Choppy scrolling and time-of-day transitions

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

Dear Community,

Just now, I have installed the "4GB pack" hoping to increase the performance of SC4. I've got 4GB 1333Mhz RAM and 3.2 Ghz i3 CPU on my current computer. Also, we're talking Windows XP.

I can generally run the game successfully and all animations are A-OK. The problems appear when I scroll the view. Especially in the up-down direction - it's a nightmare... Scrolling is always choppy, no matter what I do and what graphics options are (un)checked.

The same goes for time-of-day transitions. Whenever the game transfers from day into night, the animations freeze every two seconds for a little bit, until the transition is complete.

I was hoping that the 4GB patch would help resolve these issues. No such luck. My RAM activity barely exceeds 400MB...

This is why I'd like to know whether this is one of the "it just has to be this way" situations, or whether it is me doing something wrong? Or maybe it is caused by tampering with the .exe file?

Just to make it clear - by tampering, I understand adding HD resolution properties to the .exe shortcut. I know that pirated copies of SC3000U suffered intentional performance hits. Perhaps the same goes for SC4 and the program simply thinks that I try to hack the game...? 

I just don't know... I am really disappointed. Could you shed a little light on this?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

Okay, I found this thread on Steam;

https://steamcommunity.com/app/24780/discussions/0/540742667927005233/

The solution presented there helps to an extent. It is especially evident in the smallest city lots - scrolling is really smooth there!

Still, if anyone would like to chime in, please go ahead and do.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Scrolling performance in SC4 is notorious for being a bit on the laggy side, and so I can reassure how it's nothing inherently wrong with your system.

There are certain steps one can do such as the linked topic you found there, and most of that is covered in this thread as well. The method there is to instruct the game to recognise your graphics card as a "fast" one. It can also help to switch the rendering mode to hardware by adding -d:DirectX in addition to the -CPUcount:1 to limit the game to running on a single processor core. There's a list of command line switches covered in this article.

One thing I thoroughly recommend is to turn down Shadows in the game settings to Low instead. These shadows are notorious for increasing scrolling lag, and also you may find turning down the other graphics options may help as well. It could be worth turning them back up again when taking city screenshots.

As you may have seen, here's a preview pic of the panel to adjust these:

 

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Also, we're talking Windows XP.

Running the game on Windows XP is probably advantageous in many ways compared to modern systems, since Maxis designed it to be. There is one consideration though that the 4GB patch is most effective on a 64-bit operating system. I'm not completely sure on the details, but the 4 GB patch may not do anything useful on a 32-bit OS.

(I do know that a 64-bit version does exist for XP though.)

I'll call in our resident expert @rsc204 who can share more details on the subject of the RAM allocation sometime.

[rsc204 21,866]

16 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I'm not completely sure on the details, but the 4 GB patch may not do anything useful on a 32-bit OS.

It won't do anything because the LAA (Large Address Aware) flag it sets, simply doesn't exist to be read by a 32-bit OS. Not to mention, since a 32-bit OS can only support 3GB RAM, the mechanics of this simply doesn't work in 32-bit environment. There are other ways to do this on a 32-bit system, by editing the Boot.ini file to adjust memory allocation. But honestly, I wouldn't go digging around there quite yet.

17 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I've got 4GB 1333Mhz RAM and 3.2 Ghz i3 CPU on my current computer.

Which begs the question, why are you running Windows XP on it? XP is too old to make full use of the Hardware in your system. A 64-bit version of Vista or 7 by comparison, could utilise the full 4GB RAM, but also would provide a performance boost to your CPU, because it can make use of the newer instruction sets, which XP is not coded for. Also, multi-core is poorly supported under XP too. Obviously this has nothing to do with your current problem, just an observation.

I'm not entirely convinced however that your sluggishness can be attributed to a lack of available memory though. Whenever this problem has cropped up previously, it usually means you need to tweak your GPU setup for SC4. If it's not correctly detected somehow, SC4 might be running slowly as a result.

17 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

The solution presented there helps to an extent. It is especially evident in the smallest city lots - scrolling is really smooth there!

You are referring to disabling the Vertex Buffers, right? But making drastic changes like that, I'd first check your game is working optimally with your hardware.

To start, we need a copy of SC4's log file, which can be found inside the \Apps folder. It is named MYCOMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt, if you open this and copy/paste the contents into your next post, we can see if everything is working optimally or not.

17 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Perhaps the same goes for SC4 and the program simply thinks that I try to hack the game...?

If SC4 thought that, it simply wouldn't even run. Likely your setup just needs to be tweaked for your hardware. Necessary in many cases, because the hardware you are using is simply too new for the game to automatically detect the correct settings.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

22 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Which begs the question, why are you running Windows XP on it?

Because this is the only legal copy of an OS that I have on me right now.  It is running bootcamped on my Apple. I'd rather not change to another OS just for some games - this is the sole reason why there is any Windows installed there at all.

I'll be back with the log later.

[rsc204 21,866]

4 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

 It is running bootcamped on my Apple.

Right, which I get may not be easily changed, since the version of Windows supported by Bootcamp is linked to what version of MacOS you are running. I’m not telling you what to do, just stating a fact that XP can’t take full advantage of your hardware.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

Shucks... That's a pity. 

I'm not sure if either 7 or Vista are free these days but if they were, I'd just go and update the current OS. Once I evacuate the files, of course.

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

2 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I'm not sure if either 7 or Vista are free these days ...

I'm sure they are not free.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

Ok, here's the log.  Hope you'll make something out of it, though I'm afraid you won't be able to help much if, like you say, XP is the major part of the problem.
 

Spoiler

Log generated on 12/7/2020, 21:45

 

Flags

-----

hardwareDriver = true

DXT = true

fullscreen = true

MMX = true

FPU = true

backingStore = true

forcedFSAA = false

 

Strings

-------

userName = Apple

appName = SimCity 4

version = 1.1.641.0

osVersion = Windows NT 5.1

computerName = USER-2BA7DC5CD6

CPU = GenuineIntel

sglDriverName = DirectX

sglDriverVersion = 2.0

driverName = ati2dvag.dll

driverVersion = 6.14.10.7070, GUID: D7B71EE2-2B80-11CF-DB73-D220AFC2CD35

cardName = ATI Radeon HD 5670

cardVersion = Vendor: 1002, Device: 68c0, Board: d2106b, Chipset: 0000

cardIdentity = ATI Radeon HD 5670

soundDriverName =

soundCardName = Podstawowy sterownik düwiÍku

buildType = Release

 

Numbers

-------

cpuSpeed = 3192

memory = 3064

freeMemory = 2548

screenWidth = 1920

screenHeight = 1080

screenBPP = 16

videoMemory = 1013

textureMemory = 1013

textureStages = 8

bogoFPS = 0

bogoMPPS = 0

 

Rules

-----

applying Sound

applying high sound detail

applying City Detail and Day/Night Settings

applying City Detail and Day/Night Settings>

applying high computer power

  option 9 = 3

  option 13 = 1

  option 15 = 3

applying Texture Quality and Building Variety Settings

applying Texture Quality and Building Variety Settings>

applying high memory

  option 3 = 3

  option 14 = 3

applying Variable Speed Automata

applying default

  option 10 = 1

applying Standard hardware

  option 0 = 1

  option 1 = 1

  option 2 = 1

  option 4 = 0

  option 5 = 1

  option 8 = 1

  option 7 = 1

  option 6 = 1

  option 11 = 0

  option 12 = 0

applying Standard hardware>

  option 1 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>

  option 0 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>>

  option 2 = 2

applying Standard hardware>>>>

  option 4 = 1

applying Standard hardware>>>>>

  option 11 = 1

applying Two stages

applying Lotsa vidmem

applying Radeon

applying Not Slow GeForce

 

Options

-------

Visual Effects current: 2 recommended: 2

Cars/Sims current: 1 recommended: 2

Shadows current: 2 recommended: 2

Atmospheric effects current: 1 recommended: 1

Water effects current: 1 recommended: 1

Software/Hardware current: 1 recommended: 1

Cursor current: 1 recommended: 1

VariableSpeedAutomata current: 1 recommended: 1

Translucent UI current: 1 recommended: 1

Graphic Detail current: 2 recommended: 3

Building Load Speed current: 2 recommended: 3

Texture Quality current: 3 recommended: 3

 

Properties

-------

forcesoftwaredriver = false

renderdynamicview = true

renderstaticview = true

renderwatereffects = true

rendercloudsandfog = true

forcepointsampling = false

forcebilinear = false

forcenoalphablend = false

forcenoalphatest = false

rendershadows = true

renderdecals = true

usesecondstage = true

forcedebugtexture = false

renderparticleeffects = true

renderflorashadows = true

renderterrain = true

showupdateregions = false

usecursoreffects = true

drawlottextures = true

drawlotfoundations = true

drawlotwalls = true

forcetexturerepeat = false

usescreenshake = true

renderui = true

useupdaterectclipping = true

usevertexbuffers = false

showboundingboxes = false

useoverlayculling = true

rendersnapshot = false

noaddsigned = false

nopartialbackingstorecopies = false

usescreenflash = true

renderautomata = true

preferopaque = false

displayalertborders = true

drawlotopaquetextures = true

useviewcleanup = false

doautozoomandrotationchanges = true

 

viewoffsety = 0

viewoffsetx = 0

texturebits = 32

lodoffset = 0

shadowdebug = 0

maxparticlestarget = 10000

particlelodoffset = 0

effectprioritylevel = 5

backingstoremaxzoomall = 5

backingstoremaxzoombuildingsprops = 5

backingstoremaxzoomterrain = 5

backingstoremaxzoomflora = 5

shadowquality = 2

minvehiclezoom = 3

minpedzoom = 4

cursortype = 1

depthoffset = 2

debugtexture = 0

dirtyrectmergeframes = 4

sounddetail = 2

buildingvariety = 2

buildingloaderspeed = 1

modellodoffset = 0

stringtexturecachesize = 1024

 

particleeffectslod = 5

splattexturescale = 50

texbindmaxfree = 8

particledensity = 1

particledamping = 0

particlescale = 1

lightingupdatedelta = 0,0001

shadowmodelthreshold = 12

demolishmodelthreshold = 12

rendermodelthreshold = 6

rendermodelthresholdscroll = 40

particlesizethreshold = 300

maxvehiclepct = 1

maxpedpct = 1

opaqueuialphavalue = 0,55

 

[rsc204 21,866]

9 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'm sure they are not free.

Why not?, Windows 10 is... you can install and never activate it and it doesn't stop working.

But yeah, all joking aside, Windows (other than version 10), is NOT free. Win7 disks were going for a premium for a while, but I think these days it's a junk (price) purchase. But you need a proper Retail (not OEM) edition, with a valid license key, or good luck activating Windows, which you must do within 30 days or Windows stops working on earlier editions.

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

cardIdentity = ATI Radeon HD 5670

There's your problem, you have an ATI card. SC4 "thinks" this card isn't up to playing the game, because it assumes that of almost all ATI cards. It may not mean anything to you, but what we want to see in the Logfile, is that SC4 is applying a profile named "fast card", which it currently isn't. It should be as simple as a few edits to some config files, to fix this.

Don't forget, if this works, you may want to try restoring the previous values you changed. Each tweak you do, may not combine well with others. Of course, it's equally true you might want both settings. What I can tell you, I used to play on an HD 3870 without disabling Vertex Buffers, but I needed to make the same edits outlined in the linked thread.

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

like you say, XP is the major part of the problem.

No, I never meant to say XP is a problem, quite the oppose, SC4 plays best under XP. Simply that your CPU would be more optimised under a newer version, in other words run faster. But SC4 doesn't require modern hardware to run well, so honestly if you can solve the main graphical issue, I don't foresee any problems.

Again just for the sake of comparison, I used to use a 2009 Mac Mini to run SC4 under Bootcamp on WinXP. It worked really well actually and your system is at least a couple years newer than that.

[Matrim Cauthon 344]

Just chiming into to say to not underestimate how much disabling shadows does for you. I've spent hours tweaking my SGR and Rules files to get -fast working, and simply turning off shadows gave me almost as much of an improvement as all the technical work I did.