My city won't load!!!

[sillyfreshdj 1]

Recently got sc4 regular version, and my game runs perfect. I saved my city and exited, then the next time i went to region and loaded my city it crashes to desktop just as it's about to load up. I have no plugins installed. I backed up my city file and reinstalled and same deal. I'm afraid to spend hours making a new city if it's not even going to load. The default starter tutorials load fine. Could somebody please help!!

[JakeMD 107]

SimCity Vanilla? Before RushHour? How did you find that??

Anyway, this is odd, since you don't have any plugins installed, we can't try to weed out the problem there. Perhaps it is a bug with the game itself. If it is the actual vanilla version (The first ever simcity 4) then there is probably a good chance that some error could come up like this.

What I suggest you do is to start a new region, don't worry about terraforming, and try to load a few cities, and play them (nothing too fancy, just a few factories, maybe build up to about 10,000 sims) save and exit, then try to reload. If that doesn't work, I suspect something is wrong with your game, and to do a re-install.

[Sam 163]

Originally posted by: SWAT-MEDIC SimCity Vanilla? Before RushHour? How did you find that??

quote>

I've seen quite a few of them around for sale in the stores. Especially as "classics".

I would suggest firstly starting a new region and see if you can create cities there and reload them after working for a while on them as Swat-Medic suggested.

Then you could try importing your broken city to a new tile in the new region. That way you might find out if its the city or the region that is the problem.

Are you sure both your plugins folders contain absolutely no plugins whatsoever?

Saving regular backups of your cities is a good idea, eg just before you are about to start playing the game for the day is a good time to back them up.

[sillyfreshdj 1]

Thanks for the reply guys. Ok. I started a new region, made a "test" city larger than my "Kalamazoo". Even has more people and a wide variety of other things. Closed out and loaded it fine. I imported Kalamazoo to the region and tried to load, it said "building trees" then it said "unable to render.... (something i couldnt read it quick enough) then went to desktop. I tried again to see if I could catch what it said but now it just crashes right after "Building trees". Looks like Kalamazoo is SOL.

[JakeMD 107]

Huh, never had a city just get corrupted like that, usually they just disappear. Any suggestions sam? I have none

[Darth Apple 54]

has anything been abruptably changed in any of its neighbor cities? , for example , if you set up neighbor deals between tutorial cities , then you reset the tutorials , the other city will be corrupt.

I have found no cure for this kind of problem... but there are probably a few things you can do , say , update your game or something.

I have , for quite a while , made huge backups of my cities and plugins , its probably a good idea to start doing so soon.

I never knew you could create trees in a region , without going from city to city to city planting them , so I cant help you there.

Hope this helps.

[sillyfreshdj 1]

I did have a connection to neighbor, don't think that was the problem. Only other think of is i temp disabled hyperthreading by going to process affinity and clicking off one of the cpu's. Oh well, this game is too good to give up. Ill just start a new city and make frequent back ups.

[JakeMD 107]

If you turn off one of the CPU's it shouldn't make a difference in the game code itself, in other words, it shouldn't function any different other than using one cpu.

[CaptCity 4,694]

Do you run any other programs at the same time that you're playing the game? I've seen it hypothesized that if the game's focus is 'stolen' by another program during a save, corrupted files may result. I probably lost two or three cities back in the days before I used any custom content, and that is the only thing I could come up with as a cause. It's rare, but... who knows? Just a thought...

[Sam 163]

Originally posted by: SWAT-MEDIC Huh, never had a city just get corrupted like that, usually they just disappear. Any suggestions sam? I have none quote>

I've had a few like this. Fortunately most involved custom content and some fiddling with plugins fixed most. But in this case there is no custom content.

I think the only idea left is to firstly make sure the game and its patches are in the same state as they were the last time the city was saved. Next is to patch it as high as possible (I think there is only two options, patch and then the BAT patch).

If that still doesn't work, then I think the city is lost for good. This does sometimes happen but its very rare. In six years I've had no more permanently corrupted city files than I can count on my fingers where I didn't know the reason for the corruption (many times a bad custom seaport or airport, a few times a bad custom query).

Sillyfreshdj, this is normally a very rare event so don't get discouraged. Just keep backups of your cities (you can even copy the city file to a backup while the game is running as long as you aren't in the city at the time). When you've had a few more successful cities, having this happen once in a while won't seem quite so bad. Its all a matter of experience really, you do get the occasional city that for one reason or another doesn't quite work out. If it keeps happening on a regular basis then that would indicate some kind of problem with your game or install of it, but mostly this is not the case.

[k808j 0]

Sam,

Is there a tutorial on what can CTD a city and on how to fix it, cuz I just lost three of my cities (my fault I think, updated the plugins folder but didn't remove the lots).

[Sam 163]

Hi k808j, I think from what I've heard from others there are three things known to permanently cause a city file to suffer an unrecoverable crash (note, unrecoverable not just an ordinary CTD). One is related to some older custom seaport and airport files I think where there is a conflict between the sea/airport plugins and what is listed in the sea/airport controller index. The second occurs when an object in a custom query has dimensions that are located outside those of the custom query itself. Unfortunately I can't remember what the third is.

I have seen many non-permanent CTD's as the result of particular lots growing, although others did not experience CTD's with the same lots (I think it depends on interplay between different plugins and also the system setup). Usually with those the city crashes as the lot is actually growing and you don't get to save the city so its ok the next time you load.

But many CTD's are "cause unknown". Some may relate to hardware or driver issues but they are often impossible to trace.

One tip I've found useful is if you are changing your plugins, always put the ones you want to remove in a backed up "removed plugins" folder, rather than deleting them straight away. That way if you run in to problems like you mentioned, you can at least try putting the old files back in for a while until you can delete all the occurrances in the city. I have trouble with this when I'm testing lots, as depending on the version of the lot, I can end up with older versions and newer versions in the city if I'm not careful to delete every one of them from the previous test (especially growables because you don't necessarily see where they grow). So I always keep a backup of every version I've made of a lot until I'm finished testing in case I run into trouble.

Its also a good idea to keep a "quarantine" folder for new plugins and only use that folder in test cities for a while until you think there are no problems with the new plugins.

I don't know of any tutorials though, as CTD's are notoriously difficult to find a cause for.

[k808j 0]

Sam,

I use both techniques you described but lost 1 city (the 2 others are acting right for now).

But I have noticed a trend with CTD's, they happen with new NAM releases or when WIndows comes out with an update.

[CaptCity 4,694]

Thought I would chime in here with a couple things I've been guilty of that's caused CTD's...

1) Improperly installed, removed, or changed terrain mods in cities that have been saved when using one. These have never caused any permanent losses, but can be hard to diagnose if you don't have a system for keeping track of your changes as sam mentioned.

2) Other improperly installed mods. When the readme (I always read them, now) says choose one, believe it. Having more files than called for can cause conflicts. Again, these haven't been permanent; just a matter of following directions.

3) Then, of course, there are those 'unkowns' as sam mentioned that seem to happen for whatever reason. I've managed to trace some to hardware issues, but others seem to be true unknowns.

Just some thoughts...