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klmc29

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2008
20
0
Alabama
Hi. I can't play my Life Stories that I recently bought because the screen flashes blue. I was given this link: http://www.srtest.com/referrer/srtest to try and see if my graphics card needs to be updated. Well, that site just looks like it checks PCs not MACs. Anybody know?
 
You didn't say whether your system meets the reqs for Life Stories, but it sounds like a graphics card issue. Aspyr is frequently late to the party in supporting cards on recent macs... :rolleyes: On this forum, I found this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/368550/ which suggests turning off optimized rendering. I'm not sure that applies to LS, but you could try it. :eek:

Of course you can always try Aspyr, to see if they released a patch for LS, as they did for the full sims game. (Doubtful.)

Also, try searching on 'flashing blue' over here for possibly more info:
http://forums.thesimsresource.com/forumdisplay.php?f=534
 
Thanks djgold! I have no clue how to update my video card or anything like that though. I'll try Aspyr. Maybe they'll email me back. (Last time they didn't).
 
Oh gawd no, don't get a newer graphics card! :eek: It would probably only make the problem worse! :D

What I meant was that Aspyr may have ported Life Stories at a time pre-dating your graphics card. The peculiar graphics artifacts reflect an incompatibility between the game's assumption of what card you have, and the graphics card drivers, which Apple has provided for your hardware. This can be solved either with a driver update, which would come from Apple under an incremental update to your OS, or a patch to the game by Aspyr.

It would help to know what graphics card you do have, as some issues were already addressed as I say, by Apple. If you know that you are already current on Mac OS updates, then I think you've done the right thing to open a ticket with Aspyr. A casual search at macgamefiles doesn't show any patches for that game. :(

If you like this game franchise though, I'd suggest getting the full game and any EP after maybe EP4. That combination isn't any more demanding, yet has better stability and support than the Stories knock-offs.
 
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