Running SC4 on Windows 10

[tfcjohn 4]

4 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

From what folk have said the Gog one is best, and that's the one I'll probably go for.

Yea I just created an account and its for $26.99

:/ lol 

 

When does it go on sale? lol

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

3 hours ago, tfcjohn said:

When does it go on sale? lol

That's a very good question. There's no real guarantee when the next GOG sale will occur, so we can only speculate really. However I'd say based on previous trends of the 75% discount happening during seasonal events, the most probable time would be leading up to and in the Easter period. It's possible sales will happen any day of the week though, and they have offered SC4 at the $4.99 reduced price while not part of a "mega" promotion where the whole store has deals running.

If you do decide to go with GOG, purchasing from our affiliate link provides Simtropolis with a small sales commission (which helps towards monthly funding).

Steam is another viable digital option too for a fully patched and functional SC4 Deluxe, and especially if you already have games in your library there.

[Handyman 792]

6 hours ago, Miss Cuddly said:

I have installed SC4 on my laptop, and it was working fine for a while then it crashed on me, and I have no idea of how to restart the game

I am glad to hear you had it running.
What were you doing when it crashed?
Were running in software or hardware mode?
If it is the disk version, did you apply the updates and patches?
Did you have any other programs running or windows open?

It can be a little frustrating when all you want to do is play but it helps if you take a methodical approach and document your steps, to identify what works and what does not.

I like the Gog version.

I have had a chance to look at Fedora and checked into the state of Intel driver support. I thought about installing it on to a spare partition but that would not produce any useful results for your situation as I use a desktop with AMD graphics. However, as I thought and you proved, it will run on Fedora. Also it appears Intel does have graphics drivers available and they offer rpm packages. It may involve some trial and error figuring out which one will work for you or if you in fact need one at all. When using Ubuntu 14.04 the OS loaded everything I needed to run directx and thus SC4 but when I upgraded my game system to Ubuntu 18.04 I had to find a driver.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

13 minutes ago, Handyman said:

I am glad to hear you had it running.
What were you doing when it crashed?
Were running in software or hardware mode?
If it is the disk version, did you apply the updates and patches?
Did you have any other programs running or windows open?

It can be a little frustrating when all you want to do is play but it helps if you take a methodical approach and document your steps, to identify what works and what does not.

I like the Gog version.

I have had a chance to look at Fedora and checked into the state of Intel driver support. I thought about installing it on to a spare partition but that would not produce any useful results for your situation as I use a desktop with AMD graphics. However, as I thought and you proved, it will run on Fedora. Also it appears Intel does have graphics drivers available and they offer rpm packages. It may involve some trial and error figuring out which one will work for you or if you in fact need one at all. When using Ubuntu 14.04 the OS loaded everything I needed to run directx and thus SC4 but when I upgraded my game system to Ubuntu 18.04 I had to find a driver.

The city I had started had just gone past the 600 mark for population then I press 'Q' and it crashed, it was running in hardware mode and no other programs were running, and I hadn't done any patches or updates I was trying out the 'vanilla' disk version.

I'll have a look to see if I can get a download of directx

My current thinking is to get an external drive with Windoze 7 on it and boot off that.

[Handyman 792]

10 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

The city I had started had just gone past the 600 mark for population then I press 'Q' and it crashed, it was running in hardware mode and no other programs were running, and I hadn't done any patches or updates I was trying out the 'vanilla' disk version.

Not sure why a hotkey would have crashed it unless the keystroke was grabbed by the OS somehow. One thing I forgot to ask was if you are using a proper shortcut to start the game.

This is the command line from my desktop shortcut:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/username/.wine" wine C:\\GOG\ Games\\SimCity\ 4\ Deluxe\ Edition\\Apps\\SimCity\ 4.exe -sound:off -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r:1920x1080x32 -d:directx -CPUcount:1

Of course you would have to edit it according to your installation.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

No, I'm not using a shortcut to start the game I'm just using the method I stated in my post. I have uninstalled the game and might try again or see if I can't get a Windoze disc that boots up externally.

 

What command line would I need for the disk version.??

And is that from create new launcher?

 

P.S The game I had started was straight after the installation had finished

[CorinaMarie 29,919]

5 hours ago, tfcjohn said:

I have the Origins version.... Is that the reason I am crashing now every 2min? :/ fml!

No. The digital version from Origin will run fine. The reason to not buy that version now is that they have reverted to selling the unpatched (and unpatchable) version which means most addon mods will not work with it. For a while they did have the fully patched version. If you can find SimCity 4.exe on your hard drive and hover your mouse over it you can find out what version it is. If it's is like Gog's the fully patched version it will show 1.1.641.0. Should that be the Origin version you have then it is just as good as the Gog one. And also if so, do not let anyone convince you to uninstall and reinstall it because when you redownload you are likely to get the borked version.

The most likely reason the game crashes is by not having the -CPUCount:1 parameter in your start up line. See CB's post here about that.

[Handyman 792]

4 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

What command line would I need for the disk version.??

env WINEPREFIX="/home/username/.wine" wine C:\\GOG\ Games\\SimCity\ 4\ Deluxe\ Edition\\Apps\\SimCity\ 4.exe -sound:off -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r:1920x1080x32 -d:directx -CPUcount:1

Edit the command as follow:
change username to your username
change .wine to whatever you named your wine prefix
change C:\\GOG\ Games\\SimCity\ 4\ Deluxe\ Edition\\Apps\\SimCity\ 4.exe to the path to your .exe file
                    *** Remember that the the path section (starting after C: will require a back slash before a backslash as well as a backslash before a space)

Although theoretically you can use 64 bit wine and let it create the environment to run a 32 bit program, I always explicitly create a 32 bit prefix to work with.

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/home/username/.wine

Sorry my thought process is a little fragmented these days, so I am remembering things as I go along.

[Handyman 792]

30 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

And is that from create new launcher?

Sorry missed this part.

Here' a copy of mine, right click on it and choose properties, then drag it out across your desktop so you can see more of it. Edit as shown above and give it a try.

SimCity 4.desktop

[Miss Cuddly 52]

Whoah.!! That's gone right over my head...

[rsc204 21,868]

56 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

I'll have a look to see if I can get a download of directx

SC4 with Hardware Rendering simply can't work without DirectX, so I would guess you already have it with WINE, or you wouldn't get very far.

56 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

My current thinking is to get an external drive with Windoze 7 on it and boot off that.

Performance wise, I suspect that would suck. If you aren't using USB 3.0, I wouldn't even consider it. In either case, it would probably be much more ideal to partition your HDD and have a dual-boot system.

Win7 will require in the region of 60GB for a well-pruned install, add another 20GB for SC4's install/plugins and some headroom. But then why not simply install WinXP if all you will do is play SC4? That would cut the space needed considerably and SC4 runs natively on XP, you might oddly enough, end up with less problems. The real issue there is whether or not your machine has driver support for XP, without that, it's a non-starter. Remember too, disable all internet activity under XP and it's secure, since it couldn't read a non-NTFS linux partition, there are no security risks to this method.

That said, if you are going to all this effort, I'd keep plugging away with WINE. Once you get it working, there aren't many drawbacks. So adding another O/S for just one game seems a lot of hassle.

[Handyman 792]

3 hours ago, Miss Cuddly said:

Whoah.!! That's gone right over my head...

You'll have to be a little more specific.

 

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

SC4 with Hardware Rendering simply can't work without DirectX, so I would guess you already have it with WINE, or you wouldn't get very far.

If you have the disk version you can search for DXSETUP, I believe it is on disk 1. This must be installed into the wine prefix using wine control panel. But it is also required that the host graphics system can handle directx.

[rsc204 21,868]

2 minutes ago, Handyman said:

If you have the disk version you can search for DXSETUP, I believe it is on disk 1. This must be installed into the wine prefix using wine control panel. But it is also required that the host graphics system can handle directx.

Quite right, but SC4 will look to detect the graphics system on startup. If it fails to find DirectX/Compatible Hardware, it will either switch to Software or throw an error. So you'll never see any of the game if DirectX isn't there and the Hardware setting is enabled.

[Handyman 792]

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Quite right, but SC4 will look to detect the graphics system on startup. If it fails to find DirectX/Compatible Hardware, it will either switch to Software or throw an error. So you'll never see any of the game if DirectX isn't there and the Hardware setting is enabled.

This is true. You could try changing the' -d:directx ' part of the command to ' -d:opengl ' this should work even if directx is not supported by the host system.

Double checked myself on this and found it does not work. 

  Edited February 17, 2019 by Handyman  
Correction

[Miss Cuddly 52]

Running SC4 under Linux with wine is a bit too much for my little brain, so I'm going to get hold of a spare HDD and install Windoze 7 on it, then install SC4 on that, then all I will need to find out in what order to install any patches and NAM.

I'll save the wine for me to have later on this evening.!

I've had a look at this page and that seems to give me an order to go by, so do I get SC4 deluxe installed, then exit and install EP1, check it's okay. Install Nightlights, do the same thing then go for the NAM.?

[rsc204 21,868]

Indeed you'll need to run both the EP1, then Nitelighting patches after the main install of SC4. You should do this before any other fixes/changes.

Note if you fully update/patch Win7, you will need to deal with the SecDrv.sys DRM problem, but it can be made to work:

I'd recommend using Step 5, since removing the patch or not installing it is more risky.

After that, ensure you use the -CPUCount:1 command line switch, to prevent CTDs on multi-core computers. Just right click the game's shortcut, select properties and add this switch as shown here:

Note that a second command, -intro:off is there too, which simply helps the game start faster, but is optional.

Then I would install the I-HT fix:

This needs to be done in a very specific way, unlike most other fixes which can simply be installed. There are some other fixes out there, but these ones are for me absolutely essential.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

Bloody Microsoft, trying to dictate to us what's secure or not, nobody is going to get onto my system by hacking the Wi-Fi. I have a 63 character randomly generated password which will take a gazillion years to brute force.

As for connecting to the laptop I will be connecting via eSata, not USB

 

[catty-cb 4,413]

On 18/02/2019 at 7:55 AM, Miss Cuddly said:

Running SC4 under Linux with wine is a bit too much for my little brain

That's what I thought but Steam has made it a lot easier these days, I'm running the latest Linux mint with Steam Play enabled

https://itsfoss.com/steam-play/

The only problem I had was making sure the sc4 resolution matched my computer and using software rather than the hardware setting in the sc4 options as on the hardware setting it's a bit jerky.

Still having problems getting Banished to work using Steam Play as the game is super slow.

-catty

 

[Miss Cuddly 52]

I have just tried to install SC4 again under wine, and exited straight away after installation was completed, but when I opened the SC4 folder and clicked on <startgame.exe>  and then open with wine windoze loader it did nothing at all, on the off chance I tried it with the wine installer and still no joy, so I'm going to hook up an external drive with an eSata lead as a temporary measure then when I can afford one get a digital download and transplant the drive into the bay where the optical drive of  my laptop is.

So I'm going to install some wine into me this evening...

[Miss Cuddly 52]

23 hours ago, catty-cb said:

That's what I thought but Steam has made it a lot easier these days, I'm running the latest Linux mint with Steam Play enabled

https://itsfoss.com/steam-play/

Well as I have the disk version of SC4 I want to see if I can get that working, and I use a different flavour of Linux and don't really want to change to another if I can help it.

Going back to Windoze 7 would be another free option for me as I have a spare HDD, the correct connecting cable and a copy of Win 7. If all of that fails then I'll fork out some money.

[catty-cb 4,413]

21 minutes ago, Miss Cuddly said:

Well as I have the disk version of SC4 I want to see if I can get that working, and I use a different flavour of Linux and don't really want to change to another if I can help it.

You don't need to change linux, steam play will work on all the major distros, but before I decided to try out the steam version of wine, I was using PLAYONLINIX to run Banished and am probably going to go back to it for Banished as its unplayable in Steam.

Looking at the game list here

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/supported_apps-1-0.html

There are two install scripts for SC4 one if you have the disks and the other if you have the GOG version.

[rsc204 21,868]

22 hours ago, Miss Cuddly said:

I have just tried to install SC4 again under wine, and exited straight away after installation was completed, but when I opened the SC4 folder and clicked on <startgame.exe>  and then open with wine windoze loader it did nothing at all, on the off chance I tried it with the wine installer and still no joy,

Just bear in mind, the disks you have are intended for use with Windows and will requires the SecDrv.sys is loaded to validate them when running SC4. This applies regardless of whether you are running Windows natively or through WINE. So if WINE has not been setup such that it loads that driver, the game will never run. I suspect that's your problem here, it's a hurdle using a digital edition would remove. Bear in mind both Steam and Origin use DRM too, albeit a different system, which for me is the #1 reason to avoid them.

On 18/02/2019 at 11:51 PM, catty-cb said:

That's what I thought but Steam has made it a lot easier these days, I'm running the latest Linux mint with Steam Play enabled

Right, but wouldn't that require the Steam copy of SC4, therefore it wouldn't work for those using the disks.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

8 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Just bear in mind, the disks you have are intended for use with Windows and will requires the SecDrv.sys is loaded to validate them when running SC4. This applies regardless of whether you are running Windows natively or through WINE. So if WINE has not been setup such that it loads that driver, the game will never run. I suspect that's your problem here, it's a hurdle using a digital edition would remove. Bear in mind both Steam and Origin use DRM too, albeit a different system, which for me is the #1 reason to avoid them.

Right, but wouldn't that require the Steam copy of SC4, therefore it wouldn't work for those using the disks.

Once I have got the Win 7 drive up and running, (connected via eSata) I will uninstall update KB3086255 for Windows 7 so that the disks will work, as I have said in a previous post no-one is getting through my Wi-Fi password, and according to Shields Up! I don't exist, so there is no security risk to my machine.

    Two hours in on the install of Win 7 and my other half is losing the will to live...  She is going to have take two tomorrow - Wish her luck please.

The light has just dawned, it's in case you try to install a disk with a virus on it, everyone knows that you should virus scan a disk before installing it, and I don't think that would apply to commercial disks that you have had for years.

 

Then I'll install the SC4 patches and NAM, with that working it will be time to install any plug ins that I want for added game play.

(Any suggestions gratefully received) Especially those that remove the power and water requirement. I had them on an old machine but I can't remember what they were all I can remember is that they were a 1 x 1 square and looked like paving.

PPS: Does anyone know if I can redeem my licence key for SC4 with Gog

[Terring 6,476]

There is a new update for Windows 10 1809, called KB 4482887. This update is optional, so the only way to get it is by clicking the "Check for Updates" button. There have been reports that this update is messing some games. In games like Apex Legends, CoD4, CoD MW2 and Destiny 2, players have encountered major gaming performance issues. The good news is that Microsoft is aware of the issues and investigating. The better news is that SimCity 4 is unaffected. After getting this update, I run the game in both vanilla and modded modes. No problems, no drops in performance, nothing concerning. So far so good. If something changes, I’ll let you know.

Remember, the only way to get this update is if you have the 1809 version and if you click the " Check for Updates " button. And if you’re experiencing crazy fps drops in other games, try to uninstall KB 4482887. For more information, check Ask Woody.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

UPDATE

Thanks to my wonderful wife  she has managed to get a second HDD with Windoze 7 on it installed in my laptop so that I can play SC4. Now comes the fun part of getting all of the custom content installed, starting with NAM

It's not an ideal situation, as I am now without an internal optical drive, so getting SC4 to work with Fedora is still the ultimate goal.

[catty-cb 4,413]

On 3/9/2019 at 3:56 AM, Miss Cuddly said:

.....so getting SC4 to work with Fedora is still the ultimate goal.

For the last month I've been trying to get Banished to install on my Linux Mint 19 computer ... both the Steam and PlayonLinux (using GOG software) install correctly but after that were unplayable ... snails were faster than the game, anyway I successfully got the game working last night ... so I've just tried it with my GOG version of SimCity 4 and it appears to be a success

In theory the same thing should work on Fedora

If you haven't already got it install PlayonLinux and then go to Tools - Manage Wine Versions

I picked Wine 3.0 to install on both x86 and amd64 even tho I was planning on just using the x86 version

On returning back to the main screen go to Configure and select New at the bottom left-hand side

It will then ask you what type of Virtual Drive to you want to create, I picked the 32 bits windows installation and called it SimCity

It make take a while to create the virtual drive, but once its done then click on the drive

Go to the Wine Tab and select Configure Wine and then selected Windows XP

Next you go to the Install Components Tab and installed the following programs, think I may have missed a program because I did get a couple of error messages at the end, but SimCity works, anyway I installed directx9, gecko, microsoft core fonts, mono, xact

You go back to the main PlayonLinux screen and select "Install a Program" and then "Install a non-listed program" as you need to use what you have just installed, click thru the defaults till you get to this screen and you want to select "Edit or update ..."

Make sure you have the show virtual drive button ticked and then select the SimCity Virtual Drive you have created

Make sure you have only selected the "Use another version of Wine" box as the next screen will bring up the Wine version you installed back at the beginning

It should then bring up a screen allowing you to select the SimCity Install program from GOG and at that point the install should start

Right at the very end of the install I got four error boxes which I just accepted and carried on

Its really important that when it reaches this point you exit out as the PlayonLinux hasn't finished installing SimCity

Second to last stage is creating a desktop shortcut

And its done, before you get tempted into clicking on the shortcut you need to right-click on it and add this to the end of the line in the command box

-CPUcount:1 -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32

or whatever your screen resolution size is, my command line looked like this

/usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "SimCity 4" -CPUcount:1 -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32

Hope that helps.

-catty

[Silur 3,309]

Oh, my God.

How many problems are created by new technologies and thirst for money, money and money...

My WinXP never asks for anything, it just works with SC4 and  with all addons ... 

[Miss Cuddly 52]

3 hours ago, catty-cb said:

For the last month I've been trying to get Banished to install on my Linux Mint 19 computer ... both the Steam and PlayonLinux (using GOG software) install correctly but after that were unplayable ... snails were faster than the game, anyway I successfully got the game working last night ... so I've just tried it with my GOG version of SimCity 4 and it appears to be a success

In theory the same thing should work on Fedora

If you haven't already got it install PlayonLinux and then go to Tools - Manage Wine Versions

I picked Wine 3.0 to install on both x86 and amd64 even tho I was planning on just using the x86 version

On returning back to the main screen go to Configure and select New at the bottom left-hand side

It will then ask you what type of Virtual Drive to you want to create, I picked the 32 bits windows installation and called it SimCity

It make take a while to create the virtual drive, but once its done then click on the drive

Go to the Wine Tab and select Configure Wine and then selected Windows XP

Next you go to the Install Components Tab and installed the following programs, think I may have missed a program because I did get a couple of error messages at the end, but SimCity works, anyway I installed directx9, gecko, microsoft core fonts, mono, xact

You go back to the main PlayonLinux screen and select "Install a Program" and then "Install a non-listed program" as you need to use what you have just installed, click thru the defaults till you get to this screen and you want to select "Edit or update ..."

Make sure you have the show virtual drive button ticked and then select the SimCity Virtual Drive you have created

Make sure you have only selected the "Use another version of Wine" box as the next screen will bring up the Wine version you installed back at the beginning

It should then bring up a screen allowing you to select the SimCity Install program from GOG and at that point the install should start

Right at the very end of the install I got four error boxes which I just accepted and carried on

Its really important that when it reaches this point you exit out as the PlayonLinux hasn't finished installing SimCity

Second to last stage is creating a desktop shortcut

And its done, before you get tempted into clicking on the shortcut you need to right-click on it and add this to the end of the line in the command box

-CPUcount:1 -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32

or whatever your screen resolution size is, my command line looked like this

/usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "SimCity 4" -CPUcount:1 -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32

Hope that helps.

-catty

Thank you so much for all your hard work on my problem, I'll print out the instructions and give it a go.

[Miss Cuddly 52]

MEGA UPDATE

I have just followed all the instructions that Cathy has spent ages working on, and I'm pleased to report that SC4 is now running in Linux.

Thanks to everyone that has worked on the problem.

[catty-cb 4,413]

On 3/14/2019 at 12:26 AM, Silur said:

....How many problems are created by new technologies and thirst for money, money and money...

Linux is nearly 30 years old so I wouldn't call it new and its also open source so not a lot of money changes hands.

13 hours ago, Miss Cuddly said:

....and I'm pleased to report that SC4 is now running in Linux....

That is excellent news as I really wasn't sure what would happen on Fedora, as for

That's a relief as I just copied my MySim, Plugins and Regions files from my old SimCity 4 setup over to "/home/catty/Documents/SimCity 4/...."  as its been a few years since I have made any changes to my plugin folder, gone are the days I spent more time trying to create the perfect plugins folder than I did playing the game.