Crashes at game date 31/03/02

[TekindusT 3,809]

Hi all,

 

I have been playing a city for a while, and there is NO way for me of getting past the 31/03/02 date appearing on the GUI. I had never experienced this situation before, and it is getting really frustrating. To keep building, I have to use the SimDate cheat and bring the game date back to 01/01/00.

 

The other cities on the region do just fine, and I get no crashes because of this reason.

 

I'm using several plugins on the city, I tried demolishing all custom content and letting the game run, to no avail. Do you guys have some idea on what can be going wrong? The capital city of a nation depends on your answers!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Never heard of that one.  Is there something odd about the city terrain?

[Tropod 144]

Is this

-(A)an established city that already had (custom) content etc or

-(B) a barebones city or city without custom content?

 

If (A), plugin could be causing it. If (B), I'd say city file is most likely corrupt.

Either way something is in your plugins &/or city file that's triggered on that date.

 

If possible, have you tried changing/moving the date forward instead?

[TekindusT 3,809]

Thanks for your answers.

 

The whole region was rendered from SC4Mapper, I see nothing odd on the city terrain. This city has been grown from scratch after the region was rendered, and I'm using plugins since its foundation. Naturally, my first suspects point to a faulty plugin.

 

As said, I tried demolishing all the custom lots I saw (especially the ones I have downloaded more recently), but I didn't check things like MMPs, terrain/water mods, etc. Bulldozing these lots didn't prevent the crashes. Moving the date forward (I tried 1st April 2002, 8th April 2002...) irremediably crashes the game right after pushing Enter to enter the cheat code.

 

Just as a matter of info, the crashes are not CTDs, but the game just freezes. When Ctrl+Alt+Del, I see the SC4 process takes up around 900 MB memory, which is a typical value when the game is running normally.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Could it be related to a seasonal item? March 31 could be a season switch. Then again, the problem should occur in the first year already - unless the item in question wasn't plopped back then. In any case, it's an odd problem, and one I've never heard of before.

[McDuell 301]

Have you tried to set the date further into the future than a few days?
 
What about 06/30/02 and 07/01/03 (or 10/01/03) for checking if there is indeed a relation with something seasonal?
What about setting it forward 1 whole year (10, 100, 1000 years)?
 
Another question which may be dumb/needless: you did put in the cheat in the following format ?

SimDate MM DD YYYY

 
Sorry of being no real help here, just throwing ideas at a wall and see what sticks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I guess manipulating the date may give some light on this, but it really is strange.  Do you have seasonal flora mods?  If so, they will be hard to remove.

 

BTW, programs don't freeze.  They hang in a loop of some kind.  Because of the anti-debugger code in the program I don't think there is any way to get a trace.  If the game actually froze your system, you wouldn't be able to get to the task list.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Sounds like a good time to use the Binary Search method with your Plugins.

[SimCoug 5,973]

Just for fun, what if you bulldoze the entire city, and run it until the doomsday date... what happens?  

[TekindusT 3,809]

So, here are some of the stuff I tried, in response to your comments.

 

- Tried to set a date further in the future (11 20 2456), no success, crash. BTW, McDuell, yeah, I had too look up the Extra Cheats Readme file to know how the SimDate cheat works, but I made sure I was doing it fine.

- Tried demolishing the whole city at once and letting the clock run past the Doomsday. Success! No freeze!

 

I definetely concur with you guys that it has something to do with a seasonal prop grown between the autumn->winter and the winter->spring switches. I guess I will have to go checking lot by lot and using trial and error.

 

Will let you guys know and will try to test the conflicting prop when if I find it.

[meister1235 92]

Could you attach this city in a post, i'm very curious why this crash is happening and would love to find out how this crash works.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Program hangs like this in an old, well beaten program are rare.  When you find it, I think everyone will be interested.  Good luck, TT.

[Tropod 144]

So, here are some of the stuff I tried, in response to your comments.

 

- Tried to set a date further in the future (11 20 2456), no success, crash. BTW, McDuell, yeah, I had too look up the Extra Cheats Readme file to know how the SimDate cheat works, but I made sure I was doing it fine.

- Tried demolishing the whole city at once and letting the clock run past the Doomsday. Success! No freeze!

 

I definetely concur with you guys that it has something to do with a seasonal prop grown between the autumn->winter and the winter->spring switches. I guess I will have to go checking lot by lot and using trial and error.

 

Will let you guys know and will try to test the conflicting prop when if I find it.

 

What you're probably better off doing to start with is repeating this exercise but only deleting half the city. If problem occurs, continue delete that half again etc. I would probably make a back up of the file first before doing this though.

[TekindusT 3,809]

So, I followed the procedure suggested by Tropod. Half, half, a quarter, etc. 'Till narrowing down the problem to the area marked on the picture [link] (sorry, Majhost keeps down so I had to upload it to my Dropbox account).

 

This is weird. I had my target on the DeVries Villas or the other lots by mattb325, which tend to use seasonal lots. Instead, this binary search process lead me to a Maxis-ridden area!! Tried demolishing this area, and everything seems to work properly when the Doomsday comes.

 

I'm posting a link to this city tile, as meister1234 proposed, so you guys can take a look to it. I guess you will miss a bunch of plugins, though [link].

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, that's interesting and I, for one, am glad you persevered and found the problem.  Have you examined the lots to determine the actual culprit or is it a combination?

[Mister Giggles 310]

Edit: Actual useful instructions! Yay!

TekindusD,

Upon downloading and testing the city, I experienced no crash. I'd say the issue is a prop that replaces a Maxis one...

The good news is, you can (probably) find the problem. The bad news is, it's going to take a lot of work.

1: Narrow down the source of the crash to 1 lot. Yes. 1 lot.

2: Using the extended query function of the SimCity 4 Extra Cheats Plugin, find out what the internal name of the building on the lot is. Also note the lot's dimensions.

3: Using PIM-X, load SC4's program folder. Find the building's name in the descriptor listing, then load it. Right click the building's information list to open a context menu, then click on the "Open lot(s) using this building/family" option.

4: Filter out the many possibilies from the above using the lot size you noted earlier. Write down the TGIs from the lots that remain.

3: Using DataNode, find the lots in the program's "Lots - Props" filter using the TGIs you obtained. Datanode sorts its lists in ascending order by Group.

4: When you click on the lots in Datanode, their lot information will be loaded. This will, among other things, tell you what the source of the lot's props are. Under normal circumstances, all props for Maxis lots will be sourced from SimCity_1.dat. In the case of overrides, the file containing the overriding prop will be shown.

5: Do a test for each overriding prop to see if the game still crashes with them removed. Try to isolate it to a single prop/prop pack.

6: Name and link the problematic prop pack, if possible. Otherwise isolate the problem prop and upload it for testing and bonfires.

 

7: If it turns out the problem isn't a prop, then I have just wasted several hours of your life. You may flog me presently.

 

If any of the above is confusing, inform me and I'll clarify.