[RESOLVED] Segmented looking landfills and black lines between streets, roads etc.

[MithrilRing 4]

Edit - Resolution:

It seems like the Steam is a step behind the AppStore in terms of release version. For now, this problem is a Steam-only bug on Mac. I guess there isn't anything you can do to fix it, other than waiting for an update.

Original Post:

I'm on an Intel Mac with Sonoma (14.3.1) and have both the AppStore and Steam versions. (Only the Steam version is installed at the moment.)

Ever since I've switched to the Steam version, things like landfills and de-zoning tool produce a segmented look with spaces between tiles; and streets, roads etc. have thin black lines in-between each segment. (Screenshot provided below.) I'm pretty sure that other things in the game also have thin black lines in-between them. (The grid is off, and has a different look than what I'm describing anyway.) I removed all the mods (had NAM and SC4 Fix etc.) and reinstalled the game but the problem persisted. The AppStore version didn't have this problem. (I've switched to Steam because of other reasons and bugs.)

Does anyone have an idea what could cause this problem and how can I fix it?

  Edited March 22, 2024 by MithrilRing  

[simster007 413]

Don´t know about the app store version, are you sure that it doesn´t show these grid lines?  My steam app shows the same issue.  Small gridlines in all textures areas. AFAIK this is a Mac bug, which you cannot fix.

[MithrilRing 4]

10 minutes ago, simster007 said:

Don´t know about the app store version, are you sure that it doesn´t show these grid lines?  My steam app shows the same issue.  Small gridlines in all textures areas. ASFAIK this is a Mac bug, which you cannot fix.

I've only had the AppStore version up until the spring sale on Steam the other day. It didn't have this problem.

[rsc204 21,869]

The AppStore and Steam versions are pretty much identical to my knowledge, but this is definitely a bug with the Steam version I have it too. But the Steam edition should be the same code because it's still the Aspyr version, for example whilst it took a little longer, both were updated to 64-bit for Catalina and onwards. Unless you've got some kind of beta version of a new update, that was the last official one to my knowledge.

So far as I know this and some other graphical issues relate to the OpenGL implementation the Mac version uses with a compatibility layer to communicate which DirectX which isn't natively supported on MacOS.

[MithrilRing 4]

14 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The AppStore and Steam versions are pretty much identical to my knowledge, but this is definitely a bug with the Steam version I have it too.

Two versions are not completely identical. I've had the AppStore version since 2014. Got back into the game a couple of weeks ago and it didn't have this problem. It had some other problems though (one, actually, that I can be sure of: here's the forum link). I bought the Steam version about a week ago to see if it fixes some of the problems the AppStore version had, and it did fix a major problem – the one I mentioned in the link above. But sadly, it has some other problems, like those ugly grids, or NAM pieces rendering as white tiles sometimes, another known bug. The AppStore version didn't have this problem about NAM either.

So, if the bug I mentioned in this post doesn't bother you, I may actually choose the AppStore version over the Steam version now. Because those grid lines bother me more than the map glitch.

Edit: Added a screenshot from the AppStore version.

  Edited March 20, 2024 by MithrilRing  

[rsc204 21,869]

I have a 2k display which both my Mac and PC use, regardless of version this issue with rendering the region affects all SC4 versions. It is because of a limitation in DirectX 7 of 1200 vertical displays. Whilst we can bypass this limitation, the game was not designed to take screenshots beyond this size. Maybe it can be fixed with a DLL mod, but that won’t help Mac users.

I can’t explain the difference since Steam are literally using the Aspyr release themselves. If they’ve updated something for the AppStore release, surely that would be passed as an update to the Steam edition too? Perhaps not, but that’s shitty support if it is the case. Like I said, both received the same update for 64-bit runtime.

[MithrilRing 4]

1 minute ago, rsc204 said:

I can’t explain the difference since Steam are literally using the Aspyr release themselves.

It's really weird. I just installed the AppStore version back, to be sure that it didn't have the grid bug. It didn't (I've added a screenshot to my previous comment). The funny thing is, screenshots on the game's AppStore page have grid lines on ploppables (like the University) :^) The actual game itself doesn't have this problem. And I've never encountered white tiles when using NAM on the AppStore version either.

[rsc204 21,869]

My only question is what resolution are you running the AppStore version with and have you changed any of the other settings from their defaults?

Perhaps Aspyr fixed this bug?. but just didn't pass it onto Steam or maybe they did and Steam didn't update it, the latter seems less likely. If that is the case, presumably that update will make the Steam edition eventually since it seems there is a beta somewhere for an update to support Apple Silicon. I mean, it doesn't make any sense to fork the Mac versions so that the Steam one is using a different codebase, that would increase costs and complexity supporting the code.

[rsc204 21,869]

One other thing, can you get a version number of SC4?, when launching in Steam up pops the Aspyr launcher, I believe you can find this there. If there was a mismatch between Steam and AppStore releases, it would explain why they behave differently on the same machine.

[MithrilRing 4]

On 20.03.2024 at 1:31 PM, rsc204 said:

My only question is what resolution are you running the AppStore version with and have you changed any of the other settings from their defaults?

I've played on each available resolution setting and nothing changed. Default graphics settings are set too low on my machine so I change some of them, like the number of sims & cars and city details etc. This didn't change anything either.

On 20.03.2024 at 1:34 PM, rsc204 said:

One other thing, can you get a version number of SC4?

Oh, yes, there is a difference in versions: The AppStore version is on v1.2.2 whereas the Steam is still on v1.2.1.

So, it seems like the Steam version is a step behind. But it deals with resolution related bugs better than the AppStore version. There is no problem in rendering the region map on the Steam version, but the AppStore version still has the infamous "1200px" rendering glitch on the region map, despite being the newer one. On the other hand, the AppStore version seems to have fixed the grid problem.

Let's hope that they will update the steam version and fix all the problems we mentioned.

Btw, I'm not on a Mac with Apple silicon.