BuffaloMaine

I love your terraforming job on the river.

I have been sleuthing about looking for the source of my phantom slider bug and have found two buildings labeled Error: no name (to get a sense for what the problem is, see this video and check out around minute 15:44 or so). One is a "phantom" fire house and the other is a "phantom" school, both of which I bulldozed a very, very long time ago and have since built over, yet they show up in the list of firehouses and schools respectively as Error: no name. When you click on them, you are taken to the spot where they used to be. Two suggestions seem to have been given to solve this problem: 1) remove the offending plugin if you can figure out which one it is, or 2) rebuild the exact building on the same spot and then bulldoze. I have tried both and neither has worked. I have also tried the immortality killer plugin which didn't work either. Has anyone else had this problem and, if so, were you able to solve it? Is it possible to manually edit the city file somehow to fix the problem?

That's one of the first things I did. As I mentioned before, I can pin down exactly which plugins caused this, but getting rid of them does not solve the problem. The thing is that, as the video above (and some other forum posts from other people) shows, it's not one or two plugins. It's a bunch and they don't seem to have any discernible connection to one another.

Well, I searched the STEX and found one for the private school, but nothing has come up for fire stations. And, so far, the private school one (which resets the capacity) hasn't seemed to fix the problem (yet). I still have these "phantom lots" exactly like the ones that pop up in the video above and that have popped up in a few other posts on here as well. It seems as if it is a very obscure but non-user-specific problem.

Never heard of Bywater Springs. I don't have the Opera House, but I installed the fix anyway (figured it couldn't hurt at this point). No luck.

I started with that thread. Those suggestions did not work.

That's the one I had trouble getting to work. It wouldn't recognize that the disc was inserted when it tried to run after installing it. So I just paid $8 to get the whole game in one file from GOG.com.

OK, so there is a definite improvement. One quirk I'm still trying to figure out is, while running in windowed mode, how do you get edge scrolling to work? I like to be able to pan around my city by moving my mouse around (edge scrolling). It doesn't work in windowed mode since Wine doesn't "capture" the mouse. Any ideas or am I stuck with it as is? Update: OK, figured that one out. Still having trouble when I do edge scroll whether or not I'm in windowed mode. Basically I get ghost images (best way to describe it) as I pan around. It's almost as if the renderer can't keep up with the speed of edge scrolling.

Hmm. How do you set it to windowed mode? Do I have to add a flag to the EXE command (like turning off the intro or setting the resolution, etc.)? Update: I just found the settings for windowed mode, though it doesn't seem to want to work for some reason. Once I actually start playing it for real, I'll let you know how it is going. So far I have just tried to load this city that I've been working on since I bought the Aspyr version earlier this summer. It would really bum me out of I couldn't get it to load. I spent a week or two on a single highway interchange. Early indications are that it's running a bit slow. Here are my machine specs: RAM: 32 GB VRAM: 4 GB Native resolution: 2560x1440

OK, got it working via Wine BUT I'm having trouble loading my previously built city. All my plugins are loaded and the city and region appear, but when I go to open the city it crashes. It does NOT do this for a newly created city. I have no trouble starting a new city. I also can see all the appropriate plugins when creating a new city.

Well, that answers that question. I was wondering where in WNY you were from. I grew up in East Aurora, went to Canisius HS, and UB. Most of my family still lives in the area. My grandparents had a farm that was within sight distance of The Ralph (which will forever be Rich Stadium to me). I have been very impressed with the recent revitalization of the city.

I had forgotten until you mentioned it, but a while before searching for a digital copy (which I did on a whim prompted by I-don't-know-what) I had tried that route in order to try to get the game to run off a disc image in Parallels. The images created with no issues, but I may or may not have had the same exact result you got. In any event it didn't work. Digital copy is a far more elegant solution anyway. And assuming Wine keeps with the times and continues to support Windows XP apps you'll be future-proofed. You could explore asking for a refund from Aspyr - I thought of it but didn't. It cost me $20 in App Store credit that had been sitting around for at least 2 years and I never buy anything else off it so maybe that sapped my motivation. The fact that it was released unpatched (and with no way to patch it) is ridiculous. Actually just found a copy on GOG.com for $8.

That sounds like the splash screen you get on a PC when loading a CD-based copy of the game, which correlates with what you said you installed with. More than likely this just means Wine isn't seeing that you have the disc inserted (it was Disc 2 if I recall). I've never tried my CD version in Wine, only digital copy so I can't say for certain. I'm going to suggest you purchase a digital copy. Look at GOG.com or Amazon (I've purchased games from both, SC4 from Amazon and the RCT series from GOG). You won't pay more than $15, which is well worth not having to deal with a CD drive. (Not to mention an excellent price for a game that'll steal every waking free second you have if you let it.) If I was to boil it all down, aside from real life getting in the way the nuisance of having to carry that CD around with me to play is the number one reason I disappeared from the game (and this community) for nearly 7 years! I actually made images of each CD so I'm running from those since dealing with the drive itself was a pain. If I point Drive D: (which is set to CD-ROM) at the folder holding the CD1 files, it hangs. If I point it at the folder holding the CD2 files, it claims the disc is not inserted. Anyway, thanks. I was afraid you were going to say that since I spent $20 on the Aspyr port earlier this summer and didn't want to shell out more money. I originally stopped playing (and drifted off from this community, which I always kind of lurked in anyway) once I upgraded to Mavericks. I was so psyched to get back into it and now I'm a bit deflated.

OK, I'm banging my head against a wall in frustration at the moment. I have given up on the Aspyr release and have a 2 CD copy of the Windows version. I have tried Sabretooth78's instructions on porting to Wineskin but still can't seem to get the game to run. It will install, but when I go to launch it I get an image (looks like an SC4 graphic) of a bridge with cars on it, but then it just hangs... I've tried -intro:off but that doesn't help. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Well, I can't ignore the advice of a fellow Western New Yorker. I will have to give your Wine instructions a shot. I'm just frustrated because I spent money on the Aspyr version and it is essentially unusable.

So I've been fighting with the Aspyr release for a couple of months now. With the release of NAM 32.1 (and a nifty data packer tool someone put on SC4Dev) I was limping along until today. All was fine until a bulldozed this one lot in order to move it (it was just a simple plugin - the spa St. John Customs House). Now, merely attempting to open my major city leads to a CTD. I am at the point of giving up and switching to the Steam version (or maybe even the PC version running through Wine?). From what is written above, however, I get the impression that the Steam version still has issues. FYI, I've got a nearly brand new 27" iMac loaded to the gills so there can't be an issue with RAM or anything like that. Anyone have any ideas? I was so psyched to get back into this game again after giving it up when Mavericks came out. I should add that even after pulling out all of the plugins, it still crashes.

Answers: 1. You need to do a custom installation and look for the "Maxis Highway Override" option and check the box next to it. You don't have to uninstall the NAM first; each new install overwrites the previous install and it remembers which options you had installed previously. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at. Could you please explain what these "custom menu options are" that you want? Thanks. I guess I had just assumed that with a complete install, it automatically put in the MHW override. Answers: 1. You need to do a custom installation and look for the "Maxis Highway Override" option and check the box next to it. You don't have to uninstall the NAM first; each new install overwrites the previous install and it remembers which options you had installed previously. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at. Could you please explain what these "custom menu options are" that you want? As far as I can tell, BuffaloMaine is referring to daeley's BSC Menu Management Lot Mod (MML) (), a precursor of sorts to his Daeley's Advanced Menu Navigator (DAMN). Hmm. That doesn't look like it. What I seem to recall seeing somewhere was a pic someone had posted that showed the following: when you click on a menu item (for example the Parks or Police or Highways button), instead of getting a single-column of options that requires scrolling through, all the options showed up in a grid-like pattern so you could see them all at once. Maybe I am imagining things? I'm not sure if that's possible, but it would definitely be cool! That's for sure. I must have been hallucinating then.

Answers: 1. You need to do a custom installation and look for the "Maxis Highway Override" option and check the box next to it. You don't have to uninstall the NAM first; each new install overwrites the previous install and it remembers which options you had installed previously. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at. Could you please explain what these "custom menu options are" that you want? Thanks. I guess I had just assumed that with a complete install, it automatically put in the MHW override. Answers: 1. You need to do a custom installation and look for the "Maxis Highway Override" option and check the box next to it. You don't have to uninstall the NAM first; each new install overwrites the previous install and it remembers which options you had installed previously. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at. Could you please explain what these "custom menu options are" that you want? As far as I can tell, BuffaloMaine is referring to daeley's BSC Menu Management Lot Mod (MML) (), a precursor of sorts to his Daeley's Advanced Menu Navigator (DAMN). Hmm. That doesn't look like it. What I seem to recall seeing somewhere was a pic someone had posted that showed the following: when you click on a menu item (for example the Parks or Police or Highways button), instead of getting a single-column of options that requires scrolling through, all the options showed up in a grid-like pattern so you could see them all at once. Maybe I am imagining things?

OK, potentially dumb questions here, but I can't seem to fine an answer anywhere. NAM 32.1 works great and fixed a lot of the bugs in the Aspyr version. However, there are two issues I can't seem to figure out: 1. How do I invoke the Maxis Highway Override ("Project Symphony") option? I saw someone post a beautiful interchange recently with curved elevated highways that supposedly come from this option. 2. How do I get the custom menu options so that all the menu items for a given thing appear at once so I don't have to scroll through a million plugins to find the one I want to plop? Thanks in advance!

Figured I'd share my experience with NAM32 on the Aspyr release. I routinely used NAM years ago when I was running on my old Macbook Pro and had to stop playing when I upgraded to Mavericks. Just bought the Aspyr release and am still trying to fully get my old regions up and running. Anyway, I have NAM32 installed now and the only trouble I've had were related to anything related to the elevated rail stuff. That would alternately freeze the game or CTD. I'm not using it anyway, so I'm not concerned (at least at this point). My only other problem is getting a custom controller on install. I use WINE to install and unpack, but it doesn't recognize my Java installation and so it always defaults to the standard controller (so I'm stuck with tabs). Still trying to figure out how to force it to recognize my Java installation. I'm not a huge fan of how some of the roads and bridges render (I prefer the US roads for most of my builds), though. And I wish it would be possible to get the three-lane bridges with US roads.

OK, I've searched high and low for an answer to this but can't find one. I'm getting brown boxes on some lots even though I have all of the dependencies properly installed. I have tried updating the dependencies and tried rolling them back, all to no avail. It seems as if the problem might be in some of the BSC files, but it's not clear that all of the brown boxes come from them. As I mentioned, I tried reinstalling the plug-ins, updating, rolling back, etc. Some of the lots that are affected include mattb325's (which only has a brown box over a portion of the lot, not the whole thing) and SimCoug's FYI: I'm running Aspyr's Mac App Store version (which could be my problem right there...)

Yep, you were correct SimCoug. Looks like it was an outdated CP Mega Props pack --- the only one I don't think I updated (until now). Thanks for the help!

I'm new to the forum but have been successfully running SC4 Rush Hour Deluxe for awhile now with lots of plugins on a Mac running OS X 10.6.8. I've solved a number of problems myself and have managed to stop it from crashing. All-and-all it's running pretty well right now with the NAM and SC4 updates installed as directed by several of the posters here. However I have two persistent problems that are annoying me and that I can't find a solution to here. 1. Many of the ploppable plugins I have downloaded (as opposed to growable) simply don't show up in any menu when in the game. Even if I didn't have all the dependencies (which I do), they should still show up in the menu. But it's as if the game never even loaded them for some reason, and yet it loads other files in the same folder just fine. Anyone have this problem and, if so, what's the fix? 2. Every time I run the game it screws up my disk permissions. This of course doesn't do much initially, but after awhile it can slow down my computer and cause other annoying problems. Most of the disk permission errors appear to be associated with Java. Anyone else have this issue? What's the fix? Thanks!

Thanks. There are two Plugins folders, both having been automatically created on installation. The first (which is under the SimCity Data folder) was placed (with other things) under Shared according to instructions given here which apparently originated with Maxis itself. Then the second was placed in the Documents folder. There was a post somewhere that outlined how and why to do this and I can't, for the life of me, find it again. There was also a guide somewhere on this site that suggested loading the textures and props first but, again, I have not been able to find it (though, admittedly, I haven't looked for more than about ten minutes). Anyhow, I have re-installed the game (more than once, I think) and I'm still getting the disk permission errors. But perhaps I'll try placing the game in Applications and see if that helps (though I should note it was originally loaded in a sub-folder of Applications and still had trouble). In all honesty, this is not a surprise. I never seem to have problems that are easily solved.

Thanks for getting back to me. The following are two screenshots. I have the SC4 update and the NAM as well as one or two other things (as you can see) in /Users/Shared/.../Plugins (this is screenshot #1) while I have the buildings and lots in /Documents/.../Plugins (screenshot #2) with textures and props in a folder under the latter that should load first (i.e. I followed the directions given here on Simtropolis and in any Read Me file that comes with a given download). Specific examples of files that don't show up anywhere include the B87_USA_SpeedLimitSigns, some ploppable cows that I downloaded, and some textures/dependencies that are there but nevertheless the files that use them don't "see" them (e.g. a lot of MTP stuff). As for repairing my disk permissions, I pretty much do it every time I run the game now but it would be nice not to have to. The screenshots: