Problem with moving cities in a region

[Badwater 2]

I recently had to restart my Windows 10 system. I had SimCity 4 with Origin but lost those files in the process.

I was able to dig up an old CD of SimCity Deluxe. I installed it and got it to work with the no CD patch. Then I installed my mods from a backup of the SimCity 4 folder in Document. Everything runs and appears as normal.

The only region I've ever built on is the San Francisco region. I also had all my cities saved and moved them to the Region folder in Documents.

 

Now the curious part: When I run SimCity, the program truncates all the named cities after the New City listings. This means that all the cities in the SF region that start with the letters A-M exist, and all the cities that start with O-Z are deleted and do not exist when I open the folder back up after running the game.

The cities A-M run fine, the mods are working; O-Z don't exist. I've tried every combination of loading files that I can think of. Is there another dependency in the Plugin folder or some other reason why this is happening? It's not making a whole lot of sense to me.

Thx in advance for you input.

[rsc204 21,806]

Why didn't you simply re-install the Origin version? I'd be doing that before installing dodgy NoCD patches. Perhaps this was a bug fixed in the EP1 patch, which most NoCD patches simply don't support. These are fixes to the game Maxis made in 2003 which you won't have. In addition, who knows what such a patch is modifying. You are much better off therefore getting your digital version working and installed. It may indeed fix this problem altogether.

 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

There might be a solution to play using CD versions of the game without a no-cd patch

Look at my last reply here :

 

[CorinaMarie 29,576]

2 hours ago, Cool_Z said:

There might be a solution to play using CD versions of the game without a no-cd patch

Look at my last reply here :

 

If you are going to consider using the Self-Sign option to convince Win 10 to allow the use of the DRM I would first suggest also reading the linked article in one @Cool_Z linked to: Is DRM A Threat To Computer Security?

See, that option really does open the computer to possible intrusion so if you enable secdrv.sys be sure you never, ever connect to the internet with that computer. (Which isn't at all practical.) The chance of getting hacked might be small, but it is certainly not zero. With GoG currently selling a DRM free SimCity 4 for $3.99 (until the 22nd of this month) I feel that's a reasonable price to pay to solve the problem and not compromise your system.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Right... these drivers were not updated in  a long time and might be subject to vulnerabilities, but only "might be"... and since they've been removed from all (except from those who blocked the updates) win 7 and win 8 machines... the chances that they could be used for attacks is very very very small I think.

[rsc204 21,806]

34 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

See, that option really does open the computer to possible intrusion so if you enable secdrv.sys be sure you never, ever connect to the internet with that computer.

Well that's one way of looking at it. The thing is, IF this vulnerability exists, does not mean it's necessarily dangerous to the point you shouldn't use it. First, a flaw in DRM software is most likely to be exploited using optical media, rather than a network-based attack. By itself, having a security hole in the DRM drivers would not allow an internet connected system to be compromised. You'd need access to the OS, which requires first exploiting a hole in Windows or your browser. Not to mention, such an intrusion should almost certainly not be able to run code willy nilly, there are layers you have to get through elsewhere to realistically exploit this. 

Here's an example of a recent set of MS Patch Tuesday updates... which follow week in, week out because MS software is obviously holier than Swiss cheese. That might sound a little unfair, since almost all software is just as bad and needs constant updates to stay on top of such problems. What it comes down to is which exploits are "in the wild" and actually being used.

So you have to ask yourself why MS decided not to fix this flaw, the answer is that they didn't want to. This combined with a complete lack of any information on the problem, such issues being usually found by security researchers, who publish details of such flaws, lead me to believe MS are lying.

Personally I happily run my computer without the patch and have run into no problems. But your millage may vary, if your computer/data is important to you, reactivating security vulnerabilities is less safe that leaving it be. Frankly, if a virus/malware finds its way to me, I'll scrub it clean with very little loss of time or data. But if you'd need a professional to do that, it would likely cost more than the machine is worth at an hourly rate. So if you do risk it, the consequences are on you.

Now let's assume the only affected software you have is SC4, in which case, pay GoG $4 and install the patch, it's stupid not to. If you have a library of old games that all no longer work, you might consider paying for it all again is a bit much. If you have a decent understanding of PCs, you'll probably be alright.

[Badwater 2]

When I woke up this am I came up with the idea of just renaming the cities that start O-Z with an "A" in front of the city name. That worked, and all the cities loaded up.

I'm still kind of curious why the game would have done that in the first place, though... >.>

[CorinaMarie 29,576]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

By itself, having a security hole in the DRM drivers would not allow an internet connected system to be compromised.

I believe the By itself part is the important aspect. Quoting that article:

Quote

This isn’t just one isolated example. In 2012, Ubisoft’s uPlay software was found to include a nasty security hole in a browser plug-in that would allow web pages to compromise computers running uPlay. uPlay is mandatory for running and authenticating Ubisoft games online

Shows at least one instance that would allow an internet connected system to be compromised. My whole premise is that the computer is safer when one does not bypass security measures.

I personally go a different route. I play SC4 on an XP machine that has no connection to anything except the electricity it uses. I have a complete Ghost Image of the hard drive and I do frequent back ups of my content which includes my regions, plugins, and screenshots.

[rsc204 21,806]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Shows at least one instance that would allow an internet connected system to be compromised. My whole premise is that the computer is safer when one does not bypass security measures.

Yes, but in your example, the exploit in uPlay would already give you access to run illicit code on a compromised machine. How does having access to another vulnerability in these drivers work out in such a scenario. Once you've dug a hole to access the safe, you probably don't need to blow the door off as well to get to what is inside.

I'm just saying on the face of it, it's not really a critical problem, because in order to make use of such an exploit, you'd need access to the machine from elsewhere. I agree it's probably safer to have as many cracks boarded up as possible. But the whole premise a problem exists here is frankly rather dubious, so it really comes down to whether or not you trust MS. Are they removing this support to protect you or for some other, slightly less ethical purpose. I strongly suspect the latter.

As usual with this kind of thing, you've got a legitimate owner of two licences for the game, installing dodgy NoCD patches to work around the problem. How has disabling the drivers made things more secure in the real world, where many will simply find the easiest solution to a problem?

1 hour ago, Badwater said:

When I woke up this am I came up with the idea of just renaming the cities that start O-Z with an "A" in front of the city name. That worked, and all the cities loaded up.

I'm still kind of curious why the game would have done that in the first place, though... >.>

The only way the game usually interacts with these files is when you have used the original regions shipped with the game. So for example, you've used the SF region and made your own cities. When you reinstall the game fresh, it also creates a region called San Francisco. What you need to do is remove the original folder, replacing it with your modified copy. Otherwise it sees two copies of every city, which could cause conflicts. The files you say are deleted, have probably been moved to a folder called "Downloads" in the Regions folder.

Sorry I kind of forgot about this before. Although I still couldn't recommend using NoCD patches. The best workaround for the SecureRom problem is having a script that allows you to enable/disable the service at will. That way, you can get the game going then turn off the drivers once more. Still, I wouldn't bother with this if I owned the Origin version and could simply re-install it without all the hassle.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

As usual with this kind of thing, you've got a legitimate owner of two licences for the game, installing dodgy NoCD patches to work around the problem. How has disabling the drivers made things more secure in the real world, where many will simply find the easiest solution to a problem?

This !!!!

And don't forget about the people who simply disabled the automatic updates on their wi7 or win8 machines to stop the drivers from being removed ?? (yep, like for the win10 update, some people claim to have blocked all updates to be sure not to have it... VERY good for security... nicely played here micro$oft.)

[Badwater 2]

On 2016/6/17 at 11:38 AM, rsc204 said:

The only way the game usually interacts with these files is when you have used the original regions shipped with the game. So for example, you've used the SF region and made your own cities. When you reinstall the game fresh, it also creates a region called San Francisco. What you need to do is remove the original folder, replacing it with your modified copy. Otherwise it sees two copies of every city, which could cause conflicts. The files you say are deleted, have probably been moved to a folder called "Downloads" in the Regions folder.

Sorry I kind of forgot about this before. Although I still couldn't recommend using NoCD patches. The best workaround for the SecureRom problem is having a script that allows you to enable/disable the service at will. That way, you can get the game going then turn off the drivers once more. Still, I wouldn't bother with this if I owned the Origin version and could simply re-install it without all the hassle.

I'm aware of all this, and the Regions folder in Documents is where all of this was taking place.

And whether or not I'm using a CD patch is not the answer to the original question, and not at all helpful. I use NOCD patches and cracks all the time for Japanese games and VNs, it's old hat to me, and very much a non-issue.

Not that it was in any way related to my original query, but after my Windows restart Origin did not exist on my system and my account showed no history of having purchased it, so rather than lay down more money I simply used my original game. Again, a non-issue.

[rsc204 21,806]

1 hour ago, Badwater said:

I'm aware of all this, and the Regions folder in Documents is where all of this was taking place.

Well if that's so, then you should understand what was happening. You basically took your modified San Francisco folder and merged it with the default one that gets installed. In the process, you created a duplicate of every city tile that you had developed in your custom version.

So you end up with a load of files named "City - New City (X).SC4" which are either duplicates of existing cities, or undeveloped tiles from your SF region.

Now, SimCity 4 doesn't care what files are named, each save file has a Hexadecimal ID that must be unique. SC4 is loading the save files in the following order (based on the filenames):

• City - A-Mxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• City - N xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• City - O-Zxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now, since the game can't deal with two save files with an identical ID, it disregards one (or more). Typically in the case of plugins, it uses the last file to load. What's interesting here, which I'm hypothesising, is that this behaviour is reversed somewhat. If A-M files are loading fine, that simply means that once SC4 has identified a save file, it will ignore any others with the same ID. So by the time you get to the New City files, A-M are already fine. But, when you get to O-Z those ID's have been taken by the New City files.

Sounds to me like renaming the problem files is a recipe for more issues down the line. Primarily because you've a number of redundant duplicates with the same IDs. I'd recommend completely removing the San Fransico Folder from your Regions folder. Then just restore the one from your original backup. This time the default region won't exist for all the files to get merged together.

1 hour ago, Badwater said:

And whether or not I'm using a CD patch is not the answer to the original question, and not at all helpful.

No it isn't, I was just trying to advise you that No CD patches are not a great idea, especially for SC4. But you can do whatever you wish, except have nitelites on custom buildings, install the NAM and possibly even have a game with the EP1 patch. Your game experience is limited by using an illegal tool (they are), to run it. Because the NOCDpatch includes an out of date .EXE that isn't patched, it will fail the validation check of the patches, NAM and SC4BAT software. That's before you get into the potential for security problems.

What you do is your prerogative, but I like how you took the time to complain at someone, who was trying to help. Even if you choose to ignore me, hopefully others who come across this thread will see sense.

[twalsh102 1,601]

Badwater, you just fell into the trap.  Piracy is very much a hot-button issue on this and other English-speaking sites (and probably most foreign-language sites) that provide support for SC4.  Regardless of the purported reason for using the NOCD patch (in your case, allowing you to run the CD version of SC4 on Windows 10), it is still a hack and allows piracy.  Most content creators will not support their creations if it is known that hacks such as the NOCDPatch are being used.  Depending on the site, even talk about using such a hack is enough to get you banned from the site.

2 hours ago, Badwater said:

And whether or not I'm using a CD patch is not the answer to the original question, and not at all helpful. I use NOCD patches and cracks all the time for Japanese games and VNs, it's old hat to me, and very much a non-issue

You as much as admit that you regularly pirate software, so in reality you are probably lucky that anyone is actually trying to help you here. 

[Compdude787 916]

^ This. 

Talking about or promoting things like no-CD patches or the like is considered to be promotion of piracy and that is against this site's rules and the rules of other English SC4 fansites.

  Edited June 27, 2016 by Compdude787  
piracy, not privacy

[Mister Giggles 310]

Bah, a no-CD patch in this day and age? Disc emulation is where it's at! No .exe hacks, no possible secondary issues, just a big ol' 650 megabyte weight hanging out on your hard drive.

Better yet, just get the digital version off of GOG. No DRM at all!