How often does your game crash?

[monomass 36]

I'm mostly curious to hear from the pros (you know what I mean and who you are). I've been playing this game since forever and just recently got a computer capable of using lots of mods. I'm on my 3rd or 4th round of building and organizing my plugins folder. I try to be very careful, but I've reached a point where my game will crash every now and then: after as little as 4 years or as long as 17 years, and most the time not at all (I've been doing test runs to check my plugins, and usually assume that running over 20 years without issue means all is well). I've done the "-CPU count 1" thing, and that's not the problem.

 

I'm not looking for a solution here, but just asking about what is reasonable. If my game crashes-to-desktop once every 5 times i play a city to 20 years, is that normal/acceptable? Are there any mayors (particularly the pros out there) that this is or is not an issue for?

 

So basically, anyone who reads this, please tell me how often your game crashes, and how often you expect that and what you consider "a good run". Thanks! 

[Turjan 1,048]

My game started crashing during saving when it reached a certain size, but not during normal play. I know you said that you didn't look for a solution, but if you have lots of plugins, the game might start choking on the sheer number of files. Try using the SC4 Dat Packer. Try packing everything except the NAM and maybe some of the stuff starting with z. It helps a lot.

 

A different common crash reason is hovering puzzle pieces over transit-enabled lots (frex a piece of SAM street over a GLR station), but I assume you know not to do that.

[Adjiebrotot 94]

i have 3 GB (maybe 4 GB :|) of plugins today... my laptop is Dell Vostro 1014.. in a normal play (without shadows) it crash in 1 or 2 hours but i always press CTRL+S every 3 minutes, so i will lost nothing but the black screen flashing is very often...

[euverus 20]

Very rarely actually, sometimes I can play weeks (2-3 hours per day) without any crashes. I think it helps to switch between cities quite often, I do it every 20-30 min or so, to keep all my cities in the region up to date. My plugins folder is only 800 MB.

[yoge123 1]

once every 4 - 8 hours . is there a fix to the crashing?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Monster plugin folders no doubt affect loading, scrolling, and zooming speed.  However, unless there are conflicts in these there should be no crashes.  However, this legacy program is pretty delicate on modern rigs, and you should train your left hand to type CTRL+s at decent intervals.  The apparently causes a garbage collect and queue reset in the program and limited its propensity to give up and crash. 

 

I run in Windows 7 decor on Linux/wine and find that software rendering produces the best image.  I purchase the original game when it was out about six months and have been playing ever since.  I recently bought a new digital copy because my Rush Hour play disk died of old age and heavy use.

 

Oh, and BTW, CTRL+S turns on the camera.  Save is CTRL+s.  And with NAM 31 my plugins have grown to 1.1GB.  (needs some pruning).

[Adjiebrotot 94]

what is the difference :| caps lock and not...

[Mercury53 7]

Crashes all the time. Just tried to get the weather mod to work and it crashed four times, so I gave up. Game is too old I guess for my computer. Still haven't found a good fix to the problem. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

All kinds of fixes for this kind of problem will be found by scanning the Bugs and Technical Issues forum.

 

Never, never, never let a computer tell you it won't do something.  It is just a matter of whispering proper instructions in its shell pink keyboard.

[Magneto 316]

Crash? As long as I don't toy around GLR stations with TEd lots, never.

Win 7 SP1, 1 Gb plugins, old fashion single-threaded low-end laptop.

[Bdub01 201]

For some reason I tend to notice it may crash after I add new things to my plugin folders, but once again as long as I save every 15 minutes or so it won't crash.

[Metalpuritan 160]

As long as I run just 1 CPU I am A OH KAY.  Game rarely crashes under that circumstance, I haven't had a crash in almost a week playing for 6-8 hour intervals.  I am running win7, I got nearly 2 gigabytes of plugins.  I also runt he game in 1600X900 resolution and in windowed mode.  Things may get a bit choppy when I have a city tile completely covered with cityscape/sims or trees, but I do not crash.  Saving, loading and zooming do not lead to crashes, not for me anyway.

 

One thing, I also a long time ago installed DirectX9 in it's own folder on my hard drive, don't know if that that did anything, I know it had a file in it that I needed to run a SimCity 4 related program like the Traffic Simulator Controller Tool(TSCT) or the SC4Terraformer or something can't remember which one though(too long ago).  I think it might have helped the game but I cannot tell you for a fact that it did.

 

My game is fully patched and when I take screenshots of my cities the only thing that you see that isn't modded is the little minimize/maximize button int he lower left hand corner of the screen(yet).  This causes me to difinitively say modds don't cause crashes.  The problem, if you are having one, lies elsewhere.

 

I did recently have an issue with crashing, my game was crashing a lot, like it was unplayable, every time I zoomed in or out, whent to save my game and sometimes it just crashed for no apparent reason, crashed to desktop so much I quit playing and trolled the forum for like a week.  Turns out the problem was me.  I installed the SC4Launcher and thought that  because it was detecting that I had 4 cores in my CPU that it was now okay to use them, I was apparently incorrect in my assumption, as when I turned it back to just 1 CPU it instantly cured all that ailed my game.  I had been playing this game off and on for many years and had never had crashing issues like that in all that time.

 

Still, the bast way this game ever ran was back when I had WinXP still, back when DirectX 9 was standard and it was the current software, back when all you had to do to play the game was double click it's icon and away you went.  This computer I am using to play this game now, I am going to keep it the way it is forever.  When it is time to upgrade it, I am going to replace it, not get rid of it, I will always hang onto it, this is my SimCity 4 machine now.

[Jim14409 448]

My game never crashes unless I do as Magneto said and forget and wave rail pieces over stations. If you have fixed the command line then you have to consider the machine you are playing on. The amount of RAM on the system as well as any dedicated RAM for graphics. Also, what else are you running in the background? Is your virus program scanning your machine? Do you have a music player running? How about chat programs? Is your paint program open?

 

It seems that since SC4 is only using one core these other things could run on the others and they sometimes do but most times things reach a bottleneck somewhere and your game slows or crashes. I don't play the game while connected to the internet and you should set your virus program to be in silent or gaming mode when playing SC4 in full window.

 

I failed to mention the size and organization of your plugins but this is also important and is limited by the amount of RAM on your machine. I pack everything except NAM. I have the usual "Compressed Plugins" and "zzz_Plugins_Compressed" files ( I pack them separately). Unpacked my plugins weigh in at 1.31 Gig. Clean them up beforehand removing images and txt files and organize them in a way that works for you. Avoiding crashes is not always possible for everyone I suspect but attempting to avoid them requires a little time and effort in preparation on the players part.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

It really shouldn't crash at all if your game is patched and you are using all of the necessary fixes, unless you have plugin conflicts or you are using too many plugins for your computer to handle.  Or if you hover a puzzle piece over a transit-enabled lot, like the rail station thing mentioned above, that will cause an immediate crash every time.

[gido505 12]

hmnn.. not one crash since i put this on my SimCity 4 shortcut

 

"E:\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050x32 -CPUCount:1

 

my Plugins folder is 1.32 GB (1,426,787,432 bytes) in size due to NAM-CAM and some misc buildings and props.

using a humble AMD A6-3500 APU with 4GB of ram, no extra graphics card. but game works great on my system.

all settings on high except shadow and building draw speed on medium with software rendering. 

 

ubuntu user dual booting xp for games 

[Shortsonfire 67]

I usually get 5 crashes within the first 3 minutes of playing any city in my first few attempts. Then I'll get about an hours play followed by a crash. This usually occurs if I lay a stretch of road of 6+ tiles or large buildings. I save every couple of minutes. A good run for me is an hour or more.

This is most likely because I have the Mac Aspyr version and I'm on a 2010 MacBook Pro. I've been working on trimming down my plugins folder but it's still 3gb, so the constant reloads suck.

[Turjan 1,048]

What you describe about crashes when laying roads matches my experience when not restricting the game to one CPU core.

[hellmunkey 30]

After I did the cpuCount:1 change, the game almost never crashes.  3 things make it crash for me.

 

TE lots and not paying attention.

Mixing flups and water lines.  The game runs fine, but if I save while a flup and water line are in the same square, the game crashes.

My last city was getting near 1M people and would crash about 1/3 of the time during saves.  The game would save, then lock up, so I didn't lose anything.  It was a zone though as I had some bad lots/BATs that I needed to fix, so I just decided to start over.

[The Pennsylvania Turnpike 252]

my game crashes on my Pavilion g6 every 5 games or so. On my 1st desktop around every 3 games *it is very old* and on my 2nd around every 8.

[z1 566]

My game never crashes; I'm running Win7 SP1 on a Core i7-920.  I noticed you mentioned using the switch "-CPU count 1".  Is that a typo or is that what you actually have?  If that's what you're using, it won't work.  It has to be "-CPUCount:1" (note the colon and no spaces).

[Pinstar 13]

I had a few crashes when I first installed NAM 3.1, but after doing a fresh reinstall with an updated plugin pack (the 3gb one that includes NAM, CAM, SPAM and a bunch more) I haven't had a crash yet.

[docj101 99]

Only 1 time I have had the game crash on my current rig I hovered a network puzzle piece over the wrong thing and CTD.  This is a known issue when working with puzzle pieces so w/e.  I have probably played 500+ hours without any other crashes.  Game runs like a dream for me, loads cities in seconds, saves in seconds.  I have ~400MB of plugins.

 

If I was crashing I would find out why and fix it, its not acceptable or normal.

 

My System (Custom Build)
MOBO:  Asus P8Z77-V Pro
CPU:  Intel i5-3570k (3.8GHz-4.8GHz)
GPU:  MSI TF GTX 660 OC 
RAM:  8GB Corsair Vengeance (1600MHz)
SSD:  Samsung 830 128GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
HDD:  Samsung Spinpoint 1TB (SATA 6Gb/s)
Optical:  Samsung DVD Writer SH-222BB/RSBS
Cooler:  AC Freezer 13 (92mm fan version)
PSU:  PC P&C Silencer MK III 600W
Case:  Rosewill FUTURE
OS:  Windows 8 (64 bit)

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Oh, and BTW, CTRL+S turns on the camera.  Save is CTRL+s.  And with NAM 31 my plugins have grown to 1.1GB.  (needs some pruning).

Shift+s turns on the camera and CTRL+s is save.

 

My games run pretty smooth most of the time. I just noticed to be careful with scrolling too fast and puzzle pieces. I love the El over road pieces but scared to use them because the last city I used them in disappeared completely after a CTD. I mean literally when I loaded my region back up there was a big square hole where the city used to be. Anyone know about that?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, apart from goofing up with TE lots and puzzle pieces there is one (probably self-inflicted) cause for a crash: When I hover the query cursor over a particular tree prop, the game will freeze. I have never been able to find out why. Fortunately that prop is not so frequently used, and I hope that overriding it with a tree mod may get rid of the problem, even if it's just a workaround and no actual solution.

 

Otherwise, the game runs without crashes for me, both on my previous WinXP 32-bit PC with nVidia gfx card and on my new Win7 64-bit notebook with ATi/AMD gfx card. No problems when scrolling, zooming, or laying out transit networks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Oh, and BTW, CTRL+S turns on the camera.  Save is CTRL+s.  And with NAM 31 my plugins have grown to 1.1GB.  (needs some pruning).

Shift+s turns on the camera and CTRL+s is save.

By actual test right now, Shift+s does nothing.  CTRL+S (CTRL+Shift+s) turns on the camera.  I generally run the game on another desktop when I am on this forum.  So I can easily test such things.

[Turjan 1,048]

Well, apart from goofing up with TE lots and puzzle pieces there is one (probably self-inflicted) cause for a crash: When I hover the query cursor over a particular tree prop, the game will freeze. I have never been able to find out why. Fortunately that prop is not so frequently used, and I hope that overriding it with a tree mod may get rid of the problem, even if it's just a workaround and no actual solution.

 

Funny. I had the same experience and thought it was just coincidence, but now that you mention it... The game freezes with the name of that tree prop showing (in German, if I remember correctly).

[T Wrecks 10,209]

So I am not the only one? Guess it's no self-inflicted problem due to my own meddling with plugins files then! (I do like to customise custom stuff...) German version here, too. Maybe something went wrong with the translation of Cycledogg's prop pack? Normally, such a freeze can indicate the use of a special character in an "Item Name" or "Exemplar Name" property, but I already scanned the prop pack for this - to no avail. Of course, I may have overlooked something.

 

I should try my old region after replacing that version with Cycledogg's new prop pack V01b. The difficult part is that I am often not sure which of the trees actually rely on this prop pack and which ones on the tree model files no. 8 and 9 that came with the Columbus Terrain Mod initially. I found out that this can be quite confusing when I was dabbling with my tree replacement mod... many "TREE! Y U NO GET REPLACED?" moments were the consequence.

 

Would you happen to have any further clues, or a screenshot of the offending tree? It's been a while since I last played the game, so I'm no longer sure. However, I've been wading knee-deep through tree models recently, so there may be a chance of getting closer to the root cause.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

 

Oh, and BTW, CTRL+S turns on the camera.  Save is CTRL+s.  And with NAM 31 my plugins have grown to 1.1GB.  (needs some pruning).

Shift+s turns on the camera and CTRL+s is save.

By actual test right now, Shift+s does nothing.  CTRL+S (CTRL+Shift+s) turns on the camera.  I generally run the game on another desktop when I am on this forum.  So I can easily test such things.

My bad.....you are correct.

[Turjan 1,048]

So I am not the only one? Guess it's no self-inflicted problem due to my own meddling with plugins files then! (I do like to customise custom stuff...) German version here, too. Maybe something went wrong with the translation of Cycledogg's prop pack?

 

Actually, I have the English version of the game, that's why I specifically mentioned the German prop. My assumption was that it came with one of the SFBT plugins I had installed shortly before that (Street tree mod, about 4 building lots), but I'm not sure. The crash happens from time to time, but not always, so it's hard to reproduce if I want it. It might be related to growth or season changes, who knows. Sorry to be not of much help here, but I never got to the ground of this. It simply doesn't happen often enough to force me to rigorous action, but it is often enough to be noticeable.

[Swordmaster 50]

I only crash (I mean my computer ) when I (almost) run out of available RAM. This typically happens when I have multiple programs open and I try to add the game to it. If I dedicate my entire system to the game, I don't ever have crashes unless I do something stupid. My system is relatively old, though, with a duo core and 3Gb RAM. And yes, I'm running the latest NAM (dev build, though, which has fixed some of the NAM 31 issues).

 

Bigger plugin folders exacerbate this, of course. Knowing when and where to stop adding stuff to it requires some trial and error and is different for every system, I presume.

 

 

Cheers

Willy