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It works fine by default, but needs some thinkering if you wish to force a higher resolution than the one used by the developer decades ago.
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32
The game works great by default, but given that it's a very old game, by default it comes for low resolution monitors and square screen projection. Fortunately I found a launch command that allowed me to fix the resolution and adjust the display for modern monitors. Even though, the game works fine by default and you could play it as people did decades ago.
-f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -Intro:off
After installing, my game immediately crashed after i tried starting it up (black screen flashing and immediately closed). I tried a lot of solutions, but in the end I got it fixed by installing "Steam Common Redistributables" package! If only all fixes were that easy :)
-CPUCount:1
Can escape fullscreen but upon returning to the game, the graphics are too distorted to play.
From what I've read, for computers with a typical modern CPU, you are very likely to have to add the launch option.
I also recommend to force a higher resolution using "-f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32" as launch options.
Had to disable the Steam Overlay. Also I had to install another game which brought Steamworks Common Redistributables.
It works great out of the box. Default controls are excellent. Playing with the trackpad is a breeze, and you can easily scroll with the d-pad. No issues whatsoever. Highly recommended if you like city-builders.
If the game crashes on startup and you're using an AMD GPU try switching to the older radeon driver if you can.
switched graphics driver from amdgpu to the older radeon
-f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -intro:off
Reading all the comments people screwing around with the cpu affinities and overcomplicating everything with "9000" lines of launch parameters and such, meanwhile me sitting here, looking at people, and just going on my own way - doing it plain simple...: I'm using only this basic resolution changing one, even without it the game would perfectly run, but then at lower resolution obviously. My observation is that it just simply works out of the box.
Also, alt-tabbing does not break my UI, I don't get it what is wrong with other people's pc, but I'm running this with nvidia proprietary drivers, and as opposite to radeon users, im having a better out of the box experience it seems!
Default launch params detailed:
-f -> to force fullscreen
-CustomResolution:enabled -> to enable the next line which will use custom resolution
-r1920x1080x32 -> set to your monitor's resolution (x32 is the color depth, leave it like that)
-intro:off -> well.. intro off :D quicker game startup
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command% -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -CPUPriority:high -intro:off
Moving about seems jumpy
An older version of proton works. Make sure to turn on Hardware rendering. I am using Kubuntu.
The game is broken.
The game does not start. After the installation process, and when running the game; For a few seconds you see a black screen, and then the game crashes. I have tried all versions of Proton, and none of them have worked.
The window/fullscreen problems would likely be too annoying for anyone, except for the most determined, to play this game.
%command% -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32 -intro:off
Changing config files did nothing, running winecfg helped
By default, the game WILL run on fullscreen normally, but hitting Alt-Tab and then coming back to the game breaks the UI horribly. When using virtual desktop mode on Wine, the game runs on "windowed" mode, but the game is off-center, and half of the game is off-screen. You can resize the virtual desktop window to "fix" it partially.
The game MUST run on fullscreen mode. Windowed mode comes with extreme unplayable slowdown.
Some users report having no or almost no issues. I wonder if this problem varies depending on Distro or GFX card?
%command% -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r2560x1440x32
Initially used a few custom launch args I found here, I removed some to see what would happen and.. still rock solid. Yay. I don't want windowed mode so I just kept the 1440p resolution and intro disabling args. Note: I'm using a non-standard (newer) kernel for this version of Mint for improved support of my very recent (at time of writing) hardware.
%command% -CPUCount:8 -w -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r2048x1152x32
You may want to change to a custom resolution and disable the intro, but the game works perfectly without any tinkering.
Fail to load to main-menu. Black Screen Flashes and Exits
it works very well out of the box, but you need to set the correct resolution in the launch options
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x800x32
just update the resolution and configure the controls to your liking, use this in the launch options:
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x800x32
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command% -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -intro:off -d:DirectX -f -CPUCount:3
D3D9 Vulkan crashes the game on startup
If you are experiecing immediate crash upon starting the game (game window flashes for a fraction of a second) there is a workaround where you disable D3D9 vulkan and use standard WINE D3D9 OpenGL by adding the PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 environement variable to the command line options. (See above for an example command line with extra options that may improve compatibility/performance)
Tested on the example big city. (Keep in mind I'm using intel integrated graphics, 4th gen Haswell), ran smoothly when not moving around. Simulation speed seems ok and constant. Moving around is a bit stuttery, specially on farther zooms. Setting shadows to medium also seem to improve perf a bit.
%command% -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -Intro:off
Occasional frame drops and complete unresponsiveness.
This game is known to crash, so I'm sure it's a game issue and not Proton.
Can't seem to get the NetworkAddonMod installed correctly, even after running the .sh file. This isn't a Proton issue either, but having NAM really makes a massive difference in gameplay.
when i scrolled the map some elements would disapear.
Doesn't work, flashes black screen and nothing happened.
Used Proton 7.0-2 and each time I launch the game it only flashes black screen and close automatically without any error message or anything.
The game works just like in Windows. You can use some parameters to change the game's resolution and to skip the EA intro
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1366x768x32 -intro:off
Using OpenGL audio cracks on heavy load, using DirectX only creates cracks on game load
The DirectX graphics mode seems to dislike windowed mode, but fullscreen works fine
Not related to Proton, the game is just old, so save often using Ctrl-S
If after installing you see some black screen flashing, you need to install the "Steamworks Common Redistributable" tool in Steam, then you need to delete the game's prefix. Some games have this tool as a dependency, so that's why some systems work first time without tinkering
The only issues/bugs I ran into exist when playing on Windows since they are just bugs within the original game.
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -CPUPriority:high -intro:off
Ok this is the strangest fix I've found for a proton game but here it is. If you're getting a black screen that flashes and closes immediately after lauching the game (which happened to me after installing and launching), I fixed it by installing No Man's Sky via Steam/Proton. No additional configuration was needed to launch NMS. After simply installing No Man's Sky, Sim City 4 Delux just will launch without issue.
If anyone can help nail down why this works, we can possibly figure out what the issue is and resolve it without the need to purchase an additonal game. I tested this on Gentoo and Arch Linux and it worked like a charm. I hope this can help somebody as I spent many hours trying to find a solution to the game crashing immediately after launching, considering I had no issue running the game in the past via Proton.
%command% -CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x800x32 -Intro:off
Lot of slowdown when moving around the map. Framerate likes to drop to 30 (and below) constantly.
Use the command line options to set the deck native 1280x800 resolution.
As some other reports have noted, the performance in the game is worse than expected on modern hardware. There are a few proposed solutions but I've only tried various command line options so far. I'll post a new report if I try anything else and it runs more smoothly.
I'd say it's probably playable, but I also haven't tried huge cities.
Some of the community control layouts aren't bad, but you'll probably want to tweak them for the deck.
Used to be able to start this game with Proton but not anymore recently
Also tried out proton GE 7-15, proton GE 7-5 and Proton 7.02
-intro:off -gp -d:DirectX -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32
I used the Lutris install script for "SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition" (note that when you search in Lutris, you'll see several with similar names - use the one without the colon in the name!). I'm not sure where the installer comes from for the Lutris script, but I own the game on both GOG and Steam (I think it downloads it from GOG).
After installing it, I added my GPU to the recognized cards list. Specifically, this is what I added:
- Graphics Rules.sgr:
partialRule "Fast card" -any ... stringMatch cardIdentity "ATI*Radeon RX 5500*" stringMatch cardIdentity "AMD*" ... - Video Cards.sgr:
vendor "ATI" 0x1002 ... card 0x7340 "Radeon RX 5500" ...
On Windows, I can run this game with the software renderer just fine (more stable than hardware), but on Linux, the game is so slow as to be completely unplayable with the software renderer. Hardware rendering is usable, although it is still noticably slower than the software renderer on Windows, and is so slow as to be unplayable on large cities with lots of mods.
Back in 2012, I ran this game under Wine on Ubuntu 12.04 just fine. It was slower than Windows, but not by much. I was amazed.
Yet somehow, I could not get this game working when I went to install it on Linux Mint 20.2 (Ubuntu 20.04). I tried every Proton version available via Steam, tried installing the GOG version via Wine, Play on Linux, CrossOver, tried all the tips on here... Sometimes I could get it to the region view, but it would either hang while trying to load a city (even tiles that weren't even cities yet) or crash.
I had given up until I found Lutris. It installs and it runs, but it's slow. Really slow. And that's after I switched to hardware rendering, which I had always avoided on Windows due to the stability problems it tended to create.
But still, it works. And in cities with a population of <200k, it's bearable. But in my 300k population city that has a lot of custom lots, NAM tiles, etc (that I was so proud of the last time I played it on Windows), it's...every time I scroll the map, adjust the zoom level, etc, I have to wait for at least 10 seconds for the next screen draw to complete.
Almost makes me want to run a Windows thin client just for this game.
I'm not sure why it's so slow for me. Other people with similar hardware aren't having such struggles, so I have to wonder if it's a specific hardware combination making things awful or something else. Even before I symlinked the Lutris game folder to my Dropbox to access all my mods, maps, etc, it was slow.
Works out of box. Used -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 to get 1080p via launch options
Played 1 tutorial so far
I've tried out multiple versions of proton and none of them worked
PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command% -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -w -CPUPriority:high -intro:off
Works fine, just needs a compatible version of proton. Any version of proton > 5.13.6 doesn't work.
Didn't work with vers of Proton > 5.13.6. Game loads, but only displays red, no Green/Blue is shown. Works mostly OOTB on v. 5.13.6. Add'l tweaks recommended to fix resolution issues. My entire command string: PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command% -CustomResolution:enabled -r1600x900x32 -f -Cursors:fullcolor -Intro:off -CPUPriority:high -CPUCount:4
Large Address flag for testing/stability. CPU flags are optional, and may or may not improve performance (another tweaking to test). DO NOT set CPUCount to 1, game will be so slow it's virtually frozen (but not quite).
NOTE/FURTHER INFORMATION: Works BEAUTIFULLY if run via WINE, as in install the windows version of steam via wine and then installing SimCity 4 as usual (resolution tweaks still necessary). Verified with Wine versions >= 5.x. This is not a bad idea, as a fallback option. Some games run better this way than via proton. Also, some games run better with the windows version via WINE than the native linux version.
Command line options, noted above
Proton-GE is quite tricky to install, and did not always work for me. Hopefully the official releases will fix this issue.
PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command% -f -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -w -CPUPriority:high -intro:off
Steam overlay is disabled.
Proton-6.21-GE-2
Tried again on a fresh Pop! OS install and with GE-2 release. Starts and seems to run very well, but do NOT use the "-CPUCount:1" flag that is needed for stability in Windows, as it makes the menu unusably slow.
Proton-6.19-GE-2 GloriousEggroll
Still no launch with GE
Tried 6.20GE and 6.21GE.
Still has flash of a window using options listed in other reports
