Crashes due to Seaports

[tsarchristopher 1]

:???:Greetings-

After reviewing the fine articles and useful information I am certain that my Sim City 4 crashes to desktop due to the additional Seaports lots downloaded to my plugins file. Of course, before I realize the issue I placed two of the upgradeable seaports side by side, which causes the Sim City 4 to crash. Utilizing and downloading the upgradeable seaports (again) and the Swamper 77 file did not solve the problem. To date, I have tried, deleting all of the downloaded upgradeable seaport files, downloaded the Swamper 77 files, and even tried changing the Affinity option to CPU 0, all to no avail. Is there any hope of salvaging this city in its current form, or is it the unthinkable and I must start again? Currently I am using Windows 8.1 on a Dell XPS 8500 with an Intel i7-3770. THANKS!

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Actually, not quite enough information.  Can you list the URLs of the ports in question?

 

Anyway, some general things:

You should use the command line options to control your game rather than going to the task list.  This is done by adding options after the last quote of the complete pathname of your game in the shortcut target.  I suggest always using the -cpucount:1 option along with -intro:off.  The first specifies only one core can process this program and the second turns off the never to sufficiently cursed movie at the start of the game.  Options are always preceded by a single space character and always start with a hyphen.

 

If you have a 16;9 or other HD monitor you need the -customresolution:enabled and the -rhhhhxvvvvxbb option where:

hhhh is the horizontal pitch of your screen in pixels

vvvv is the vertical pitch

bb is the colour depth, either 16 or 32 bits

example -r1920x1080x32

 

Here is a complete list of all command line options.  This link is at SC4Devotion so you may need an account there.

 

Oh, and please use more white space in your posts.  Dense paragraphs like that are hard to read.

[tsarchristopher 1]

Hello- THANKS FOR THE HELPFUL INFORMATION: Here are the sources/sites from simtropolis that I used to download seaports. I also installed two seaports into my Sim City 4 game.

 

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The information you shared below is foreign to me, in terms of what it means and how to implement it...I am not familiar with going into the command line area...

 

You should use the command line options to control your game rather than going to the task list. This is done by adding options after the last quote of the complete pathname of your game in the shortcut target. I suggest always using the -cpucount:1 option along with -intro:off. The first specifies only one core can process this program and the second turns off the never to sufficiently cursed movie at the start of the game. Options are always preceded by a single space character and always start with a hyphen. If you have a 16;9 or other HD monitor you need the -customresolution:enabled and the -rhhhhxvvvvxbb option where: hhhh is the horizontal pitch of your screen in pixels vvvv is the vertical pitch bb is the colour depth, either 16 or 32 bits example -r1920x1080x32

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks for the URLs.  I don't use these seaports and probably won't.  They seem to be denigrated.  I use the PEGasus CDK 3 Seaports which override the Maxis ports.  If Maxis ports are present in a city before the installation, they are continued but won't be available in the menus any longer.  I have been using these for quite a while now, and you can build some fantastic layouts.  For example:

 

 

The information I shared with you is an edit to the target box in the shortcut that starts the game.  To open that is dependent on your O/S release and is different between XP, Vista/W7 and apparently W8.  Generally you need to right click the short cut and open its property pages then find the target box (this is a text box with a label of target).  When you finish editing press the apply button.

 

Since all programs in Windows are started by command lines like this or short scripts, this is one of the things that people who need to use options with programs need to know.

[tsarchristopher 1]

Thanks for all of the info, guidance, and help...will give this a try.

[CaptCity 4,910]

Not sure if your crashing issue is due to the seaport plugins or your computer (which is what the above suggestions deal with), but I do remember trying out Mr. Truesage's ports and didn't have any problem. However, it's been a good long while and on a different computer, so perhaps I'll give it a try again. 

 

As a question, do you have any other custom seaports in use - including the earlier version by Mr. Truesage (which must be removed when using the second version). Seaports are 'finicky creatures' and need to be installed rather precisely depending on what is being used. Using more than one type could cause crashes if not installed correctly. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I am pretty conservative, so I don't try to get more than one set of anything into my plugins where there may be conflicts.  Playing with more than one seaport set, for example, is a problem I don't care to solve.  The CDK3 set, while mostly eye candy, gives you four nice ports and two of them are not only road but rail enabled.  One can see from the embedded snapshot above that it can be pretty extensive.  Not everything in that picture is in the CDK3 set.

[tsarchristopher 1]

Interesting...how does one know if certain plugins don't work together?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

By testing them when you add new ones.  Make a sandbox region if you don't have one.  If you find a conflict, it is up to you which plugins you keep.  Generally, I keep the older one that I know is working.  However, if you want something new, then its "out with the old".

[CaptCity 4,910]

Yes, testing is always recommended when using multiple downloads. Creators do try to warn of any conflicts, but with the multitude of possible combinations, there is always a possibility of something slipping through.

 

With regards to Seaports (and Airports), a good rule of thumb is to use only one type because of the way the game treats these particular lots. Several years ago there was a lot of 'research' into the possibility of using more than one. There were attempts to create support files that would allow a player to use those that existed at the time. However, due to the precise nature of the way files had to be created and used, it wan't always successful. If you're interested in having a variety of seaports, you might check out the Functional Seaport set from the LEX (there's also one for Functional Airports). They are much more reliable, although reading through the installation procedures is recommended.