SimCity 4 FAQ Help (MAXIS)

Dowloaded Lots Don't Function
Lots created using either SimCity 4 Deluxe or the Rush Hour Expansion Pack may not function correctly for users when loaded into the SimCity 4. If you are running SimCity 4 on your computer, and are encountering problems opening downloaded lot files, you may want to consider buying a copy of Rush Hour to ameliorate this problem.

Disappearing Buildings When Scrolling
Many cards (including the ATI Radeons) lack support for a backing store, which SimCity 4 utilizes. For those cards, SimCity 4 is forced to disable the rendering of many of the view objects (like buildings) during scroll. This is intentional to ensure responsiveness while scrolling. You can enable the rendering of all objects by editing your "Graphics Rules.sgr" which is found in the SimCity 4 directory installed to your hard drive. With any text editor go into this file and change the following property from true to false:

property noPartialBackingStoreCopies false

Note, however, that doing so can adversely effect scrolling speeds.

Performance Problems
If this problem is occurring for brief periods, this is to be expected. If these pauses occur for longer than several seconds, the likely reason is that you have run out of RAM. The larger the city, the more RAM the game requires. In this case, you have several options short of purchasing more RAM. First, play on smaller cities (64x64 tile cities). Secondly, play with City Detail turned to medium or low. City Detail can be found in the Graphics options and reduces the number of objects rendered in the world (such as trees, street lights, stop signs, etc). After changing this setting, you must exit your city and re-enter it to take effect. Third, have few or no other applications running simultaneously with the game. A combination of these three options should improve performance.

Game Crash
The crash with MySim is related to the bonus CD. If you have installed the bonus CD and have moved a MySim into your city, crashes are likely. We will have a patch available soon that fixes this issue. Deleting the file called Plugin_007_AirForceBase.dat from the Plugins directory found in Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Plugins is a quick way to avoid the crash.

Turning Off The Auto-Street Laying Function When Zoning
Currently the auto-street laying function as part of the zone tool cannot be turned off. If, however, you draw roads and then zone an area, you can avoid having streets automatically drawn.

Editing Terrain With Fine Detail
You can change the size and speed of all terrain brushes by using the shift key in combination with the number keys for size, and the shift key in combination with the F1 though F10 keys for speed. So, after selecting a brush to use, you can make the brush smaller by clicking on Shift-1, large by clicking of Shift-0, and everything in between using Shift-2 though Shift-9. Similarly, you can slow the rate of terrain change for the same brush by clicking on Shift-F1, increase the rate by clicking on Shift-F10, and everything in between by using Shift-F2 though Shift-F9.

Custom Music
By placing your own music files (MP3's) in the proper directory, you can have custom tunes play while you enjoy the game. The first step is to place the music files in one of two directories. For music to be played while in region mode place your custom tunes here:

C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Radio\Stations\Region\Music

And for music to be played while editing your cities:

C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Radio\Stations\Mayor\Music

Once your music is in place, start the game up and go into the sound options. In sound options is a check box called Custom Tunes. Checking that box will enable the playback of the music files you placed in the two directories.

Anti-Aliasing problems
We've tested the game with full-screen anti-aliasing on a variety of cards. We found that beyond some graphics glitches (streaking) the game runs fine. If, however, if you have overclocked your card or have beta drivers, a crash might result.

Flood Fill Zoning
After selecting a zone tool, by click-holding in an area, the tool will flood fill the zone in the area bounded by roads. This can be useful for zoning non-rectangular areas.

An alternative to just straight roads
Instead of just laying out straight sections of road there is an another way to get more variety. Holding down the shift key and then drawing roads allows a straight & diagonal section from the start of your draw to the end. Remember that you can lay out roads and look at the preview before letting go of the mouse. If you don't like what you see, hit escape before letting go and it will cancel the action before spending your precious dollars.