MacBex

This is a draft version based on the notes I made when installing, I will need to buy a backup disk to do a clean macOS installer to go through the process again to take screenshots and simplify the steps. This guide was made using macOS 15 Sequoia. How to install SimCity 4 Deluxe (Windows version) on a Mac with DLL support 1/ Buy the game! This is the only part that costs money, and if buying for GOG usually only £3.99 / €4.59 / US$4.99. You do not need to use GOG, it is very slightly easier but if you have a standalone .exe installer for v1.1.641 (the version the community supports) then that will work too. If using GOG you do not need to download it, otherwise if you have an installer then putting it your Downloads folder will make the process easier equally as seamless. 2/ Downgrade your computer (sort-of) if using an M2 (Apple silicon) processor or later! With M2-based computers and later Apple removed the default support for older low resolutions display formats. This is required to run SimCity 4 (though you are not restricted to this resolution for playing) as its default launcher is 800 x 600. You can add back that support using a free app called RDM though. On this page https://github.com/usr-sse2/RDM/releases click on the RDM.zip file dated Dec 31, 2020 located under the first post that added Big Sur support. This still works on macOS 15 Sequoia. This will download it to your Downloads folder and depending on your settings may be uncompressed automatically, if not double click the zip file to reveal the RDM.app file. You only need to complete this process once, so you can choose whether to move is to the Applications folder or just run it from Downloads them delete it later. A benefit of keeping the app is you can later create custom resolutions to use when playing the game. Because RDM.app has not been signed it needs to be explicitly approved by the Gatekeeper process in macOS. The original way of doing this is to right click on an app and select Open. This will bring up a dialog window saying the app cannot be run and on older versions of macOS will give an "Open Anyway" button. Clicking on this you will be asked for your password and the app will load. However this was removed in macOS 15 Sequoia, instead you need to close the warning dialog and open System Settings and go down to the "Privacy & Security" section. Scroll to the bottom of this section and within the Security section it will say "RDM.app was blocked to protect your Mac." This does not mean macOS found anything wrong with the app, only that it was not signed by an Apple Developer key, these cost $100 per year which is why open source developers do not sign their apps. But this gives an "Open Anyway" button which is the equivalent of the right clicking and selecting Open on older macOS Versions. So clicking this will bring up the original dialog where you can (again) click "Open Anyway" then enter your password so the app will load. I think this is a one-time only operation and Gatekeeper will approve it to be run again in future, though this is where I need a clean macOS install to test properly as I have configured my computer to be able to run unsigned applications automatically. Open RDM and it will add a menu bar icon that looks like an Apple monitor. Clicking this will show two sub menus under Main Display, select the top one with your screen's resolution then at the bottom of the sub menu is an "Edit…" option. Select this to open the Scaled resolutions screen. At the very bottom of the page click the "+" button which will add an entry to the list with a width and height of 0. Double click the first 0 to make it editable and enter 800, then tab to go to the height and enter 600 then click the "Save" button. You will be asked to enter your password once or twice to change your computer's settings. You now need to reboot your computer so they will be used. 3/ Install the game with PortingKit I need to take a break down so will continue the write-up later, but once you have completed the RDM step it is basically a case of getting PortingKit from https://www.portingkit.com/ and following the instructions. PortingKit is just an interface for WINE which is what allows Linux and macOS to run Windows applications. It is one of several ways of using WINE on a MAC but benefits by being free, means you never have to configure WINE yourself which can be difficult, and has a script so will create a Mac .app file that will run without any extra configuration as it also sets the CPUCount etc. 4/ Now we are Windows users we need the 4GB patch too! The 4GB patch is required for the Windows version of SimCity to allow the full use or larger mods like NAM. But while you can sill just use install NAM using the its normal java installer the same as for the native Mac version, the 4GB patch will need to be applied manually. If you download NAM then the patch is included in the Zip file, however it can be downloaded on its own from https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/ if installing NAM through SC4Pac. 5/ Now play! You can install plugins in Documents/SimCity 4/Plugins as normal, or use SC4Pac to manage them. And this includes DLL mods that do not work with the native macOS versions. No extra steps are required to use DLL mods, they just require you to be running the Windows version. Because SimCity 4 is over 20 years old the Windows version should feel just as fast as the native macOS versions on modern computers despite needing to use WINE to interpret the Windows code, and on Apple Silicon also needing to use macOS's Rosetta 2 to emulate the x86 processor instruction set of Intel Macs. The only downside to playing the Windows version on a Mac is that regions created in the macOS version will not load. This problem also applies if wanting to copy regions between Mac and Windows computers. Apple removed support for 32-bit applications from OS X 10.15 Catalina requiring the macOS versions of SimCity 4 to be updated to run as 64-bit applications, but this also changed how the region files are saved. As the Windows version is a 32-bit application it cannot read this files

Thank you for adding the extra logging information to v2.1. I am not sure why my problem exists but I have been able to resolve it. The more detailed error read as: That path does exist so I assumed it did not like a trailing dot, and renaming the directory to just "UK" has fixed everything. The game now loads with all the plugins and there are no errors in the log file. Incidentally, I am running as Windows 10, 64-bit, which I think was a choice I configured manually while trying other things out. PortingKit is a front end for Wine integrates with GOG with recipes for working configurations so you just need to link a GOG account, click install, and it creates a Mac .app file. I am pretty sure I remember the standard installation for SC4 is as Windows 7, 32-bit.

Thank you, I am happy to help do what I can to test things if you want to try and solve the problem. The odd thing about that being the error message is that the plugin directory can be found within Wine as that is how the plugin is running! Incidentally, I installed the plugin via SC4Pac, so the DLL is within plugins in the data directory, not stored in the application directory.

This was my write up on solving this problem in 2020. I have switched to running the Windows version under Wine after upgrading my MacBook to an Apple Silicon one, but I assume it still works the same.

have installed the GOG version of SC4 on a Mac with an Apple Silicon processor using the free Wine front-end Porting Kit. The game works perfectly, including with other DLL plugins. (I had started drafting an install guide to post here before I got busy either other things, but I will eventually complete it.) But if I have this DLL plugin installed to try and avoid the occasional delay it stops other plugins loading so the game loads in its vanilla state. The log gives the following errors: Is this fixable or does it just not work with Wine, or on a Mac? Porting Kit maps the Windows home directories to the Mac ones, so plugins appear to game as being in <user>\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins (as they are on the Mac but with the slashes reversed!)

Thank you! I never thought to try elevating from the avenue side, I had been trying with highway ramps as with the old puzzle pieces, but both the FTL height transition and FlexOST work perfectly.

Are elevated FlexSPUIs one of the "presently limited" features in NAM 47? If not, can someone tell me how to elevate them? If they are then I will wait and do something else for now.

May I ask if there is any specific reason it requires at least macOS 10.15? I am still on 10.14.6 as it was the last version to support 32-bit apps but would like to have something to help me run the game under Wine without problems and in the best quality as I am fed up with how many things cause a crash with the App Store version. I have installed Wine via Homebrew then installed the game by just running the GOG installer. Adding the command line option to use the OpenGL driver does get it running, though it complains about not being able to initialize DirectDraw. At that point I have no idea what I am doing, though! I have no idea how to configure Wine, nor do I know anything much about Windows. Although I have the game installed, after installing the plugins I previously downloaded it now crashes trying to load a city tile so I need to debug that to find the cause even before getting to finding out if the game will play reliably. I did try downloading your wrapper but though SimCity 4.app file shows as being executable, the Game Config.app has the icon crossed out and gives the version error when trying to run it. So I am not sure if it just requires compiling with an older Framework or whether it uses features that were not available in macOS 10.14. Incidentally, I appreciate the annoyance at Apple requiring developers to pay them to support the platform. When they replace the old Safari extension system I lost access to my keyword search shortcuts ("/eb something" for eBay, or "/w article" for Wikipedia etc.). Rather than give them up or change browser, I just worked out how to write my own Safari App Extension. But it means I need to use the Develop > Enable Unsigned Extensions options every time I reload Safari unless pay them, which is stupid.

Wonderful, thank you so much. When I searched on the filenames I never thought to break them out into words too or I would probably have found them that way. A lesson for next time!

Hello, I was looking to install the ComRail Maintenance Yard, however it lists Misc-TrainCarProps-V9.dat as a dependency. The link on the page goes to http://www.gizmo.lunarpages.com/ which no longer seems to exist, and a 2014 question on this thread said you need to sign up on http://gizmo.aplaceforwebsite.com/index.php but that also no longer seems to exist. A search on Google only otherwise brought up a German forum which offered no help. Is there any way to get this file, or is the Maintenance Yard effectively unusable? Also, the Large Rail Yard needs NameBrand-TrainProps-V3.dat which also directs to the gizmo.lunarpages site, so I assume that also has the same problem.

THANK YOU! Following your instructions worked and I think I have worked out what is happening now. Apple's App Store requires apps be sandboxed for security, that means without specific permission an app can only read files located within its own container. But because this makes the path to the file so long, if you put it in a sub folder, like Regions, it ends up being longer than the app can cope with. So putting the file in the main SimCity 4 folder prevents the path being too long. Knowing that I have tested that it will work through a symlink in my home folder, and it can now read the file from the Regions folder that way. More importantly, it means much less typing to import the greyscale file. To do that go into Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type the following command: ln -s ~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.simcity4.appstore/Data/Documents/SimCity\ 4 ~/sc4 This will create a folder called sc4 in your home folder that is actually a link to the one in the sandbox. Then in the file selector you would only need to type: /users/computer-name/sc4/greyscale.jpg You can obviously replace the "sc4" with any other name of your choice at the end of the Terminal command. But you can rename it in Finder at any time too. And can move it into other folders, just as with any other file. Using a capital U for Users also worked in the file selector when I tested this, even though it did not when I used the full path. Very strange. A few more advanced notes to add in case they help anyone else: Using a regular Alias does not work (Make Alias in Finder's File menu, or by holding Opt + Cmd when dragging). I expected this as though they both look the same in Finder, with a curved arrow to the bottom left of the icon, they work in very different ways. The symlink does not have to be located within your home folder, but the file owner does need to be the same as the one running the app. This is why it never worked for me when I created it in the root, as I changed the file permissions but not the owner. But if you just follow the above that will not matter. And you might be able to bypass the sandbox and access a file located anywhere by granting the app Full Disk Access: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy (tab) > Full Disk Access (left column), authenticate with the padlock icon then click the + icon and select the SimCity 4 app. But I have not tested this as having a shortcut to the sandboxed folder is useful for quick access to regions and plugins, so it is easy to just keep the greyscale files in there than to change a security setting.

Thank you both, I posted the path with the ~ so I did not have to post my home folder on the forum, but I created the shortcut as a symlink, so it works at the file system level, which means it got expanded into the full path when created. Unfortunately the Mac version does not seem to allow you to copy and paste anywhere the game, nor can you drag and drop text into it. I think the Mac port is the minimal effort to get the original Windows code to run so it does not hook into the normal parts of the OS like those. But I have tried typing out the full long path (including home folder) by hand, but the result is the same as selecting it. That includes using colons instead of forward slashes, as they were the old pre-OS X way of specifying paths on a Mac. And trying both methods with and without specifying the drive name first. No matter what I have tried nothing happens, and I think I have tried every possible combination. It is a shame in that other thread rcc31 never came back to say whether your instructions worked. As that is what I have tried with no success. Incidentally, the New Folder button the file selector does work, so if they have enabled that feature it would seem odd to ignore reading a file.

Hello, I have been trying to import a greyscale region terrain on the current Mac App Store version of SC4 without any success. Is there a specific way to do this or is it no longer possible? As a test (I do not want to play this region but create my own), I downloaded the following region as it is a greyscale image rather than an SC4M file: Next I created a dummy region, replace the config.bmp file with one 62 x 30 (as the greyscale image is 3,969 x 1,921) and switched to it. That loaded correcytly, so I then pressed Ctrl + Opt + Shift R to bring up the file selector for the JPG file. I guess because of permission reasons, I was unable to see anything in the Users folder. So I moved the Shikuka-cho.jpg file I downloaded into the Macintosh HD root. I was able to select it, but after clicking okay (or double clicking) nothing happened other than the file selector disappearing. I am not sue what should happen, whether it displays as message or just locks up whilst it calculates the new map, but it was as though I had not done anything at all. Then I wondered if maybe it is a sandboxed permissions issue. So I moved the Shikuka-cho.jpg file into the region's folder, and made a shortcut in the Macintosh HD root to the Regions folder at ~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.simcity4.appstore/Data/Documents/SimCity 4/Regions But selecting the file in this location still has the same lack of effect. Finally as a test I replaced the config.bmp file with one of a smaller size (48 x 20), to see if it would show an error because of the resolution being incompatible. It did not, still nothing. Am I doing something wrong? I am running version 1.2.1 of SimCity™4 Deluxe Edition.app from the Mac App Store on a 2018 MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Thanks.