A fix for SimCity 4 resolution problems on launch
Sep 12, '03 09:04:00AM
Contributed by: Anonymous
It took me four hours to figure this out, so I have to share it. I'm running a 933MHz PowerMac G4 Quicksilver 2002 edition with the NVidia GeForce4 card. I have a really bad generic monitor (ADi ProVista VD-544), and I dropped $50.00 to come home and discover Sim City 4 likes to change the resolution and frequency settings when it starts up. My monitor was giving me an error saying the the input was out of range. With rolling static on my screen, I couldn't even see enough to close the program, so I kept having to press the reset button to get back to a visible screen. After searching on-line, I discovered other people were having similar problems with who knows how many other old moniters, and they were just as confused and frustrated as me. So I found a workaround.
Read the rest of the hint for the solution...
Open your user's Library -> Preferences folder. There's a file in there called com.aspyr.simcity4.plist. Use Command-I to get info on the file. Under Name & Extension, I checked the box "Hide Extension,"; under Open With, I changed the application from Omni Outliner to Text Edit; under Ownership and Permissions, I clicked the padlock icon so it goes to the unlocked position. I then opened the Preference file and found where it says:
<key>fullscreen-mode</key>
<string>0</string>
I changed the 0 to a 1, then found where it says:
<key>window-mode</key>
<string>1</string>
And changed the 1 to a 0.
I then saved and did another Get Info on the file. Under Name & Extension, I unchecked the box Hide Extension. Closed the Get Info dialog box and opened Displays in System Preferences and set the display to the normal high res configuration; in my case, it's 1152 X 870 at 60 Hz. For some reason, I changed the number of colors from "Millions" to "Thousands." While I've since found it makes to difference, this seems to increase graphics performance without significant loss in quality.
Then, I opened SC4 holding down the Alt/Option Key untill a dialog box appeared. I don't think you need to check the 32-bit box, but you do want to check "Custom Resolution." I tried different resolution setings, and I got mine to work at 832 X 624. I imagine that if you were to try all the different custom res settings and still not get the job done, changing the resolution in the Displays pane again to something different and then repeating the process of selecting a custom res on startup of SC4 might work.
One more thing. I found a way to close the program even when I couldn't see my screen. I waited untill the opening sequence finished playing, and then hit Command-Q to quit like in any other app. The program won't just quit for me, though. A dialog box comes up asking if you're sure, which I discovered later, obviously. The box is in the middle of the screen with two long rectangular buttons. The top one confirms you want to quit, the bottom one cancels the quit command. By moving the mouse up and to the right a good long ways to be sure I was in the corner, I slid left to where I figured the top center of the screen would be. By then moving the mouse down, clicking as I went, the program finally quit.
I'm not sure, but it could be that this means of quiting doesn't work in the full screen mode that the preferences use by default. I read a post from another guy on a different site complaining that he couldn't use Command-H to hide the game. In the window mode that it seems I'm now forced to use (but would prefer anyway), I have no problem hiding the program. Dragging the window requires clicking first on the desktop, so as to switch to the Finder and then dragging the SC4 window around.
By all accounts, it seems that this is a really bad port to OS X from Windows with lots of other bugs. I hope this helps people, though, because in general, the playing experience really is a lot more entertaining then the predecessors, with killer graphics and a soundtrack that has made it worth the trouble.
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