Crashing while zooming

[demerson 42]

Latley I have been playing alot of simcity.  The problem is that sometimes when I try to zoom out it crashes to the desktop.   Why is this???  The game runs so smoothly other wise.  Please help.

[KingTitan 6]

What i found really interesting is that I found this to be true with my game as well. I also realized that it happens when I am in the last few days of the month and the first few days of the next month. It may be because the simulation part is updating crime statistics and things alike. I pause to a moment in the day such as 2pm and then I have no problems.

I hope this will work out for you as well.

[pippolo 0]

Have you try to install SC4DatPacker ? After installed i've had no more crashes when zooming (Sorry for my bad english)

[psander5 198]

If your cities are quite big and you have a lot of custom content, and are running the game on high graphics settings, the game struggles with lack of memory. 

Try this, which I posted in this similar thread;

Originally posted by: psander5 I've had this problem for ages, and I've today found what I hope will be a useful trick! I'm fairly sure that the problem is to do with memory and plugin sizes, both of which are impossible to fix for me. I can't empty my plugins because I love them too much! I can't upgrade my hardware because I play on a laptop.

As I said above, I've found something that seems to work for me so far. Every time you zoom in or out, the game redraws all the buildings and props radially from the centre of your screen outwards. If you zoom in/out while in the centre of your city it makes sense that the game has to redraw more lots at any one time. I noticed that if you scroll off the map so that none of the map can be seen (scroll as far up as you can, and as far right as you can) then zoom, there are no errors. The game seems to have no issues trying to redraw nothing! Then just scroll back onto the map and the city can redraw at a much steadier rate.

I've not tested this extensively yet. I was too excited at finally being able to get those overview pictures of my biggest city for my CJ! I grabbed the snapshots then promptly exited the game to do the necessary editing! It did seem to work well for me though. I've previously been getting CTDs 100% of the time at the furthest two zooms, which is incredibly frustrating.

Try it out and see if it works for you, and then let me know!

One point though; you can only move off the map completely by going off the top right of the screen. The other three corners leave some of the map showing, which might still cause problems. By going off the top right you can be 'clear of the map' at every zoom level.quote>

I've been playing like this for a few days now, and i've had no zoom related crashes since.   My crash problem used to be chronic, until I figured this out! 

Hope this helps.  It's a workaround, not a fix, but i'm content with it. 

[demerson 42]

Thanks everyone. I am glad that Im not the only one having this problem. Ill try what you all said.

[normac 1]

I'm just curious to know if you use a mouse scroll wheel to zoom or if you use the keyboard. I've found the many times I've had a crash when zooming it's because some other application has managed to steal focus from SimCity (even though you wouldn't see it since SC is a full screen game). SimCity doesn't do a good job of making sure it's the priority app at any time. If that is the case, make sure you minimize or close anything that may have a scroll bar or other item that may be manipulated by a scroll wheel on a mouse. That solved all my problems.

[Darth Apple 54]

I would think that is was either simcity1.dat , simcity 2.dat etc... all the way to simcity5.dat and ep1.dat(all the .DAT files that came WITH sc4 except sound and intro.dat)you may try copying all the .DAT files from the two sc4 discs and using them to replace the ones that are already in your program files folder , and re-updating simcity.

I really hope this helps.

[Alkaola 18]

wow long time no posting here... anyway ..this particular problem is the main reason why i quit playing simicity ....

A BIG shame that EA/maxis never made a patch to fix this ....I must confess that I hate them for that.. But on the other hand crashes are often caused by custom content (props etc) so you can't blame maxis / ea for that...

Oh man I wanna play simcity again ... gosh ...

[Darth Apple 54]

alkaola: did you try reinstalling? - you may try getting a new computer , or deleting all your cities and reinstalling from a completely clean slate.this may help.

swordstalker2008: did you just recently install a plugin when this bug occurred?