Game Save Issue: No region view

[sys12189 21]

Whenever I save using Ctrl+S or the Save button, after about 3-5 seconds the window sort of 'loses focus', the mouse cursor which is supposed to be an hourglass when playing SC4 turns into the spinning blue cursor you usually get when loading stuff, and it says on the windows title bar that it is 'not responding'. If I do something stupid like changing windows or click-spamming then the screen turns whitish (the way it does typically with non-responsive programs). Sensible enough to not do this and just wait patiently.

BUT if I don't do anything and just wait, then after about 15-60 seconds it says that the game is saved. (I consider this quite normal for save times) The save itself seems OK.

the problem is that when this happens the region view of the city looks completely blank. It gets blank every time the save goes on with the aforementioned symptoms, and I have to tell you, it's very common - much more often then not.

 

Once, a city got corrupted once so I had to load it from a backup, but that's only once. Maybe it has something to do with me attempting about a dozen saves of the exact same thing.

 

SC4 does this weird phenomenon most of the time. Sometimes it saves normally without any of this hassle or 'unresponsive' screens. I don't know exactly when I get the problem, but the problem seems to be more prevalent in highly developed tiles, because my 20,000 pop rural area does this not responding thing only once in a while, in my 80,000 town - about two-thirds of the time, so in about two or three save attempts I'm clear. In my largest city of 950K I get this almost all the time.

 

The game is playable but I have to say that trying 10, 20 times saving to just get a region screen view / or just look at blank green squares can be quite frustrating, and wonder if it is a technical problem that can be solved.

 

 

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I run version 1.1.640. the plugin folder is about 1.3GB in size, so excluding the NAM I don't think I have that many plugins.

CPU: Intel Core i5-8250U (this is a laptop)
RAM: 4 GB

Pagefile: 9353 MB, according to dxdiag (I dunno why, I recall setting this to 5120)

GPU: GeForce 940MX / Intel UHD Graphics 620 (I use the former when running SC4)

OS: Windows 10 version 1903 (build 10.0.18362)

 

something 'special' - my C drive is running low on space so my pagefile.sys is on D. Maybe this might be a factor....

  Edited May 15, 2020 by sys12189  
Added specs and info

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Changing focus while saving is an issue. Although it has a windowed mode, SC4 was designed a long time ago by programmers with a full-screen mindset. During that save, the equivalent of a screen-capture is happening, and if your focus is not on SC4 at that moment then "bad things happen".

So... when you want to save your game (just save -- never save and exit), click save and then step away from the computer.

[sys12189 21]

Yes I am aware of the problems of save & exit / save & quit, and I don't deliberately change focus. The problem for me is that the window apparently 'loses focus' out of nowhere, even when I don't touch anything after clicking save.