Crash to desktop after only a few minutes of play

[Rendell001 36]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and new to SimCity 4 Rush Hour on the Mac, I'm hoping you'll be able to diagnose my technical issue!

I recently got hold of a copy of SimCity 4 deluxe from Steam - version 1.2.1 - and started with a couple of the tutorial cities to get aquainted with the mechanics. Generally speaking there were no issues though I began reading through Simtropolis forums and realised that getting the NAM (41) installed was an essential component. I've also gotten a couple of waste to energy lots, a couple of diagonal railway stations, the Opera House and Crime doesn't pay fixs. Everything seemed to be okay but now I'm lucky if I can play for a few minutes without it crashing to the desktop - it seems to be when I'm in the biggest tutorial city which now has 48,000 sims though I think the other one which has 38,000 sims may well have the same issue.

I realise that it could well be a conflict in the plug ins folder but as I've been looking at the Mac forum I realise there may be other issues I was unaware of. I run this app on a 2011 27' imac with 24Gb of Ram under the High Sierra OS if that makes any difference. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

[rsc204 21,870]

Have you DATPacked the NAM? This is a recommended step for any Mac user, since there is a bug that crops up causing such instability if you've more than a certain number of files/folders, which the NAM itself can exceed depending on Installation options.

You'll need a copy of JDATPacker, which is a Java program that takes a given folder (input - in this case the Network Addon Mod folder), then compacts it's contents into as few DAT files as possible, usually just two or three for the entire NAM. You can then remove the Network Addon Mod folder and play with the DATPacked files instead, this should then be stable.

If you re-install or upgrade your NAM install in future, you'll need to DATPack it once more, but it's a fairly painless operation.

[Rendell001 36]

Ah... i did notice the DAT pack thread after my original post but your reply clarify's why it's essential for the Mac version.

I find that the intial load-up of a city when you first start a game to be VERY long - better part of a minute in fact. Would that change with the DAT pack method?

Also I'm wondering if the commuter modeling in NAM is quite right but thats a topic for another thread...

[rsc204 21,870]

6 hours ago, Rendell001 said:

I find that the intial load-up of a city when you first start a game to be VERY long - better part of a minute in fact. Would that change with the DAT pack method?

Not really, especially so if you are using SSD storage. Originally DATPacking was conceived as a way to speed up game load times when users had a large number of Plugins. Spinning disks need to find data before they can read it, so having 10's of thousands of small files was very inefficient. By packing everything (all the same data remains), into fewer, smaller files, a HDD doesn't have to seek anything like as much, making a significant difference. However, SSDs don't work like HDDs used too and whilst DATPacking does optimise things a little, the benefits for SSD users are marginal, because SSDs can find data much more efficiently.

What tends to cause the delay with the modern NAM releases, is the sheer amount of code that needs to load. The first city you load after starting the game, triggers the RUL code being loaded into memory. A full NAM controller contains probably 4-5 million extra lines of such code, which is what's causing the hold up. However, this process only needs to happen once after starting the game itself, opening further cities will be much quicker.

6 hours ago, Rendell001 said:

I'm wondering if the commuter modeling in NAM is quite right

That's subjective in the context of this being a simulator, computers can mimic the real world, but the real world is really complex. Especially given the age of the game, it would have been necessary to condense all the factors that make up this process, into a set of algorithms that wouldn't have required a super-computer to calculate. As such, there are quirks, limitations and nuances that apply to any modding in this area.

Personally I would say it's pretty good, considering this is just a game, it does a fairly realistic job IMHO. There is some work going on to make some alterations to the Traffic Simulator, I don't think there will ever be a total consensus on how this should work, because everybody is looking for it to do things slightly differently. It's not like the game says, oh I see you are in Europe, so let's make things more like where you live. However, there are some user-customisable functions, that may work better for you and how you want to play. In the NAM Download is a folder for the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool (TSCT), another Java app, which exists for this purpose.

[Rendell001 36]

I'm pleased to report that the DAT packing seems to have done the trick and the game ran earlier without incident - are there any other items I should be aware of when playing this version on the mac?

Btw as regards NAM and the city I've been playing, it's probably not NAMs fault, I think there are other factors in play which are influencing commuter patterns. I've been working on the "Big City tutorial" and thats basically a triangular coastal city, the coastal side is one long diagonal and it creates all kinds of problems. Now while NAM is pretty comprehensive when it comes to transport puzzle pieces, I have noticed there are a couple that seem to be missing. Additionally I can't seem to get ring roads for my parallel one way streets... I'll work it out eventually!

[rsc204 21,870]

You probably need to know that to use the Tab-Rings, you need to hold CTRL or they'll cycle 2 items at a time, so half the pieces appear to be missing. Otherwise a lot of useful info can be found here.