jjakucyk

I tried it a while ago, but couldn't get it to work properly under Parallels. CrossOver Games works better, but it's still not perfect.

I noticed this issue too, which also appears when the railroads are on retaining walls. I assume it's using the same texture (or even the same tile piece) for both. I can usually get rid of the approach piece for the railroad bridge just by rebuilding the bridge.

First let me say I'm thrilled with all the great additions to the January 2009 NAM release, it's a fantastic update and I thank everyone involved for all their hard work on it. While there are a lot of suggestions out there for new networks, intersections, etc., there's at least one element I was surprised still wasn't included in the latest NAM. Specifically, with all the new smooth/long curve puzzle pieces for railroads, avenues, and highways, where's the smooth curve piece for ELEVATED highways? This seems to be one big missing piece in the collection. The next thing I've run into relates to the smooth curve railroad pieces. I've found it rather difficult to create a simple "T" junction with the included pieces. It's certainly doable, but it's just too big, as you can see in this screenshot. What's needed is a symmetrical "Y" piece, where the rails split apart equally, such as in this roughly Photoshopped image below, and as can be seen in this Google aerial. Along with that, the same piece could be made with the addition that the straight rail continues through, so you can use four of them to create a "grand junction," so a train approaching the junction can go either left, straight, or right.

I've tried and not had any luck. Due to issues with Apple's X11 implementation, there's problems with OpenGL in WINE, and that's pretty much required for any game to work on the Mac. Things may be a bit different in 10.4, but it's completely broken in 10.5, which is one place where Crossover Games comes in. I don't know how they modified the WINE codebase to get OpenGL working, but they did, and that's an accomplishment in and of itself. I posted some information on using SC4 through Crossover in this forum, you might check that out.

I've had some problems getting the game to run at all through Crossover when hardware rendering is turned on. You might try setting the game to software rendering by setting up the "run command" as such (change the file paths and resolution as required): /Users/you/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/winxp/drive_c/Program Files/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Apps/simcity 4.exe -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050x32 -intro:off -d:Software

I like to use highways for realism, but they can be very valuable too. The trick to remember is that unlike in the real world, the pathfinding in SimCity prefers the shortest DISTANCE commute over the shortest TIME. This has been fixed to some extent with the NAM and other transit mods, but it's still the overall basis of the commute engine. So the lesson is that people will not go out of their way at all to use a highway. The only way around this is to try to funnel people onto the highways and provide other barriers that make the highway more direct.

That's such a lonely looking road... I've seen this too from time to time, and usually just re-laying the road over top of the old one will cause the gates to go up.

I've had similar problems trying to get nice middle-income row-house neighborhoods. The underlying issue is that the neighborhood will eventually fill with the highest density buildings possible. The only workarounds I can come up with (other than the historical trick you already mentioned) are to lower desirability. That can be done by increasing pollution (although that would be the least effective on low-wealth residential), removing schools, parks, hospitals, other city services, and reducing access to transportation. That's all very difficult to do and make it work right though. I don't know if the double-bungalows can be edited so there are fewer residents. If a custom building is "taking over" then maybe you could mod it to have fewer residents, or simply remove it altogether. There is an RCI plop modd that basically turns all buildings into ploppable landmarks with jobs, residents, etc. However, I strongly recommend you don't use it. There's some issues with residents finding jobs, but more importantly it also affects growable buildings. When I tried to remove the modd, I found about a quarter of the growable buildings in my cities disappeared, leaving just their base lot. However, demolishing that lot didn't remove the residents! Essentially the building was still there but invisible, and a new building could grow in the same place. Needless to say I had to just reinstall the modd and will just live with it.

If you're gonna gripe about something, gripe about the terrible performance compared to the Windows version, the fact that abandoned or dilapidated buildings are just darker, not really "dirtied up", that the sound in u-drive-it is completely broken, or that night lighting and transit station capacities on custom BAT's are messed up.

In low-density areas, I just don't give them water. That will give you nice middle-class suburbs without any rich people moving in.

I just posted these instruction on the SimCity 4 page for CrossOver Games at http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=35 I figure some here might find it useful too. Any suggestions would be helpful. These instructions are for installing and running SimCity 4 Deluxe on CrossOver Games for Macintosh. Instructions for the Rush Hour update will need to be altered accordingly, but I don't know if it works. Note that SimCity 4 does not appear to work with the regular version of CrossOver, it only works with CrossOver Games. This is due to bugs in Apple's X11 implementation that causes OpenGL to fail in standalone versions of WINE and Darwine (and on the Mac nearly everything, including "software" rendering utilizes OpenGL at some level) . Also note that you will need a no-CD cracked version of SimCity for it to run in CrossOver. I also used .iso disc images for both the install CD's, and even with both mounted it still wouldn't work without the crack. The installer may work with the actual first CD, but the installer has trouble recognizing the second one when it needs it. The test system is an 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro (2008) with 4GB of RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT running OS X 10.5.4 Leopard. ATI or even other NVIDIA cards could produce significantly different results, so beware. 1. Install CrossOver Games if you haven't already 2. Mount both CD disc images in the Finder. CrossOver should start by itself 3. Click the "Express Install" button for CD 1" 4. Enter your serial number and proceed with the Windows installer 5. After a few minutes, the installer will hang, click the "Force Installer Completion" button 6. Manually install any .dat or .sgr files from CD 2 if they didn't copy over, the install location is: /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/winxp/drive_c/Program Files/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe 7. Replace "simcity 4.exe" (in the Apps folder) with the no-CD cracked version You can now launch SimCity from the "Programs" menu in Crossover. If it uses an incorrect resolution, you can change it on your next relaunch. To do that go to "Programs" "Run Command..." and paste in the following: /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/winxp/drive_c/Program Files/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Apps/simcity 4.exe -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050x32 In this case it will enable a resolution of 1680x1050 at millions of colors (32 bit). Other flags such as "-intro:off" or "-w" don't always work. The installer will create a SimCity 4 folder in your documents folder. If you already have one from the Mac version, it will use it, and on your first launch you should see your current region. If you have another existing SimCity 4 documents folder that you want to use, copy the Plugins and Regions folders into the one the Windows installer created. It's important to note that SimCity 4 on Crossover is very particular about placement of plugin files. I've spent weeks tracking down very frequent crashes, but it's allowed me to keep all my custom buildings, lots, and mods. Keep all 3rd party bats, lots, props, textures, and mods (including the Network Addon Mod) in your documents plugins folder: /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Documents/SimCity 4/Plugins Landmarks downloaded from Maxis and the bldgprop .dat files need to be in the application plugins folder: /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/winxp/drive_c/Program Files/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Plugins This setup is the most stable for me, but if you have crashing problems, try moving/removing plugins between those folders. I've broken down my documents plugins folder into Bats and Lots, Mods, Network Addon Mod, and Props and Textures. The landmark and other .dat files in the application plugins folder are just placed straight in the folder. Rendering modes are somewhat of a double-edged sword. SimCity 4 for Windows supports DirectX and Software rendering officially, and OpenGL unofficially. On the Mac, Software and OpenGL operate the same. DirectX is faster and smoother, but vehicles and pedestrians disappear and reappear randomly. Also, buildings under construction tend to flicker and break apart while the scaffolding is "growing". Software/OpenGL isn't quite as fluid as DirectX, but it's still much better than the Mac version. Vehicles and pedestrians render properly, but anytime you hover your cursor over a tool or building, the tooltip/bubble or highlight can cause flickering when you move the mouse away. Waiting a few seconds or scrolling the screen will erase the flickering areas. Also, shadows only render in their lowest quality with OpenGL. The game's custom cursor does not show up in either rendering mode. To try to fix the aforementioned video glitches, I've tried installing in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 bottles, tweaking the video cards and graphics rules .sgr files, and adjusting overrides in Wine Config, but nothing produced any change, let alone a fix. If you can get around the visual glitches, the game is much much more fluid and responsive than either the PPC or beta Universal Binary Mac versions. Distressed/dilapidated buildings also show dirt and grime, as opposed to just being colored darker, and time also proceeds much faster as well. The heavy-hitting NAM traffic controller plugins can still slam the game pretty hard, but not to the extent that it does on the Mac version. For instance, playing a large city with about 300,000 people, the "A" or "Perfect Pathfinding" plugins would cause frequent long pauses in game time (lasting several minutes) and when time did run, it would barely crawl by at low speed. With the Windows version on CrossOver, those pauses are virtually eliminated, and time generally runs at least on medium. Of course, the complexity of your city and computing power will have an effect on speed and fluidity.

The UB patch is NOT any faster than running the PPC version under Rosetta. I have no idea why that's the case, as you would think that the processor-intensive stuff like the pathfinding engine would speed up, but it doesn't. In fact, the UB patch seems to cause more problems than it solves. Unfortunately, SC4 is just plain slow on a Mac. That's partly Aspyr's fault, and partly Apple's (for their OpenGL drivers). If you have the Windows version, consider Crossover Games. It's VERY fast and fluid, but I had some graphics glitches that stopped me from pursuing it any further.

So I finally had to retire my 1st-Generation dual-processor Power Mac G5 due to repeated video card failures (3 ATI Radeon X800 XT's have failed, and the OEM ATI Radeon 9600 Pro just plain sucks for processing RAW photos in Aperture). Just a note, the X800 XT didn't change much in SC4. Performance was maybe marginally better, but not noticeable. There were several graphics glitches in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) that actually went away in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Anyway, my new computer is a 2.8 ghz 8-core Mac Pro with the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT. A very nice machine to be sure. At work I have the quad-core version with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. Both computers are running OS X 10.5.2. I have tested SC4 RH with both the PPC version and the Universal Binary beta on both machines, albeit not too extensively on my work computer, for obvious reasons. Here's my observations though. 8-core vs. 4-core doesn't make any difference for SC4, which shouldn't be any surprise. Video performance is somewhat better with the Nvidia card than with the ATI card, but it's pretty lousy with both. For example, on my home computer, I get about 10 FPS. Needless to say, U-drive-it is next to unplayable. Terrible scrolling performance seems to be the norm, regardless of video card. On both computers, using the PPC version of the game yielded worse FPS than the Universal Binary, and with the ATI card there were a lot of graphics artifacts. Thus, I haven't pursued running the PPC version on Intel machines. Before I continue with the problems, I will say that game/city loading, and the progression of game time is much faster. Navigating menus is also a little snappier. It also reduces the problem the NAM pathfinding engine has finding jobs for newly built buildings in large cities. I've noticed fewer of those newly built buildings become abandoned before finding jobs, but it hasn't stopped completely. As with my G5, the look of the game is generally ok, although there are a few problems. One is that the color of pathfinding queries is totally wrong. Cars paths are purple, pedestrians are yellow, trains are red, etc., even though the key window is still correct. Also, when querying a small house (which thus has few trips), the path is so faint that it's nearly impossible to see. That's not a huge issue, just kind of annoying. One thing that is a big issue is that dilapidated or abandoned buildings no longer show as darkened on my home computer (I can't remember if this happened on my work computer or not). As much as I hate the look of those abandoned/dilapidated buildings, it's very annoying to have to query a building to find out if it's in trouble. If I demolish a distressed building, I can see it turn black as the model is "shattered", but that's not much help. So the issues, all graphics related, are poor scrolling and FPS, incorrect pathfinding colors, and dilapidated buildings that look normal. I've tried every edit I can think of to the Graphics Rules.sgr file (and yes, I added my cards to the Video Cards.sgr file). The Radeon HD 2600 XT can be added to the list of cards without a backing store, and it will enable that "low-impact" scrolling mode, but that doesn't really help much. I even found out how to add rules to change parameters that show up in the SC4 config-log, but which aren't in the Graphics Rules file. Unfortunately, nothing changed. The only thing I've been able to find that makes any difference in SC4 is to use the Quartz Debug app that's part of the Apple Developer Tools to disable Beam Synchronization. However, the benefit is miniscule, improving the game's FPS from 10 to about 12 at best. It seems that the crux of the issue is with OpenGL, as it's the intermediary between SC4 and the video card. I don't really see any way to futz with the OpenGL drivers though. I'll see if I can get anywhere with Darwine or Crossover, but I'm not getting my hopes up on that front. Boot Camp, Parallels,

What kind of video card does your MBP have? I had graphics problems with my G5 when I upgraded the video card from the original ATI Radeon 9600 to the Radeon X800 XT, but upgrading to Leopard fixed it. That might work for you too.

Can you offer any help on the following items? Transit Tab/Transit Preference: What exactly is "none" for? Is that for industrial freight trips? Can you offer any better explanation of what these settings do? Traffic Tab/Commute Trips: What is the "occupant radius", and what does changing it do? Traffic Tab/Traffic Generated by Population: Changing these values doesn't seem to affect anything in the game. Perhaps this is a bug? In looking a bit deeper into the problem I mentioned before (residences generating few or no commuters compared to using one of the regular NAM pathfinding plugins), it appears that the number of commuters is only 5% of the capacity of the building (the supposed Maxis default) regardless of whether or not I change it in SC4Config. I find it odd that 5% would be the default, since it means that most single-family homes won't generate any traffic at all unless they have more than 20 occupants. All that being said, what sort of traffic is generated from commercial zones anyway? Various Tab/Weather Simulation: What does this do? I'm not aware of any weather capabilities in the game to be modded. Here's what happens to a city after "switching" from the NAM-only plugins to SC4Config: