Editing Simcity_1.dat in any way causes crash

[Sven Boogie 6]

Not sure what to do here, if I use ilivereader in to modify even a single property of, for example, an ordinance, save the .dat, and try to launch simcity 4 (deluxe) the game simply crashes back to desktop at launch. I've followed the tutorial on editing the properties here to the letter, still just crashes to desktop. Any ideas?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ 1. Don't do that, and you won't have this problem.

2. What was it you wanted to do?

Editing the system residency is tricky and dangerous. If you do a reinstall anything you've done will be lost, so it is better to seek other solutions. If you are not a programmer, I'd keep my fingers out of the Program Files section altogether.

[Mister Giggles 310]

Nonny is quite right. Altering any of the core SC4 files is risky.

In Reader, it's possible to add any changed instances to a .dat file that will override their counterparts in SimCity_1.dat. This .dat file will reside in your plugins folder, and thus if any problems happen you can simply delete it.

[Sven Boogie 6]

Nonny is quite right. Altering any of the core SC4 files is risky.

In Reader, it's possible to add any changed instances to a .dat file that will override their counterparts in SimCity_1.dat. This .dat file will reside in your plugins folder, and thus if any problems happen you can simply delete it.

How do I go about doing this? I'd like to be able to play around a bit with some custom ordinances, etc...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Nonny is quite right. Altering any of the core SC4 files is risky.

In Reader, it's possible to add any changed instances to a .dat file that will override their counterparts in SimCity_1.dat. This .dat file will reside in your plugins folder, and thus if any problems happen you can simply delete it.

How do I go about doing this? I'd like to be able to play around a bit with some custom ordinances, etc...

There are a couple of ordinance mods you could download and look at. However, you would be better off over in the general modding discussion forum.