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No railroads? No subways? No natural disaster "I want to play god and blow it all up" mode? No terrain editing? Limited city size?

Huh?

-SC
 
More and more since launch day [for PC] after reading actual user reviews, I'm becoming more inclined to not buy this game. EA is really making me not want to part with my money and time for a game I so loved in the past and have been looking forward to for the last 12 months. Shame on EA, shame, shame. :mad: :(
 
Well I managed to rack up a few hours today on new servers. First impressions are actually very good.

Whilst you don't lay waterworks or sewerage or power lines anymore you do still have to control your water, power and sewerage.

You do have railroads. I haven't seen subway yet though.

I decided to play a private game on a small area with space for 3 cities. My plan is to build three cities myself and trade between them. I am not interested in playing online particularly.

Running on my Mac Pro with a 5870 I'm able to run my 27" monitor at full 2560x1440 with all settings maxed out and have no frame-rate issues or anything.

If they sort out the server issues the game is very good.
 
the FAQ was pretty clear i am afraid . The mac version will not be a windows port but a native mac game and they need some time more . So it will be released in the spring . I did not see anywhere mentioning a simultaneous release . ( unless it was there and they changed it later ) .


Also it says that tha mac version is going to be available through digital download only .

The question is : no Mac App Store ? What are they thinking ? why origin ? and not mac app store ?


for people that don't buy stuff online the mac app store is the easiest way . i only bought the newer OS from there and was a bit concerned even for that . But now that i know the process i would definitely prefer to buy the game through the mac app store if i choose to buy it ... other online purchases no .
 
I'am really excited about this one, I hope that they resolve these server issue before mac users join the party. I wonder if sim city will be optimised for the macbook retina display.
 
I'am really excited about this one, I hope that they resolve these server issue before mac users join the party. I wonder if sim city will be optimised for the macbook retina display.

I sure hope so. Don't see why any game being made for mac now a days shouldn't be.
 
Just buy Simcity 4, and have the joy of a larger city, offline play, no queuing and an all in all superior experience....

is it me or is EA trying to destroy gaming, one franchise at a time,

first it was the awful Dragon Age 2, then the Mass Effect 3 devolution into a multiplayer shooter for no apparent reason, dead space 3 went from survival horror to generic shooter, but you had to buy your ammo with real money as you went, followed by micro transaction hell that is Real Racing 3, and now Sim City, rebooted into an online only, tiny city size, micro transaction laden, server outage crapfest.

Wonder if i could get enough Kickstarter funding to buy Bioware and Mass effect franchise off EA before they ruin Mass Effect 4
 
Just buy Simcity 4, and have the joy of a larger city, offline play, no queuing and an all in all superior experience....

The problem with SimCity 4 is that it will not play well on Intel-based Mac's, which most people probably have. You need a PowerPC Mac in order to play it and not toss the computer out the window for choppy gameplay and crashes.

is it me or is EA trying to destroy gaming, one franchise at a time,

It sure seems that way. They only care about the money and not the gamers, sadly. :(
 
The problem with SimCity 4 is that it will not play well on Intel-based Mac's, which most people probably have. You need a PowerPC Mac in order to play it and not toss the computer out the window for choppy gameplay and crashes.

It's not specifically Intel based macintoshes.

SC4 drives the graphics card in a very bizarre and peculiar way. Some of the features it requires are not fully implemented (or implemented at all) on ATI cards. It runs extremely well in hardware rendering mode under a system with an NVIDIA GPU, not so much an Intel or AMD/ATI GPU (the technical name for this feature is a "backing store").

For the most part, you can set the game to render through software instead. Most computers today are more then fast enough to handle this, so in the end it doesn't entirely matter.

I've also found that it works pretty well under VMware Fusion. The Mac version seemed to be a bit tweaky in general on Intel, but the game runs rock solid under Fusion, even if you need to switch the rendering backend to software mode.

-SC
 
It's not specifically Intel based macintoshes.

SC4 drives the graphics card in a very bizarre and peculiar way. Some of the features it requires are not fully implemented (or implemented at all) on ATI cards. It runs extremely well in hardware rendering mode under a system with an NVIDIA GPU, not so much an Intel or AMD/ATI GPU (the technical name for this feature is a "backing store").

For the most part, you can set the game to render through software instead. Most computers today are more then fast enough to handle this, so in the end it doesn't entirely matter.

I've also found that it works pretty well under VMware Fusion. The Mac version seemed to be a bit tweaky in general on Intel, but the game runs rock solid under Fusion, even if you need to switch the rendering backend to software mode.

-SC

Fascinating. How do I get the game to render in software? Is it an in-game setting?
 
It's an in-game setting.

I can't quite remember how it was worded, but it's in there, and it says something to the effect of "Software Rendering". I think it was a toggle between hardware rendering (OpenGL) and software rendering, near the bottom of the options screen (or advanced section, I can't remember).

-SC
 
Fascinating. How do I get the game to render in software? Is it an in-game setting?

Just select software under renderer.
sc4-settings.png
 
how does this run on the retina MBP's?

Just wondering if I can run it on high settings when its out for mac, i've got a 2.4 i7, 16GB Ram, GT 650M 1024 MB.
 
I may give SC4 another whirl as well...

One other unintended consequence through the bumbling and general stupidity of EA is that I'm now aware of competing or similar games, such as Cities in Motion and Cities XL.

No, they aren't the same as SimCity, for example Cities in Motion is really about setting up urban transport, and they have their own issues, but they have single play and large maps with the graphics I'd tend to expect out of recent games.
 
That sucks, my only suggestion left is to torrent a windows version and use wine.

Nah. I have an iMac G5 that I plan on starting to rebuild this week and I'll run it on that probably.

So my earlier statement that SimCity 4 will not run on Intel-based Mac's still stands, albeit with a caveat. If you're running Mountain Lion, and maybe Lion, it won't install. IIRC, I bought this game while I was still running Snow Leopard and it installed but wouldn't play well, even with the Intel patch installed.

I have Lion on a different Mac still and will test to see if the install will work on it.
 
Well I managed to rack up a few hours today on new servers. First impressions are actually very good.

Whilst you don't lay waterworks or sewerage or power lines anymore you do still have to control your water, power and sewerage.

You do have railroads. I haven't seen subway yet though.

I decided to play a private game on a small area with space for 3 cities. My plan is to build three cities myself and trade between them. I am not interested in playing online particularly.

Running on my Mac Pro with a 5870 I'm able to run my 27" monitor at full 2560x1440 with all settings maxed out and have no frame-rate issues or anything.

If they sort out the server issues the game is very good.

There is none.

Over at Simtropolis some people are building a true SimCity 5, it's under groups and it's called BoomTown.
 
Looks like they have been rolling out some updates today. Apparently the servers are running 40x faster....

Have you guys noticed any difference as of this morning?
 
Odd you guys can't install, I had a friend give me his copy and I installed it just fine on ML then the patch and it runs, albeit resolution is a little dodgy and it likes to crash... :/
 
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