[Solved] City crashing even without plugins

[justforfun 7,744]

Hi, I have worked on a new city for a couple of sessions and now it crashes every time I try to open it. The window comes out informing me that a plugin package is missing, and before I have the time to click OK, the game has crashed to desktop. 

What puzzles me is that removing all the plugins in either or both plugin folders (Documents / Programs) makes absolutely no difference, it keeps crashing. Has anyone had a similar experience?

[rsc204 21,805]

Errors like this (the CTD), usually relate to some content that have been saved, but no longer exists in your Plugins folder. Flora, which practically speaking means MMPs or Tree Controllers mostly, being the most common. Have you removed anything from Plugins before this issue occurred? Could your anti-virus have quarantined something without your knowledge?, maybe check the Recycle Bin just in case too? If any flora item is part of your save file, but it's associated Exemplar gets removed, until you restore it, you won't be able to open that city.

Another common cause is trying to use High Resolution textures, so called HD, with either the OpenGL of Software Renderers. Any texture larger than 256x256 in size can only work if you are using the DirectX renderer for SC4. Practically, this really applies to sidewalk, terrain, beach, rock and water mods that use high res textures.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 5/6/2020 at 3:59 PM, justforfun said:

What puzzles me is that removing all the plugins in either or both plugin folders (Documents / Programs) makes absolutely no difference

Can you launch the game and load a new city with no plugins? If so, then the game is ok and your problem city is the problem.

One common CTD is if that city had an airport shuttle and then you deleted it. If so, then you need to (restore plugins and) replace the broken shuttle mod with a patched one. If that doesn't work at this stage, then you probably need to go back to a backup of the city (or start over), because I don't think there's any way to repair the damage.

[justforfun 7,744]

Thank you @rsc204 and @jeffryfisher. Yes I confess I'm guilty of working on my plugins >after< using them in the city. I must have edited some building exemplars, perhaps turned a landmark into a commercial, without bulldozing the lots first. I still find it strange though, as I had indulged in similar reckless practices before and I was still able to open my cities when removing all the plugins. This time instead I can't.

I suppose I'll have to start over, and, since I was using a custom map, I wonder: is there a way of deleting all the lots and restarting the map even without opening the city? Any such option with Node.js, for example?

[rsc204 21,805]

21 minutes ago, justforfun said:

I had indulged in similar reckless practices before and I was still able to open my cities when removing all the plugins

If you know what you edited and can restore it to the unmodified version, it should be enough to get the city to open without the CTD. After that, you really need to remove all instances of some things, before you install changes, but that's very much down to exactly what you change.

23 minutes ago, justforfun said:

is there a way of deleting all the lots and restarting the map even without opening the city? Any such option with Node.js, for example?

The save files include a checksum, in other words if you edit them, the game refuses to read those save files ever again. SC4Fix has created a working Plugin than can get around this limitation, which I believe has been used as part of this, generating new items without opening the game. In other words, only @smf_16 has the tools/know how to alter save files in the manner required. If you ask real nicely by PM, perhaps he would be able to assist you. Otherwise it's restore from a backup or start over I'm afraid.

[smf_16 1,834]

On 8-5-2020 at 10:23 PM, justforfun said:

I suppose I'll have to start over, and, since I was using a custom map, I wonder: is there a way of deleting all the lots and restarting the map even without opening the city? Any such option with Node.js, for example?

As @rsc204 mentioned I do have the tools to delete all lots in a city. That's actually relatively simple by the way, just emptying the lot subfile should do it - and probably you'll want the prop and building subfile to be deleted as well, otherwise you'll still end up with a city full of buildlings and props, but not belonging to a single lot.

I can give it a try if you want, but you'll have to be patient as I am still fully occupied with my website for playing cards. I cannot guarantee either that deleting the lots will actually be the solution. It's possible that the cause lies in some other subfile that has been corrupted, but we can always give it a shot.

[11241036 5,094]

On 7.5.2020 at 12:59 AM, justforfun said:

Hi, I have worked on a new city for a couple of sessions and now it crashes every time I try to open it. The window comes out informing me that a plugin package is missing, and before I have the time to click OK, the game has crashed to desktop. 

What puzzles me is that removing all the plugins in either or both plugin folders (Documents / Programs) makes absolutely no difference, it keeps crashing. Has anyone had a similar experience?

All suggestions above sound really acceptable. However, before you resort to deleting everything in your city, I'd like to make a different suggestion.

I once had a similar issue in one of my cities: When loading the city, the city became visible for a few seconds, but I couldn't do anything and then the game immediately ended. No matter what I did (removing plugins), the result was always the same.

You told that you are occasionally modifying lots yourself. Can you recall a specific lot that you only placed in this city and nowhere else? If yes, then this lot may be the source of these mysterious game crashes. I'm very frequently modifying plugins as well, and thus I've already stumbled about some obscure ways to "crash the game", thus, if you really have some suspicions about a plugin causing this behaviour, you can send me a PM with the affected files, if you want.

[justforfun 7,744]

@rsc204, @smf_16 Thank you, I have a suspicion on a lot that I edited, I'll try to restore it and see what happens. Failing that, I'll be glad to wait and have my city emptied out with the super tool!

I'm still perplexed as to why the game crashes even with empty plugin folders.. shouldn't it just open the city without any custom buildings and props, and with loads of brown boxes? How does the game even know that I have modified a few lots, when there are no custom lots at all in the plugin folders? 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

1 hour ago, justforfun said:

I'm still perplexed as to why the game crashes even with empty plugin folders..

Some lots don't just sit there looking pretty -- They do stuff (or at least they're supposed to). Therefore, placing certain lots causes the game to save what you might call "promises" of functionality (or the data for such). Deleting all mods can break promises that break the game's heart so to speak...

And then there are problem mods that can cause CTD... Some of their problems can be injected into a city when they're placed, and those problems remain even after they're deleted or the mods are removed from plugins. When developing new mods, it's wise to work in a throw-away city in a throw-away region.

[rsc204 21,805]

It relates to how the data of a lot is stored in the games save files. Certain properties are dynamic, for example you can change textures and even their placement, all will be refreshed upon opening the game. Other data such as the Building and Props are static, i.e. rather than re-checking the lot properties on startup, the items linked to are read from the save file on startup. This means that if you change them, you must replop the lot afterwards for those changes to be seen in-game. In some cases, clashes between the properties in a mod and those in the save file can cause weird behaviour. For example it can cause lots with sliders, such as hospitals or schools, to mess up their funding. In extreme cases, such discrepancies can lead to a CTD on loading the city. This doesn't mean the mod is necessarily faulty, some changes simply can't be applied after placing a lot. In such situations, you should ensure all instances of the lot you're editing are removed, before loading the altered files. In the event of a problem, restoring the unmodified version should allow you to open the city to do this.

[justforfun 7,744]

On 10/5/2020 at 10:03 PM, jeffryfisher said:

Therefore, placing certain lots causes the game to save what you might call "promises" of functionality (or the data for such). Deleting all mods can break promises that break the game's heart so to speak...

Haha, I must have been so mean to the game!  Well, the CTD seems to be happening in the same way and time regardless of whether I leave or remove the content of the plugin folders, so I seem to be breaking promises equally by making the game load edited lots or lots that have been removed altogether. 

 

On 11/5/2020 at 11:45 AM, rsc204 said:

In some cases, clashes between the properties in a mod and those in the save file can cause weird behaviour. For example it can cause lots with sliders, such as hospitals or schools, to mess up their funding. 

This happened to me once. I modified the funding in the exemplar of a custom fire station and I was never able to have proper fire coverage in that city again, not even after removing and re-plopping all fire stations.

[Cyclone Boom 16,851]

42 minutes ago, justforfun said:

This happened to me once. I modified the funding in the exemplar of a custom fire station and I was never able to have proper fire coverage in that city again, not even after removing and re-plopping all fire stations.

While this won't be the solution to your CTD issue, in some cases it is possible to reverse troublesome data in the save file. See this post that @CorinaMarie made for details of a method which helped resolve a phantom slider case by allowing the problem lots to effectively be uninstalled.

[justforfun 7,744]

New city, new CTD.  Why, oh why?

Quick recap: considering that I had edited several buildings after plopping thus it was pretty impossible to locate the problem, I thought it might be easier just to start a new city on a new map altogether. 

So I did, this time paying attention to not edit any files I was plopping in the game. I worked several sessions and the city was fine. Upon opening I was always getting the message about plugin pack 17891132 being missing, nonetheless the game would never crash. Until this morning: the city opened for a few seconds and then... CTD. 

If memory serves, in the last session I had only plopped a few buildings, none of which had ever given me troubles in other cities. So, what the heck am I doing wrong?

It's getting really distressing. Just as in the previous case, the city keeps crashing even when I remove all plugins from both folders. 

I start suspecting that my old laptop might be unable to cope with a high number of props/buildings, therefore it crashes as soon as I plop too many for it to handle. Could that be a possibility, do you reckon?

I also wonder whether this problem might have something to do with the way I'm building these new cities: 100% plopping, with the intention of then using the growify function of Node.js.  But mind you: all I was doing in these sessions was plopping buildings using the extracheat. dll, with the game paused. I had NOT used Node.js yet on these new cities (though I did use it in previous cities that were a mix of plopped and growables, and they still work fine). I'm not sure how it would be a problem to plop buildings with the game paused, but at this point I just don't know what to think.

Well, if I can't figure out what the problem is I'll have to quit playing SC, as there's not point in starting building a city with painstakingly selected buildings and then at some point being unable to open it. Any insights?

[CorinaMarie 29,568]

10 hours ago, justforfun said:

I worked several sessions and the city was fine. Upon opening I was always getting the message about plugin pack 17891132 being missing, ...

In context, this has occurred in a new city on a new map. Right?

Unless you have removed some plugins after having plopped (or grown) things in your city there should never be a message about a missing plugin pack. (Assuming you have all dependencies installed.) So, somehow plugins are going missing all on their own if you didn't touch any of them sometime between the start of the city tile and the sudden appearance of the message. Ofc, I have to ask: Are you certain you didn't do anything in your plugins folder during the entire test? If you have not, then this would imply one of more files are either becoming corrupted (potential sign of a failing hard drive) or a virus scanner is getting overly zealous and removing files.

Otherwise, with absolutely no changes to the contents of your Plugins folder, this message really shouldn't be a possibility.

 

10 hours ago, justforfun said:

Until this morning: the city opened for a few seconds and then... CTD.

To clarify, is this the smaller thumbnail (about a quarter of the screen for a large city tile) being shown as the city starts to load or do you actually get all the way into the city wherein you could plop something if it didn't crash?

 

10 hours ago, justforfun said:

... the city keeps crashing even when I remove all plugins from both folders.

During troubleshooting you'll want to leave the contents of the installation folder alone. You should have the following files (and no others) in the installation folder's Plugins:

• Background3D0.png
• Background3D1.png
• Background3D2.png
• Background3D3.png
• Background3D4.png
• SC4Fix.dll
• SimCity 4 Extra Cheats Plugin.dll

 

And, as @jeffryfisher mentioned, do you have the old version of the SFBT Airport Shuttle installed? And if so, did you perhaps plop it during one gaming session and later bulldoze it in another? (Like to move it somewhere else.) There was an unfortunate modding error in the original version which has subsequently been fixed. See the Airport shuttle woes thread if this might be a possibility.

[justforfun 7,744]

Thank you @CorinaMarie, I really appreciate you analysing this. 

11 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

this has occurred in a new city on a new map. Right?

Yes, correct. 

That missing plugin pack is likely related to some lot I plopped that is lacking some dependency, but it's nothing to worry about, because I have news: I now identified with certainty the culprit!  It's a CO$$$ I plopped that has a mistake in its building exemplar -the wealth property is set to "none" instead of "$$$". There is no doubt because: 

-I emptied both plugin folders, leaving just the files you mentioned and this CO$$$;

-I created a blank test city, plopped only this building, and saved. This test city now immediately CTD when I try to open it.

-I created more test cities and plopped other buildings I suspected might be broken, but not this CO$$$, and they all open fine.

So we now know exactly what the problem is. In search of a solution I've tried several ways of editing the building exemplar, in the hope of being able to open the city and delete the offender, but so I far I only get CTD every time -I am obviously experimenting on the test city that only contains the offending building. 

If all fails, my last hope would be that Node.js can possibly get rid of that specific lot, or correct the building wealth in the save file. 

[CorinaMarie 29,568]

9 minutes ago, justforfun said:

It's a CO$$$ I plopped that has a mistake in its building exemplar -the wealth property is set to "none" instead of "$$$".

Nice you found the lot responsible. In your testing, did you set the wealth to $$$ and plop it in a new city tile and then there is not a CTD later?

[justforfun 7,744]

12 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

In your testing, did you set the wealth to $$$ and plop it in a new city tile and then there is not a CTD later?

Yes, precisely. But the cities that have the version with wealth "none" saved, still crash.

[Cyclone Boom 16,851]

@justforfun

It sure must've been frustrating, but glad to hear you've persevered in narrowing down the culprit.

Is this a file on the STEX which is the one responsible? If so, it'd be great if you would post a link.

[justforfun 7,744]

2 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Is this a file on the STEX which is the one responsible?

@Cyclone Boom It's actually a file I edited a while ago, hence the oversight with the wealth level. It does feel better now that I know what the problem is, but it would feel ever better if I knew how to solve it. 

[justforfun 7,744]

Ok guys, CASE SOLVED! 

As I had found out, the CTD was caused by a mismatch in the building exemplar of a CO$$$, where the "wealth" property was mistakenly set to "none" instead of $$$.

Thanks to @smf_16's amazing editing skills, this could be corrected. After locating the offending building in the city map with the Savegame Explorer tool, I passed the coordinates to smf_16, who was able to amend the wealth level in the Lot subfile. 

Now my city opens again fine, so it's all sunshine and daffodils. Thanks all for your insights and suggestions, I hope this can be useful as a reference case. 

[smf_16 1,834]

10 minutes ago, justforfun said:

Ok guys, CASE SOLVED! 

As I had found out, the CTD was caused by a mismatch in the building exemplar of a CO$$$, where the "wealth" property was mistakenly set to "none" instead of $$$.

Thanks to @smf_16's amazing editing skills, this could be corrected. After locating the offending building in the city map with the Savegame Explorer tool, I passed the coordinates to smf_16, who was able to amend the wealth level in the Lot subfile. 

Now my city opens again fine, so it's all sunshine and daffodils. Thanks all for your insights and suggestions, I hope this can be useful as a reference case. 

For future reference I'll elaborate a bit on what I did. As @justforfun already correctly found out the problem was that the ZoneWealth for the lot was set to 0 which caused the game to crash. Modifying this in the Building Exemplar of a .SC4Desc file doesn't help because it's already baked in into the game.

Now interestingly his city contained a lot of lots with the Zone Wealth byte set to 0 in the Lot Subfile. Those are probably things like landmarks or something. Apparently the game can handle this correctly, but it goes wrong if ZoneWealth is set to 0 for an RCI building - at least I suppose. I think it is related to the fact that the game might be looking for a texture associated with that ZoneWealth and RCI type which it can't find because there are no RCI buildings with ZoneWealth 0 - or at least there shouldn't be. 

[justforfun 7,744]

2 hours ago, smf_16 said:

I think it is related to the fact that the game might be looking for a texture associated with that ZoneWealth and RCI type

Um.. what if it is a jobs issue? That might explain why landmarks and parks can have wealth set to 0.

[11241036 5,094]

On 19.5.2020 at 1:42 PM, smf_16 said:

For future reference I'll elaborate a bit on what I did. As @justforfun already correctly found out the problem was that the ZoneWealth for the lot was set to 0 which caused the game to crash. Modifying this in the Building Exemplar of a .SC4Desc file doesn't help because it's already baked in into the game.

Now interestingly his city contained a lot of lots with the Zone Wealth byte set to 0 in the Lot Subfile. Those are probably things like landmarks or something. Apparently the game can handle this correctly, but it goes wrong if ZoneWealth is set to 0 for an RCI building - at least I suppose. I think it is related to the fact that the game might be looking for a texture associated with that ZoneWealth and RCI type which it can't find because there are no RCI buildings with ZoneWealth 0 - or at least there shouldn't be. 

OK, so that's the issue. I had quite a conversation with justforfun because I thought it was a discrepancy between the wealth level as defined by the jobs in the OccupantGroups property and the level defined by the Wealth property (in the Buildings exemplar file) itself.

I should note that I really had this discrepancy issue once (however, with a ploppable lot), and I know for sure that merely modifying the OccupantGroups property to remove the jobs from there helped me. Perhaps ploppable buildings with jobs work differently than growables. Anyway, I'm glad that you all found a way to remedy that issue.

[justforfun 7,744]

On 21/5/2020 at 5:58 PM, 11241036 said:

Perhaps ploppable buildings with jobs work differently than growables.

Yes, I think that may explain it. It makes sense, if you think about it. If the building is a landmark, temporarily deleting the jobs occupant groups will not cause a void, so to speak. But the game perhaps crashes when trying to load a CO$$$ exemplar without any jobs occupant group.