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Sim City 4 is back!

Started by NCGAIO, April 10, 2014, 02:56:22 PM

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NCGAIO

Maybe a side effect of demand for SC4 after the release of SimCity 2013





Quote

AUSTIN, Texas—April 10, 2014—Aspyr Media announced today that fan-favorite and best-selling city simulator SimCity™ 4: Deluxe Edition is available now as a digital download. The game has been updated to support OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion (and above) and includes bug fixes, performance enhancements, and other updates such as native resolution support.  Customers may purchase the game now exclusively through Apple's Mac App Store, and the game will join Steam and other Mac digital outlets in coming weeks.



"$Deal"$ - http://www.aspyr.com/news_articles/simcity-4-deluxe-edition-makes-triumphant-return-to-the-mac

dahemac

Sim City 4 is back! Aspyr has re released Sim City 4 for Mac. I guess they remembered after two dreadful versions that they already have the best City Simulator. Enjoy. http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=aa74fcab7292881d581707173&id=9f23698f57&e=ba2a34f64c

Jaden85

Yay!!
I'm buying it next week, after everyone else has bought it first and confirms it is no longer buggy and rocks!

APSMS

My question: Did they rework the code to fix the most prevalent problems that previous users had with the port?

Or did they just make sure that the thing worked with the latest MacOS and leave it at that? I'm inclined to think the latter, but you never know...miracles abound.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

jaredh

We really need to find out if its the former though...

memo

Oh, this is both unexpected and tempting. I'll await initial responses though; I kind of doubt it contains any serious improvements, but you never know.

NCGAIO

Quote from: APSMS on April 10, 2014, 07:46:20 PM
My question: Did they rework the code to fix the most prevalent problems that previous users had with the port?

Or did they just make sure that the thing worked with the latest MacOS and leave it at that? I'm inclined to think the latter, but you never know...miracles abound.


There are already some comments of use ...


simtropolis.com_Smcity4 deluxe edition makes triumphant return to the mac

droric

That would be too awesome if they updated the windows client as well.  I bet they could smooth stuff out a whole lot just by optimizing some of the handling of 2d sprites with DirectX.

PC Specs: i2700k @ 4.9 Ghz, 16 GB @ 1600-8-9-8-16, 2X GTX 580 SLI, Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3R, 120 GB Vertex 3 SDD, 3 TB RAID1, 1200W SilentGold, Antec P180B case, Win 8 x64 Pro

TEG24601

Quote from: APSMS on April 10, 2014, 07:46:20 PM
My question: Did they rework the code to fix the most prevalent problems that previous users had with the port?

Or did they just make sure that the thing worked with the latest MacOS and leave it at that? I'm inclined to think the latter, but you never know...miracles abound.

I had asked them about a patch for existing owners and they responded - "unfortunately there is no patch or upgrade available for CD owners, as this is a completely new release designed for new hardware. To play the digital version, you'll need to purchase either through the Mac App Store now or wait to purchase the Steam version later." So it appears that they went back to the original PPC version and updated it for Intel Macs, or reported it completely.

memo

I choose to give it a try today, so here are my impressions.


My System specs:
• MacBook Pro 13'' 8,1 (early 2011)
• 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
• Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MiB
• 10 GiB RAM
• 250 GiB SSD
• OS X 10.9.2


My impressions of the game:

• Don't expect any bug fixes. This is really only the same as the (unpatched) PC Deluxe version with all its bugs (e.g. transparent lot texture bug and TE lot/puzzle piece CTDs), but with additional bugs that are exclusive to the Mac version.

• Performance is okay. It runs decently, but I am not used to the best performance of the game on my laptop anyway. I cannot really compare it to my Bootcamp install, as I switched to an SSD and upgraded my RAM only two weeks ago. The game certainly loads fast, even with a full-blown NAM controller on an SSD.

+ very smooth integration into the system; even in full screen mode, I can switch between applications easily, the process is sent sleeping and is hardly noticeable - this is much better than on Windows

- scrolling skips zoom levels; scrolling the menus is hardly possible due to acceleration, neither with a mouse (not a magic mouse) nor with the trackpad - in my opinion this is a no no for a Mac application. In contrast, the trackpad is incredibly useful in the Windows install, as it allows me to scroll down to the end of the overfull transit menu like lightning.

- zoning preview is buggy (randomly missing or randomly distributed arrows)

- using the Shift key when dragging Roads does not work

- SimCity_1.dat is identical with the one from the CD of the Windows Deluxe version (except for one Exemplar file). This is considerably different from the patched version of that file, hence, it does NOT include the patches; in particular this means a number of missing sc4path files, some missing exemplar tuning and more. If you own a PC version, it may be possible to patch the files yourself.

- mipmapped textures look incredibly blurry, more than in my Windows version (note that this only concerns some pieces of the NAM, but not BATs)

+ no issues with high (30m) elevated rail and high monorail

- The files
  "Network Addon Mod/NetworkAddonMod_Bridges_Plugin_Controller.dat"
  "z___NAM/Mass Transit Lots/High Speed Rail Stations/Modern Arched GHSR Station/"
  "z___NAM/Mass Transit Lots/High Speed Rail Stations/Modern Arched HSR Station/"
  need to be removed or else the game freezes upon unpausing the game (modders play the game in paused mode only, anyway);
  this means if you want to play in LHD mode, you are out of luck;
  this also means no custom bridges, for the time being (DBE might work though).
  The rest of the NAM does indeed seem to work (but there are a few options I did not check).

- when using puzzle pieces, the preview model flickers if you don't pause the game

- no nightlights for custom BATs

- no extra cheats

+ it is possible to load your regions and your plugins from the PC version; however, expect that individual plugins might cause issues, like the HSR stations (it took me some time to locate these via binary search) - my plugins and regions load just fine, though (roughly 1 GiB)

• I could not get the DAMN menus to work, yet, but for the most part that's because I don't know what would be required to make them work

- base textures don't line up which makes for an even griddier look; visible in zooms 4,5,6 (grid turned off)




- I've never seen an industrial zone like this: At first glance, I thought there were missing buildings or props, but in fact, it consists almost exclusively of 1x1 industrial lots, which might be attributed to the zoning issues. Not sure if this is exclusive to the Mac version.



• my non-QWERTY keyboard layout gets recognized in text input fields, but not in shortcuts, which is not necessarily bad considering the arrangement of the SC4 shortcuts. This is different from the PC version.



Conclusion:

The game is definitely playable, with the usual restrictions and bugs of the Aspyr port. I can't really compare performance though. Plugins do work with some exceptions. I am not sure whether I should recommend this version though. On the one hand, some of the restrictions are pretty severe which is why I am probably going to stick with the Bootcamp install if I want to enjoy playing the game. On the other hand, for me as a modder who works on OS X most of the time, this allows me to quickly start the game and check the modded files, which is incredibly useful, in contrast to annoying reboots. I should add that I have not tried using Wine yet, but I'm sure I'll give it a try eventually.

Regarding the problematic NAM files, I am confident we'll be able to locate the issue more precisely so as to find a better tradeoff than deleting them completely.

jdenm8

I can see a couple 2x1s and a 2x2 there. It could be Stage-related. But those lots do look very bare. It's like half the props are just missing.


"We're making SimCity, not some dopey casual game." -Ocean Quigley

memo

It could be stage-related, but I don't think there are missing props, as those are merely industrial filler lots. I guess this could be something that was tweaked by the patches – I've never played the unpatched version of the game. After all, the patch alters numerous exemplar files, so the characteristics of growable lots might have been improved.

Compare to an analoguous industrial zone in an empty region of the PC version:


john_yang

#12
Thanks a lot.
My NAM version is 2014. I'm not sure if its compatible with the game by deleting the files you mentioned.

I just downloaded today and installed by Keya. I tries several times yesterday but still it freezers. I'll try it today.