City vanished....

[Louich 0]

Hi guys, first post here (I snooped around a lot)

Here it goes, I was growing a new city (70 000 sims) and the game crashed...I reload the game and: no more city, actually no more land, it just vanished......

Now I have a big hole in the middle of the map, looks ugly and it sucks a lot....anybody have a solution for me?

thanks !

[joshriddle 29]

The crash must have corrupted the city's file. Each city has its own file, and if you were saving it, it must have become corrupted it. If not, then the crash corrupted it. Sadly, I am afraid there is nothing you can do about that, unless it is one of the starter regions.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Welcome to Simtropolis and our Forum.

Here is your faint hope clause.

You have a hole in your region, which means that the city has been, effectively, deleted.  The question is whether it  is on your disk.

First thing to try is to click on the hole, and see if your city gets opened.  Probably not, but it is worth a try.  What can happen?  Nothing, and no results.

I assume the city was named and saved at least once.  If not, then you are dead in the water.  If the city was saved, use your file system's explorer or whatever it is called, and open the folder C:\Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\{region name}.  If your city is still around, even in a corrupt state, it should be in the list of files in that folder.  If you find it, MOVE IT to the .../regions/downloads folder.  (Don't copy it, move it).  Now, open your game, and try importing your city.  The import button on the city opening dialogue box is the faint symbol on the lower left.  If the city is intact, it should import.  If it is corrupt, the game should tell you that the city is no good.  In either case, you will know more than you know now.

Now, you should make a point of saving your game regularly when you are playing by pressing CTRL+s.  This gives you a recovery point, but it can be destroyed by a bad save (interrupted, and not completed, for example).  One other thing you can always do is to copy your regions folder to someplace else on your machine.  The desktop will do for want of anything else.  To do this, open the SimCity 4 folder in your documents list, and drag the regions folder to your desktop.  It should copy, but if it moves it (not leaving it in the SimCity 4 folder), then use your file system's copy command to copy it back.  Copy means make a duplicate while move means take it from here, and put it there leaving no trace here.

As a matter of interest, I archive my entire user area once a month, so I always have a recovery point.  And that reminds me that I need to do this tonight.  I use a separate hard disk attached over a USB port.

[Louich 0]

Indeed, theres a hole in the region (original New York region from the game), I cannot click on the city, but the name appears...

When I go to the file the all that is there is .sc4 files named :

city- New City (2) And it goes from 2 to 49

There is also a file with no number in the name (corrupted file?)

Damn I hate this....lol

[joshriddle 29]

Go to C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Regions, and copy the New York region into your plugins regions folder. You will lose all your cities on that tile, but it does remove the hole in the region. You jsut have to start fresh.

[gkaytaz 0]

Originally posted by: Louich

Indeed, theres a hole in the region (original New York region from the game), I cannot click on the city, but the name appears...

When I go to the file the all that is there is .sc4 files named :

city- New City (2) And it goes from 2 to 49

There is also a file with no number in the name (corrupted file?)

Damn I hate this....lol

quote>

You are probably missing a number in the 2 - 49 sequence as that one should be the city that became a hole in the ground.  You can copy only that particular missing city file to fix the hole.  When you make a backup of your region be sure to backup the files that do not have a (number) after them.  Those are the ones you have developed, whereas the ones with a (number) extension are empty cities, identical to those on the original, never played before version of the region.

[Louich 0]

Unfortunately for me, there is no missing number in the sequence (except no 1).

So I'll try just to rename the file and see, if not I'll try your suggestions and get back at you guys !

stay tuned !

[joshriddle 29]

I wouldn't think a rename is going to help anything, but it might. Really, if you rename it without the number sequence in the region's file system (each file is a city), then you will really have problems!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You have nothing to lose, and may gain something.

If push comes to shove, you can restore the region to its original condition by:

1. Delete the region from your regions folder
2. Copy it from the C:/program files/maxis/simcity 4/regions folder into your game's regions folder.  This will give you a restart.  You can use the knowledge you gained when building the first time to make any improvements you've thought of since.

[Louich 0]

I fail to see how to delete a file and copy it in the same folder it was already in would change anything? (I'll try it anyways, nothing is working for now :-()

I even tried to download other regions from the Stex and I only get a gray image of the map but no download link....Do I suck or what !