Bumdark

This is probably the most common problem in SC4... and there are so many threads all relating to this topic it hurts my head to count them. (Though I have a headache, so that may not help...) There are a crapload of reasons as to why Brown Boxes appear instead of the buildings. (BTW, having a Mac has nothing to do with the issue, so rest assured.) 1 - Just about 99,99999% of the downloads on this site (and any other sites, for that matter) require you to have SC4 Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition (they're essentially the same thing... SC4 + Rush Hour = Deluxe Edition). If you've got SC4 "Vanilla" (original version), chances are nothing downloaded will work. 2 - Once you've got RH / DE, most buildings and downloads need other downloads themselves to be able to work. These are called "Dependencies". These range from props, to textures, etc., used on the download. Usually, the list of required downloads, or dependencies, is included either in the download's description or in the obligatory Readme file (that's why they're called so!). If, somehow, you download something that doesn't list any Dependencies but still doesn't work, either it's an in-game conflict (things get complicated here), or the download's maker forgot to include the list and should be whacked over the head. Repeatedly. That's just about it. There could be more reasons, but they're fairly uncommon so I won't bother you with them - I'm pretty sure you'll fix the problem with the above. (And if I can make a recommendation, try searching the forums - the aptly-named "Search" button is there for that. That way, you won't have to wait for an answer that might never come.) Peace Y'all

Hang on, lemme get this straight... A game that's nearly five years old sells better than it's brand-spanking-new sequel...? Methinks EA (and / or Tilted Mill) should take a hint... I can't help but remenisce at something of the sort I've once seen on "Fraiser". For Christmas, he always gives others gifts he thinks THEY SHOULD LIKE, in stead of simply giving them gifts he knows THEY DO LIKE. Same with EA / TM. Stop forcing sour little Societies down our throats and revert back to the winning formula. Sure,, SC4 is complicated as hell, but isn't that why we actually like it? For the challenge, the modifiability, the variety, the options for customisation? Seems clear enough for me... Maybe Societies has what it takes to make an OK game, but don't name it SimCity. Giving cities "energies", feels, etc. - *****???

These things just get sillier and sillier, don't they? Like on steaming coffees, "Danger: very hot". Guh, I hadn't thought of that earlier! Whaddaya mean, my coffee, having just come out of the bewing pot over a fire stove, is very hot? That's steam of cold you see! Dumb nuts... I've heard this one from my English teacher a few weeks back... Once, some stupid woman in the US took her van for a spin. On the highway, she decided to press "Cruise Control" to let it steer her home. Need I remind that she ended up in the field? The worst part: she SUED THE VAN'S MAKERS for not informing the public that Cruise Control ain't Autopilot! And SHE WON!!!!! Since, vans have been required to sport the "Danger: Cruise Control is not Autopilot" warning. I mean, being the judge, I'd've just sent the dumb woman to be commited for extreme stupidity and lack of a brain, but that's just my opinion... pretty sure it's shared, though. Comes to show not everyone can be fit to drive like they state in commercials... some are a pure danger, but only 'cause their brains didn't come shipped with the baby at birth.

I truly hope no-one's thinking along the lines of "Oh, it's because she's under so much pressure to succeed, surpass herself on TV and in the public eye..." Complete BS. Ah celebrities... they make me laugh. They're the only people in the world that first do everything to get noticed in public, then to everything to try and go unnoticed in public. Ah well... Weird world, eh?

I'm worth exactly 5000$ - yay! Enough for that big new PC I wanted! (Though I probably won't play much with it, what with being a cadaver and all... )

Ah well, just comes to show American government cares more about money than the people... as WillG_75 said so truthfully, commiting some silly, stupid little tax fraud (who doesn't wish of doing it!!!) will make you disappear for a great chunk of your life, while actually ruining a child's life with pedophilia and similar [Don't try to get around the censor, please. Vulgar words are not allowed] Marc will get you, at worst, a spank on the hand... What has the world come to? Please show me proof it actually isn't as pathetic and cold as it seems to be... Anyway, I'd love to villify this creep far and wide but I'd likely get banned for my less-than-pretty ideas... I wouldn't shoot him and kill him. Never. I don't kill... I'd torture the sanity out of him first. A bit à la Sin City when the Big guy slices and guts the man that killed Goldie... He's worse than an animal - animals don't do that to themselves!!!

Hey y'all... I download content at a supersonic rate all the time, resulting in that I don't always remember what exactly I download... The thing is, I've downloaded some mods and new trees from the STEX (where else?) and since I've been getting brown boxes. Curiously, these only appear when I plop the City Hall reward building. I've done some digging, and I've found a few of their names: - JRJ_TC_PinusPinea V2 - JRJ Fantasy Big Tree - JRJ_TC_Megaplatanoids - Spruce Tree Now: 1 - Who is "JRJ"? Jeronij? Jirnsum? Plenty of names that come to mind, but I'm just not sure. Second, anyone happen to know which file(s) contain these trees, so I can either get the blasted dependencies, of tell me what the file name is, so I can flush it away simply? Any help would be pretty appreciated. PY

... and you've only posted three times...!?? Didn't think I'd ever get an answer this complete... thanks jmelvin! (Along with everyone else who posted, of course). Heck of a long post, but it definately does work for now! Thanks! PY

Hey y'all! (Sorry if this is long, but I'm trying to accurately describe the symptoms so it may be easier to pinpoint the problem. ) ----- Symptoms ----- Now a while back, I gladly paid about 80$ CAD and soon after recieved my two STEX Collections CDs, the Classics and the Dream City DVD . Here's the problem... When I load the Classics into the disk drive, nothing happens. No autorun, nothin'. Now, seeing as my autorun doesn't actually work at all, I ain't too fussed here, so I open up My Computor, and click on the drive [E:], which is a DVD drive, just so you know. Some window pops up, asking me which program to open it with. *****, right...? So I explore the CD (right-clicking "explore", funnily enough) and I click on the Autorun thingy. The PC immediately goes into overdrive and looks like it's straining to lay a beachball-sized egg or something, it's working so hard . Finally something happens, and I'm then able to navigate the disk and download stuff... but at a funeral-esque rate. Takes roughly 15 minutes for any given page to load, even though my PC's a recent, Pentium 4 3GHz from Gateway. Ah well, at least it works... somewhat... right? Once my picks are installed, I then pop in the Dream City DVD... and for once, the autorun actually kicks in. Yay! Wrong. The screen loads, after a long while, and then I go to click on a page to open some buildings up, and its instant death . It freezes, though the PC seems to be working to lay an egg again. Dang. After a while of troubleshooting, I finally manage to actually browse through some pages, though it takes AT LEAST half an hour - that's 30 minutes for the mathematically impaired - to load any given page, and that's when it loads at all. ----- PC Specs ----- Processor: Pentium 4, 3,0GHz OS: Windows XP SP2, Home Edition Disk Drives: 2 [E: and F:] E: is a DVD drive, F: is a regular CD drive RAM: 1,5GB DDR Other: Antivirus running at all times, "Windows Live OneCare", which I can't for the life of me figure out how to disable or simply "quit" for a while. ----- The Rest ----- So, basically, any help would greatly be welcome, or even some informing us about similar problems, so I know I'm not alone in this... PLEASE!!! Not that I just paid for the disks - I love ST as much as anyone else - but dishing out roughly 80$ CAD for two disks that barely work at all has got me pretty ticked off. I'm pretty certain the disks are fine, no replacement necessary... but if it comes to that, I'll take it gladly. PY Note: I made some edits, sometimes you need to use brackets "[ ] ", instead of "( )", otherwise you get a smile. tungston

Hey y'all. My PC used to be my pride, but now it's just about the death of me. Here's the problem(s). First off, explorer.exe keeps crashing again and again, and never for any ***** reason. It actually seems to target certain file paths, and then jams them so I can never enter those files or folders again. I try to enter my file/folder, pause a bit, an error (explorer.exe has encountered an error and must shut down. Sorry for any inconvenience even though we don't give a *****, or we would program our OS's a helluva lot better) appears. I choose to send the error report thingy, then explorer.exe shuts down altogether, and reinitiates after a few seconds of staring at a blank background image. This doesn't only happen with explorer.exe, but several other programs. Noticably, whenever I try to use Dreamweaver 8's Help menus, same thing happens, but with Dreamweaver 8.exe instead of Explorer.exe. Happening to anyone else? Or is this, once again, unique to my brand of faulty computors? PC specs: CPU: Pentium IV 2,99Ghz RAM: 1512MB/Mo DDR OS: Windows XP Home SP2, all available updates installed Patience: wearing thin Please help, anyone... I'm truly getting desperate here. PY

I've recently added a thread that describes the causes to most of well-known bugs and glitches in the game. Now, here's my best attempt at a full explanation to everything I know... Symptoms Causes Solutions Brown boxes appear in city Missing dependency files/Vanilla edition Download required dependency files / Purchase Rush Hour/Deluxe Edition Bright green schools / buildings In-game graphics glitch No cure - simply select appropriate data view category, then select "All off" to remove highlight Choppy framerate - 1 Tech specs Upgrade your PC / download all recent updates for your system Choppy framerate - 2 Background tasks interference Close or kill all running programs in background and kill unneeded processes (caution) Repeating shutdowns / game crashes to desktop repeatedly Compatibility issues with antivirus programs Switch off / close all antivirus programs while running SimCity 4 (though disconnect internet first) Missing textures in BATs Missing dependencies Download all required dependencies No night lights in BATs Missing dependencies / missing updates Download all required dependencies / download all updates and patches No highrises Missing updates Downoad all updates Massive unemployement Not a bug, misunderstood game mechanics Too many rich folk for too little rich jobs available. Increase rich jobs or get rid of rich folk. Erronous funding Transition from Vanilla to Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition Try ajust funding the way you want it Sudden strange transportation behaviour Transition from Vanilla to Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition Try modifying transportation structures or obliterate city Sudden growth spurt Transition from Vanilla to Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition Try modifying city infrastructure or obliterate city Cities disappear from map - 1 Transition from Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition to Vanilla Edition Get Rush Hour / Deluxe Edition back or cope without cities Cities disappear from map - 2 Deleted city files (cityname.sc4) Try to find city files or start over Skipping music (like on vinyls) Framerate issues Upgrade system These are all the problems I can think of right about now. If you've got more problems or more solutions, please post! PY

A few steps that will certainly get you your High Tech: - Destroy as much Dirty and Manufacturing industries as you can without causing too much unemployement. Although much cleaner, Manufacturing also pollutes the air around it. - Improve EQ around the entire city. Make sure all your residential zones are covered with precincts from every imaginable school - elementary, high, college, librairies, museums and the reward university. Adjust funding as well so you don't end up broke... - Improve desirability for your industrial zones. Plant large Park Greens and Large Flower Gardens here and there, preferably one or two per block. - Add a few trees. This always helps. - And of course.. MAKE SURE YOUR ZONES ARE WATERED!!!!!!! What happened to me once was, everything seemed to be fine, I had zoned and everything, but the years passed and nothing was building. Then I remembered they need water... then they grew like crazy. If pipes do run through that sector (in your town now), make sure they're connected with the civic water sources. Broken or orphan pipes don't do nothing. Post back soon to see if anyone of our solutions helped! PY

I didn't see your original pic earlier on... I don't know what you mean exactly as "boxes", but as for tear-like line, this isn't specific to your game. It's another one of the common in-game graphics glitches that the programmers didn't have time to work out - it happens to many buildings, sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. BTW, where did you get that helluva stadium? Me like... PY

Well, it would sure be easier to help you if, you know, you actually like told me what your problem is... If applicable, try squeezing in a few pics, too. PY

Woah - that's freaky. I've just got to know, does it do this to every button in the game or just a few, excluding those? You should probably scan your game files for anything wierd or missing, and if you're not good at that kind of stuff, you should consider uninstalling and reinstalling the game completely, cities included. (PS - Try running a virus scan on your PC while your game's uninstalled, it'll find any problems that could potentially affect your game. It's happened to me before, it worked fine after.) PY

Crater

Crater

ricky1097: 1 - Pretty much every factor in the game contribute to increasing population: health, education, desirability, parks & rec., very low or no garbage, low crime, low pollution (both water and air - most people keep overlooking water pollution at their expense), complete safety coverage (Fire & Police), low traffic (for Residential - opposite for Commercial, for them, the more traffic, the more customers, the better they are), higher zone density for taller buildings, enough water to feed (or drown) the demand, etc. Heck, just make your city as good and pleasant as you can, simple as that. But don't drive yourself into the red, either. 2 - A few things come to mind: passenger stations must be positioned well: the end with the building must be completely parallell to the tracks, and the end with the parking must have at lease one connecting road or street. As for Freight Stations, same thing as above, except that, as their name suggests, they must be placed only in Industrial sectors to work at all. They don't carry people at all. 3 - See below. 4 - Increase education, which will increase people's IQ, and they will ask for higher-end, higher-paying jobs like High-End Commercial. As for High-End Residential, same thing: work on your EDUCATIONS!!! 5 - Read all above. Dixie: Not an expert, say you? What nitwit put that into your head? You know more than enough to be an expert in SC4... Hope this helps! PY

It`s done that to me once, a long while back... I was innocently viewing the Transportation Map in the Region View, when suddenly the entire block of land started shaking fit to rip itself apart. Stopped soon enough though, and as for you, no damage was found anywhere in the city... I'd venture a guess as to this is some strange bug or glitch. Good thing it's nothing serious, but you should contact Customer Support, for glitches and stuff. I'd suggest searching your game files (usually in C:/Program Files/Maxis) and search for one of the little icons that have the little blue question mark. Click the "Contact Customer Care" or something like that, they'd tell ya what the heck this wierd thing is... Hope it happens again, though - I like to imagine those pesky cities crumbling into flames... they irk me so MUCH!!! PY

Ummm... Okay, here<s the deal. I've followed people's instructions, I've downloaded a dozen Mac skins/themes from themexp.org, but I still can't get that toolbar, Mac OSX style, on the bottom ofmy screen (or anywhere else)! Is it something I should be doing but I'm not? Please help, I really want that toolbar. PY

Well, here's mine. Hope you like it - I know I do! PY

Definately need to keep an eye on this one. It proudly bears its name in my opinion. Great work Jackie! BTW, is there a single thread in which you haven't left a post? lol I can now tell why you got all those awards, just look at how you answer to your viewers...

I say put a bullet in his head. Sorry i fI'm harsh, but I can't stand terrorists - they should all individually be nuked. People who do harm to others, whether pros or amateurs, don't deserve to live.

I wasn't entirely sure where to post this, so I chose the general area... My pictures don't appear. In topics like "Show us your city's pictures" and the likes, all I get are small squares with that annoying little sign in it. Does anyone know what I should do? This is killin' me!

The thread I'm mentioning (though this applies to pretty much all picture topics around the site and other sites as well) is the "fun screen shots" at the top of the General Discussion, and I do see a few pictures that appear. It's that most of them don't appear for reasons I still can't figure out. At least some appear, and they're older than 2006, so it can't be the thread itself...