Windows 7 - gameplay time limit feature?

H

hardc0re

Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2006
Messages
869
I was playing Sim City 4 earlier and was really impressed with the way Windows 7 manages my time by abruptly shutting down my game while I'm having a euphoric high buiding an amazing city. I am always at ease that not too much time will be wasted playing this fantastic game!

I admire this hidden feature and was surprised it was never advertised on the product's box. :eek:

Hoping to hear more experiences from you folks!:p
 
Is it patched?

Some people find it more stable in Win XP SP2 compatibility mode, some find it more stable with compatibility mode turned off.
 
The game was released 7 years ago, it was not built to run specifically in Windows7, that's not windows 7's fault...
 
Oddly I just got the urge to play SC4 again as well, and ran into the same issue you did. Apparently the problem is caused by poor support of multicore processors (google SC4 multicore fix for more details). Most of the fixes I found said to start the program, then tab out and specifically set the affinity of the program to a single core through the task manager, however this didn't fix my crashes on Windows 7 64bit.

What *did* fix the crashes however is launching the program through a batch file that sets the affinity instead.

Code: 
cmd.exe /C START "SimCity 4" /high /affinity 1 "SimCity 4.exe" -intro:off -w -r1680x1050x32  -CustomResolution:enabled

Place this in a .bat file in the same directory as the SC4 executable (under SC4\apps) and use it to launch the game. You can skip the command switches, but they're useful to have (turns the intro off an enables custom resolution, 1680x1050 in this case).

With this batch I can play for hours without crashes whereas before it would crash after 5-30 minutes. In fact I've yet to have the game crash since.
 
So you're playing a game that wasn't made for Windows 7 and crying about it?

Cool story.
 
I have windows 7 x64 professional on a core i7 920 OC to 3.8. Dragon Age: Origins & Torchlight had consistently crashed anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes of gameplay. After a bit of googling, I came across the 'affinity' thing mentioned above. So, what I've been doing is launch the game -> alt-tab -> task manager -> right-click the process -> Set Affinity -> uncheck everything except CPU 4,5,6,7 for DA or CPU 6,7 for Torchlight.

Doing the above I have not had any crashes. I did not have to do this with Crysis and Crysis Warhead.
 
well you gotta love compatibility mode that doesen't do anything :p

I'll try the switched startup as suggested :)
 
darksonic said:
So you're playing a game that wasn't made for Windows 7 and crying about it?

Cool story.
Click to expand...

This. Not only that, Simcity 4 has always been a rather unstable, poorly coded game whether it be installed on XP or 7. Protip: Become friends with the CTRL-ALT-S key combo in the game and use it often. Faster than just CTRL-S.

Jutsu said:
XP Mode?
Click to expand...

A-HAHAHAHAHAHA! GL with that. Simcity 4 still has some performance problems even on today's high-end machines. Probably because Maxis thought we'd all be using +10GHz by now instead of multicore machines.
 
GushpinBob said:
Probably because Maxis thought we'd all be using +10GHz by now instead of multicore machines.
Click to expand...

Which was pretty much the common feeling at the time. I remember the announcements when the P4 was first released where Intel was claiming that technology would scale up to 10GHz.. That didn't work out so well for them.

It is likely a timing issue related to multicores as previously discussed. There are several older games that had major issues with multicores at first. Everquest had some major issues when multicore systems first came out with keeping things in sync.
 
hardc0re said:
I was playing Sim City 4 earlier and was really impressed with the way Windows 7 manages my time by abruptly shutting down my game while I'm having a euphoric high buiding an amazing city. I am always at ease that not too much time will be wasted playing this fantastic game!

I admire this hidden feature and was surprised it was never advertised on the product's box. :eek:

Hoping to hear more experiences from you folks!:p
Click to expand...
This is an extremely clever post. Well played, sir.

Anyways, I can't help you too much. My guess is that there's a compatibility issue, given the age of the game.
 
I run Sim City 4 on two different Win7 machines, without it crashing. It does run rather poorly when your cities get large, but that's not a Windows issue. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top