Unable to 'exit to region' - the game crashes instead.

[poshbakerloo 186]

When I exit a city to the region, most of the time the game crashes instead. I've tried saving separately and then exit without saving, I've tried save and exit but it doesn't make a difference. Its frustrating as I often swap between map tiles but now I have to reload the whole game each time. If I save and exit the game still saves, but then fails to load and just crashes.

[rsc204 21,836]

Is this problem happening with all cities or just selected ones?, this is something I've had happen and it seems to be some sort of file corruption. Once a save file is doing this, there is no way I am aware of to fix it, if you have one restore from a backup.

SC4's saving process is pretty intensive and won't like other running Apps interfering by taking away resources whilst it is happening. Similarly switching focus whilst saving is known to cause problems and so are using either the Save and Exit to Region or Save and Quit options. I have this mod which disables those options so you don't accidentally do it, much safer to use CTRL + S to save, the Exit/Quit without saving. Since I learned this, I never had a repeat of the problem personally.

[poshbakerloo 186]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Is this problem happening with all cities or just selected ones?, this is something I've had happen and it seems to be some sort of file corruption. Once a save file is doing this, there is no way I am aware of to fix it, if you have one restore from a backup.

SC4's saving process is pretty intensive and won't like other running Apps interfering by taking away resources whilst it is happening. Similarly switching focus whilst saving is known to cause problems and so are using either the Save and Exit to Region or Save and Quit options. I have this mod which disables those options so you don't accidentally do it, much safer to use CTRL + S to save, the Exit/Quit without saving. Since I learned this, I never had a repeat of the problem personally.

It happens with most map tiles but not all, I do generally save and then exit to region but it just crashes each time (and sometimes it might crash during the save urgh)

[rsc204 21,836]

It won’t necessarily affect all tiles, but the more objects in a city then the more complicated the saving process becomes. As such, it’s really important to be careful and try to avoid the problem in the first place, there is no cure only prevention.

Bear in mind, the last part of the save process is taking the screenshot. So far as we can determine the issue happens when the save process is still busy but it tries to take said screenshot and it can corrupt the save data. If that happens, subsequent saves can no longer create the screenshot because that area of the save is corrupted somehow. Which is why when leaving the city the game will crash, even if you save beforehand and just exit to region. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,061]

On 4/17/2023 at 11:45 AM, rsc204 said:

Bear in mind, the last part of the save process is taking the screenshot. So far as we can determine the issue happens when the save process is still busy but it tries to take said screenshot and it can corrupt the save data. If that happens, subsequent saves can no longer create the screenshot because that area of the save is corrupted somehow.

I can attest that @poshbakerloo, because this is exactly what's been happening to some of my cities. In various situations, which I believe might have involved background programs interfere with the save, I had blank, green city tiles appear rather than actual region view cities. However, I have never (and hope not to) got to the point where any of my cities would cause an actual CTD.

[poshbakerloo 186]

UPDATE: I made a new region, and tried to just save and then exit to region without saving and it still crashes! The region loads normally when I start the game I just can't get back to it to swap map tiles  

[Ulisse Wolf 4,426]

20 minutes ago, poshbakerloo said:

UPDATE: I made a new region, and tried to just save and then exit to region without saving and it still crashes! The region loads normally when I start the game I just can't get back to it to swap map tiles  

First check if any antivirus software you are using is causing interference.

Make sure you have disabled "Controlled Folder Access" which causes problems with SC4.  This option can be found in Windows Security -> Virsu and Threat Protection -> Ransomware Protection

Make sure you have set SC4 in hardware rendering (Directx). You can run this guide on how to set SC4 correctly

If you are using a lot of mods then there may be some mod that is causing this problem. Remove the mods and enter the mods one by one to check which mod is causing this problem.

 

[poshbakerloo 186]

On 11/06/2023 at 12:43 PM, Ulisse Wolf said:

First check if any antivirus software you are using is causing interference.

Make sure you have disabled "Controlled Folder Access" which causes problems with SC4.  This option can be found in Windows Security -> Virsu and Threat Protection -> Ransomware Protection

Make sure you have set SC4 in hardware rendering (Directx). You can run this guide on how to set SC4 correctly

If you are using a lot of mods then there may be some mod that is causing this problem. Remove the mods and enter the mods one by one to check which mod is causing this problem.

 

I tried a smaller region and that seems to be fine... only the large region crashes hmmm although it also seems to crash when I save, but is fine when I 'quick save'

[Odainsaker 2,135]

I have been having some crashes lately in my new region of Greater Catania as I try to render Mount Etna, where, after the "Save City" function, choosing to "Exit to Region" and then the "Exit Without Save" button option leads to an eventual crash.  Restarting the game found that the city and thumbnail saved and the city was still loadable and playable.  Subsequently exiting to region, however, again resulted in a crash.

After some testing as a number of my regions were increasingly being affected by this I narrowed the problem to having a recently installed NAM 47 in my plugins.  Actually, the issue probably isn't really NAM itself, but in the resulting new size of my loaded plugins, which the latest full NAM installation had significantly increased.  Additionally, my region of Greater Catania is 31x52 large cities, which creates a heavy region.  What I believed has happened is that during the Exit to Region process, my currently loaded city with its plugins including NAM is momentarily still in memory while the game is simultaneously loading my giant region into memory, and at this point in the process a memory limit is reached and the game crashes.  I was always teetering at the edge, and the increased NAM filesize happened to push me over it.

After taking the largest simulation item out of my plugins, NAM, I can again use the "Exit to Region" options with ease, and even dare to use the dangerous "Save and Exit to Region" button without issue.  However, I can't really leave out NAM, so I'll personally have to juggle some other plugin and region options to keep the whole setup working, perhaps by first testing out the no RHW options or NAM Lite.

For quick numbers in my case, my Greater Catania region view when loaded has SimCity.exe using ~3,200,000 K of memory, while the default tutorial region only uses ~170,000 K.  An underdeveloped large city from this region with full NAM in plugins loads using a max of ~1,720,000 K of memory before settling at ~870,000 K when finally loaded.  The same undeveloped large city but without NAM in plugins, or even with NAM replaced by an equivalent filesize of non-simulation plugins, steadily loads using only ~290,000 K of memory.  I have noticed that when loading a city from region view the memory usage suddenly and significantly drops to minimum on the "Start New City" command and builds up as the city is then loaded, but, when using the "Exit to Region" command, the memory usage instead builds upon that already in use by the currently loaded city.  On screen when loading a city, the region view gives way to a placeholder Loading New City screen, but, when exiting a city back to region view, the full city view remains on screen as the region view is being loaded.  Maxis probably did this to streamline the Save and Exit to Region options, but it makes a memory bottleneck.  If this observed behavior is indeed what is happening, then a SimCity.exe that already has 870,000 K tied up in a currently loaded city view as it is gathering some 3,200,000 K for a region view will likely hit the 32-bit 4 GB limit and crash.

Hence, we might here have to consider not only interference from background programs, but also how large are your loaded plugins and how large is your loading region and if those combined have exceeded the memory allowances of even the 4 GB patch when exiting to region.  I suspect this is actually a problem for many more people, but because our plugin, city, and region sizes are all radically variable, the threshold where this issue might occur with also be different for everyone, and many players may not even reach this threshold.  I just happened to hit it here because my tested region is so extremely large that there was little leeway in plugins, of which NAM happened to have the largest part, and the masochist in me is whispering to just learn to quit after each save as a caveat for playing such a large region.  Others might have smaller regions, but heavier cities and plugins in their mix.

  Edited July 3, 2023 by Odainsaker  

[TheMurderousCricket 5,061]

Your avatar demonstrates your feelings about this entire issue pretty well! 

In my case, I had some problems with my cities being saved ok but being rendered as blank tiles. Opening the cities again proved, time and again, that they are saved correctly.

In my case, playing in full screen rather than window mode was what helped and holds so far. I am, kind of, a proponent of external programs' interference as this is somehow more likely when playing in anything but fullscreen.

[Propfam 2,293]

On 7/2/2023 at 12:23 PM, Odainsaker said:

I have been having some crashes lately in my new region of Greater Catania as I try to render Mount Etna, where, after the "Save City" function, choosing to "Exit to Region" and then the "Exit Without Save" button option leads to an eventual crash.  Restarting the game found that the city and thumbnail saved and the city was still loadable and playable.  Subsequently exiting to region, however, again resulted in a crash.

After some testing as a number of my regions were increasingly being affected by this I narrowed the problem to having a recently installed NAM 47 in my plugins.  Actually, the issue probably isn't really NAM itself, but in the resulting new size of my loaded plugins, which the latest full NAM installation had significantly increased.  Additionally, my region of Greater Catania is 31x52 large cities, which creates a heavy region.  What I believed has happened is that during the Exit to Region process, my currently loaded city with its plugins including NAM is momentarily still in memory while the game is simultaneously loading my giant region into memory, and at this point in the process a memory limit is reached and the game crashes.  I was always teetering at the edge, and the increased NAM filesize happened to push me over it.

After taking the largest simulation item out of my plugins, NAM, I can again use the "Exit to Region" options with ease, and even dare to use the dangerous "Save and Exit to Region" button without issue.  However, I can't really leave out NAM, so I'll personally have to juggle some other plugin and region options to keep the whole setup working, perhaps by first testing out the no RHW options or NAM Lite.

For quick numbers in my case, my Greater Catania region view when loaded has SimCity.exe using ~3,200,000 K of memory, while the default tutorial region only uses ~170,000 K.  An underdeveloped large city from this region with full NAM in plugins loads using a max of ~1,720,000 K of memory before settling at ~870,000 K when finally loaded.  The same undeveloped large city but without NAM in plugins, or even with NAM replaced by an equivalent filesize of non-simulation plugins, steadily loads using only ~290,000 K of memory.  I have noticed that when loading a city from region view the memory usage suddenly and significantly drops to minimum on the "Start New City" command and builds up as the city is then loaded, but, when using the "Exit to Region" command, the memory usage instead builds upon that already in use by the currently loaded city.  On screen when loading a city, the region view gives way to a placeholder Loading New City screen, but, when exiting a city back to region view, the full city view remains on screen as the region view is being loaded.  Maxis probably did this to streamline the Save and Exit to Region options, but it makes a memory bottleneck.  If this observed behavior is indeed what is happening, then a SimCity.exe that already has 870,000 K tied up in a currently loaded city view as it is gathering some 3,200,000 K for a region view will likely hit the 32-bit 4 GB limit and crash.

Hence, we might here have to consider not only interference from background programs, but also how large are your loaded plugins and how large is your loading region and if those combined have exceeded the memory allowances of even the 4 GB patch when exiting to region.  I suspect this is actually a problem for many more people, but because our plugin, city, and region sizes are all radically variable, the threshold where this issue might occur with also be different for everyone, and many players may not even reach this threshold.  I just happened to hit it here because my tested region is so extremely large that there was little leeway in plugins, of which NAM happened to have the largest part, and the masochist in me is whispering to just learn to quit after each save as a caveat for playing such a large region.  Others might have smaller regions, but heavier cities and plugins in their mix.

@Null 45, I don't know if I have sent this issue already or not. But, can you make this type of fix? Not necessarily the 4 gig patch (tho it's quite interesting), but better exit-to-region system.