NAM for Mac Is Back

The wait is finally over. The NAM is officially back on the Mac, with the release of NAM 32.1. And for the first time, it includes an installer, providing a similar user experience to what our Windows installer package has offered.

The changes included in NAM 32.1 are specific to ensuring compatibility with the 2014 Aspyr re-release of the Mac OS X port of SimCity 4 Deluxe, on the Mac App Store and Steam:

Exemplar encoding has been fixed, effectively solving the crash-to-desktop (CTD) issues that have existed on the Mac port since Apple's removal of Rosetta in OS X Lion (10.7).
Adds transit network paths that were missing in the Aspyr release.
Includes an installer for the first time.

NAM 32.1 is a Mac-only release, and all the changes to the package are aimed at ensuring compatibility with the Aspyr port. No other features have been added, making a NAM 32.1 release unnecessary for Windows.

In order to open the NAM for Mac installer, you will need to acquire a file decompression tool capable of handling 7-zip (.7z) files, such as Keka or The UnArchiver. We have used 7-zip because of its use of LZMA compression, allowing the file to be hundreds of megabytes smaller. The package contains a "READ FIRST" .txt file that will further instruct you as to installation.

A few other items of note:

As the installer package is basically the Windows installer running in a Wineskin wrapper, it is unable to detect Java, and by default, cannot run the Controller Compiler. You will encounter a pop-up dialog box informing you of this while the files are installing. The installer is designed to install the full NAM Controller as a failsafe. Testing results have shown that the full controller has much less of a performance impact on the Aspyr port than on the Windows version, but if you would like to run the compiler, it is possible to do so manually. The "READ FIRST" document details this information.
The Aspyr re-release is known to have a quirk in which the number of files (not their size) contained in the Plugins folder can cause crashes to desktop. This issue is inexplicably triggered with a much lower number of files if the user is running the game while not connected to the internet. To avoid these crashes, we recommend that the user use a tool like the cross-platform JDatPacker in order to combine the NAM files. Further instructions are included in the "READ FIRST" document.

Special thanks to memo from the NAM Team for spearheading this compatibility effort, and to Jonathan, Sabretooth78, and TEG24601 for testing and feedback.

The team would like to thank the Mac userbase for their patience, and we hope you enjoy this new package.

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