Deleted my city... can I get it back?

[JonU 0]

Hello all,

I am a complete newbie (as you can probably tell from the topic) but I was playing around with my new SC4 and wanted to see what happened when you import one city into a new region. I didn't like it so I deleted it, not realizing that it wasn't a copy of the city. Now my old region is all screwed up and missing this city. So is there a way of retrieving that file or is it gone forever?... Lesson learned.

[lhrob 213]

Do you know where to find your Regions folder? If so, right-click on the Regions folder and select Copy. Create a folder on your Desktop named "Backups"...or whatever you prefer to name it. Then open it, and paste the copy of your Regions folder inside it. (This way you'll have a backup copy if the following procedure doesn't work.)

Now, go back to the original copy of your Regions folder. Right click on it and select Properties. Click on the Previous Versions tab at the top, and allow the computer to scan for any previous versions of the folder. In the list that comes up, highlight a version of the Regions folder that is dated PRIOR to the time you imported that city. Select Restore, and it SHOULD replace the current Regions folder with the one you highlighted. That should fix the problem for you.

Alternatively, if you don't want to replace the entire Regions folder, you CAN just open it up and use the same procedure to replace the individual region you want to restore.

[JonU 0]

Genius, absolute genius.... It has worked.  Thank you very much

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well done.  If this had been prior to Windows Vista this feature wasn't there.  More handsprings would have been needed.

[Prophet42 1,503]

Glad you got your city back. It would suck losing a city you worked hard on.  I usually create a backup of my region and plugin folder once a week (okay maybe only two to three times a month).

[lhrob 213]

You're very welcome, JonU.  I'm glad you were able to get it back.  And welcome to Simtropolis. 

[IBuildEmpires 0]

First post for me as well. I didn't want to create another newb thread since my problem is similar. Maybe you guys can tell me if I'm screwed or not.

 

So I have spent a lot of time working on this one region with multiple interconnected cities and whatnot. My first city (pop ~150k) was the central hub of my region at the time ended up getting a bug and would crash as soon as it loaded. Loading it would crash SC4 right to desktop (Win7). I just ignored it for a while. Then I bought a new computer (Win8) and everything worked flawlessly, except that one damn city! Still would crash when loaded. It happened after I had a little fire and dispatched the water plane. The plane wouldn't go back to the airport and kept glitching out until finally the game crashed. 

 

So I was basically screwed, didn't know what to do and just ended up ignoring it. Finally said screw it, I'll just delete the city and start over. WRONG, forgot that deleting the city also deletes all the terrain features, so now my nice region has this ridiculous large level blank terrain lot right on the coast line that is surrounded by other cities. That was a few weeks ago. I pretty much gave up on the game, but who am I kidding, I can't get away from SC4 for that long! Now I am determined to make fix, whatever the cost.

 

I thought it might be as simple as redownloading the blank region, going through the blank tile list once the region was rendered and finding which tile corresponds with the city I deleted. I would need to rename the region of course. But I have yet to try this out, just wanted some opinions first, before I **** anything up.

 

Thanks in advance!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Welcome to the conversation.  

 

I guess you don't have a backup of the city before the disaster.  Since it happened on a different machine than the one you are using, you are indeed probably truly in the dill.  However, you can get the terrain back at least.

 

If the city is in a default region all you have to do is copy the default region from the game storage to a folder with a different name.  Change the name of the region in the region.ini.  It is only a text file, so open it with notepad, and just change the name to agree with the folder name.  Save it.

 

Now, open the region in the game.  On the same tile that was deleted on the other region, open the city and name it.  Save the city and exit from the game.  This is so you can find the city file.

 

Now, open the folder for the new region and find the city file you just named among all the others.  Copy this file into the folder:

C:\<your id>\Documents\SimCity 4\Downloads

This is a special folder used only for transferring city files, so now you know why it is there.

 

Open the game, and go the the region with the blank city.  Click on the city (once) to start opening it, but instead of opening it, click on the greyed out button that has a tool tip reading "Import City" (the left hand one).  You will get a warning, then a dialogue box to find the city to import.  Choose the Downloads folder and you should be able to pick up your city.  The game will do a move replacing the old blank tile. 

 

The reason we do all this is so that we don't clobber the new region's city.  Move really does move the file, leaving nothing in its place.  You also have a backup if anything goes wrong.

 

Now if the city is a downloaded city from an exchange, do the same thing, but you'll have to render it, so it won't be necessary to fix the .ini file.

 

The next time you want to sock it to a city, use CTRL+SHIFT+o (the obliterate function).  Everything goes except the terrain.  The game does a nuclear clean off, quite spectacular.  Wipes the disk image and replaces it too.

[lhrob 213]

Well, I wasn't absolutely certain I understoood what you were wanting to do, so I'm glad A Nonny Moose chimed in.

 

Having said that, if that one particular city was causing a CTD (crash to desk), but none of your other cities were, then it generally means you placed some sort of custom object within that city which was conflicting with another object in the city. So for future reference, the next time you have a CTD issue, (posted by A Nonny Moose himself) and follow the instructions to see if you can isolate the problem file.

[IBuildEmpires 0]

Did not know about the ctrl+shift+o option, thanks! And thanks for the help, just the knowledge I needed. I figured the city was toast, so I'm just glad I can get that tile back. I just downloaded the latest NAM anyway, so it doesn't hurt that I have the option to build that city bigger and better now! 

 

I didn't have any plugins at the time the city was causing CTD, but I am thinking it had something to do with the Fire Airport thing. The plane wouldn't land, it just kept circling around and glitching out until CTD. Now I don't build them anymore! 

 

Its amazing how much has changed since I last played SC4. I just started back into it after probably 6-7 years of not playing. Got the game when it first came out, have been playing SC since the original. Glad to have SC junkies like you guys around to pick me up after I fail! Thanks again, gonna get on that fix. 

 

If only I could get all those cities I made all those years ago...

[lhrob 213]

Did not know about the ctrl+shift+o option, thanks! And thanks for the help, just the knowledge I needed. I figured the city was toast, so I'm just glad I can get that tile back. I just downloaded the latest NAM anyway, so it doesn't hurt that I have the option to build that city bigger and better now! 

 

I didn't have any plugins at the time the city was causing CTD, but I am thinking it had something to do with the Fire Airport thing. The plane wouldn't land, it just kept circling around and glitching out until CTD. Now I don't build them anymore! 

 

Its amazing how much has changed since I last played SC4. I just started back into it after probably 6-7 years of not playing. Got the game when it first came out, have been playing SC since the original. Glad to have SC junkies like you guys around to pick me up after I fail! Thanks again, gonna get on that fix. 

 

If only I could get all those cities I made all those years ago...

 

Usually a CTD in the situation you described (which only occurs with one city but no others) indicates a custom content conflict.  But the Fire Department Landing Strip is a default Maxis part of the game, so that's really odd.  I know (having learned from Nonny) that certain things, such as zooming in or out too fast, can overwhelm the game and cause it to crash.  Basically, SC4 wasn't made to run on today's powerful computers - so, as strange as it might sound, maybe there's something about the plane flying around that caused an overload on the game and zapped it.  Nonny, what are your thoughts?

[Turjan 1,048]

Did not know about the ctrl+shift+o option, thanks! And thanks for the help, just the knowledge I needed. I figured the city was toast, so I'm just glad I can get that tile back. I just downloaded the latest NAM anyway, so it doesn't hurt that I have the option to build that city bigger and better now! 

 

I didn't have any plugins at the time the city was causing CTD, but I am thinking it had something to do with the Fire Airport thing. The plane wouldn't land, it just kept circling around and glitching out until CTD. Now I don't build them anymore! 

 

Its amazing how much has changed since I last played SC4. I just started back into it after probably 6-7 years of not playing. Got the game when it first came out, have been playing SC since the original. Glad to have SC junkies like you guys around to pick me up after I fail! Thanks again, gonna get on that fix. 

 

If only I could get all those cities I made all those years ago...

 

Usually a CTD in the situation you described (which only occurs with one city but no others) indicates a custom content conflict.  But the Fire Department Landing Strip is a default Maxis part of the game, so that's really odd.  I know (having learned from Nonny) that certain things, such as zooming in or out too fast, can overwhelm the game and cause it to crash.  Basically, SC4 wasn't made to run on today's powerful computers - so, as strange as it might sound, maybe there's something about the plane flying around that caused an overload on the game and zapped it.  Nonny, what are your thoughts?

I read somewhere that the default fire landing strip is bugged, and I noticed that myself when I played the vanilla game in the beginning. You won't notice it if you never use it to quench a fire via the "alarm" button, but if you do, the mission never ends. This didn't crash my game, though.

[lhrob 213]

Interesting.  I didn't realize it was buggy, but then again I've never used it, so I didn't realize the plane just kept flying around like that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

True.  I seem to recall that someone did a fix for it, but since I never use it, and now I remember why, I don't know if it was just wishful thinking on my part.  If there was a fix, I'd likely have it, and I don't.

[IBuildEmpires 0]

Well I guess I won't be building them anymore. 

 

I might need to do the CPU count trick though. I haven't had any issues running SC4 on Windows 8 w/ i7 core, but I did have a CTD when messing around with NAM, even though I don't have any other plugins loaded. So perhaps its the dreaded CPU issue coming out of the woodwork. Might also be because the city I was working in basically has no more free tiles lol! 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Do an in-game save more often.  Big cities with lots of subways are prone to crash on CPU exhaustion and too much "garbage".  The save does some garbage collection and refreshes the queues.  The other thing is the TE lot/cursor problem when using puzzle pieces.

 

If you've never heard of that one its this: If you load a puzzle piece on your cursor then touch a Transit Enabled lot with it, you will probably crash.  I know this is being worked on, but I haven't heard that it was solved.

[IBuildEmpires 0]

That's probably what happened actually, now that I think about it. I was trying to figure out the tram-in-avenue thing (new to me). I guess the best thing to do would be to just leave my old cities be, and start the new ones with all the NAM goodies. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Actually, if that's the cause, do what I do.  Take an in-game save (CTRL+s) before you start working with puzzle pieces, and another one when you've done something you like.  If you crash you get a back out to the position you last saved.

[IBuildEmpires 0]

Fixed the map, thanks again! Worked mint.