Strange glitch on Steam resulting in crashing

[onerinconhill 0]

So I downloaded the Steam version of SC4 since Origin had a deal for $2 code, and I keep having a strange issue with the game. I downloaded the game, installed the NAM, and everything was fine. Then, I added about 300 plugins and dependencies to the plugins folder, and I got an error where the game would start, the EA logo wouldn't show up but I'd get the Maxis and SC4 logo, and then when the regions screen shows up it's blank and shaking, but if you click on the regions tab, its all blanked out and the game crashes. I went through all the plugins to determine which one would be causing the issue, and it worked again when I deleted the NAM files. I tried downloading a few other plugins and the issue would random occur for different ones, but now the NAM causes it to crash every time.

Is the amount of files in the NAM and other plugins causing this to happen? I read about people needing the Jdatpacker but I only saw it as a result for something called Aspyr (I can download it but doing the JDK runtime and figuring out how it all works is not my first choice)

The strange thing is in the regions folder, the game creates multiple blank regions and tries to duplicate the Timbuktu region as well every time this happens, so I delete the duplicates before relaunching it. I made sure any duplicates of the mods were deleted, although I do have the hole digging lots and it looks like the newest NAM has them as well so maybe a custom installation without those things might prevent this from happening...the wineskin wrapper installation is a bit difficult to get to work properly however.

Anyone had any of these issues, or any thoughts? I know the origin copies for windows had lots of errors, but I downloaded a steam version and just used an origin key, so I figured my version wouldn't have any of those issues.

 

Thanks!

[c4bl3fl4m3 405]

Yes, it's the amount of files in the plugin folders making this happen. This sounds exactly like the behavior that happens to me when I have too many files & folders (which happened after I installed the NAM), which is a well known Mac bug. So, yes, this is the thing that'll get fixed with the JdatPacker & turning your many BATs into a single DAT file with it.

Check out #8 on this: 

The only issue is... the NAM is a very special case where it really expects things to be where it wants them. So making a DAT out of the NAM is a bad idea. So instead I would use the JDatPacker to take those 300 plugins & dependencies and pack them up into like 10 or so, and leave the NAM alone. That should fix the problem. (FWIW, it usually slows down before getting to the point you stated, so if you get more plugins & dependencies in the future, when it starts getting sluggish, try DAT packing it again.)

I have thousands and thousands of plugins and dependencies, and I'm running a 2013 MacBook Pro, so what I do is I have a "dummy" folder elsewhere where I basically keep a copy of my entire Plugins folder, with the exact same folder structure, but not DatPacked. And then in my Plugins folder, I have my plugins sorted by years (as I've been doing this for 10 years now), and then Dat packed by type (R, C, I, Transit, Parks & Rec, Utilities, etc.) for all but the current year and the year before. (Oh, and I keep the NAM its own folder in the "root" of Plugins.) So if something's ever wrong and I need to fix something and then remake the DATs (or if I need to see what's in a DAT for a given year), I still have that structure.

Does this make sense? I can attach copies of what it looks like, if you need it

Re: custom installing the NAM. That's a fantastic idea & should work well for you. I've had to do that because with the amount of plugins I have, the NAM makes my big cities grind to a complete standstill and makes them unplayable. So I basically have the lightest NAM install that's a pre-given setting (the files that fix the routing issues & the amount of traffic each road type can hold, and updates various transit stations to take more traffic.) I'd like to have a fully custom NAM install but the last couple times I tried to run the Windows version in Wineskin, it doesn't give me the option to make it a Mac install so it keeps crashing, but that's a bug I'll fix another day.

.

[rsc204 21,866]

On 1/15/2020 at 9:56 PM, onerinconhill said:

So I downloaded the Steam version of SC4 since Origin had a deal for $2 code, and I keep having a strange issue with the game. I downloaded the game, installed the NAM, and everything was fine. Then, I added about 300 plugins and dependencies to the plugins folder, and I got an error where the game would start, the EA logo wouldn't show up but I'd get the Maxis and SC4 logo, and then when the regions screen shows up it's blank and shaking, but if you click on the regions tab, its all blanked out and the game crashes. I went through all the plugins to determine which one would be causing the issue, and it worked again when I deleted the NAM files. I tried downloading a few other plugins and the issue would random occur for different ones, but now the NAM causes it to crash every time.

Is the amount of files in the NAM and other plugins causing this to happen?

All these issues are just endemic to using the Mac Version of the game. The Steam and Aspyr versions of the game are pretty much identical, the other version for Macs was disk-based and is neither the same nor recommended for use anymore.

The NAM isn't likely to be exactly why you are experiancing issues. Although I'd avoid updating to the 64-Bit version of SC4, which isn't available yet on Steam, but will be necessary if you have MacOS Catalina. Because this brings some problems with NAM content which works just fine with the original 32-Bit editions.

It's hard to say if you've the "too many files" problem, since I've never seen it quantified as exactly how many is too many. But, NAM certainly won't help because it contains many individual files.

On 1/16/2020 at 11:52 PM, c4bl3fl4m3 said:

the NAM is a very special case where it really expects things to be where it wants them. So making a DAT out of the NAM is a bad idea. So instead I would use the JDatPacker to take those 300 plugins & dependencies and pack them up into like 10 or so, and leave the NAM alone.

That's not actually why we advise against DAT-Packing NAM, it's mostly because it makes changing/updating the NAM a mess and frankly we don't want to support such cases. A classic case of, if you don't know what you are doing, leave it alone. However, for Mac users we do recommend DAT-Packing the NAM using JDatPacker. The order of files is retained when DAT-Packing the root Network Addon Mod and z___NAM folders. But, you should always keep the original unpacked folders somewhere safe, but outside of the Plugins folder. If you want to re-run or update the NAM, delete the DAT-Packed versions and restore the original folders beforehand. After any changes, you'll need to re-create the DAT-Packed variants anew, to reflect the changes. Just remember too, never DAT-Pack the NAM together with other Mods or Plugins.

On 1/15/2020 at 9:56 PM, onerinconhill said:

(I can download it but doing the JDK runtime and figuring out how it all works is not my first choice)

Well all software requires libraries, Java (JDK runtime) is pretty standard, it's no more complex than running an installer. JDATPacker is not overly complex, you simply select a folder to pack and it takes the entire folder's contents and places them into one or more DAT files. Honestly if you are serious about using Custom Content, as a Mac user, you pretty much will need to be DATPacking at some point.

On 1/15/2020 at 9:56 PM, onerinconhill said:

The strange thing is in the regions folder, the game creates multiple blank regions and tries to duplicate the Timbuktu region as well every time this happens, so I delete the duplicates before relaunching it. I made sure any duplicates of the mods were deleted, although I do have the hole digging lots and it looks like the newest NAM has them as well so maybe a custom installation without those things might prevent this from happening...the wineskin wrapper installation is a bit difficult to get to work properly however.

This issue is usually a result of conflicting save file IDs. The regions that come with the game, it's save files have fixed IDs. The game doesn't care for filenames, everything is loaded by it's hidden ID in the files themselves. If two files have identical IDs, it moves one of the files and leaves whichever loads last behind. In the first instance, finding the "User" Regions folder and temporariy removing the affected region's folder, should stop the endless duplication. If not, that suggests you may have messed with the "installation" Regions folder, which should NEVER be altered or used in any way. Either way, it's a separate problem from the CTD one entirely.

On 1/15/2020 at 9:56 PM, onerinconhill said:

Anyone had any of these issues, or any thoughts? I know the origin copies for windows had lots of errors, but I downloaded a steam version and just used an origin key, so I figured my version wouldn't have any of those issues.

The only problem with Origin, is that they ship an unpatched game that cannot be patched. This means many bugs which are very old remain, some of which cause big issues with NAM content. Therefore we designed the Installer of NAM to refuse to install, unless a user's game was patched with the EP1 patch. It's a big and stupid problem, but does not affect Mac users since Origin don't directly distribute a Mac edition, likely why you got a Steam code.

On 1/16/2020 at 11:52 PM, c4bl3fl4m3 said:

I'd like to have a fully custom NAM install but the last couple times I tried to run the Windows version in Wineskin, it doesn't give me the option to make it a Mac install so it keeps crashing, but that's a bug I'll fix another day.

The installer only offers a Mac install, if it sees that SC4 is not installed on the computer being used and also fails to find a Plugins folder. I suspect it's the latter that prevents the Mac install option from appearing in your case. In any case, the files used in either instance (Mac or Windows) are identical, so the installer crashing is most likely to be a problem with your setup for Wineskin or a compatibility issue.

No one on the NAM team is a big Mac user, both Tarkus and myself have access to a Mac Mini, although I personally don't have a Mac copy of SC4. I'm also only able to run El Capitan on my 2009 model, so many of the compatibility changes that cause such issues with the NAM installer on Macs, don't apply to my setup. Sierra I think was the beginning of all these problems and we can't be paying Apple for digital signatures, so users need to find workarounds to run the installer on these systems. As much as I know you're going to hate me saying it, the simplest solution is always to run the Installer on a Windows machine, then copy the Network Addon Mod and z___NAM folders to your Mac. Even if you don't use bootcamp, parallels or similar, surely everyone knows someone using Windows?

[c4bl3fl4m3 405]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The installer only offers a Mac install, if it sees that SC4 is not installed on the computer being used and also fails to find a Plugins folder.

The first time I ran the NAM installer under Wineskin on my Mac (which did, indeed, have the Aspyr version installed, and had a Plugins folder), it gave me the option of a Mac install. (In fact, it did it a few times.) While the behavior you state may be what it's *supposed* to do, that wasn't, in fact, its actual behavior. (Could it be related to the fact that I'm running the Aspyr version which has the Plugins folder in a very different place? Sometimes I run EXE installers for Plugins, so it creates a Plugins folder in the place where Windows would want it (which is also where the Steam version puts it). It could be that the times it wouldn't give me the options, it looked for the Plugins in that place and another EXE installer had created it there, so it saw it there and wouldn't give me the Mac option.

(Is there a reason we can't have it always give the option of a Mac install?)

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

surely everyone knows someone using Windows?

Not really. Me & my partner both have Apples, his family is purely an Apple family, and I'm new to the area so we don't really have any friends there yet. 

 

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The strange thing is in the regions folder, the game creates multiple blank regions and tries to duplicate the Timbuktu region as well every time this happens,

 

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Either way, it's a separate problem from the CTD one entirely.

Then why does it keep happening with the Too Many Files bug and with other CTDs?

 

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

That's not actually why we advise against DAT-Packing NAM, it's mostly because

Thanks so much for the clarification! I've seen multiple recommendations re: the NAM, so it's good to finally get the final word from the developer!  (I'll update any instructional documents with this information as well, as soon as I'm not traveling.)

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Honestly if you are serious about using Custom Content, as a Mac user, you pretty much will need to be DATPacking at some point.

Absolutely this. After a certain number of files, there's just no way around it. (Esp. if you're using the NAM.)

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

It's hard to say if you've the "too many files" problem, since I've never seen it quantified as exactly how many is too many.

As a person who has run across this problem multiple times over the years personally, and had it happen recently (when I installed the NAM, actually), AND who has troubleshot (troubleshooted?) this issue with other Mac users, I can say without a doubt that it's the Too Many Files problem. As per the quantification, the next time it happens to me, I'll look into how many files. At least that'll give us a ballpark to start from. (And I wonder if the number changes?)

Frankly, I feel this is one of those issues you can troubleshoot by its symptoms & how common it is. If you have the symptoms, and you do have hundreds of files, then 99.9% of the time, it's the Too Many Files problem. Esp. if you DAT pack it and the problem goes away. I don't think we need to have it quantified to diagnose it, esp. because we've successfully diagnosed it & treated it multiple times in the past without having it quantified.