the dll won't work but I guess I was hoping that something in the app might still recognize it even if they mean nothing to Macs.
  • I thought part of the issue with DAMN might be that DAMN Manager writes the paths in the file \DAMN\Support\DAMN-index.txt using the Windows pathing convention (i.e. X:\....\...).
    • I was able to point DAMN Manager to the correct folder and update the index.  The [blank home] menu shows up in-game.
    • I tried deleting "X:" and replacing all the backslashes with forward slashes but it doesn't work.  I'm wondering if anybody else has ever tried and found a correct path scheme or truncation that works?
    • Perhaps it's related to the Windows version not working correctly when the "Apps" folder is not included in the path.  If that's the case, I would say it's hopeless to get it to work on the Mac since such a folder doesn't exist.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to set a custom resolution in windowed mode.
  • Example:  While running in WINE or VM (and Cities:Skylines, Civilization, etc. for that matter), I've actually taken a liking to running in a "slightly less than full screen" window.  For what it's worth, I have a 1680x1050 native resolution:
    • Using that windowed results in a window that's too big for the screen since the app is too dumb to know that the title bar takes up the space it does.  The ability to hide the menu bar in OS X El Crap-o is a nice touch in that it buys you back that infamous 22 pixels of height but that's still not quite enough.
    • The next largest available option is 1280x800.  This is OK, I guess, but I would prefer a 1440x900 or 1600x900, as I typically will set when given the option.

The Good:

• My full DATpacked plugin suite loaded with no issue.  I don't think it did before.
  • This includes the DATpacked Windows NAM 33 Pre-Release.
• It loads fairly quickly.  Subsequent loads after the first are super fast thanks to OS X's RAM caching.  Having 16 GB of RAM probably doesn't hurt, either.
  • This was also with initial loads being from an external volume.  I haven't tried the initial load from the SSD.
• It's smooth as silk, even with shadows enabled (which I typically don't use).  There's occasionally a little bit of stuttering, but nothing bad.  Changes in zoom can be a little wonky it seems (noticed some lagging) but that might also have been because I was fooling around with settings.
  • Definitely smoother than running in WINE or VM, though perhaps not as "fast".  Wine and VM pans, for instance, seem to draw faster, but there's a slight choppiness to them.
• The font looks cleaner than the Windows version.  Also, the color cursors actually work.
  • I can get color cursors to work in VM, but not when I use the tweaked *.sgr files.  So it runs better, but can't render a color cursor.  Go figure.  I wouldn't care as much but those B&W cursors are just ugly.
• It doesn't choke on my 84x72 (small tile) mega region like the VM copy does.  Or at least it hasn't yet.  What I mean is that I can load and enter a city fine, but being able to exit back to the region is a crapshoot as to whether or not it'll be a CTD.  Not a killer, but having to play one-and-out all the time sounds like a pain.
• Energy use seems to be a little better than running VM (which in turn is better than WINE) - not that I'd expect the battery to last very long with this game either way.
• Can't do the -intro:off launch option, but you can delete the .../Applications/Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition.app/Contents/GameData/Video folder to achieve the same result (and release a significant 70 MB of wasted drive space in the process).

 

So I don't know what to think.  I might convert, because I do think it runs better - it just requires a slight paradigm shift on my part.

• I rarely use the night mode anyway, so I could do without that.  What bugs me is not knowing if something else is missing, too.  If I wanted, I could load it up in WINE/VM, say for night shots for a CJ.
• Ditto extracheats.dll - however, the only added cheat I really use is drawpaths.  I suppose I could continue to use WINE/VM for those pesky network debugging purposes.  Fortunately terrainquery is a stock "cheat", as I use that almost religiously.
• Getting over DAMN and having to deal with those menus again would be tough, though.  I don't use the stuff a whole ton, but I do use it and I just like having options.  Arranging the menus in Reader just sounds like a miserable task - this is a game; I want to enjoy it.
• It beats WINE from the standpoint of stability - in order to avoid CTDs due to multiple CPUs I need to carry the 10 GB overhead of XCode just to be able to throttle the whole PC down to 1 CPU, not to mention the attendant lag that brings to the whole system outside of SC4 to a slow grind.

 

"That's all" I can think of for now.  I might add to this if I happen to recall something else.

[atlanticfish 8]

The update killed my setup without warning and the game was running fine post El Cap update; just posted a very poor review at the Mac store.

[Sabretooth78 808]

^ This is what I mean when I say I hate having files kept inside apps.  I still have redundancy, but it's just a bad idea.

[atlanticfish 8]

I reinstalled the game from a time machine backup and restored complete functionality. I have also stopped any automatic installation of the update. Finally, I asked Aspyer support what on earth they were thinking with this update.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I left a fairly lengthy review essentially summarizing what I posted above - I like to consider it fair and objective.  That said, I'm not expecting to see any kind of response to it; nor do I have any faith that anything would actually be accomplished were I to open a support case over it.  It really baffles me as to why it can't be the fully patched game - although, if memory serves I've heard that EA outright denies the existence of the BAT so that might have something to do with it.

That review, when last I checked to see if it had been approved and posted, had been found helpful by 0 of 1 people.  I guess it wasn't "complain-ey" enough.

[BugeyedDragon 412]

It's fixed my issue of loading up cities with more than 30,000/20,000. It froze when I started the time after one sec but now that's gone!

[His Divine Hand 244]

I left a fairly lengthy review essentially summarizing what I posted above - I like to consider it fair and objective.  That said, I'm not expecting to see any kind of response to it; nor do I have any faith that anything would actually be accomplished were I to open a support case over it.  It really baffles me as to why it can't be the fully patched game - although, if memory serves I've heard that EA outright denies the existence of the BAT so that might have something to do with it.

That review, when last I checked to see if it had been approved and posted, had been found helpful by 0 of 1 people.  I guess it wasn't "complain-ey" enough.

I found your review fairly in depth and helpful in understanding how Aspyr's update affected the game (i.e. fixed what they had already broke), especially since I have finally gotten a new Mac that won't be able to run the original game.  There was one thing I was curious about and that is how large you un-DAT packed plugin folder is, to get an idea of what the limits still are even with this update.

[Sabretooth78 808]

 

I found your review fairly in depth and helpful in understanding how Aspyr's update affected the game (i.e. fixed what they had already broke), especially since I have finally gotten a new Mac that won't be able to run the original game.  There was one thing I was curious about and that is how large you un-DAT packed plugin folder is, to get an idea of what the limits still are even with this update.

My plugins folder is 4.18 GB unpacked.  Keep in mind that while that does crash the Aspyr version, it also crashes my Windows version.  I had determined it to most likely be some kind of file count limitation perhaps inherent to my setup.  I can't remember if I tested it with VM or WINE;  it's in a thread around here somewhere (maybe the CTD thread under Bugs & Technical Issues?) but I can't recall exactly where.  When datpacked, however, it seems to run flawlessly.

[His Divine Hand 244]

 

I found your review fairly in depth and helpful in understanding how Aspyr's update affected the game (i.e. fixed what they had already broke), especially since I have finally gotten a new Mac that won't be able to run the original game.  There was one thing I was curious about and that is how large you un-DAT packed plugin folder is, to get an idea of what the limits still are even with this update.

My plugins folder is 4.18 GB unpacked.  Keep in mind that while that does crash the Aspyr version, it also crashes my Windows version.  I had determined it to most likely be some kind of file count limitation perhaps inherent to my setup.  I can't remember if I tested it with VM or WINE;  it's in a thread around here somewhere (maybe the CTD thread under Bugs & Technical Issues?) but I can't recall exactly where.  When datpacked, however, it seems to run flawlessly.

Good to know.  Yes, I too had found that the original PowerPC port had a file limit, but it wasn't a hard limit and seemed to be based on  RAM available.  But it appears they fixed what they broke, so maybe worth a re-investment.  

[1131989 223]

I moved everything to my desktop, ran the update on a vanilla SC4, and then reinstalled my plugins. Zero brown boxes yet.

[atlanticfish 8]

That has been my experience. On additional observation, the game urns much, much better after the update; the game runs smoother and the road laying tool operates better, among other thinks.