Region Census Loading Error No such file? Help?

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

I'm having a problem with Region Census for SimCity 4. I'm trying to take a snapshot of a very large region that I built up. but when i try to load it up, it gives me this error in the picture below. 

it says that the file for one of my cities in the region can not be found, but notice the question mark infront of the name of the city. 

Is there anyway I can fix this? what do i have to do? please help 

 

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Try applying the 4 GB Patch to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Region Census\RegionCensus.exe".

It might be you'll want to move RegionCensus.exe to another, unprotected folder before patching, patch it there, and then move it back due to how Windoze doesn't like it when peeps go modifying things in restricted folders.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

38 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Try applying the 4 GB Patch to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Region Census\RegionCensus.exe".

It might be you'll want to move RegionCensus.exe to another, unprotected folder before patching, patch it there, and then move it back due to how Windoze doesn't like it when peeps go modifying things in restricted folders.

i tried that but it's still giving me the same error message 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Just now, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

i tried that but it's still giving me the same error message 

Grrr. That was my best hope for how to fix it.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

19 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Grrr. That was my best hope for how to fix it.

oh  i was wondering if it was probably a glitch with that specific city but im not sure. it always says it cant find ?Bakersfield but im not sure why it shows a question mark infront of the file name like that  

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

5 minutes ago, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

it always says it cant find ?Bakersfield but im not sure why it shows a question mark infront of the file name like that  

A test you could do is to make a copy of that city tile into the Downloads folder, open a new blank region, and import it. Then run Region Census on the test region and see if it still complains. If so, there there is something specific about that particular city tile which is tripping up Region Census. If not, then it is likely related to the size of the region.

I do recall back when ST had its own chat room and I used to hang out there a lot in 2016 that someone mentioned how Region Census could not handle overly large regions. (This was before we knew about the 4 GB Patch, but that didn't help for your situation anyhow.) I do recall them saying they used some other program to get the image of a very large region, but since Region Census was working for me I never made note of what that other program was.

Jump forward a few years and there is the:

but, I've no idea if that would get you what you need.

Hopefully someone else knows what the alternative program mentioned in 2016 is and can post a linky to it.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

51 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

A test you could do is to make a copy of that city tile into the Downloads folder, open a new blank region, and import it. Then run Region Census on the test region and see if it still complains. If so, there there is something specific about that particular city tile which is tripping up Region Census.

^this is actually exactly what happened when i tried importing the city into a different region. i got the same error when it was just the bakersfield city in a brand new region that i created when i tried opening it up in RegionCelcius. 

How would i fix that city? do i need to build it all over again or something?

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

16 minutes ago, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

How would i fix that city? do i need to build it all over again or something?

Anything I'd say at this point would be speculation.

However, if you would zip up just that particular city tile and send it to me (here or via PM) I could take a gander at it and see if I can figure out something which might help.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

12 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Anything I'd say at this point would be speculation.

However, if you would zip up just that particular city tile and send it to me (here or via PM) I could take a gander at it and see if I can figure out something which might help.

sorry this took so long but here's the download link to it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfhKB0veqJLMyQBR-J_Cb6d9qeyCt3rt/view?usp=sharing

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

42 minutes ago, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

sorry this took so long but here's the download link to it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfhKB0veqJLMyQBR-J_Cb6d9qeyCt3rt/view?usp=sharing

It wants me to sign in and I don't have a Google account. There may be a setting you can tweak or just use the free part of WeTransfer.com.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

On 2/19/2021 at 1:33 AM, CorinaMarie said:

It wants me to sign in and I don't have a Google account. There may be a setting you can tweak or just use the free part of WeTransfer.com.

oops, sorry about that, i fixed the link to it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfhKB0veqJLMyQBR-J_Cb6d9qeyCt3rt/view?usp=sharing

it shouldn't ask you to sign in. 

im not sure if it's an error with the city it's self. i feel like it's that the region is so large it isn't working. idk though. 

srry it took me so long to get back to this. 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

On 8/9/2022 at 3:18 AM, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

srry it took me so long to get back to this.

No worries. I sort of went missing for a couple of years myself so I'm only now getting caught up with old posts.

It downloaded just fine this time and I extracted the city tile from the .rar. The trouble now for me is I don't have the game or any of my tools. Still, I'm bumping this to see if you pop in and if so, I'm sure we can get some help to investigate.

[CaptCity 4,915]

Sorry for butting in here, but just in case anyone comes across this again...

I went ahead and tried the attached city above, and yes, it gave me the same error message when I tried to load it into Region Census after importing it into my game. Because of the question mark thingy in the name (and on a whim...  ), I used the WhereRUFrom cheat to rename it 'Bakersfield'. After that, it opened fine in Region Census. Hmmm... It is also odd that after doing all that, I tried copy/pasting the two files togehter into the same location to see if the names were somehow different. The renamed file pasted without an message about overwriting an existing file. I guess there was a fluke with something in the name.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Excellent work, @CaptCity.

I couldn't look into it myself so you've solved it and should they ever pop back in, they'll have a good answer.

[Joe_Winko_From_YouTube 18]

On 7/8/2024 at 8:49 PM, CaptCity said:

Sorry for butting in here, but just in case anyone comes across this again...

I went ahead and tried the attached city above, and yes, it gave me the same error message when I tried to load it into Region Census after importing it into my game. Because of the question mark thingy in the name (and on a whim...  ), I used the WhereRUFrom cheat to rename it 'Bakersfield'. After that, it opened fine in Region Census. Hmmm... It is also odd that after doing all that, I tried copy/pasting the two files togehter into the same location to see if the names were somehow different. The renamed file pasted without an message about overwriting an existing file. I guess there was a fluke with something in the name.

 

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH! 😁😁😁

I seriously thought I would Never get this fixed! 🤣😂🤣 BUT YOU DID IT!  😁😁😁
I was trying to figure that out for the longest because I wanted to take an updated picture of my SimCity 4 region I have been building on since April of 2017, called THE UNITED STATES OF JOE WINKO! I recently got back into SimCity 4 & this is what I have of it so far! 😁😁😁 I was able to take this picture thanks to all of your help! 😁😁😁

It blows my mind how I been adding to that region & building on it since April 26th 2017 (more than 7 whole years) but I'm more suprised that I haven't filled it up yet. I recently just got back into SimCity 4 but my goal is to have that whole region filled up before year 2025 is over so I can move on to filling up more regions 😁 such as the ones shapped like South America & Africa & Europe & maybe even Austrialia 😁😁😁 I haven't found one for Asia yet but hopefully someone creates one! 😁😁😁
Remind me to make a post about my United States of Joe Winko region with pictures from each of the cities too! I made TONS of custom SimCity 4 content that I want to show off also 😝 

But again, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP!
& thanks so much to everyone else who helped also! 😁😁😁

P.S.

incase you're all wondering, the total residental population for The United States of Joe Winko so far is 8,929,067 😁 back when I first started building it in year 2017, my goal was to make every city as populated as possible but recently, I became more interested in making cute little small towns here & there 😁 you'll be surprised how many sims can fit with low desnsity residental zoning 🤣

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

5 hours ago, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH! 😁😁😁

Woot! I'm glad you came back to get Capt's solution.

 

5 hours ago, Joe_Winko_From_YouTube said:

I became more interested in making cute little small towns here & there 😁

These are the ones I'll be waiting to see.

[Null 45 3,114]

On 7/8/2024 at 6:49 PM, CaptCity said:

Hmmm... It is also odd that after doing all that, I tried copy/pasting the two files togehter into the same location to see if the names were somehow different. The renamed file pasted without an message about overwriting an existing file. I guess there was a fluke with something in the name.

The city file name contains a UTF-8 byte order character before the B in Bakersfield. No idea why SC4 would insert that character, perhaps its is a quirk of the game's string format conversion code.

Technical Details

SC4 uses UTF-8 as its internal string format, but unless you are using Windows 98 it is converting that UTF-8 string to UTF-16 whenever it needs to pass the file path to Windows. The UTF-16 APIs handle that character without issue, but it cannot be displayed in Windows Explorer. If you try to rename the file and hit backspace after placing the cursor before the B in Bakersfield, you will notice the the first backspace doesn't appear to do anything. It is removing that invisible UTF-8 byte order character.

Based on the error message, I am guessing that Region Census is not calling the UTF-16 versions of the Windows API. The non-UTF-16 (ANSI) APIs have a default behavior of converting any unrecognized character to a question mark, which would create a file path that doesn't exist on disk.