City Crashes-Only One

[BEJA 2]

Hi all:

    I'm posting this issue in a new thread, N_O_Body has gracefully responded, however under a different thread, which this issue should not have been....which was my fault.

  However a brief history:

    I was building a super retail centre in one of my cities, "Pacifica", and I had the game in pause mode.  Upon finishing my creation, which has lots of Custom Lots...I saved it, and then took it out of pause...unfortunately Pacifica then crashed to the Desktop.  Now, when I try to enter Pacifica, it will load, but within 5 seconds it will crash agian.

  I'm thinking I have a corrupt plugin or I have used too many Custom Lots.  N_O_Body has helped immensely, however we cannot solve the issue.  I may just redo the city, delete it and start over, but I thought I would post this under a proper thread and see if anyone else may have some ideas.

 BEJA (Bruce)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Bruce, can you let us have a snapshot of your city while it is still paused?  Also, how big is your plugin load?

[JoeExplorer 1]

I was having this same problem. Except my city was just starting out with about 15,000 pop. Unpause, 5 sec CTD. I removed all plugins and went down the route of finding the culprit. When it was all said and done it turned out to be "NetworkAddonMod1". Which is in the NAM plugin folder. I was experiencing laggy traffic, you know stop and go and stop and go. When I had the NetworkAddonMod1 out of the game it didn't lag as much.

I destroyed my city and started over. First I redownload the NAM to make sure I didn't have a corrupt download. My new city is now at 25,000 pop. I'm starting to experience the lag again but no CTD. I'm very gunshy cause I'm waiting for it to happen any moment.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

[dadyrghluv 8]

joeExplorer: thats most likley due to CPU constraints. the NAM needs alot of CPU power, due to the better pathfinding code used in the mod. the better the pathfinding the harder it is on your CPU, hence the lag. tone down your pathfinding option when u install the NAM or skip it all together, which is allowed, but diverts the traffic and speeds and capacity's to their normal values as the default game.

BEJA: well try the plugins folder first. remove your plugins folder first, and then load up a "test city" and see if CTD happens. DO NOT SAVE the game, just exit the game, and start putting in your plugins folder, 3-4 plugins at a time and test it again. it's slow and boring, but this is the only way i know how to fix a plugins conflict. their may be other ways though. if this doesn't fix the issue, then it's the save file of the city, and it has been corrupted, which to knowledge, there is no way to fix. lets hope it's the former, as this option is fixable.

[BEJA 2]

In the Region View, Pacifica is the upper right city, Northeast corner

Pacifica, the actual city has the Super Retail Centre on the West side, centre

 BEJA

[BEJA 2]

Just a note...I appreciate everyone's responses, here and on the first posting in the other thread.

My Plugins folder is quite huge, about 3 to 4 Gigs....yes I know, most likely too big!

I am using the NAM, and have it set at the Better Pathfinding...I'll reset that to Normal, however this does not occur in any other city in the Region.

I clean and defrag at least once a week. I have set Virtual Memory back to 4096 and am running 2 GB of RAM

Bruce

[andhow 0]

just to give you some comfort, my system specs are...

1.1 GB of plug ins (using datpacker), 

intel 6420 dual core, 

2.13GHz, 

2GB RAM, 

184GB free HD, 

4095 Virtual memory

and I still get quite regular crashes to desktop, although between the crashes the game runs incredibly well  with no lag at all, even with display settings at max and high NAM settings.

Good luck in your quest!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you want to tackle your plugins, see the pinned thread above on how to identify faulty plugins.  If you have 4,000 plugins (by count) you will need log₂(4000) tests to find a faulty one.  That is not a very big number.

This is called a binary search or the "wolf fence" method of finding troubles like this.

[BEJA 2]

Hello again, everyone....I have been thinking, and yes I know that is a dangerous thing!

However, I am not convinved that my problem with Pacifica is a plugin issue...due to the nature of that last save. Just to refresh, I saved the game while I was in pause mode, after completing my building. As soon as the game finished saving I took it out of pause, which behaved naturally, but then all of sudden my Budget figure went from 400,000 odd to nothing, not zeroes, but blank with the exception of a hyphen and then crashed...so possibly I corrupted the actual city in the process of the last save?

Bruce

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Yes, it is possible.  If so, I hope you have a backup.

On this budget thing.  Do you have a money lot?  If you overflow the budget counter you will crash.

[BEJA 2]

Thanks N_O_Body, yes I have several "money lots", but not employed in this particular city....I did not realise that one could overflow the budget counter. I have the Coastal Casino operating in another city in the Region...Easton Bay, so I'll keep a close eye on that one!

Bruce

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I am beginning to think that something has corrupted your city.  The usual thing is a bad save.

This is why we suggest a backup of regions periodically, along with the plugin folder.  I am now really stuck on this on, Bruce, sorry.

[BEJA 2]

Yes, I'm thinking the same thing...a bad save, and I do have a back-up, only it is not as developed, however it will give me a chance to employ some re-designs! So all is good! Thanks ever so much for the help and discussion...and as always, through this process I've learned more about the game and the great people that are SimTropolis!

Bruce