OS X Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition!

[Dirtyharry50]

I already purchased this game in 2008...so I need to rebuy it for Mac??

Well, since Aspyr didn't spend months of expensive development and testing time on the one you bought in 2008 but they did for the version for Mac they are selling now I would say you might expect the answer to be yes. Unless you happened to buy it on Steam and it winds up being a Steamplay release. You might luck out then. I am assuming by the way you worded your question that you bought a Windows version of the game in 2008.

 

[MathBunny123]

Well, since Aspyr didn't spend months of expensive development and testing time on the one you bought in 2008 but they did for the version for Mac they are selling now I would say you might expect the answer to be yes. Unless you happened to buy it on Steam and it winds up being a Steamplay release. You might luck out then. I am assuming by the way you worded your question that you bought a Windows version of the game in 2008.

Yes, I did buy it for Windows. Well, it was an excellent game and now I can finally have large cities over 400,000. I guess I'll buy it for $20

 

[Cougarcat]

Yes, I did buy it for Windows. Well, it was an excellent game and now I can finally have large cities over 400,000. I guess I'll buy it for $20

Did you buy it on Steam? It'll be SteamPlay in May. If you didn't, it's on sale for $5 all the time on Steam.

 

[monokitty]

Just picked this up. It reminds me a lot of SC2000, which I enjoyed immensely, except with even more options all around. I'm looking forward to building a big city again.

 

[cerote]

Did you buy it on Steam? It'll be SteamPlay in May. If you didn't, it's on sale for $5 all the time on Steam.

I'll wait till it officially goes to Steam because I want to make sure to support Aspyr for their work. From other threads of back and forth with Aspyr and/or Ferial they talked about buying it on the Mac or playing it first on Mac or so the funds go to them instead of the side that developed windows side as if I bought it now on steam and would go to Windows side.

 

[Cougarcat]

I'll wait till it officially goes to Steam because I want to make sure to support Aspyr for their work. From other threads of back and forth with Aspyr and/or Ferial they talked about buying it on the Mac or playing it first on Mac or so the funds go to them instead of the side that developed windows side as if I bought it now on steam and would go to Windows side.

Doesn't matter where you buy it, but yes it goes to whichever platform you play first, or the Windows publisher after a month.

 

[n8mac]

I know it says 'unsupported', but wondering if it would load and play on my 2007 iMac with Radeon HD2600 256mb on low settings at all. I was disappointed with the new SimCity.

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

I know it says 'unsupported', but wondering if it would load and play on my 2007 iMac with Radeon HD2600 256mb on low settings at all. I was disappointed with the new SimCity.

We wrestled with the 2600 for a LONG time before dropping it from the supported list. It plays...just not up to our standards for performance. Its gonna be chuggy on big cities, but there arent any specific crashing issues.

 

[zvandiver]

Aspyr-Blair,
I know that your specs list a 2.2 GHz CPU, but will the game run on a late 2013 Macbook Air with the 1.3 GHz CPU?

 

[eatrains]

How does it work on Retina displays? Is the interface pixel-doubled, really small, or Retina-ized?

 

[davemon]

Haha, you havent missed anything. Its only been on the store for a few hours, surprise!

We have been working on this re-release for months. Cleaned up a TON of old bugs, and really pushed on performance increases as well. You can now get a city up to 4-500k pop without any performance hitches.

We also completely scrapped the old fixed resolution option. The game now detects your machine's top 4 available native resolutions for your options. SimCity4 on an iMac at 2560x1440 is really something to see

I purchased SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition from the App Store last night and installed on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. It's running ok but doesn't give me any resolution options above 1680x1050.

Does anyone know the solution for this? I'm really bummed as I really wanted to play in hi res.

Only game play issue so far is the zoom in an out is too fast for me to control on the touchpad (two finger) so I'm going to have to look up how to zoom on keyboard.

Dave

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

I purchased SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition from the App Store last night and installed on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. It's running ok but doesn't give me any resolution options above 1680x1050.

Thats because 1680x1050 is the native scaled resolution for your screen. SC4D is not a Retina enabled app (just like the vast majority of games) because the machine would come to a crawl attempting to draw at Retina resolutions. We just dont have the hardware to support that yet.

 

[n8mac]

We wrestled with the 2600 for a LONG time before dropping it from the supported list. It plays...just not up to our standards for performance. Its gonna be chuggy on big cities, but there arent any specific crashing issues.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like it will still play better on my iMac than the original SC4 Mac PPC port. I thought about getting it for my G5 but I read too many horror stories.

 

[emio]

I purchased SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition from the App Store last night and installed on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. It's running ok but doesn't give me any resolution options above 1680x1050.

Do you run the game with a GeForce 650M?

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

Aspyr-Blair,
I know that your specs list a 2.2 GHz CPU, but will the game run on a late 2013 Macbook Air with the 1.3 GHz CPU?

As long as you have the Air with the HD5000, you should be good to go! We cant list anything below 2.2 because that could encompass many machines that clearly wont play much (older MacMini's for example.)

 

[davemon]

Thats because 1680x1050 is the native scaled resolution for your screen. SC4D is not a Retina enabled app (just like the vast majority of games) because the machine would come to a crawl attempting to draw at Retina resolutions. We just dont have the hardware to support that yet.

Thanks.

Is that because the graphics card doesn't do the Retina resolution natively or something? I'm not in the know on how my machine fills the whole screen... rather just that it is really, really helpful when editing photographs as I rarely have to zoom in much to see fine detail.

Dave

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

Thanks.

Is that because the graphics card doesn't do the Retina resolution natively or something? I'm not in the know on how my machine fills the whole screen... rather just that it is really, really helpful when editing photographs as I rarely have to zoom in much to see fine detail.

Dave

Retina resolutions in games is actually a pretty complex subject, but to overly simplify...its a combination of all the hardware not being beefy enough. The power needed to render/edit a photograph pales in comparison to what it takes to render a game. There is very little hardware even on the ultra high end PC side that could play a game a true retina resolutions with acceptable performance.

It also depends on the game. For example Civ V and Xcom both can play at retina resolutions, but both titles have WAAAAAY less going on at one time vs SimCity, hence the hardware set works less to render those actions.

 

[davemon]

Retina resolutions in games is actually a pretty complex subject, but to overly simplify...its a combination of all the hardware not being beefy enough. The power needed to render/edit a photograph pales in comparison to what it takes to render a game. There is very little hardware even on the ultra high end PC side that could play a game a true retina resolutions with acceptable performance.

It also depends on the game. For example Civ V and Xcom both can play at retina resolutions, but both titles have WAAAAAY less going on at one time vs SimCity, hence the hardware set works less to render those actions.

Makes sense to me as I am a developer and even if not. It's easy to imagine just how static most things are in Photoshop compared to SimCity and something turn based like Civ V is probably in between due to animations and such.

Thanks for your responses. The game still looks very nice and my fans don't even come on much the way they do when I'm working in Photoshop or doing HDR stuff.

 

[HarryPot]

Too bad, but it's understandable. It's $5 on Steam all the time, I'll get it then.



Mods go here: ~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.simcity4.appstore/Data/Documents/SimCity 4/Plugins

To install NAM you have to use a tool like http://www.kekaosx.com/en/ to unpack the .exe

I've just downloaded the NAM 32 (the latest version). I unzipped it with the program you linked, but after that I'm lost as to what to copy to the folder you mention.

A bunch of files come with he NAM zip, and after several tries (and deleting some of the files that seem to freeze SC4), it is still not working.

Some people at the Simtropolis forum say that they have been able to run NAM in this new release, but they don't explain how to install it.

I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks!

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

Thanks for your responses. The game still looks very nice and my fans don't even come on much the way they do when I'm working in Photoshop or doing HDR stuff.

Thank YOU for the support davemon! Without it, we cant bring classic favorites like SC4D to the Mac!

 

[CyAnMan]

Works great so far on my 2012 mac mini with no plug-ins.
Great job, many thanks!

Might there be more updates in the future to this classic or was this a one-shot deal?

 

[Cougarcat]

I've just downloaded the NAM 32 (the latest version). I unzipped it with the program you linked, but after that I'm lost as to what to copy to the folder you mention.

A bunch of files come with he NAM zip, and after several tries (and deleting some of the files that seem to freeze SC4), it is still not working.

Some people at the Simtropolis forum say that they have been able to run NAM in this new release, but they don't explain how to install it.

I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks!

I have two folders, Network Addon Mod and z__NAM. Both of those are in my Plugins folder.

 

[Aspyr-Blair]

Works great so far on my 2012 mac mini with no plug-ins.
Great job, many thanks!

Might there be more updates in the future to this classic or was this a one-shot deal?

Thanks CyAnMan! We are turning our attention to our next couple of releases right now, but more updates for SC4D is certainly a possibility for the future.

 

[zvandiver]

As long as you have the Air with the HD5000, you should be good to go! We cant list anything below 2.2 because that could encompass many machines that clearly wont play much (older MacMini's for example.)

Thanks. I played the old DOS version over 20 years ago on a NEC laptop. Playing on my Air should blow that away.

 

[bigpoppamac31]

Okay so I downloaded this game but I have no idea what to do. When I start a new game the only things I can do is place animals, trees, mountains, valleys, etc. They seem to be my only options. I can't put any roads, buildings or any of those things. Can anyone help please?