Airport shuttle woes

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello Simtropolis!

So, I have a little problem with SFBT's Airport Shuttle. It's a transit enabled lot and modded as an airport/bus terminal combo, but the transit switch cost is set to zero, so it creates traffic problems with many cars, buses and pedestrians crossing the lot on their commute. I wanted to fix it and remove the transit switch so it just works as an airport lot, I know how to do it and thought it would be straightforward.

However, when I bulldozed the lot and then saved the city, the city file became corrupted or inaccessible somehow. I tried restoring the original file and removing it from the plugins folder but I still can't play the city. It may be worth mentioning that I saved the city while in pause, and did not run the clock after bulldozing so as to not lose the benefits from the airport lot and screw up my demand.

I have a backup of the region but it is from months ago, and I'd hate to lose all the progress that I've made. Is there anything I can do to save the city file?

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Oh, my!

I'm not an expert on this, but I believe the problem will be that the city originally had a stored copy of the lot before editing. Then because it was bulldozed with a different version in your plugins it tried deleting each aspect of the exemplar and the corresponding parts tracked in the transit structure, but since those were not exact it's now totally confuzzled. Having saved again after plopping the new one now means the new lot's info got piled on top of the wrong info inside the game save data.

Ofc, it may be too late for this city tile, but the sequence to use when doing these alterations would be delete all instances of the original lot while the original file is in plugins. Then save, exit the game, remove the file from plugins, add the modified file, and then go plop in your city.

Now, don't take my first paragraph as gospel because I may not have it all correct. Do wait for the experts to pop in and reply too.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Oh, I may not have told it correctly. I bulldozed the lot with the original version still in my plugins, I was going to delete it, mod it, and then re plop it. However, I now remember that another city in the region has that same airport lot, so I probably need to delete it there too before modding it. I have a backup of the original airport file (the one I tried to restore in an attempt to fix the city)

I also made a backup of the whole region right after deleting the lot and saving, I should have made the backup before bulldozing the airport lot.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Ok. Maybe all hope isn't lost. The sequence is super important. So, did it go like this?
 

1. Original file in plugins
2. Bulldoze all lots in the city
3. Save, exit, remove original file from plugins
4. Add modified file to plugins
5. Game crashed on loading

[rsc204 21,815]

22 minutes ago, Edvarz said:

I also made a backup of the whole region right after deleting the lot and saving, I should have made the backup before bulldozing the airport lot.

Hindsight's a bitch. But yeah, anything which uses Airport or Seaport controllers can completely mess with save files, I guessing that's a factor here since you deleted the lot from the game, which shouldn't really cause problems.

If you have the original unmodified lot, put that back in your plugins and see if things at least load now?

[Edvarz 1,984]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Ok. Maybe all hope isn't lost. The sequence is super important. So, did it go like this?
 

1. Original file in plugins
2. Bulldoze all lots in the city
3. Save, exit, remove original file from plugins
4. Add modified file to plugins
5. Game crashed on loading

Yep, that is indeed the order in which I did it, the thing is, the crash came when loading just the city, so I doubt it's a conflict with the plugins themselves.

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Hindsight's a bitch. But yeah, anything which uses Airport or Seaport controllers can completely mess with save files, I guessing that's a factor here since you deleted the lot from the game, which shouldn't really cause problems.

If you have the original unmodified lot, put that back in your plugins and see if things at least load now?

No dice, restored both the region and the lot files and it still won't load. I'm starting to think I've lost the city file.

I tried something else: With the region backup, I went to the other city that used the airport shuttle lot and bulldozed it, but this time I allowed some time to pass (some 2-3 in game months) saved, exited to region and exited the game. However, the same thing happened, I couldn't load the city file when I re-entered the game. I tried loading both cities with and without the file in my plugins but it is to no avail.

The first time it happened I thought the cause of the problem was that I saved with the game in pause, not giving the game time to adjust to the change but that's not it, it seems

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

2 hours ago, Edvarz said:

Yep, that is indeed the order in which I did it, the thing is, the crash came when loading just the city, so I doubt it's a conflict with the plugins themselves.

If that was exactly that sequence then did you continue with?

• Remove modified file
• Restore old file
• Load city again

And was this the only file which was changed? I've not used the lot in question, but I believe from another thread I've read it also has an Airport Controller file. Those and Seaport Controllers are also really fiddy inasmuch as changing them can wreck havoc.

 

8 hours ago, Edvarz said:

I have a backup of the region but it is from months ago ...

If comes down to using the old backup, I'm sure you know you can restore individual cities and that you won't need to overwrite all the others.

One thing to keep in mind about restoring from an old region backup is what files were in your plugins at the time said backup was made. If there's been changes (specifically files removed or modified) in the interim that could pose conflicts.

[Edvarz 1,984]

10 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

If that was exactly that sequence then did you continue with?

• Remove modified file
• Restore old file
• Load city again

And was this the only file which was changed? I've not used the lot in question, but I believe from another thread I've read it also has an Airport Controller file. Those and Seaport Controllers are also really fiddy inasmuch as changing them can wreck havoc.

That is also correct, I tried to do that after the first time the city refused to load. I added a couple more files after but they were just commercial lots, I could try removing them but that probably won't be it.

13 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

If comes down to using the old backup, I'm sure you know you can restore individual cities and that you won't need to overwrite all the others.

One thing to keep in mind about restoring from an old region backup is what files were in your plugins at the time said backup was made. If there's been changes (specifically files removed or modified) in the interim that could pose conflicts.

Oh, I've been rather careful in that regard. I'm always modding/fixing things so I keep a tidy pluins folder, though sometimes there's things that slip trough the cracks like in this case. I'm positive I haven't removed anything since then, only added.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

5 minutes ago, Edvarz said:

I could try removing them but that probably won't be it.

I agree. Those are not likely the cause. I'm not sure what to suggest at this point.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Neither am I, I downloaded the Save game explorer to see if it could somehow tell me if the file was broken but that doesn't seem to be it's purpose. I'm out of ideas at this point

It's not as bad as it could be, the good news is that I took a lot of screenshots so I could redevelop the zones so that they look the same, Though I still want to modify that airport, so it's worth finding out the cause of the problem to avoid future incidents.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

7 minutes ago, Edvarz said:

Though I still want to modify that airport, so it's worth finding out the cause of the problem to avoid future incidents.

I have the LEX entry up in another tab and as soon as a big file transfer I'm doing is done, I'll download it and take a peek. If you'll attach your modified version, I can see if I can screw up one of my cities.

[rsc204 21,815]

I would add that it might be beneficial to ask on SC4D or even send a PM to andreas who released the lot. He's one of the more knowledgeable peeps and there really isn't a lot of good information on Airport Controllers anywhere I've looked.

In my opinion, a lot that can't be removed from your save file without breaking it, would be a serious problem. It's certainly what appears to be happening here.

[Tyberius06 12,190]

Oh shiiiii... 
Guys and Gals, Andreas already knows about the issue, because I found it when I tested Tariely's Regional Airport 2-3 months ago. Once you plopped the lot  you can not bulldoze it because it corrupts the city tile permamently indeed. He was extremely busy at that time, so he couldn't manage to take a look into it.

Here is one of our last message exchange:
From me:
 

Quote

Bulldozing the airport shuttle lot by default will prevent the city to load in next time. It doesn't matter when you saved the city tile, once you plopped the airport shuttle, it seems you can not delete it because next time you can not enter the city at all. This is interesting.
So what I did in these latest test.

1) plopped the airport shuttle, saved the game, bulldozed the airport shuttle saved the game, rebuild the airport shuttle elswhere and placed some maxis landmarks, saved the game... Next time I couldn't enter the city tile.
2) plopped the airport shuttle, then bulldozed the airport shuttle, then rebuilt it elswhere, then saved the game and went to region view. I was not able to go back again.
3) plopped the airport shuttle, then bulldozed the airport shuttle, and then saved the game (only one piece of road left this time in the city tile), went to region view and I couldn't go back at all...

This is interesting, because I thought that it is leaving some mark in the save game file, but it actually doesn't matter. Once I plop the shuttle it burn itself into the city file for good, and if I remove the lot from its current coordinates it will crash the game next time.
Anyway these airport stuffs just unbelievably instable and sensitive. If the old airport tram and swamper support file is in my plugin folder, then I can not plop Xannepan's parking garages, because I get CTD, and I can not plop apparently EN (bripizza) Approach Light System (ALS) as well for the same reason. But if I plop them first then I move the airport tram and support file back to the plugin folder, everything is working fine... And they are working well with your airport shuttle otherwise... pretty insane.

 

His last reply:

Quote

I was able to replicate what you found out without spending a lot of time (that's the main obstacle right now, alas...). I was looking at my lot again, and also at the BSC Functional Airports, and there's only one explanation I can think of: When you build my SFBT Airport Shuttle lot, SC4 actually does add "something" to the savegame (the Airport Developer Exemplar maybe?), and bulldozing the lot apparently does not remove it again, hence the game will crash during the next startup.

When I checked out the BSC files, I noticed that it contains a DAT file with the Airport Developer exemplar file, and a full list of all supported airports as "dummy lots", and when you want to use one or more of those in the game, you need to have another DAT with an "enabler" in your plugins folder (which is just another copy of the lot exemplar file, which apparently overrides the placeholder "dummy"). I thought that this method was used, so you'd be able to enable and disable any airport lot(s) that you like, without breaking the game, as there can be only one airport developer exemplar.

I haven't tested this, but I suppose the game won't crash if you bulldoze any of those airports, save and re-open the savegame. Maybe I need to create a similiar kind of dummy lot that makes the game thing that my airport shuttle lot is "there" all the time, regardless if it has been plopped or not, and the actual lot that you plop that is included in the "enabler" doesn't affect the savegame. So far, it's just a vague theory, but I don't know the exact details how the whole thing was developed back then, and IIRC, that happened in the private BSC board that is long gone.

As I mentioned in my last PN, I *think* that I DID try this plopping and bulldozing myself before I released the lot, and I actually found one city named "Airport Shuttle Test" in my test region, which didn't contain anything else but the plopped lot and a windmill for power. Unfortunately, it's been so long ago, and so far, you're the only one who approached me about this bug that I wonder why it hasn't happened before. Right now, I cannot think of a proper solution, and who knows if the other lots that you mentioned face similar problems due to their modding. Obviously, this would require even more careful testing and comparing files...

Or the BSC Functional Airport (JENX edition I guess is the latest one), but it requires mostly additional Reader work to make it work. 

- Tyberius

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Turns out to be a simple solution.

In the lot configuration change the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes from Ploppable (0x0F) to Airport (0x0B).

 

^ This will not help any already borked cities, but if you make this change and start afresh plopping them, then you can also delete them and it knows to remove the embedded information from the relevant sub files within the game save data.

 

On 16/11/2019 at 7:45 PM, Edvarz said:

... the transit switch cost is set to zero, so it creates traffic problems with many cars, buses and pedestrians crossing the lot on their commute.

I believe you want to increase the value for Transit Switch Traffic Capacity to something much greater than its current 10,000 rather than editing the Transit Switch Entry Cost.

Edit: Here's a fixed version of: SFBT_4x3_Airport Shuttle_21e2f5ac.SC4Lot

Edit Too: And now Andreas updated the file on Devotion.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Ooooooooooo! New information.

After you fix the file, simply remove the original file, put the new one in your Plugins whilst all the originally plopped lots are still in place. Now the lots can be safely deleted. Ofc, this should be done after a backup of said city tile(s) and then see if anything else goes goofy with demand or such. At least in my test city I was able to then delete one plopped using the original file with this method, save, exit, and reload the city with it gone.

By fixed, I mean only the change to airport zoning. Hold off until all original instances are bulldozed before doing the additional tweak for traffic.

[Tyberius06 12,190]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Turns out to be a simple solution.

In the lot configuration change the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes from Ploppable (0x0F) to Airport (0x0B).

 

^ This will not help any already borked cities, but if you make this change and start afresh plopping them, then you can also delete them and it knows to remove the embedded information from the relevant sub files within the game save data.

 

I believe you want to increase the value for Transit Switch Traffic Capacity to something much greater than its current 10,000 rather than editing the Transit Switch Entry Cost.

Oh dear!!!!  
I've tested it and it's working nicely. I'll provide this post and information to Andreas to help him to fix this issue! You did it, it's working, now.

Thanks a lot!

- Tyberius

PS: @tariely, check these posts, please regarding our released airport! Thanks.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

CB asked me about this. Here's my explanation for what's going on:

The problem is/was that the Lot IID is tied to its airport sub controller exemplar, but it's only a one way association in the original file. When deleting the lot whilst using 0x0F, it doesn't check that it is an airport and doesn't know to remove the data in the airport sub files of the game data. When loading the game after bulldozing and saving it sees it's supposed to have an airport based on the airport sub file info, but then can't find any lot with the IID the airport sub controller knows it should have. At that point the game says: I'm so confuzzled I'm giving up and crashing.

By changing that thinger to 0x0B (airport), it then invokes an additional function when the lot is bulldozed which updates the airport sub files before actually deleting the lot from the game.
 

@Cyclone Boom then replied:

Quote

Whereas as an analogy, otherwise it's like deleting an application folder from an installed program, instead of going through the proper process of uninstalling via the Control Panel (where it also removes registry values, etc).

^ Which sums it up well.

[tariely 4,496]

@Tyberius06 : I've added a link to this thread on our modular airport page.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hey!! So, thanks to you all!!!.

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I didn't get a chance to properly read the replies and test the solution during the week. I tried it in my unaffected city tile and it indeed lets you delete the lot normally! I'll update the transit switch when I bulldoze the lot in every city.

On 17/11/2019 at 3:12 PM, CorinaMarie said:

The problem is/was that the Lot IID is tied to its airport sub controller exemplar, but it's only a one way association in the original file. When deleting the lot whilst using 0x0F, it doesn't check that it is an airport and doesn't know to remove the data in the airport sub files of the game data. When loading the game after bulldozing and saving it sees it's supposed to have an airport based on the airport sub file info, but then can't find any lot with the IID the airport sub controller knows it should have. At that point the game says: I'm so confuzzled I'm giving up and crashing.

I can work with the backup I have, but it is worth asking: could that airport sub file be somehow modified? From what I understand it's something located in the savegame, and I know those aren't commonly modified, but I'm just curious

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

1 hour ago, Edvarz said:

I can work with the backup I have, but it is worth asking: could that airport sub file be somehow modified? From what I understand it's something located in the savegame, and I know those aren't commonly modified, but I'm just curious

There is the technical possibility with the work @smf_16 has done successfully modifying the save game data for residential related things. However, there isn't anything for this specific situation atm. If the lot could be re-recorded as existing in the city at the exact co-ordinates as before then, perhaps, the city could be loaded without crashing and you would be able to use my fix to bulldoze it and let the game engine itself handle the updating of the mysterious sub file(s).

[Edvarz 1,984]

@CorinaMarie I see, well, I'd better bite the bullet and start rebuilding. As always, thank you for your help and your insights!!

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Until now I had never heard of this even being a possibility that any given ploppable could cause such a dire situation. As complex as the game interactions are and how little is fully understood, it's not surprising something of this nature might occur. Peeps create things to the best of their ability, but I know full well how something like this can slip by as its not expected.

This incident with that lot brings up another step I'll add to my list of testing when acquiring new content. Plop in a test tile, run some time, save, exit, re-load, bulldoze, save, exit, and then make sure I can still get into a city.

 

[mattb325 28,880]

Well done on figuring out a fix for that bug!

I had never used the airport shuttle file because I always knew about the issues, but at least it is now an option, as the premise was always a nifty idea. 

For me, testing before I release anything takes twice as long as batting something and I have very large regions dedicated to test as many variables as possible.

So for anything more complex than a basic growable, it first goes into a vanilla region to see how it behaves. Plop the lot, run the simulation, take screenshots of demand graphs before, during and after: save, exit, re-enter and check the demand graphs are still the same; save exit re-enter and open a different tile to check the demand graphs in neighbouring tiles, then re-enter the original city, bulldoze the lot, check the graphs, save exit, re-enter, etc. If it passes that test in a vanilla region (not all modding does...I've made some crashy, screwy mods over the years that never see the light of day), it goes into a full plugins suite  of approx 5 - 6GB of various custom content and is then tested all over again.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 11/17/2019 at 3:43 PM, Tyberius06 said:

I'll provide this post and information to Andreas to help him to fix this issue!

Is a revision available for download from somewhere? I think I have a BSC / JenX airport mod at home with an airport shuttle (the one with Lisa Simpson in the menu icon) that I've plopped dozens of times in a lot of cities 

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

12 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Is a revision available for download from somewhere?

In the meantime, I know you know how to use Reader. See my post above and you can fix it by editing one single property.

 

12 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

I think I have a BSC / JenX airport mod at home with an airport shuttle (the one with Lisa Simpson in the menu icon) that I've plopped dozens of times in a lot of cities

To test if you have a bugged version, back up that region then go into a city tile, bulldoze the lot, save, exit, re-load the city tile, and if you get a CTD you'll know it's a problem one. Then if it did crash, restore that city tile from the aforementioned back up, edit and save the lot file, then repeat the test. Once you can successfully enter your city tile after bulldozing the lot and saving, you'll know you've eradicated the bug.

[Tyberius06 12,190]

56 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Is a revision available for download from somewhere? I think I have a BSC / JenX airport mod at home with an airport shuttle (the one with Lisa Simpson in the menu icon) that I've plopped dozens of times in a lot of cities 

Official one is currently not available (Andreas is super busy with RL, but as soon as he can spare a little time he will update the file), but as Corina said, you can modify the examplar for yourself. I don't know actually how a fix would affect on the currently plopped lots, but actually you can test it and let us know. Just make a back-up of your region for sure. That is essential. If the fix doesn't affect on the already plopped lots it's still not a problem, until you don't bulldoze them at all. It's strange however that until I didn't run into this issue by testing the lot with our airport relot, nobody came up with it. But what can we do. There are a bunch of stuffs what I recently started using after many years of their release, and I'm running into small issues with a bunch of custom contents. Ok, this one is a quite game-breaker. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

2 minutes ago, Tyberius06 said:

If the fix doesn't affect on the already plopped lots it's still not a problem, until you don't bulldoze them at all.

As I mentioned above, if you fix the lot configuration exemplar and have only the new version in your Plugins, you can then bulldoze those placed with the original (bugged) version and it handles the airport sub file(s) in the saved game data.

When an official fix is released, I feel it'll be super important to list these steps for peeps to follow to safely bulldoze the old version from their cities. (And, ofc, the first step is to make a full backup of any affected region just for safety.)

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 11/25/2019 at 6:41 AM, CorinaMarie said:

To test if you have a bugged version, back up that region then go into a city tile, bulldoze the lot, save, exit, re-load the city tile, and if you get a CTD you'll know it's a problem one. Then if it did crash, restore that city tile from the aforementioned back up, edit and save the lot file, then repeat the test. Once you can successfully enter your city tile after bulldozing the lot and saving, you'll know you've eradicated the bug.

I replaced the lot months ago and now might finally get back around to that testing. That particular quote is possibly the most important answer for late-comers to the bug.

[twalsh102 1,601]

As of 02/09/20, the download over at SC4D is Andreas' updated, fixed version of the Airport Shuttle.  From reading Andreas" ReadMe file, it turns out there is another issue.  The Shuttle is only compatible with Maxis airports.and is NOT compatible with other functional Airports.

However, having said that, there is a way for each player to fix it so that the Shuttle will be compatible with other functional airports.  But first one needs to understand what is necessary for an "airport" lot to be functional.

Please note that the following is my understanding of what is necessary for this to happen:

1.  Each "airport" lot also includes its own Developer Exemplar with a unique IID.  This IID is also included in the Exemplar in the property titled "Lot Stage Template IDs."
2.  There is also an Airports Developer Exemplar that includes all available "Airport" lots by listing their IIDs in the property titled "Port Type Exemplar IDs."  An "airport" lot's Developer Exemplar IID must be included in this EXemplar in order to be functional.
3.  The original Maxis version of this Exemplar has the three Maxis airport IIDs (small, medium and large).  In 2008, Ripplejet (last active at the end of 2018), as part of the AC Team as well as BSC, created a new version of this Exemplar (released with AC Functional Airports), which included most (or all) "airport" lots that had been released to that point.  This Exemplar was last updated by Zannepan (last active in mid-2016) (also a member of the AC Team and BSC) in Oct, 2013, and released under the title "SC4 Functional Airports."  Andreas released the original version of his Airport Shuttle Lots at the end of 2015.  I'm guessing that either not being a member of BSC, he didn't feel he was able to further update Xannepan's version of this Exemplar, or he realized that to properly update the exemplar, he would need to search out any other airport lots released since 2013.  So he updated the original Maxis exemplar to include the Developer ID for his Airport Shuttle.  When he updated his Lot Exemplar earlier this year, I'm guessing the same issues remained with including an updated version of "Airports Developer Exemplar."

So, the way to "fix" the issue of incompatibility, each player would need to have a copy Xannepan's Airports Developer Exemplar, and modify the "Port Type Exemplar IDs" property to include the the IID of the Developer Exemplar for the SFBT Airport Shuttle.  

Another option for placing functional airports (other than Maxis ones) in other cities of a region would be to remove the Airport Shuttle from your Plugins (and move in the files necessary for other functional airports) before opening any city that includes another functional airport and remembering to switch necessary files in and out as necessary before switching cities again.  Given the number of files available for the many other functional airports, this might prove problematic.

I derived all of the above by looking at exemplars.  I'm not pretending to be any kind of expert on the subject of functional airports, so if I've gotten any of this wrong (very possible) or missed anything (again very possible), please let me know!

 

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I've been using "BLS Roth Air and City Bus". I can't even find the lot in my plugins folder (it's probably buried inside some DAT file somewhere). However...

I found another test:

Go to the "Zones" data view of your city... Hover over your airport shuttle stop... See what its zone is? If it says "airport", then you should be good to go 

I've only tested it in my own city with the one shuttle. YMMV, so you should still backup your city when you first try a new shuttle.

BTW, My test was an interesting twist on the save & replace: Because I load my region into a RAM drive and run from that, I was able to save the risk city, reopen it, then region without saving, then copy the HD version back into the RAM drive while the game was running in region mode, and then re-enter the city to find it right back to where it was supposed to be.

And working with RAM drive, it was *fast*.