PDA

View Full Version : Simcity 4


pcchen
13-Jan-2003, 04:26
Simcity 4 is the first to use real-time 3D rendering in the Simcity series. Its graphics is very good. 3D rendering gives it flexible terrain, and many buildings cast shadow. Furthermore, the buildings look different under day and night. They also decays as time goes by. Very impressive.

However, it is really slow. Even on my P4 2.26Ghz + GF4 Ti 4200, it is not fast. Furthermore, with 42.01 driver, force 2X FSAA cause BSOD :shock:

Gameplay wise, IMHO this is the best and most realistic version in the Simcity series. The budget system is detailed and quite flexible.

There are still some minor glitches: it crashes. Sometimes just freezed, sometimes return to desktop without warning. Furthermore, it lacks an autosave function. If it has autosave, the crashes will not be so frustrating.

Another strange thing: even if 32 bit rendering is enabled, I still can see dithering effect in the smokes. I am sure the display mode is 32 bits, since there are some Z fighting issues under 16 bits modes. So I don't understand why there are dithering. Could someone answer this?

Nebuchadnezzar
15-Jan-2003, 15:38
You need 1 GB RAM for it to run on ~1024x768 flawlessly :shock:

pcchen
16-Jan-2003, 02:38
Is that confirmed? If so, I'll go buy another stick of 512MB DRAM for it. Actually I considered it just after playing this game...

And for the dithering in smokes: I found that its "32 bits" is primarily for Z buffer. However, I didn't check if it using 16 bits or 32 bits color buffer.

Neeyik
19-Jan-2003, 16:52
Pcchen - I'm running it with an Athlon 1800XP, 1024MB PC2100 and a GF4 Ti4600...it runs slow for me too, especially after the city starts to really develop. Zooming in and out is a wonderful exercise in patience...

I've set everything I could to 32-bit/high quality and the smoke effects are still heavily dithered.

Andrew
19-Jan-2003, 20:47
Ive been playing it since last week and when my cities get big, it really cripples my machine.

Currently im running a 2400+ @ 2.3ghz, 185fsb, 9700pro (357/337).

I also have been reading there is an big issue with the tile based memory architecture on Radeon cards and this game.