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SC4 on an Intel Mac: Is Fusion the way to go?

Started by Ramona Brie, March 02, 2008, 04:12:48 PM

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Ramona Brie

I got a Mac for Christmas, and have a whole SC4 installation on another Windows PC. I know SC4 for Mac exists, but there's a little wrench called Rosetta. In 2003, Apple was two years away from its switch to Intel (they still used the PowerPC processor line). Aspyr wrote a PowerPC-exclusive version of SC4 then. Problem: I'm running on an Intel Mac, and don't want an emulator (Rosetta) and nightlighting problems in my way.

Do you think VMware Fusion would do the trick with a Windows virtual machine? It's got the better DirectX support, and I could even run other Windows applications on my Mac! I'd port my existing SimCity installation, of course. Parallels Desktop for Mac is another similar product, but it has DirectX 8 support, and that's it. Fusion can run DirectX 9 (not its a, b, or c flavors), which is a big plus. Plus, I can use BOTH cores of the Core 2 Duo processor in this MacBook. Parallels can't do that.

Do you think I should keep SC4 on the Windows PC, get the PowerPC-native SC4, or bring it to the Mac with Fusion? And if I do, what should I do to make it its best on Leopard?

callagrafx

Aspyr did an Intel patch for the game...but they failed to fix a lot of the things they got wrong.  My recommendation is to use Bootcamp (integrated into Leopard) to create a Windows XP partition and run the game under Windows natively.  Any emulator, be it Parallels or Fusion, will only give you a fraction of the processing power and very little in the way of high end graphics.  The only catch is you need a bootable XP SP2 CD-ROM.  This way you will have 2 computers, a Mac and a PC with the benefits of both.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it

Ramona Brie

I don't want to have to reboot just to play! And that's what Boot Camp will make me do!

And our XP discs are not SP2.

bwatterud

Quote from: callagrafx on March 02, 2008, 04:22:00 PM
Aspyr did an Intel patch for the game...but they failed to fix a lot of the things they got wrong.

It also, ironically, slows down gameplay and causes the game to crash when you have the audacity to *gasp* plop a lot!

GoaSkin

The best way is to buy Crossover Games and the Windows version. Crossover allows you to run Windows games on OSX without needing a virtual machine. This solution is much faster than the Aspyr port, cheaper (EA Most Wanted collection) and all the Maxis updates incl. Nightlights work.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/
download SC4Config public BETA (RC1)