Sim City 4 Universal

[TyleRomeo]

Anyone know if and when Sim City 4 will be available as a universal game? I want to play it on a 1.5GHZ core solo mac mini.

Tyler

[MacRumorUser]

Anyone know if and when Sim City 4 will be available as a universal game? I want to play it on a 1.5GHZ core solo mac mini.

Tyler

NO it wont. I contact Aspyr about a patch for SC4 a good while ago, but the reply I got told me all work had ceased on SC4 as they do not have the resources to spare to an old title..

[Artful Dodger]

NO it wont. I contact Aspyr about a patch for SC4 a good while ago, but the reply I got told me all work had ceased on SC4 as they do not have the resources to spare to an old title..

That sucks...it is such a nice game when you first start out as I built some nice medium size cities. What bugs me is that it ran great on my eMac (medium size cities did) but wouldn't run so good on my iBook or iMac :( I sure hope they make the next version a lot better as far as running smooth and Universal.

[dmw007]

That sucks...it is such a nice game when you first start out as I built some nice medium size cities. What bugs me is that it ran great on my eMac (medium size cities did) but wouldn't run so good on my iBook or iMac :( I sure hope they make the next version a lot better as far as running smooth and Universal.

I hope so as well. I don't have this version of Sim City for Mac (although, I am sure it would run fine on my Power Mac G5) but I have it for Windows and it runs "ok" on my 2.2GHz P4 based machine- rather slow at times. Fun game, but I think I will wait for Sim City 5 to come out before I buy it for Mac. :)

[Gatorman]

I could swear in a monthly e-mail they sent out that they were working on one. Maybe I'm nuts. :confused:

[srobert]

A question mark at the end of the thread title would have spared me false hopes. ^_^

[CoffeeMonkey]

This is probably going to sound troll-ish, and some people may have already ranted about this in the forums, but...

As somebody who has bought a bunch of Aspyr ports of Maxis games, I feel like I've gotten burned. The original poster said Aspyr isn't supporting SimCity 4 anymore since it is such an "old" game, but if you to the Mac secion of their site, its one of the featured games in the top banner (along with Sims2, Civ4, Tiger Woods 2005, and Stubbs). And if I go to the Apple Store, they are still charging $40-$50 for the game.

Additionally, the functionality (especially the on-line sharing) of the Aspyr ports of the Sims, Sims2, and SimCity4 isn't nearly that of the PC version.

Granted, some (or maybe even all) of this isn't really Aspyr's fault. Maybe EA doesn't give them the tools and rights that they need to make the PC and Mac versions more comparable (i.e. sharing your Sims families, sharing cities in SC4, support of the free extras that EA provides for PC users). And admittedly, the Mac game market is a lot smaller, so Aspyr don't have the resources to spread around to provide long-term ongoing support for the products. (But again, if they aren't going to support these games anymore, why are they selling for full-price)?

No matter who is to blame, I'm really sick of buying gimped software. Once I upgrade to an Intel-powered Mac, it is going to be a no-brainer for me to buy the PC version of Maxis games. And if when Spore finally comes out I read that it works really well with Intel-Macs with Bootcamp, that is probably going to be what makes me jump to the new platform.

[spaceballl]

Dude... Kinda a bummer... I got this game a while ago, and I never enjoyed it fully since my iBook G4 couldn't handle it well. Now that I have a brand new macbook, I'd like to think it would run a bit better (even w/ the integrated graphics). Oh well...

[MacBoobsPro]

SimCity 4 is still being kept alive unofficially by hardcore fans. There are absolutely hundreds of add ons and new buildings etc but nothing official from EA or Aspyr especially on the mac side of things.

Check out www.simtropolis.com, maybe some superstar has made a UB and posted it at Simtropolis. :)

[Spanky Deluxe]

If you really want to play SC4 on your Intel mac your best bet would be to install Boot Camp. I know its probably not the solution you want but it works. You can pick up SC4 for the PC in the bargain section of most pc shops, I think I picked it up for £9.99 about a year ago. I was running it on a 1.7Ghz Pentium M laptop. Since SC4 isn't really graphics card dependant (lack of 3D), it should run about the same on a 1.5Ghz Core Solo machine as a 1.7Ghz Pentium M machine. The core chips having more power per Ghz and all.

Edit: PS When I was playing this on my laptop I was running *big* cities, I mean as big as they came. I never had any slowdowns at all.

[mcgarry]

If you haven't yet, some of you might be interested to read this (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=177247).

[harveypooka]

Sim City 4 has been plagued with bad graphics issues for me - it ran fairly well on my iMac 800, when it came to my iMac 2.1ghz PPC it had weird tearing and blurs (the same on the last eMac) and I haven't bothered on my Intel iMac.

[mduser63]

I'm interested to see this thread going on today as I just found it using a search. I played SC4 for a while today, but it's been months since I last played it. Anyway, even on my Power Mac, it doesn't run particularly well once my cities start getting fairly large, and it's annoying. I wish Aspyr would release it as a UB. I don't know if performance would be any better, but seeing as how it's a port of a PC game, I hope it might. Of course, I've heard that performance on PCs isn't exactly stellar either.

EDIT: I know it was a while ago, but Aspyr apparently said (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=2253403#post2253403) in one of their newsletters that SC4 was "[one] of the games most likely to have [a] Universal update." That sounds a little bit promising. I'm also reading in this thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=177247&page=3) that SC4 apparently has problems in 10.4.3 and above with nVidia 5200 cards, especially on 12" PowerBooks like mine. I don't think I've played SC4 on my PowerBook since 10.4 came out, but my Power Mac also has a 5200 card in it, and I wonder if that's part of the problem. Anyone have any experience with SC4 on a similarly specced Power Mac with a better graphics card?

[jaw04005]

Aspyr letting the mac community down? No Way! Aspyr is awesome.

Remember that time that they refused to make the carbon installer for The Sims: House Party available on their web site, and instead made you send in your original installation CD along with $15 so that they could ship you a replacement? :rolleyes: Or when they released Sim City 4 and failed to secure the rights to access EA's Sim City web site so that users of the mac port could download compatible free add-ons? :rolleyes: Or how they still charge $49 for a three-year-old game, when the PC deluxe version retails at some outlets for a mere $10? :rolleyes:

Welcome to the Mac gaming world. I for one hope Aspyr dies a slow death, then maybe EA/Maxis will consider developing their Mac ports in-house.

The enthusiasm in Mac gaming development died when Microsoft bought Bungie, and it never recovered. Thank God for Boot Camp.