First, Thanks! Your suggestions at least got me past the EA intro and into the game, albeit briefly. I still couldn't lauch from the Origin application, but I was able to find that I could add your switches directly into a shortcut to the actual game exe. This did cut out the EA intro and I got all the way to the region screen from which you start a city. I am only able to be there for about 10 seconds before it crashes. Its not enough time to actually play with the settings, but I was able to grab a screenshot of my graphics properties as they are at launch:
If you have more suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. I've been playing Sim City since it came with a 3 1/2 AND 2 5 1/4 inch floppy disks and SC4 is my favorite.
TIA!
EDIT: I searched for other SC4 command line switches that might be available. I found some here. I turned the audio off (-audio:off) and it has now ran for nearly 5 minutes without crashing. I will let you know if I have any further issues though. Thanks again! I couldn't have done it without your leads!
@rpmanning - I'm so glad you got it working. Great job on modifying the exe directly. I wonder if you have an issue with Origin in some way, in addition to the usual tweaks needed for SC4. Regardless, make sure to keep Origin in-game turned off, it's been my experience that causes a lot of issues. Also, if you use OneDrive, you may want to exclude SC4 docs if you have any issues with saving.
Using software rendering is the easiest to explain (from my standpoint) and bypasses the need to identify your graphics card and modify config files. Looking at your available resolutions, I would try using one of the existing choices. For instance: -CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x1024x32 Running in windowed mode can also sometimes help (-w instead of -f)
If you want to see if hardware rendering helps or gives a better experience, this post gives a great step-by-step (with pictures - my favorite!).
I also played SC on floppy, then on the Wii lol. I completely bypassed SC4, but have played SC2013 since it launched. Love the game - many SimCity players think that SC4 is the best of all of them. I hope someday they create a new version. Happy Building!
