City flattened upon saving!

[dmrsunz 2]

I had saved the city previously after terraforming and planting forests in God Mode then going into Mayor Mode and naming the city. Days later I was developing the city and had finished for the evening so I selected "Save And Return To Region". When the region view appeared in the window the entire city tile was flattened, the city had reverted to New City, and the file name reverted to New City (x).sc4 in the region's directory. This is the second time this has happened in this region. The first time I had terraformed but not done any development and in that case also I was saving and returning to region view. I have other 3 cities in the region that I have played for about 30-50 game years and I have had no problems...yet, I'm afraid to go back into them. I know that I can make backups of the city files and re-import them, but does anybody have a clue as to what might be causing the complete annihilation of these cities?

[Constantina 5]

The image thumbnail may be poorly saved. The city's contents are fine. Just save them again to update the thumbnail.

[dmrsunz 2]

Really? The city has disappeared from the directory? The first time this happened I reopened the city and it was indeed flat. I did not try that with this since it was very late. Let me see...Nope, it is G O N E. When I hover over the city in region view it says "Start New City" and the only available option is to import a new city (not delete the current one). When I open it up it is completely flat, just like the region view indicates.

As always it's good to see you Constantina, good morning (at least its morning for me)

[Constantina 5]

In most cases only the region thumbnail can be corrupted now and then. When it last happened to me the city was okay, only the thumbnail was 'flattened'.

It is rare to see a SimCity 4 city flattened when poorly saved. It was common in SimCity 3000.

[dmrsunz 2]

Well that's not good. One thing these cities had in common that no other cities (I've ever created) had was umlats in the city name - "

[Constantina 5]

I find it better to name cities with A-Z, a-z, exclamation mark, and 0-9.

[dmrsunz 2]

I've renamed the other city file names - that I've terraformed only - in the region that DID have umlats (you can change the city name by renaming the file in the directory, correct? Or is it hidden somewhere else as well?). I will see if that helps. It might be good for our Swedish and German friends to know about a possible umlat bug. Thanks.

EDIT: It seems that renaming the file in the directory does not change the name in the region or city views. I'm not sure if how it appears there would have any impact on the actual file (and hence, the umlat issue), but I had to do the whererufrom cheat to change the names. Fingers crossed.

[Evean 0]

This happen to me too. I was terraforming, I enter mayor mode, Layout all my zones and i save and exit to region and when In region view, that city went back to its original self. I went into the city again and the zones are all gone, the roads and highway all gone..

[dmrsunz 2]

But in my case not only were the zones and roads, etc. gone, the terrain was flattened and the city file, "CityNameWithUmlat.sc4" reverted back to the pre-dev "City - New City (X).sc4" just like what happens when you hit the "delete city" icon in the open city dialog box in region view.

By the way, there is a "quick-save" setting that does not save thumbnail images for the region view and that would account for what you saw. But then your city would still be fine. Did you ever fingure out what was the cause?

[baertooth 330]

Have you downloaded from Simcity.ea.com? I won't use anything from there anymore. I'm pretty sure there is a few jokers who post stuff over there and have done things to the lots to cause corruption and performance issues.

The last couple of times I stocked up on lots there, I had issues very similar to yours. Every so often, after I saved and restarted the game, random cities would corrupt and it would be replaced with a flat land new city tile. If I went into the regions folder and looked at the city, the file would be there but corrupted. Corrupted to a point where I couldn't erase it, couldn't move it, copy it, nothing. Even booting into a Linux live cd and trying to erase it that way wouldn't work. I had to completely wipe the drive with an overwrite, then reinstall the partition, filesystem, the OS, and Simcity to get rid of it.

Since then, I haven't used any downloads from Simcity.ea.com. And as a result, I've haven't had that problem again.

[Vigilante1987 180]

In order to rename your cities, you have to load them in the game.

Use control-x to open the cheat box, and enter the code

whereareufrom "city-name"

I've found that it is never a good idea to use special characters in file names. I don't know what kind of system you are using, but you may want to poke around your harddrive to make sure the files weren't accidentally moved or renamed.

[prince_of_sims 0]

the Unsaved City bug is quite common on low end machines. if you have one, i suggest not using the Save and Exit to Region option, but the Save option.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just in case this is due to your umlaut problem, use Windows Explorer to open the region folder and check to see if the city is there.  If it is, rename it, then move it to another place, then import it.

Everyone who has diacritical marks in names, etc. should be aware that general American has none.  Characters with diacritical marks are not in the ASCII nor the Extended PC set, so there is likely to be trouble.

[dmrsunz 2]

Originally posted by: prince_of_sims the Unsaved City bug is quite common on low end machines. if you have one, i suggest not using the Save and Exit to Region option, but the Save option.quote>

Well I'm on a Mac that's not quite low end but not a real powerhouse. I've never had a problem saving and returning to region before in the last 2 years either on my current machine or the even less powerful machine I used before. So I'm thinking (and hoping) that that is not the problem. But are you saying that I should save, quit, and relaunch SC4 to load a new city?

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Just in case this is due to your umlaut problem, use Windows Explorer to open the region folder and check to see if the city is there...quote>

That's the thing, the named city file was not in the region's directory. I checked immediately. I re-opened the flat city, and when I saved it the dialog indicated that the name was New City(13). Whatever happened it really and truly killed the city. I've made backups of all other cities and renamed them with all standard characters. Hopefully the umlat was the culprit. If not, I'll be back (and not at all happy).

[prince_of_sims 0]

what i was suggesting is don't use the Save and Exit to Region option. use the Save option and then the Exit to Region option.

but since you're on a powerhouse of a MAC, it's possible that the non-ASCII characters in the city name caused this error.

[dmrsunz 2]

Oh, right, forgot about that. Thanks for your help.