City Simply Vanished

[JamesLancast 0]

Hi there,

I´m new to Simtropolis and been playing SC4 Deluxe for months with no bugs of any sort.

Suddenly, yesterday, when saving game using the "save and exit to region" option, the game crashed hard and took several minutes to get back to normal (I preferred not using ALT+CTRL+DEL since I had mouse response and it seemed do be working besides the awful lag).

Later the lag, still on city screen, the game showed that annoying window alerting about high traffic for less than 1 sec. Then, it came back to region screen, and... surprise. Instead of the city, its place in the region map was replaced by a weird looking black hole, as if the city simply vanished. I can´t select the square anymore.

The city name´s still showing over the map. While appearing to be dead, however, I think the city is still "functional" for the game, since it shows where the airport is (was) located.  Take a look at the print.

Now, guys, I'd like to know:

1) Is there anything I can do to get my city ("Carmo") back in place? The corresponding file is still at Region directory.

2) If not, how can I replace the city with a valid slot to start rebuilding?

Thx a lot,

James

[xchoo 0]

Hi! I have encountered this before. I think that the saving process just missed out on saving the zoomed out view, so you see a hole instead. Here's what you can try:

1.Backup your regions folder

2.start simcity

3.Go into your missing city (like you would normally do)

4.Save and exit to region

5.Check out if the region is filled.

=)

Hope this helps!

[xiziz 11]

Well, as Xchoo said, it could be that it just missed updating the region view picture as, as you can see the Airport icon from "Carmo", and i presume you had an airport there in this case? Try loading the city and resaving it. This however usually results in a flat green square, bot the hole your getting.

Otherwise chances are that because of the crash, the city was corrupted, which means that its lost. unless you have a backup of the tile in question to reload in its place.

[BEJA 2]

....another step is to actually go into the Region through My Computer, check the particular city file, see when it was last modified, and how big the file size is. If it appears to be ok, chances are it is still there, and when you go back into the game and click on this city, it will fully load and all will be displayed properly.

This same situation has happened to me a couple of times.....

BEJA

[BEJA 2]

James.....disregard my first post! I just gave you an extra step that is not needed, what the others have said is better advice! Sorry about that!

BEJA

[BIWDC 2,296]

(Backup all region files first then try the following):

To see if the city is corrupt try importing it over to a city in a new region 
to see if it imports fine & loads with no problems you might be able 
to save the city. 

if that works or don't you can probably get the land back in that region 
if you can get the city menu to appear by selecting the city then try 
importing a blank city file over the bad one if it works your good.

if it don't or you can't get that menu then exit the game & copy a blank 
city file from another region to somewhere rename it the same name 
as your city file then copy it to your region folder let it save over your 
bad city file & it might fix that so maybe you can save the region aswell.
(hope this is helpful)

[JamesLancast 0]

Thanks to you guys, BIWD, BEJA, xiziz and xchoo!

Following your steps, I managed to import the city to another region. Sadly, it still looks the same in its new location. The city is funcitional, since region pop grew up and the airport is still there. Besides that, the city is not selectable. I presume it´s really corrupted.

However, I replaced the former corrupted lot with a fresh one and can start the building all over again. Guess I´ll keep a safe backup from now on...

James