The road to 50k sims... Does it make SC4 unstable?

[rsc204 21,836]

A couple of users have had problems with the latest Mac version of SimCity 4, specifically that once the population of a city reaches around 40k, that the game starts regularly crashing. Reports here and here for reference.

My personal view is, whatever lies behind these crashes isn't related to the number of sims. If some general game-limitation was causing this, I'd expect that'd we'd be hearing a lot more about it, rather than just a few reported cases. As I stated before, I can run cities with much higher populations and a decent amount of mods, without suffering such issues. But since technically these regions were pre-built and use an out of date version of NAM, it's not really empirical data.

Having been rather intrigued by this problem, I decided to spend my 4-day Christmas (not) holiday, testing things out for myself. Instead of playing a pre-existing region, I started with a completely blank one and would build it up to 50k Residents in at least one city. As much as anything, so I could confirm that indeed, the population growing does not trigger any generic game bug. For the sake of ruling it out, I've also kept the default "full" NAM Controller whilst playing and used the latest v39 of NAM, but otherwise avoided for the most part using any other mods. I also did not DATPack the NAM either.

As you can see, I'm hardly using the latest or most powerful Mac, especially since I'm stuck with an Intel iGPU.

The overall plan here is to create a region containing a city that is just about to hit 40k, which anyone can very easily use, to quickly exceed 50k sims. Thus allowing others to check this problem with the minimal of effort required and provide a standard known-working setup to compare results against.

So I started by building a fairly small region with just four inter-connected cities:

Ruralere
This starter-town contains farms, a handful of Com and a few thousand Res.

Durtle
A town primarily intended for Power Generation and Garbage Handling for the other cities. It's home to some R$$$ sims despite the pollution in-general. It's also got a large base of uneducated R$ sims, to work on the farms and sustain I-D growth.

Farmla
I added this city tile with the intention of expanding the region's farming. However, I only needed to do so for a brief period to create demand for better industrial development. As such, it's not really an important part of the region.

Biggleswort
Here is our 'Real' test city for this case, right now it contains 35k Sims and supports workers from Durtle as well as itself. Some areas have education, others deliberately not. Like all the other cities, the budget is in the black and the future is bright for expanding this city.

I've attached (zip file) a copy of the region at this stage:
^{Note: this is intended for Mac users (Aspyr v1.21), it's unlikely this region will work on older or Windows versions of SC4.}

NAM 39 50k_35k.zip

To use this region you will need:

• NAM 39 (RHD)
• Industry Doubler Mod (or suffer demand being all screwy when you've only half the Industrial jobs intended).

To make things ultra-simple, I've uploaded a copy of the NAM as used, this avoids everyone having to manually setup the same install and ensures all results are based on identical setups. Due to the size, find that on my Google Drive.

I have already further developed the region, surpassing 40k sims in Biggleswort. All that's really needed to do this is to upgrade some of the Low Density Res zoning to Med Density Res (green areas). You may also upgrade the zoning in the Industrial area (yellow), to High-Density to help drive demand for more residents.

I will make a separate post for 40k and 50k sims, and upload the updated Region (save file) for these stages later.

Right now in many days of having the game open and maybe 10 hours of actual play time, I have had only 1 CTD. Honestly I can't say if that was a random lockup or if caused by the Puzzle Piece over CTD issue. I must admit since SC4Fix (I'm a Windows player normally), I've rather lost the old knack of being careful to avoid doing this. Sadly if like me you are on Catalina, it simply no longer works for Mac users, although I'm less certain if the same is true of the 64-bit Mac edition overall, I've a feeling it might be though. I checked into this and indeed it no longer works on the 64-bit edition of SC4, regardless of MacOS version used. That said I've had no general stability problems as this city grew past 40k sims.

[countermoon 46]

I question the value of the original post given the high number of variables involved in troubleshooting software. Being able to repeat a bug is the easier end of the scale of troubleshooting, and probably the least common experience. Many problems are not that obvious.

[rsc204 21,836]

57 minutes ago, countermoon said:

I question the value of the original post given the high number of variables involved in troubleshooting software.

This test, is a very concentrated one, is it possible for the game to get through this stage without becoming unstable? I'm not saying if I can do it, everybody can. But, if there were a general bug triggered that had anything to do with this "40k" figure, every player would suffer said bug. Ergo, if I can pass that mark without any troubles, we know those who can not must have problems that come from elsewhere.

Are you saying it's not worth me wasting my time to try and look into this problem that other people are having and not myself? Is it stupid to think there might be some use in providing a setup anyone can use, to quickly check with a known-working setup?

I guess it would help if you'd spent say a number of years professionally testing software?, not to mention your own code. Someone like that might have the vaguest inkling of what they are doing?

1 hour ago, countermoon said:

Being able to repeat a bug is the easier end of the scale of troubleshooting, and probably the least common experience. Many problems are not that obvious.

But that's the opposite of what I've set out to do, I never expected I would be able to repeat it, that's the point, I don't believe any such bug exists. Replicating a bug, assuming it's been documented isn't easy, it's child's play, you'd literally have all the steps to follow? But I am unclear what you mean by "least common experience", are you trying to say that replicating a bug is something people don't have experience of?

Ultimately, to find the root of a problem, you have to start ruling things out, otherwise their will simply be too many variables in play. So, hardware/driver quirks aside, anyone using the same version of SC4, who also uses the same Plugins/Regions I've provided, should reasonably expect the same results. But if not, that tells us something. Likewise if this setup works without problems, but a user's own setup does not, that also tells us something. In both cases, we can very reliably narrow down the number of potential causes. Call me thick, but it seems to me there is some merit to this, otherwise I wouldn't have spent any time on it.

[countermoon 46]

"every player would suffer said bug"

Maybe. There's a lot of voodoo in the computer world.

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

@rsc204

Excellent post, and thanks for sharing your valuable insights from the testing you've found.

Empirical data is so useful when diagnosing issues. I think we should all appreciate the efforts people like you put in to help others in the community. While there can be many variables in play with these things, the process of testing involves investigating from numerous different angles. How there was no immediate crash at the 40k population mark suggests that other factors are responsible to cause such crashes for some Mac users. If this can be pinpointed specifically, then we'll know more about how it can be prevented. Right now it has been ruled out that the mere surpassing of 40k Sims per tile does not cause a CTD as might've been expected.