I can't believe I actually have to ask how to save the current game? Or EVEN Stop it from Saving??

[Snacko 5]

Ok, in any other game this would be a totally stupid questoin.  But how do I Save my own game in CitiesXL?????  Really? you say?  Yes, Really....

I just started a new city and screwed up and deleted some stuff, that I didn't mean to delete.  How do I go back to the last save?  I tried to exit and reload, but the STUPID GAME automatically SAVED MY GAME WITHOUT ASKING ME!  So, it saved my game with the changes that I did not want to save!  

Am I wrong here?  Or should I be able to control when I save my own game?  What am I missing here?  How do I get my game back before I deleted that stuff, or am I screwed by the game itself??

Thanks, Please ignore my ranting. Stupid stuff frustrates me....

Snacko

[rismisner 0]

Heh... I totally agree with you.

This is unfortunately one of the stupid/frustrating sides of CXL for why I love to hate it to much... I love it for being such a detailed simulation with rich game play that I find very addictive, but it also has so many frustrating limitations, like the way it only auto-saves, and there is no undo function, and no way to go back to your last save. And of course it always wants to save in the middle of while I'm doing something, causing me to deal with repetitive save lag.... Annnnd every so often it crashes during the auto-save.

20 years ago, SimCity 1 got those basic features right... 20 years later MC tries to revolutionize city building games as an MMO and gets all those basic things totally wrong...

And similarly, the process involved if you want to share a city with someone else, or download someone else's city, or use a custom map, or make 2 different cities on the same base map, or anything like that, is arcane and complicated and involves swapping files around due to the fact that MC devs apparently never played any other games, or used other software at all before developing this, to understand basic concepts of single player game design, or like, the standard File Save As function that's available in 99.9999% of all other software that exists...

I guess they were too hung up on making people base jump off my skyscrapers instead, which is cool and all, but c'mon, get the basics right first.

But it's not just MC... the other game I'm playing these days is Supreme Commander 2, and they have all kinds of similar shortcomings, balance issues, lacking aspects of the UI, not enough maps, no custom map editor, and all kinds of similar things that make me question "OMG how do you make such a good game with addictive game play and a revolutionary ground-breaking camera control for an RTS, and yet not be able to get the basic 20-year-old feature concepts done right?!"

Nobody can do anything right except for Blizzard. I think I'll go over to their forum and ask them to make a city builder game one of these years, like after they finish SC2 and Diablo 3, so I can play a city builder that's actually polished, passed QA testing without letting 10 thousand minor issues slide for being minor, gets all the basics right, and doesn't have buttons for features that don't exist because they pushed to release before they were done like MC did... (railroads? snow? blueprints?)

If MC gives me CXL2011 for free as a former PO subscriber, then I'll play it and that will be their chance to redeem themselves in my eyes. If they expect me to buy it... not gonna happen.. I'm not dropping another $50 on software that's still in beta.

nevermind my ranting either... I have the same problem as the OP... Stupid stuff frustrates me too...

[bwavin 0]

Yes its very frustrating! One tip, if you make a mistake you can exit the game without it doing a save by using Alf-F4. Make sure you do it before it auto saves tho I have also created a shortcut on my desktop to zip up the solo directory so I can back track if I need to. Its a good way to let you try different strategies and always fall back to your starting point. I used this a lot with SC4 too so i could always go back in time with my city if I needed to.

Barry

[Skimbo 304]

You can also exit with the task manager......

[pete1061 0]

yes, everything rismisner said.

It's really annoying how CXL handles saving. MC left out one of the most basic functions of almost all software, the ability to save when I want to save. It also wouldn't take much for them to add an option to control how often the autosave saves.

Undo would be nice too, but that might be too advanced for MC to comprehend.

[YannickSHE 0]

Well, since the game crashes often without notice, or after a couple of hours, it slows down, I like the automatic saves, it prevents to lose everything you just did for 1 hour if you forgot to save.

[Xidillon 0]

you can go back only one previous save like many other games do. You rename the ".old" save file to the new save file( i forget the extension). either delete the original new file or move it in case the old save doesnt work. two new save files cant co-exist either so dont do that first.

[Snacko 5]

Hmm... my thread notifications were off for some reason and I just found all of these replies!  Thanks for the repsonses.

Originally posted by: rismisner

Heh... I totally agree with you.

This is unfortunately one of the stupid/frustrating sides of CXL for why I love to hate it to much... I love it for being such a detailed simulation with rich game play that I find very addictive, but it also has so many frustrating limitations, like the way it only auto-saves, and there is no undo function, and no way to go back to your last save. And of course it always wants to save in the middle of while I'm doing something, causing me to deal with repetitive save lag.... Annnnd every so often it crashes during the auto-save.

quote>

I totally agree with your rant.  Please, rant on more and often and drill it into their heads!  I just cannot believe they created something to build things and did not give you any way to save it yourself.  Autosave is a nice feature if you want to add it AFTER adding the basic features correctly.  This really pisses me off.  I have to actually Exit the mission, game, or use Task Manager to end the program to CANCEL a STUPID AUTOMATIC SAVING of my city??  Really?  Oh well, I could rant on as well, but anyone who would skip an obvious feature like this has to be a democrat.  "We'll save it for them!  They'll like that they don't have to save their own work.... Trust me."

Argggg!!

[Snacko 5]

Originally posted by: Xidillon

you can go back only one previous save like many other games do. You rename the ".old" save file to the new save file( i forget the extension). either delete the original new file or move it in case the old save doesnt work. two new save files cant co-exist either so dont do that first.quote>

This would be real nice.  But I do not see any files with a .old extension in my solo folder at all.  All I see are these:

• cities.cxl
• solosaveregion1map2.dds
• solosaveregion4map1.dds
• solosaveregion1map2.sol
• solosaveregion4map1.sol

Where is this .old file??

[mr-tom 2]

I'm going to be slightly controversial.

I think it's a better simulation if it handles the simulation.

Think about it. Building a city takes thought, planning and care. If the city council / mayor / whoever accidentally bulldoze the wrong residential area, that's a big deal and they have to put it right. If they build a road in the wrong place or with the wrong "traffic calming" measures, they have to spend more money putting it right.

And whilst I find it frustrating when I make mistakes, the fact of the matter is, if the game didn't hold me to account for those mistakes, it wouldn't be much of a simulation.