Autosave mod request

[moleman1546 0]

well, we all love simcity. But we all know it's wicked unstable. and we all ( i think ) have been building away when the game aborts to desktop, leaving us very frustrated. A simple mod that would save the game every 5 or 10 minutes, like office suites do, would be very, very! much appreciated. Hopefully it's possible, and even more hopefully it's quick and easy. Thanks everyone.

[Siborg 1]

I just did a search on the very same subject but found out only Maxis can do this. Shame, I really need an autosave feature

[MayorTim 16]

Saving game in SC4 takes a very long time, and an auto save every 5 or 10 minutes would leave you waiting for the game to finish saving more than actually playing.

SC4 isn't very unstable, so long as you have all the patches and that you only download well made lots and BATs.

[sim-ple 1]

I just had a situation arise last night that led me here. I was toiling away on a city with a great deal of design in my farming areas, fishing viollage and small city center for about three hours. Everything was looking great and all was well in the city as a whole. It was getting late and I stopped to save and exit. Unfortunately, I hit the wrong button and exited without saving - three hours of design work shot. 

 

Now before anyone volunteers I am going to say it first, What a dope!

 

I am sure we are all guilty of geting so absorbed in what we are doing that we forget to save our work. After all, the game is very engrossing.

 

In any event, perhaps a simple mod could be worked in as an alert instead of a fixed save. I was thinking of a simple alert box that pops up after say 30 or 60 minutes prompting you to save. It's then your option to stop what you are doing and save the your hard work.

 

Any thouight on this approach.

[ProudElm 0]

issnt their a way to get a buliding to display a red 'warning msg' everey x min or so? that would help

[Daeley 46]

well I could make a mod that makes a popup appear every x minutes... but I'm busy right now so I suggest you nag somebody who has knowledge of SC LUA and news messages...

[ProudElm 0]

well, that would be great, so, some1 else up for it?? or is it uhm, easy?

[jms 0]

daeley, if you can make a popup appear every x minutes, i would love to know how you do it.  any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

[Daeley 46]

someting like this... (of the top of my head):

**************************************************************

TIMER_lastpop = 0

TIMER_interval = 30*60*60 -- 30 minutes

function TIMER_trigger()

    local time = os.time()

    if (time - TIMER_lastpop > TIMER_interval) then

          TIMER_lastpop = time

           return true

    else

           return false

end

a = create_advice_cityplanning('0000000')

a.trigger = "TIMER_trigger()"

a.timeout = tuning_constants.ADVICE_TIMEOUT_LONG

a.title = [[text@000000]]

a.message = [[text@000000]]

a.priority = tuning_constants.ADVICE_PRIORITY_URGENT

a.mood = advice_moods.ALARM 

**************************************************************

there you go... wasn't so hard, was it? - yes, you may bow before me

it's probaly not too hard to create a few options with links in the popup either...

[jms 0]

oh god daeley, thank-you! i am bowing to you as i write this.

[Andreas Roth 607]

Neat! I'm looking forward to that mod as well, since I always forget to save when building my cities (or better: finetuning them for hours and hours). Luckily, my computer is rock-solid, and SC4 crashes are very rare.

[ProudElm 0]

yeah well, i thougt so also, but last week, i did..

[qurlix 20]

Yeah, but now is the real challenge...finding a link code to save your game. I hate SC4 links...

-qurlix

[powerpill-pacman 1]

Is there any progess on the autosave building?

[Andreas Roth 607]

Probably not. I think I tinkered a bit with the code back then, but couldn't really make it work, since my programming knowledge is next to inexistant. I shall give it another try sometime, but I can't do anything in case the code doesn't work properly.

[powerpill-pacman 1]

Thanks for the quick update.

[tommiej 0]

i think this is very good!! my simcity doesn't crash often, but usually when it crashes, i've lost some great amount of work, 2/3 hours, one time even more (airport).. and just forget about saving a soon as i'm focused on building my city... very good idea!! looking forward

[Indisguise 0]

I've just learned to save the game more often...even part way through construction or rebuilding

stop and save...every 15 min or so...specilly if you doing very tedious work....too many times the game has crashed  and I've also been stuck redoing reconstrution for the second...and glup ...hate to say it three times over...:S

it almost seems like the game actually knows the worst time to crash and is playing mind games or just laughing at your pain

[Andreas Roth 607]

I gave it another try and put daeley's script into a LUA file, but it didn't work. I even rearranged some lines, so it looks exactly like the in-game scripts, but it didn't work. Unfortunately, I don't have any programming experience, so I don't know if there's an error in the script, or if there's missing something. Sorry.

[Daeley 46]

just noticed this thread again... I'll try to remember to crack this nut

[Indisguise 0]

hands down boys or grab your jocks straps...Daeley has the nutcracker out....

[Cougar2004 127]

Yes, unless saving is what crashes your game, an Autosave mod is the best choice for these pesky repeated crashes that we all have. Good luck!

[Daeley 46]

alrighty... this is pretty much done and is now waiting testing... expect this somewhere "soon" ;-)

update: sheduled for mid-december

[seapost2w8 0]

nice, i'm looking forward to it

[david1314 44]

I've got two things to contribute to this. I remember once seeing somewhere that included in the game is the ability to save a city without it also saving the image files associated with it, and only actually the raw city data was saved. This is supposedly a much quicker way to save.

Given the fact this is just a mitigate the 'fit hitting the shan' kind of situation, you don't really need all the cosmetic amenities that go with saving.

Offhand I want to say it was like ctrl+F2 or something quite strange. But someone probably knows that one.

That said, isn't it quite easy to fool a game into thinking shortcut keys had been pressed? Couldn't a stand-alone program be used to trigger an SC4 save every x minutes?

[WJ_Webhog 12]

Hi there, any progress on that one? PS: If I remember well, holding the SHIFT key down when saving prevents the satellite view from being saved (or updated).

[BarbyW 40]

The nearest to an autosave mod is here: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=78

You need to be registered at SC4Devotion to download it.

[warrior 169]

Couldn't a program that simulates the mouse (example autoing in Runescape,which is illegal) save it for you evrey so often?

[flame1396 9]

Make it pop up every once in a while saying:

It has been a while since your last save, would you like to do it now?

[yes] [no]

[nerdly_dood 26]

I remember seeing this on stex about 6months ago. either that or modds&downloads.

but now it's GONE.