Save Warning 1.0

Out of curiosity, what's the maximum time given in this particular case before the other routine takes over?

 

(Also, having something with a variable duration overridden by a fixed timer is a horrible idea to begin with. Why even code it that way?)

5 hours ago, Wiimeiser said:

Out of curiosity, what's the maximum time given in this particular case before the other routine takes over?

I don't believe there is an actual fixed time limit as such, and instead the duration gets determined by the quantity of data being saved.

Depending on the size of the city tile and the number of objects inside, this uses up more system RAM. Running a city tile for a while and this accumulates as changes are made, and it's possible this gets swapped into memory in cycles. Then when saving, the game attempts to write this to file (which includes bordering tile references for neighbour connections). It will need longer and longer time to complete the more data there is to write from that stored in memory. Then having been instructed to exit the tile, the game can "bail out" before finishing the job in full.

Performing a regular Save (Ctrl+S) is recommended since this process cannot be interrupted until completion. The problems occur with the one-step process when the game exits the current tile to region, or quitting completely. Should this not fully write out the data, that's when problems will occur, and almost certainly making the city save become corrupted (and possibly neighbouring ones too).

Understandably only limited info is known about the save process, where observations can mostly just be made through experimentation. Back when Maxis coded the routine, it seems logical to presume they never expected city tile data to be as large as it can get today due to custom content (especially MMPs).

Here's some useful insight as posted by @rsc204 which elaborates on this further:
 

On 20/12/2017 at 11:06 PM, rsc204 said:

SC4 is a little unique in how it saves the game, from what we have managed to decipher, it pretty much takes the detail of the city as it's held in RAM and duplicates it onto your Hard Drive. The reason this is important to know, is because that process is amazingly intensive as an operation, but there is a flaw in how it works. See, at the same time SC4 is trying to save the city data, it also is trying to make a screenshot of the city for region view to be updated. In addition when you use Save and Exit/Quit, the computer is also doing other things to facilitate those processes too, it easily becomes too much and leads to CTDs.

Long and short, it's a known issue that using either Save and Exit to Region or Save and Quit, can cause the game to hang. The bigger the city and more objects in it, the more likely the problem. As such, it is recommended to avoid these options altogether and only ever use just "Save", which appears on the lower menu bar or can be activated with CTRL+S. Then use Exit without Saving or Quit without Saving instead.

On 29/08/2018 at 1:30 AM, rsc204 said:

As the save file gets larger, it takes more system resources to save the data. If the computer is busy with other tasks, it might not be able to finish the process properly. Creating the region thumbnail is one of the last parts of this, it can easily get corrupted, then it no longer works. The extra load of processing exiting either the city or game, increases the odds that the save process doesn't end properly. Just using save is seemingly foolproof, since the game has all the time it needs to finish the save, with no interruptions.

It's very likely that this issue is due to the large plugin suites and use of custom content. This hugely increases the save times/sizes, probably beyond anything Maxis ever envisioned users doing.

 

6 hours ago, Wiimeiser said:

(Also, having something with a variable duration overridden by a fixed timer is a horrible idea to begin with. Why even code it that way?)

Indeed I don't believe it was. I think simply that one process doesn't quite finish properly before the game moves back to region-view or exiting entirely. Since this would have been extensively tested at the time (during development), the issue never really came up. The point being, Maxis could never really have envisioned what a monster SC4 would become from a modding perspective.

Think about it this way, if you had more than 1GB RAM in a system in 2003, that would mean you had very, very, deep pockets. Yet today SC4 uses 1.6GB of my RAM when it's running. This should give some indication of how well the code's held up for the most part. But I suspect is a major reason why the save routine is pushed beyond what it can handle on occasion. Not to mention, background applications might interrupt SC4's use of the system bus. It's totally understandable how changes in how computers and Windows works today, could have turned something reliable into something otherwise.

The good news though, both this problem and other save-file corruption issues are pretty much a non-event. Provided you know how to avoid them.

@Cyclone Boom: Just a thought, could we alter the "Save and..." options, to simply "Save". Not sure how to re-direct the button's functions, but for me I think that would be a nice alteration too.

Could there be an expansion to provide a reminder for when a city has been modified but not saved? I've had the occasional situation in which I forget to save the city after taking screenshots and then lose the progress of what was made. I'm sure other folks have also experienced something similar.

On 21/03/2019 at 3:00 PM, rsc204 said:

Just a thought, could we alter the "Save and..." options, to simply "Save". Not sure how to re-direct the button's functions, but for me I think that would be a nice alteration too.

That would certainly be useful as another option. A few months ago when I originally created the modified button and disabled variations, I tried to swap over the function of the dedicated Save button. In Reader (version 1.5.4 which has a more advanced UI editor), I located the Save button and noted the IID used. Then I replaced this with the button control on my override. As I recall this did nothing other than caused the dialog to immediately close as when clicking Cancel.

I'll revisit this though and see if anything can be done. Or please let me know if you've any ideas of how it may or may not be possible.

 

15 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Could there be an expansion to provide a reminder for when a city has been modified but not saved?

That might be doable, but isn't something within the scope of what I can technically achieve with my current knowledge. It may well need to rely on custom coded LUA code, or even DLL file to provide the necessary functionality.

I'm aware of a Save Alarm mod which might come in handy as a periodic reminder.

That's a weird bug, still never experienced, seems perks of playing vanilla

1 hour ago, moSonče said:

That's a weird bug, still never experienced, seems perks of playing vanilla

It's very true how without using lots of custom content in a city tile, there is a reduced probability of save corruption from the Save and Exit OR Save and Quit one-step process. That's how Maxis designed the game after all, and adding more content is increasing variables and memory overhead.

Doing so playing mostly or exclusively vanilla makes it highly unlikely in fact, although not impossible. The chances will be increased for large city tiles which are significantly developed. Also running the game for extended periods or tabbing out from SC4 may raise the likelihood due to memory accumulation, especially without saving within the current tile per session. I remember reading how it does a garbage collection (system memory cleanup, not trash in the game) when saving directly. So that seems a good habit to get into at regular intervals.

Exiting to the region is something I'll personally still do after terraforming or planting flora. In otherwise empty undeveloped tiles, this really is a negligible risk. Also should anything go wrong, there's a lot less progress lost compared with a detailed crafted city built over time.

It's hard to estimate the quantity of content where corruption is more likely to occur when exiting or quitting in one-step. The biggest danger in any case is to not switch focus from the game when saving either way (even using the regular Save).

Anyway, glad to hear you've not encountered it before, but just thought I'd mention how it might still be safer to consider using the two-step process.

Thank you so much for this!

I've lost some of my favorite cities due to that bug. 

On 24.03.2019 at 4:57 AM, Cyclone Boom said:

It's very true how without using lots of custom content in a city tile, there is a reduced probability of save corruption from the Save and Exit OR Save and Quit one-step process. That's how Maxis designed the game after all, and adding more content is increasing variables and memory overhead.

Doing so playing mostly or exclusively vanilla makes it highly unlikely in fact, although not impossible. The chances will be increased for large city tiles which are significantly developed. Also running the game for extended periods or tabbing out from SC4 may raise the likelihood due to memory accumulation, especially without saving within the current tile per session. I remember reading how it does a garbage collection (system memory cleanup, not trash in the game) when saving directly. So that seems a good habit to get into at regular intervals.

Exiting to the region is something I'll personally still do after terraforming or planting flora. In otherwise empty undeveloped tiles, this really is a negligible risk. Also should anything go wrong, there's a lot less progress lost compared with a detailed crafted city built over time.

It's hard to estimate the quantity of content where corruption is more likely to occur when exiting or quitting in one-step. The biggest danger in any case is to not switch focus from the game when saving either way (even using the regular Save).

Anyway, glad to hear you've not encountered it before, but just thought I'd mention how it might still be safer to consider using the two-step process.

I see no harm in being cautious anyway but still it seems more of GC done wrong ( or not anticipated with more content as mentioned ) than a timing issue, that's abstracted in OS level after all. ( Unless you suggest game dumping allocated memory to file but does GC meanwhile therefore corrupts file ) 

At the end, we don't need to understand inner works though can simply avoid it this way.

Just a joke suggestion, since the button text is editable...