Before you found your city, you can terraform the land as you wish for free. Click the mayor icon to start building (but note that after you start any terraforming you want to do will cost $$.)
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OS X Simcity 4 Deluxe Edition!
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Before you found your city, you can terraform the land as you wish for free. Click the mayor icon to start building (but note that after you start any terraforming you want to do will cost $$.)
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Good lord, if I didn't know this was a 2003 game, I'd say it was released no earlier then 2010. Those sharp isometric graphics are really something else at 2560x1440, and seeing a city full of skyscrapers light up at night is a sight to behold.
-SC
Good lord, if I didn't know this was a 2003 game, I'd say it was released no earlier then 2010. Those sharp isometric graphics are really something else at 2560x1440, and seeing a city full of skyscrapers light up at night is a sight to behold.
-SC
But Blair you said that SC4 runs well at 2560x1440 on an external monitor, so why would you limit it to only 1680x1050 on the MBP's screen? You could go higher than this without having to go to the full 2880x1800
I run my Retina MBP at 1920x1200 (scaled). Will SC4 use that resolution if that is what it is set to at time of booting?
Sorry for the delay here, I've been out on vacation with my newborn for a week
To be clear, I said that the game runs beautifully on the 2560x1440 on a 27" iMac, which is the native resolution for that machine. Of course you could use a MBP to send out an image to a larger native resolution monitor, but that is a rare test case and something that we dont account for because of that rarity.
Since you brought this up, I decided to dig in with QA to see how the app does handle external monitors. Turns out, the app will go look for the resolution options from that external. So technically you could have the app running at 2560x1600. The problem is the game will likely run like a slideshow at that resolution (but please try!). We have also seen issues where the app will essentially become confused with what resolutions its pulling between the two monitors, causing some bugs.
I hope that shines at least a little light on the subject, and please let us know how it works with the second monitor (my guess is pretty choppy).
Thanks Blair, helpful to know.
What about the internal monitor when I am not connected to a 2nd screen. I run my 15" rMBP at 1920x1200 (System Prefs Setting: "More Space", which is well below the CPU/Graphics power needed to run a 27" external. Will SimCity run at 1920x1200 using the internal screen if that is what it is set at when I boot it?
Congratulations on your new arrival.
Assuming you have an early 2013 model likely with the 650m, your native resolution for the app would be 1440x900. The "Retina" resolution for that machine is 2880x1800, which is a HIDPI enhanced 2x variant of that baseline resolution (1440x900). Anything in-between is handled by the same OS functions that handle Retina (and again, this is not a retina enabled app). When you plug in the external monitor, the app pulls those resolutions just like it does on say a 27" iMac (which as you know is also not a "retina" display).
Its confusing, I know. I wish we could have put retina support into the game, but with that many functions going on at once on the screen, it was impossible.
That all said, I'm having the team dig into wether we can figure out a way to tap into those in-between scaled resolutions somehow without supporting full retina. Worth a shot at least
That all said, I'm having the team dig into wether we can figure out a way to tap into those in-between scaled resolutions somehow without supporting full retina. Worth a shot at least
Thanks. Yes, would be nice to run it at higher than 1440 even without going all the way to the top resolution.
SimCity4 Deluxe is now live on Steam!
I bought my copy through the Apple App Store.
I'm just wondering, Is there any difference between the Apple App Store version and the Steam version?
No worries, the versions are identical. Steam may be a bit friendlier for the mod community (although that isnt confirmed yet).
Highest rez only 1440 on MacBook Pro Retina?
That's the highest resolution that I'm offered with SimCity 4 in-game, and wondering what I need to do to enable to native retina resolution of my MacBook Pro Retina?
That's the highest resolution that I'm offered with SimCity 4 in-game, and wondering what I need to do to enable to native retina resolution of my MacBook Pro Retina?
SimCity4 Deluxe is not a Retina enabled app. There is zero chance the game could run at Retina due to the amount of rendering happening on the screen at once. So it runs at your baseline native resolution, which for your machine is 1440. You could hook up a second monitor and essentially trick the game into running at higher resolutions (see discussion earlier in this thread), but performance absolutely will suffer.
2014 and no Retina support? Appreciate all the hard work on the port, but honestly Retina machines have literally been out for years now and that resolution should pretty much just be included as a standard in an eleven year old game.
It almost sounds like it would be impossible to patch it too.
What about forcing it? Is that possible...
It has nothing to do with the age of the title. In fact, SimCity is still one of the most hardware taxing games out there due to the sheer volume of rendering happening at once with a large city. Retina is supported in VERY few games for a simple reason: the hardware simply cannot render at Retina resolutions and still have adequate performance. We just arent to those hardware levels on the Mac side yet. Heck, even a top-end gaming PC rig would have serious issues attempting to keep 40FPS on most games when drawing at Retina resolutions.
Retina was not designed with games in mind, period. At some point, the hardware will be able to keep up, but my guess is we are still 3-5 years away before that happens in a laptop.
Unfortunately Apple doesn't do anything to encourage this view of reality. When they announced the 13" retina with the HD 4000, Schiller mentioned Civ V as a game that looks amazing on it. Something tells me he didn't actually try it...
To be fair to Phil, Civ V does look amazing on it....as does XCOM....as does SCII (although as a SCII player, I would NEVER play competitively at retina resolutions). It takes a certain type of game to mesh well with Retina. Turn based titles are the best bet right now. SimCity is on the completely opposite side of that however, with thousands and thousands of animations happening all at once in a large city.
I have a few marvelous SC4 cities that have been in suspended animation on my hard drive for many years now. Can't wait to bring them back to life!