No EA launcher required, you can play it through Steam or GOG if you prefer to not have to rely on the steam launcher. No internet connection required (other than to download the game of course).
It wasn't too tricky to get running actually. I followed this guide, and after running it through the steam launcher it almost seemed like steam knew what to do to finish the job automatically? Considering I'm a novice at Linux it's fair to say someone with more experience wouldn't have much of an issue getting things working. I considered it a good learning process to get used to how Mint and Linux works.
Its interesting to think how best to modernise the game. Making it easier to run on modern systems would be a start. Remastering is interesting though - as the graphics are pre-rendered, you could potentially find a way to just upscale the textures? If you turned the models fully 3D, there is a 3D camera mod which is pretty cool but you'd need to upgrade the engine to render things faster and more accurately to fully take advantage of it. So a lot of potential, but there are things being looked at by the modding community that are really pushing the engine to its limits as is. As much as I'm deeply suspicious of it, it seems like the increase in AI capabilities has allowed people to push the frontier further than before, and faster. There's been some talk about reverse engineering, but who knows what will come of that.
That makes sense. Modern patches and updates (and likely hardware) fixed a lot of the initial issues. I definitely had some crashes before I started modding the game in earnest too.
I can't imagine life without NAM. That being said it's such a big mod that it's often overwhelming for new players. There is NAM lite for memory which gives you the fixes without having a new player drown in a multitude of new features and puzzle pieces.
I played Skylines 1, but haven't tried 2. Someone else in the SC4 community put it best when they said Skylines is more like a City Painter than a simulator. This being said they have very different feels - mainly as SC4 locks the camera and while you can make diagonals and curves with mods, your mostly playing around with grid layouts if you want things to look nice.
There are numerous ways to play SimCity 4 however. Some use it as a highway designer, others are big into the simulation, others 'paint' with it, some (like me) do combinations of all three.
I have more hours on SC4 than Skylines so I think that speaks for itself. I think SC4 looks nicer too.
I literally had my stop watch out to check. Windows could take minutes, Linux had the game loaded in 20 seconds. I tried a small blank test map and it loaded so quickly I barely saw the loading screen. It was insane.
It sometimes felt like Windows was so full of bloat that it struggled to manage simple tasks, let a lone complex ones. Linux with pretty much any task just feels rapid in comparison.
It was stable on Windows - crashes were very rare once you had the 4GB patch installed, but I'll have to get back to you after a few hours with Linux. Theres been a few new mods that really challenge what the game can do, and one of those caused a crash with my testing, but it seems that was a once off so far.
They're definitely worth giving a shot, though I hear they have a different feel to the earlier games (one that isn't entirely just due to the graphical jump). 4 was where I started and I found it immediately intoxicating, though it definitely took me awhile to get the hang of it.
I think it still holds up, that being said I've over 2000 hours on it so I'm a little biased.
No EA launcher required, you can play it through Steam or GOG if you prefer to not have to rely on the steam launcher. No internet connection required (other than to download the game of course).
Come join us! It's great fun.
It wasn't too tricky to get running actually. I followed this guide, and after running it through the steam launcher it almost seemed like steam knew what to do to finish the job automatically? Considering I'm a novice at Linux it's fair to say someone with more experience wouldn't have much of an issue getting things working. I considered it a good learning process to get used to how Mint and Linux works.
Its interesting to think how best to modernise the game. Making it easier to run on modern systems would be a start. Remastering is interesting though - as the graphics are pre-rendered, you could potentially find a way to just upscale the textures? If you turned the models fully 3D, there is a 3D camera mod which is pretty cool but you'd need to upgrade the engine to render things faster and more accurately to fully take advantage of it. So a lot of potential, but there are things being looked at by the modding community that are really pushing the engine to its limits as is. As much as I'm deeply suspicious of it, it seems like the increase in AI capabilities has allowed people to push the frontier further than before, and faster. There's been some talk about reverse engineering, but who knows what will come of that.
It's actually just the vanilla rewards statue. I have my own in game lore for it though.
That makes sense. Modern patches and updates (and likely hardware) fixed a lot of the initial issues. I definitely had some crashes before I started modding the game in earnest too.
I can't imagine life without NAM. That being said it's such a big mod that it's often overwhelming for new players. There is NAM lite for memory which gives you the fixes without having a new player drown in a multitude of new features and puzzle pieces.
I played Skylines 1, but haven't tried 2. Someone else in the SC4 community put it best when they said Skylines is more like a City Painter than a simulator. This being said they have very different feels - mainly as SC4 locks the camera and while you can make diagonals and curves with mods, your mostly playing around with grid layouts if you want things to look nice.
There are numerous ways to play SimCity 4 however. Some use it as a highway designer, others are big into the simulation, others 'paint' with it, some (like me) do combinations of all three.
I have more hours on SC4 than Skylines so I think that speaks for itself. I think SC4 looks nicer too.
Agreed. Region Play is incredible in particular for the scale you can work at.
I literally had my stop watch out to check. Windows could take minutes, Linux had the game loaded in 20 seconds. I tried a small blank test map and it loaded so quickly I barely saw the loading screen. It was insane.
It sometimes felt like Windows was so full of bloat that it struggled to manage simple tasks, let a lone complex ones. Linux with pretty much any task just feels rapid in comparison.
Definitely. Couldn't play without it, and running it on Linux hasn't put up many obstacles so far.
It was stable on Windows - crashes were very rare once you had the 4GB patch installed, but I'll have to get back to you after a few hours with Linux. Theres been a few new mods that really challenge what the game can do, and one of those caused a crash with my testing, but it seems that was a once off so far.
They're definitely worth giving a shot, though I hear they have a different feel to the earlier games (one that isn't entirely just due to the graphical jump). 4 was where I started and I found it immediately intoxicating, though it definitely took me awhile to get the hang of it.
It's a nice entry point into the Linux world so far. There were a few hiccups in the transition, but they actually help with the learning process.