Loading City crashes SC4

[Nota Republic 3]

Hello! First of all, I'm happy that there is still a living community for an old game like SimCity4...but I'm actually disheartened because the city I was working over the weekends got corrupted (SimCity 4 crashes when I load that city). I would still love to recover it...

Here's the case:
- I removed a few dark night mods, that I unknowingly downloaded, from the plugin folder because I'm not using dark nite and it looked odd in that city.
- I loaded the city and the crash happens
- I realized it was a mistake, and should have removed those lots from the city first.
- I returned the removed mods to where they were.
- Loading the city still crashes the game to desktop. Other cities are working fine.

Attached is the exception report I get. Please, I'd do anything for a workaround. 

SimCity Exception Report 2020.01.28 04.14.46.txt

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

In general, the worst which should happen if removing BATs/LOTs from plugins is that when you reload the city their building and/or props appear as brown boxes. For it to cause the CTD upon reloading, it sounds like at least one of the mods removed might've been a Seaport or Airport Controller file. This can include the one called the Airport Shuttle.

Is it possible any one of the removed mods fit that category?

[Nota Republic 3]

That's what I thought as well when removing them. I can get the list when I get home as it's not more than 10 and my method was simply search the word "dark" and "DN". But I wish it's that since if it's the other things you mentioned then it can happen to other cities I make. 😭

On my last game here's what I did that may relate to your suspected causes/used mods:

-Bulldozed an airport shuttle

-put an HSRP building and connected HSR to neighbors

-a 10 lane real highway

-agrochemicals freight station

 

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

5 minutes ago, Nota Republic said:

-Bulldozed an airport shuttle

^This is the culprit and there is no recovery for that city unless you can restore it from a backup.

I created a fix for that lot and there is a safe way to remove the bad versions in non-borked cities. I'll edit in the linky when I find it.

Bug fix:

• SFBT Airport Shuttle Lot  Fix (City tile corruption prevention)

[Nota Republic 3]

Aww. Well, there goes my weekend. 

Thanks a lot for the help! I just have few more moving-on questions...

Is there an auto-back up for the cities?

Is there a comprehensive list of buildings (especially NAM) that I cannot bulldoze or something that will result to city corruption?

Is it ok to simply destroy the corrupted city and reuse the lot, or are there things I need to prepare?

[CorinaMarie 29,565]

4 hours ago, Nota Republic said:

Is there an auto-back up for the cities?

I believe there is a mod you can install that will save the city based on a pre-defined time (or maybe it's a settable duration). I'm sure @Cyclone Boom knows where to find it so I'll kick this over to him for reply.

However, I personally would not want an auto save installed. Many is the time I've been doing some minor landscaping in a live city and I mess something up. I'm thankful I can exit without saving so I can come back to where I was before. Ofc, I'm mindful of saving the game periodically as I accomplish various things.

 

4 hours ago, Nota Republic said:

Is there a comprehensive list of buildings (especially NAM) that I cannot bulldoze or something that will result to city corruption?

Until the thread about the Airport Shuttle Woes, it was believed there weren't any which would cause this sort of severe city corruption. The author of that lot is well respected and obviously did not intend for this to happen. It's simply a mistake which turns out to have dire consequences. From that other thread, @Tyberius06 has been in contact with them and I believe they do intend to update the file on the LEX with the patched version. I've suggested there they copy (or rewrite) my full explanation of what occurred and the steps for peeps to safely remove the borked lot from their cities and replace it with the fixed one. As I'm not a member over on Devotion, I'm unaware if there is any progress on that front.

 

4 hours ago, Nota Republic said:

Is it ok to simply destroy the corrupted city and reuse the lot, or are there things I need to prepare?

Yes, it'll be fine if you simply select to Delete the city from the Region screen and then proceed with a new one in its place.

[Cyclone Boom 16,846]

26 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'm sure @Cyclone Boom knows where to find it so I'll kick this over to him for reply.

/me catches said message and replies accordingly...

 

4 hours ago, Nota Republic said:

Is there an auto-back up for the cities?

I've not tried it myself, but this SC4Launcher includes an auto save feature which can be configured to do so at periodic intervals.

Here's a preview from the file entry:

I imagine this works by invoking either the Ctrl+S or the Ctrl+Alt+S for saving without the city thumbnail snapshot (what appears in Region View).

I'm only speculating here having not tested it myself, but the "Save Quickly" setting I suspect is what makes it skip the thumbnail creation and might get it done slightly quicker. This is probably worth experimenting with toggling on/off because of how otherwise a region wouldn't appear updated when saving each tile.

 

There's also another launcher here:

(I've not tried this either, but it also says about including an auto saving ability.)

 

As a little word of caution...

One common cause of city file corruption is switching focus from the game while the save process is ongoing. With an auto-save tool doing this every so often, I imagine it'd be easy to forget when the next save will happen. As such if tabbing out from the game while the save is being done, this likely would cause it to not complete and then making the data completely malformed and unrecoverable.

So if going down the route of automated saving, it's probably a good idea to create manual backups every so often too. That way one can also restore any given city if just wanting to do something in a different way, or solve a gameplay issue (or other glitch) before it happened. The easiest way is to make a copy of one's entire Regions folder, or do it for individual folders inside. Then if ever wishing to rollback to a previous instance of your cities, it's possible to do so. The great thing is it's very straightforward from that point, and simply a case of copying back a region folder from one's backup location.

It's much easier said than done though, and I'm often guilty of not doing this enough myself.

[xxdita 1,097]

I would suggest actually backing up your entire regions folder manually as well as using any tool to save your progress in the game. This is especially important when installing new mods of any type, including airport or seaport controllers, as well as uninstalling them. Simply copy the Regions folder from your Docs/SC4 main folder (however it may be named), and paste it elsewhere on your computer. 

I need to PM Andreas about the airport shuttle though, to see what the status is on an updated file. I haven't tried it, as I know it conflicts with the AC Functional Airports that I do use. May need to see what can be done about that as well. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

49 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I've not tried it myself, but this SC4Launcher includes an auto save feature which can be configured to do so at periodic intervals.

I downloaded and installed this about 4 days ago. Not much of a program IMO. It will give you a full screen, getting rid of borders, but you can't pan region maps for screenshots. It gets rid of the intro video but also permanently got rid of game music and sound(which is no big loss). As far as auto-save goes, I disable that for EVERY game I play, as it causes more problems than it solves. The only use I can possibly think of for AS is if you want to run the city while you're sleeping or off on vacation or signed up for a 2 year hitch in the army. I deleted SC4 Launcher and the music still hasn't returned.

[Nota Republic 3]

I meant auto-save like a SimCity feature where it automatically makes back up of saved files from maybe some days ago. Unfortunately, I did not make a back-up and it seems that there is no way to recover them now.

But thanks everyone!