How to backup my work?

[tails2489 350]

To back up my current Regions and Cities, is it as simple as saving my SimCity 4 file to another hard drive on a semi regular basis and then exporting that to a different computer? I only ask because I recently found, on my new computer, the SimCity 4 file from the My Documents section of my old computer which had been recovered when my old computer died. Many of the city tiles in the regions I worked on the most are just gone, leaving blank flat land. Some of the old cities remain but they're mostly just blank slates. Would love to effectively back up my current cities and avoid losing all the work. Thanks!

[Silur 3,302]

I make copies of the Plugins and Regions folders, as well as the SimCity 4 file.cfg. I think that's enough!

I wish you luck!

[CorinaMarie 29,575]

3 hours ago, tails2489 said:

To back up my current Regions and Cities, is it as simple as saving my SimCity 4 file to another hard drive on a semi regular basis and then exporting that to a different computer?

Yes.

And as @Silur mentioned, it's the Plugins and the Regions folder in there which are the most important:

^ Mine has a bunch of other clutter. (Just ignore the non circled things.)

 

I suggest making the folder on the other drive something descriptive with a date as part of the folder name so you'll have incremental copies:

^ The thing to really watch out for is that Paste shortcut option. That is completely worthless as it only creates a tiny file that points to the original data and is not an actual backup. Once you've used the real Paste and it finishes copying files it's a good idea to peek in a few random folders to see the .dat or .sc4 files are there.

[RobertLM78 1,597]

I usually separate the two myself.   

 

I backup my region (specifically the region named Dempteria) with a shell script:

REM Region_Backup.bat

xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\Robert\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\Dempteria\*.sc4"  "E:\Docs\Robert\Simcity_4_Region_BU\0Dempteria_BU"  /d

Of course this is just a 'rolling' backup.   It's also recommended to do 'periodic' backups which once created remain static - in case something really terrible happens.  

I run SC4 in Virtualbox on Linux host and keep the backup of the Region on the client system - since needing a city backup is more likely to be necessary than a Plugins backup. 

 

When I add one or more plugins to the Plugins folder (...\My Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins), I do all the backing up on the host system.  First I unpack the  existing archive:

tar -xvzf Plugins_Backup_Oct_2018.tar.gz

Then copy the new plugin(s) into the extracted Plugins folder.  Lastly, I make a new archive:

tar -cvzf Plugins_Backup_Oct_2018.tar.gz Plugins/

 

[rsc204 21,806]

All the save files are kept in the Regions folder. Each subfolder here contains the individual cities of one region. By copying the entire regions folder, you'll be fine. Likewise copying the contents of the Plugins folder will keep a backup of your mods and addons. Where you save such backups doesn't really make a huge difference, provided they will be safe and available should you need them later.

If restoring your cities is causing you problems, there is a good chance that you've got an ID conflict between save files. Whilst each save file will have a file name, which may be unique, internally the game recognises them by a unique ID, not the file name. Should two files have an identical ID, the game will archive (move) one such file, into the Downloads folder within Regions. Typically this happens when you have used the regions that come with the game to play with. So you re-install the game, all the original regions are restored, although the file and folder names may no longer match with your edited versions. Yet, the internal IDs of these files conflict, so you might find the original blank cities in some places, instead of your edited ones.

Key to avoiding this issue, before restoring your custom regions, remove the default ones from the Regions folder. You can safely delete them, since a copy is kept in the installation folder of SC4, precisely so they can be restored if so desired. Having removed them, then restore the save files from your backup. Now you should not have any ID conflicts, so your regions should work normally. In the event they do not, check the Downloads folder in Regions, you can manually restore files from there, so nothing should ever get lost. Just bear in mind that once more if you have ID conflicts, the game will just return them to the Downloads folder on startup. You must remove the conflicting files to prevent this behaviour.

[CorinaMarie 29,575]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

In the event they do not, check the Downloads folder in Regions, you can manually restore files from there, so nothing should ever get lost. Just bear in mind that once more if you have ID conflicts, the game will just return them to the Downloads folder on startup. You must remove the conflicting files to prevent this behaviour.

Alternately if city files are getting tossed into the Downloads folder and you know what they are, you can load that region with the flat, blank city tiles and select import. Then navigate to the downloads folder and select the city for that position in the region map. The game will then assign it a new internal ID.

[luvs2draw 295]

I back-up my SC4 items on a Ext. Hard Drive. Some of the folder are set with ("a_) to keep them at the top of my folder set-up. The folder is,

Frank

1.a_SimCity 4_Plugins Downloads

A. a_Maxis_Plugins (folder)

B. Plugins, 

    A. Plugins non Dat Packed (with the date it was saved).

    B. Plugins Dat Pack (with the date it was saved).

    C. Removed Dat Pack files (Any removed Dat Pack file removed from the game).

C.SC4 Music and Install Game

    A. Music for SC4 (Music file I have created to listen to while playing the Game converted to MP3's and 128kbps).

        A. Bands.

        B. Mixes (Music mixes of songs converted to MP3's and 128kbps).

        C. Original SC4 Music (Both the Region and Mayor original music files).

        D. The install file for the game.

In the Maxis folder is all the Plugin I have saved from LEX and STEX and several other Creators sites.

A. The folder are in alphabetical order, A-Z

B. In each creators folder there Plugins are "Unzipped" and saved to this folder. If there is an "Installer", I run the "Installer" and then save the files to this folder and save the "Installer" to a "Unzipped" folder in a "Zipped" folder which contain there zipped files.

C. I have my "Regions" saved in my "R" folder.

    A. Regions.

        A. Regions from the Game (Original Maps and created Region's from SC4 Mapper).

        B. Region Maps Unzipped & Zipped.

That way if the game screws up or my computer crashes I can Re-Install the Game, load my " Saved Dat Pack" folder to the plugins and off I go to play the game. (and it is my OCD that has caused me to set it up this way, lol.)

        

[Daeris 1,116]

I wanted to circle back on this topic. I have a region I want to make some terrain adjustments too, but I'm worried I might mess up and botch my whole region. I've already started building in this region, and the current region view is great... it just doesn't really have some features I might want.

So I'm thinking I just need to save a backup of my region folder with all the actual city files saved within there. Then I can proceed to make my terrain adjustments. Then after I'm done with terrain adjustments I can keep as is.... or, if I'm feeling like I messed it all up, I can just load in my backed up file. Is that really the best way to go about it, or might I be overlooking something?

[MarkShot 631]

See my sig, please.

[Daeris 1,116]

On 8/4/2022 at 2:54 AM, MarkShot said:

See my sig, please.

Oh wow, this seems amazing. Thanks!