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smash · Jul 5, 2003, 06:12 PM

Does anyone know how to modify the config files for this game manually to make the 1440x900 resolution available?

sandsl · 07:13 PM

As soon as I buy the game I'll look and see if the config files are tweakable

Try opening any of the files in bbedit, see if you find anything.

Whats the game play like? What machine/spec? Is it playable?

smash · Jul 5, 2003, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by sandsl:
Nice to see you here...you must be the guy seeding.

As soon as I have the game I'll look and see if the config files are tweakable

Try opening any of the files in bbedit, see if you find anything.

Whats the game play like? What machine/spec? Is it playable?

yeah I am the one responsible for the game getting leaked onto BT. Oh well!

haha cool I'll check out BB Edit. So far, I've been opening things in TextEdit, and haven't found anything that acutally affects teh gameplay.

The game seems to run fine on my 17" Powerbook. I haven't really gotten into it yet though because I want to get this resolution problem solved.

- smash

smash · Jul 5, 2003, 07:12 PM

ok I figured it where the config is saved, but it does not seem to be user editable

...

in your My Documents folder there will be a "Simcity 4" folder created when the game start for the first time.

If you rename this folder, it resets all settings.

There is a file called "Simcity 4.cfg" in that folder. However, the contents are not in Plain Text, there are in bit format (most likely), which sucks because obviously we don't know what they are saying to edit them.

I have confirmed that this is where the config is stored by comparing a copy before and after changing video settings in SC4 with a Hex Editor.

Any ideas on how to edit this file or force the app not to do this?

smash · Jul 5, 2003, 07:16 PM

well holding down OPTION while starting the game gave me this option:
"Run in custom resolution:"

So I selected: 1440x900

however it didn't work. hah. it just put me right back into 1024x768, even though now the option "1280x1024" was selected in the Options window.

Weird.

i5works · Jul 7, 2003, 04:12 PM

Originally posted by smash:
well holding down OPTION while starting the game gave me this option:
"Run in custom resolution:"

So I selected: 1440x900

however it didn't work. hah. it just put me right back into 1024x768, even though now the option "1280x1024" was selected in the Options window.

Unfortunately we don't have any widescreen monitors to test with so we relied on a list of widescreen resolutions made available to us by Apple. Clearly that didn't cover every one or there's an error on our part. As to why you can see 1440x900 but it doesn't work, the game internally does some range checking and again, this resolution was missed. We'll make note of this and make sure that it gets fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

power142 · Jul 8, 2003, 09:40 PM

It would be fantastic to run the game in 1440x900!

In the meantime, does anyone know of a way to force the Powerbook (17-inch in my case) to use unstretched screen modes? I figure, 1024x768 wouldn't be all that bad if it wasn't stretched beyond a recognizable image

Astronaut Jones · Jul 10, 2003, 01:11 PM

Originally posted by power142:
It would be fantastic to run the game in 1440x900!

In the meantime, does anyone know of a way to force the Powerbook (17-inch in my case) to use unstretched screen modes? I figure, 1024x768 wouldn't be all that bad if it wasn't stretched beyond a recognizable image

If you change a couple of flags in
~/Library/Preferences/com.aspyr.simcity4.plist (the fullscreen flag and windowed mode flag) you can play it in a window, which will be the proper aspect ratio for SimCity 4's selected resolution.

It's not perfect and I suppose it's not officially supported but it'll keep it from stretching to fit your display..

power142 · Jul 10, 2003, 04:01 PM

Originally posted by Astronaut Jones:
If you change a couple of flags in
~/Library/Preferences/com.aspyr.simcity4.plist (the fullscreen flag and windowed mode flag) you can play it in a window, which will be the proper aspect ratio for SimCity 4's selected resolution.

It's not perfect and I suppose it's not officially supported but it'll keep it from stretching to fit your display..

Very cool - thanks! It looks so much better at the proper ratio.

It's also a good excuse to learn the keystrokes as the mouse scrolling doesn't work - but I think the keyboard is better anyhow once you've got a decent sized city.... what happened to the Powerbook G5?!?