countermoon

I played the Big City tutorial in the Boot Camp Windows version for a couple hours. Things seemed to go very well. I had a ton of money. But when I returned later the game crashed on loading. So for my setup, the Mac version is still more stable. Plus, the Mac version fills the screen while the Windows version doesn't. I've played around with the audio and graphics settings (in both versions) on the assumption that these might make the game less demanding of resources, but it it doesn't matter. Still get crashes.

I saw that NAM 38 was released, so I installed it in the hope that I would be able to play the game again. Nope. Still crashes on start. I'm going to install Boot Camp and see if I can play the Windows version.

Well, that's different. I've heard of people downgrading the OS from the installed version, but I don't know it if it's a good idea. Operating system installation is much more complicated than it used to be, thanks to Apple. I guess you know about the big transition Apple computers are involved in during the next year, with Big Sur and Apple Silicon. That will of course affect everything. I've had trouble running SimCity 4 in Sierra, so I'm experimenting with Boot Camp to see if I can use the Windows version.

I'm using NAM 37 on the 64 bit Mac version. The game begins crashing intermittently as I get close to 40,000 people. Reducing resolution and texture detail didn't help. At this point, I can't even start the game without it crashing. Anyone have any ideas about which particular plugins might be causing trouble? Or is it something else causing the crashes?

Command shift?

I reinstalled the game and worked my way back, but again as I reached the 40,000 mark in population, the games crashed. Then it wouldn't even start. I tried lowering the monitor resolution and texture detailing, but that didn't help.

I've had this problem for some time, and it gets worse the bigger the city is. When a plant needs to be replaced, I usually replace my water pumps at the same time. After plopping them, there's a delay when the new structures start to work. During that delay, buildings all over the city report they have no water and then turn black. For good. The last time this happened, it nearly annihilated my city and it was almost like starting over. I had about 40,000 people and over 300,000 dollars. Things were going great. But simply have to replacing plants and pumps nearly devastated the city, all because of that delay when they started to work again. Why the delay? I don't know. Everything is hooked up. Plenty of pipes, and the pumps aren't even that far from the city. I started connecting a solar plant or windmills to my pumps so that when the plants start to fail, the water will keep pumping. But then that didn't work. So I'm really at a loss to counter this grossly unfair part of the game.

I dislike cheating.

I follow the Mac world closely almost every day. The impression I have gotten (I'm on Sierra) is that Catalina has more problems than Mojave. Many more. Until last week I have been running SimCity 4 without any problems at all. Then I had crashes to desktop and had to start all over again. I have no explanation for why the crashes occurred and no idea whether they will happen again. My experience with Apple computers goes back to 1980, and I have never seen any benefits from having The Latest OS. On the contrary, I usually stay several years behind to benefit from the experience of others. Only change what you are doing if there is a compelling reason. There were problems with NAM 36, but NAM 37 works well and allows me to play the game the way it should be played.

After contributing to this site, I was given a link to a "STEX". I don't know what STEX means. I downloaded a large .iso file that was emailed to me. I can open the file. Now what? I guess there are cities, maps, and other extras that people have created. Should I import them into my version of the game? If so, how?

Yes, that much I know. I'm unsure which file to put into one of my game folders. The STEX Plug-ins folder contains nothing but a .png file. But...aha!...There's a zip file, and after you unzip it, it opens the data folder into my Downloads folder and has a file called START.HTM When you click that file, my browser opens to a 60 page gallery of buildings etc. that I can download. I'll take a look at these.

The original post is wrong. Big Sur has not been released.

Some errors I've seen so far while using the Mac version of SimCity 4 with NAM 37. Indestructible buildings: Bulldoze something, it explodes into pieces, then reassembles itself. You are still charged for destroying the building every time you do it. Landfill roads: A landfill will show the icon indicating it's not connected to a road—even when it is. This was a real problem, because garbage was piling up in the streets although I had a working landfill. Or I thought it was working. I created another one nearby and had the same problem. The no-road icon appeared. Finally I moved further down the map and tried again and it worked. It's dangerous because landfills are expensive and hard to delete. Rob's video suggested the only way to destroy a landfill is to destroy the roads around it, but I haven't seen that work. I was able to create roads through landfill, then destroy the roads, which deleted the landfill. Reluctant firefighters: They hang around after the fire's been put out. They don't want to leave. The vertical rods remain onscreen. Unless this is part of the game, I don't know, but it's a problem because if one fire occurs immediately another, then the firefighters are unavailable to fight the new fire. Even with a large fire station, you only have two firefighters.

No other mods. Just NAM 37.

To run the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, click on the TSCT.jar file that is inside the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool folder. You'll get the familiar message about the file being from an unidentified developer. Mac users know this game. Go to Security & Privacy in your System Preferences and click "Open Anyway". That's a start. There are a few more hoops to jump through. Woof. Rob addresses how to use the traffic tool in his youtube video Lesson 3: Transportation at 5:58.

Here's a puzzler. I've spent a lot of time trying to create beaches. The game tells me that the square must be placed part on water and part on land. Makes sense. The square will change from red to blue when your spot is approved for building. Now how to get there? I've done it once by accident. I spent a lot of time with the topography tools, trying to flatten shoreline, but the game never approves of the spot. If there are guidelines here, I would like to hear them. Thanks.

Thanks. You're a real hero. Sorry for all the questions.

Hey, the man himself. Thanks for the videos. Great job. I watched the first four, then I began to study them one at a time. After playing tutorials for two weeks, I have some questions if you don't mind. Train stations: Sometimes I have stations with a lot of people, sometimes zero. How many stations I do need and how far apart?. I tried to put the station the way you did in the video with the track to the right of the station, road on the left, and bus stop left of the road. This ends up throwing off my desire to have six by six blocks. I believe you said to put them in commercial districts but not residential districts. I've tried them in industrial districts but they go unused. Does the station arrow need to face a street/road or a track? Does the facing position of the station matter? How hard is it for sims to get to the station? This is also complicated by wanting a bus stop right next to it, not across the street. If I build stations in my city, do I need to run them horizontally and vertically? If I intersect the track, will the trains turn or do I need to create curves for a continuous line? I have had trouble using curved and diagonal rail pieces. I tried hitting tab, home, and end. I gave up. They are difficult to position and difficult to see. Water pollution: The water treatment plant is a high monthly expense, and I'm not sure how effective it is. But I'm always getting the comment "the city water is full of filth". This is a dilemma, whether to run pipes to farms, industry, and power plants. If I don't, there's usually a fire. If I do, there's water pollution. Even a few farms creates a ton of water pollution. My guess is that birds circle over areas where water pollution is bad, so I tried to de-zone areas, following the birds all over the map. But this too creates a problem. The birds seem to dislike all development. There's a lag time when building new water pumps to when the pump starts working again. During this lag time buildings are abandoned. Fire and police: Firefighters are reluctant to go home. I don't know what they do after putting out the fire, but sometimes they hang around and the vertical rod remains on the screen. If there's another fire soon after, the previous firefighters aren't available. I dislike sitting through fires. The game seems to send them to me in waves, and there's nothing to do but sit there and wait for them to finish. I can't even save the game during a fire. This means I nearly always need a large fire station rather than small. I can cover power plants and industry. but that usually leaves the rest of the map unprotected unless I have more than one large station. There is a similar problem with police stations. Even with a large station covering a large area I will get the message that there are gaps in my coverage. Is one large station better than two small ones? Is a prison necessary? Farms: I tried to ignore them altogether, but I think you need a few farms to generate industry activity, which then generates commercial activity. I don't know how to farm effectively. I spent almost two weeks on the Making Money tutorial. I'm in the middle of the Big City tutorial. Is there a benefit to diagonal roads? Maybe I shouldn't have bulldozed so much. At one point all the demand bars were below zero. There was no demand for anything. I tried the tourism ordinance, then I built some farms, and this seemed to generate some activity again. Most often in this game I have trouble making money. Commercial demand is often hard to get. Commercial office demand is almost nonexistent. The game seems to be happiest when income and expenses are nearly identical, preventing you from accumulating a lot of money. Loans are a burden, but I found they are sometimes necessary. I shut down or nearly down the health and education expenses and sometimes sanitation. I have successfully run huge debts and gotten out of them. One time I worked back from being 92,000 simoleons in the hole. Other than money, I would say the most common problems I face are "abandoned due to low demand", "abandoned due to long commute", and houses with the "no job" icon.