12 replies to this topic

[Kaoro]

Kinda feel like trying Sim City 4.... Used to love 2000 a long time ago. Some people on the product page say it's not universal & doesn't work with Leopard. Anybody have experience with it?

Aspyr's page has a "beta" for the UB -- wonder when that will be completed.

[Brad Oliver]

Kaoro, on December 31st 2008, 02:38 PM, said:

Kinda feel like trying Sim City 4.... Used to love 2000 a long time ago. Some people on the product page say it's not universal & doesn't work with Leopard. Anybody have experience with it?

Aspyr's page has a "beta" for the UB -- wonder when that will be completed.

OK, here's where we open it up to the floor for discussion. We released an "open beta" of a Universal Binary patch for Sim City 4: Rush Hour. I don't think we did one for the original app.

It's my understanding that the UB for Rush Hour runs ok and it should work with Leopard. My recollection is that performance varies depending on the video card you're using, and that some fine-tuning may be needed, but the details escape me. If folks want to use this thread as a dumping ground for their impressions, feel free.

There is an older thread here. I didn't immediately see any older applicable threads here on IMG, so it appears feedback so far is a bit sparse.

[Kaoro]

Oops I swear I searched and did not see that thread. I fail.

I was under the impression that Rush Hour was an expansion but all part of the same game. So the Deluxe edition installs 2 executables then?

Either way it looks like it's not available at most sites anymore. Weird, Amazon just had it in stock, but now they don't. I found it for 59.99 but that's wayyyyyyyyy over what I'm willing to pay. MacGamesArcade maybe?  

Any plans at Aspyr for this patch or are the sales not good enough to justify it?

[Brad Oliver]

Kaoro, on January 3rd 2009, 10:10 AM, said:

Oops I swear I searched and did not see that thread. I fail.

I was under the impression that Rush Hour was an expansion but all part of the same game. So the Deluxe edition installs 2 executables then?

Here's where I claim ignorance: I didn't work on this particular port, so I don't know! My understanding is that Rush Hour is a superset of it and the base game, fwiw.

Quote

Any plans at Aspyr for this patch or are the sales not good enough to justify it?

There's always the possibility of a future patch, sure. If the halls of IMG start to fill with torch-wielding villagers denouncing issues with the current UB patch, we can take it from there.

It's the season of Festivus, so it's time for the Airing of (Sim City 4) Grievances.

[the Battle Cat]

From the halls of IMG-E-E,
To the shores of MGA.
We will play your buggy ga-a-ames,
Till we come get you some day.

[Sternum]

I recently tried the UB port on my iMac and found that the game was filled with graphics glitches -- buildings and cars were dropping chunks of pixels and were semi transparent. Preliminary research via web forums made it seem that the problem was limited to recent Intel iMacs and probably wouldn't be fixed any time soon, if ever.

[Brad Oliver]

Sternum, on January 6th 2009, 08:07 PM, said:

I recently tried the UB port on my iMac and found that the game was filled with graphics glitches -- buildings and cars were dropping chunks of pixels and were semi transparent. Preliminary research via web forums made it seem that the problem was limited to recent Intel iMacs and probably wouldn't be fixed any time soon, if ever.

What type of Intel Mac do you have? Do you know what graphics card you have in it?

[Kaoro]

Sternum, on January 6th 2009, 10:07 PM, said:

I recently tried the UB port on my iMac and found that the game was filled with graphics glitches -- buildings and cars were dropping chunks of pixels and were semi transparent. Preliminary research via web forums made it seem that the problem was limited to recent Intel iMacs and probably wouldn't be fixed any time soon, if ever.

Yeah the Apple product page and even Amazon have some reviewers claiming there's tons of problems with Intel Macs. I'm guessing the majority are unaware of the UB beta patch, but some mention it's still bad after that.

Not to mention it is $50-60(here, here) while the Windows version is $15 on Amazon.

[teflon]

And that is precisely why games need to have auto-update features. Feral have started using Sparkle, and Aspyr have an update notifier through Game Agent, but thats flawed, because, to be honest, I dont want that PoS on my computer (it just doesnt do anything!).

But, of course, seeing as its a Beta patch its not really recommended for general consumption.

As an aside, Id be quite interested in seeing statistics about what percentage of users update each patch, trying to take into account playtime drop off etc. etc. to come to a percentage which just dont bother (I imagine itll be pretty high)...

[Kaoro]

teflon, on January 7th 2009, 06:52 PM, said:

As an aside, Id be quite interested in seeing statistics about what percentage of users update each patch, trying to take into account playtime drop off etc. etc. to come to a percentage which just dont bother (I imagine itll be pretty high)...

Unless the game notifies you of a patch, I'm guessing not too many. Most people I know (the casual mac users) don't even know Mac ports (like Call of Duty 4) exist until I tell them.

Wouldn't you need to have some sort of opt-in usage statistics monitoring in an app to have an idea of who uses the patches?

[Sternum]

Brad Oliver, on January 7th 2009, 10:27 AM, said:

What type of Intel Mac do you have? Do you know what graphics card you have in it?

I'm on the 25" "Core2 Extreme" iMac from 2007, which came with a 256MB Radeon HD 2600 PRO.

The problem seems limited to cars, sims, and building that have moving parts. Static buildings remain pretty solid. Here's a screenshot:



The game ran fine on my 17" Powerbook, which is what I used before upgrading. I also have a similar problem with Rise of Nations -- all the units look like the cars above, which makes it impossible to play.

[Vulpine]

Brad Oliver, on January 3rd 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

It's my understanding that the UB for Rush Hour runs ok and it should work with Leopard. My recollection is that performance varies depending on the video card you're using, and that some fine-tuning may be needed, but the details escape me. If folks want to use this thread as a dumping ground for their impressions, feel free.a bit sparse.

I tried the Universal Binary on both my MacBook Pros when I had them - an early 2008 15-inch with a GeForce 8600, and a late 2008 unibody 15-inch using the GeForce 9600. Both were visually fine as far as I could tell, but the performance was unplayably slow even without any buildings.

[macdude22]

What's sort of disturbing is Apple is still selling this in Apple Stores. I mean I sort of expect that I aught to be able to buy a Mac off the shelf and a game off the shelf in an Apple Store and expect them to work reasonably well. I question the validity of selling non UB products in Apple Stores anymore. I asked one of the lackey's and he said if anyone asked him he'd suggest to them against buying Sim City 4 for use with a new mac but it's above the store level to pull it from the shelves.