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by Rury 1116 days ago
I think that's because surprisingly, it's still a marketable/profitable game. If only it weren't, then maybe it would eventually be open sourced. Only flaw I find is that due to it's age, it wasn't really designed with maximum concurrency in mind, and doesn't utilize the full capabilities of modern hardware, so the simulation slows to a crawl after a certain size.
2 comments
speeder 1116 days ago
The game actually does support decent threading, but it relies on old RDTSC behavior and will crash on modern CPUs if you allow all the threading to run. I nagged EA a lot to Open Source SC4 or allow fans to fix bugs on Windows version, but they are stubborn :(

The Mac version is published by Aspyr that has rights to the source and to release updates. For example the Mac version is 64bit now. Windows version is 32bit thus heavily limited regarding mods.

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mhh__ 1116 days ago
Similar with the Sims 3, the Mac version is 64 bit the windows version is not and thus becomes unplayable after a given length of savefile.
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scrlk 1116 days ago
I'm hoping someone will consider starting an "OpenSC4" project, in the same tradition as OpenTTD or OpenRCT2.
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speeder 1116 days ago
There is such a project, but sadly I am not involved with it right now because I am spending all my time trying to get a new job.
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bombcar 1116 days ago
It's even more amazing because EA didn't do the port, Aspyr did, and they're still around to do an Apple Silicon port.

I wonder how it affects mods, I might have to dive back in ...

I also note it's on the Mac App Store so that's probably why they're upgrading it.

Still, worth the buy at Steam for $2.

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