SimCity 4 crashes, removed plugins

[durbancic 9]

EDIT: added an exception report file 

Tuesday morning I installed some new (to me) plugins. I do not remember exactly which ones but I am pretty sure that they were some of these seawall plugins here:

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30868-stanley-seawalls/

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29045-modular-marina-addon/

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/28951-marina/

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/10897-peg-rtk3-recreational-style/

  Along with those plugins sc4pac also did a few other updates to:

- CAM universal commercial cap fix 2.0.0

- CAM colossus addon mod core 3.5.0

- null 45 advanced water management dll 1.0

I had already installed CAM 3.0.0 27 days ago and the game was working fine.

After I installed the plugins and sc4pac updated the above files the cities in my region would ctd after 1-4 or so minutes of being in it. Larger cities would crash quicker than smaller cities. So I uninstalled all the plugins that I added, thinking that they were causing a problem. However, ctd persists. So now I am wondering if one of the 3 updates above cause this, and if so, how do I remove them? Remove is not an option in that as I can tell, and I do not know if I can just delete the files.

Thank you

SimCity Exception Report 2026.01.07 23.27.43.txt

  Edited January 8 by durbancic  
added an exception report

[durbancic 9]

Ok, update.

I did all of the "performance and graphics critical mods to install". This did not affect the CTD.  After that I removed all 3 of those files that were updated:

- CAM universal commercial cap fix 2.0.0

- CAM colossus addon mod core 3.5.0

- null 45 advanced water management dll 1.0

and found that CAM colossus addon mod core 3.5.0 is the problem.  So I have now removed that from my plugins folder.   But what about going forward? What about needing to apply that updated file?   Also, my R demand is sky high now all the way to the top of the graph, along with IA demand as well. Would this have fixed it?

Also, can i safely play my cities?

Thank you for your help!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

5 hours ago, durbancic said:

and found that CAM colossus addon mod core 3.5.0 is the problem.  So I have now removed that from my plugins folder.   But what about going forward? What about needing to apply that updated file?   Also, my R demand is sky high now all the way to the top of the graph, along with IA demand as well. Would this have fixed it?

If you have removed CAM Core, then it is normal to have more bugs, since CAM cannot function without CAM Core. So you need to reinstall CAM Core.

If you have installed the Critical Fixes, then any possible CTD failures should be resolved.

 

 

[Geechan 9]

I'm also receiving a CTD when using the latest CAM in my cities. I have installed no other plugins outside the ones found in the Essential Fixes (including the 4 GB patch) page: all installed through sc4pac. I've isolated it to be a consistent problem with railways; whenever the game decides to spawn a rail automata, the game will immediately CTD. Removing CAM Core (3.5.0) resolves this issue for me as well, even though removing it is obviously not recommended. The current experimental core also does not resolve the issue for me, sadly.

 

Still looking for a solution.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

1 minute ago, Geechan said:

I'm also receiving a CTD when using the latest CAM in my cities. I have installed no other plugins outside the ones found in the Essential Fixes page: all installed through sc4pac. I've isolated it to be a consistent problem with railways; whenever the game decides to spawn a rail automata, the game will immediately CTD. Removing CAM Core (3.5.0) resolves this issue for me as well, even though removing it is obviously not recommended. The current experimental core also does not resolve the issue for me, sadly.

 

Still looking for a solution.

If the crash occurs with an Automata, then CAM Core is not the cause because it does not contain automata mod. Have you installed any Automata mods?

[Geechan 9]

7 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

If the crash occurs with an Automata, then CAM Core is not the cause because it does not contain automata mod. Have you installed any Automata mods?

I have double checked my plugins folder, and I only have all the plugins found in Essential/Critical Fixes, alongside CAM installed through sc4pac. No automata or transport plugins at all, so it makes the issue all the stranger. The crash very clearly goes away as soon as CAM has been uninstalled.

 

Anything I can do to help troubleshoot this further? I've attached my latest exception report just in case:

SimCity Exception Report 2026.01.09 00.13.44.txt

  Edited January 8 by Geechan  
Added exception report

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

The only solution I can think of right now is to use hardware rendering (DirectX) if you are using software rendering.

[Geechan 9]

I have gone ahead and done some more troubleshooting attempts. It should be noted that I'm on Linux running the game under Wine as well, using the GOG release. Was already running strictly under DirectX.

• 1) Started by fresh installing SimCity 4 to have a clean slate.
• 2) Tried installing only the very bare essentials (SC4GraphicsOptions, 4 GB patch) alongside CAM. Still crashes upon loading train automata, goes away when CAM is removed.
• 3) Tried using different networks outside rail. Elevated rail, subway, and monorail also crashes under the same circumstances.
• 4) I've tried multiple different Wine versions. Tried with/without dgvoodoo, standard DXVK, etc. All crash, sadly.
• 5) Using CAM legacy results in the the crash disappearing. It seems to be exclusive to something in CAM 3.0 onwards.

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

2 hours ago, Geechan said:

I have gone ahead and done some more troubleshooting attempts. It should be noted that I'm on Linux running the game under Wine as well, using the GOG release. Was already running strictly under DirectX.

• 1) Started by fresh installing SimCity 4 to have a clean slate.
• 2) Tried installing only the very bare essentials (SC4GraphicsOptions, 4 GB patch) alongside CAM. Still crashes upon loading train automata, goes away when CAM is removed.
• 3) Tried using different networks outside rail. Elevated rail, subway, and monorail also crashes under the same circumstances.
• 4) I've tried multiple different Wine versions. Tried with/without dgvoodoo, standard DXVK, etc. All crash, sadly.
• 5) Using CAM legacy results in the the crash disappearing. It seems to be exclusive to something in CAM 3.0 onwards.

 

I haven't encountered any problems on Windows, so it's difficult to diagnose the issue. 

If we want to solve the problem, then you need to test the CAM Core files individually to find the file that is causing the problem.

[memo 1,444]

I can replicate the issue, too. It seems to be caused by the CAM Lua controller. Any ideas?

There also seems to be the problem that no UDI missions show up, or at least no Train UDI (which should have been available in my test city).

This is my setup:

{
  "explicit": [
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod"
  ],
  "variants": {
    "CAM": "yes",
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod:version": "current",
    "CAM:universal-commercial-cap-fix:cap": "standard",
    "config:sc4-edition:edition": "Windows-digital"
  }
}

 

[Geechan 9]

13 minutes ago, memo said:

I can replicate the issue, too. It seems to be caused by the CAM Lua controller. Any ideas?

There also seems to be the problem that no UDI missions show up, or at least no Train UDI (which should have been available in my test city).

This is my setup:

{
  "explicit": [
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod"
  ],
  "variants": {
    "CAM": "yes",
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod:version": "current",
    "CAM:universal-commercial-cap-fix:cap": "standard",
    "config:sc4-edition:edition": "Windows-digital"
  }
}

 

Thanks for posting this. I can confirm on my end that the CAM Lua controller is responsible - removing it fixes the issue completely. I also notice the exact same problem with the UDI missions completely disappearing with the Lua controller active. This includes the car related missions.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

9 minutes ago, memo said:

I can replicate the issue, too. It seems to be caused by the CAM Lua controller. Any ideas?

There also seems to be the problem that no UDI missions show up, or at least no Train UDI (which should have been available in my test city).

This is my setup:

{
  "explicit": [
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod"
  ],
  "variants": {
    "CAM": "yes",
    "CAM:colossus-addon-mod:version": "current",
    "CAM:universal-commercial-cap-fix:cap": "standard",
    "config:sc4-edition:edition": "Windows-digital"
  }
}

 

The only change in the LUA Controller is the addition of the OG counter table. 

I encountered an error when loading a LUA script file because the IIDs for LUA files are particular. 

But this is the first time this error has caused a CTD on non-Windows systems.

CAM_LUA_Controller.dat

[Geechan 9]

2 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The only change in the LUA Controller is the addition of the OG counter table. 

I encountered an error when loading a LUA script file because the IIDs for LUA files are particular. 

But this is the first time this error has caused a CTD on non-Windows systems.

CAM_LUA_Controller.dat

I replaced the CAM Lua controller with the one you've attached, and the CTD issue has been resolved for me. Thank you for helping troubleshoot. I guess it has to do with the counter table...

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

30 minutes ago, memo said:

There also seems to be the problem that no UDI missions show up, or at least no Train UDI (which should have been available in my test city).

 

37 minutes ago, Geechan said:

I also notice the exact same problem with the UDI missions completely disappearing with the Lua controller active.

Try this version

 

CAM_LUA_Controller.dat

[Geechan 9]

11 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

 

Try this version

 

CAM_LUA_Controller.dat

Can confirm this resolves both UDI missions disappearing and the CTD.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

36 minutes ago, Geechan said:

Can confirm this resolves both UDI missions disappearing and the CTD.

Perfect. I have uploaded the corrections to versions 3.5.1 and 4032.0801 for CAM Core Experimental.

It is already available for manual users, while SC4Pac users will have to wait a few days for the update. (Core Experimental is already available for download in SC4pac)

[durbancic 9]

Thank you Geechan and Ulisse Wolf for diagnosing this today. I have been at work and am excited to try this later when I get home. I can just use that 2nd file you uploaded, correct?

Also, another question. After these files updated it changed the demand in my city as I mentioned above. All R demand is at the top top top of the screen, as is IA. Like where I feel like I could zone only that for days and it would never budge. Any thoughts on this? Or maybe putting the updated CAM core file will help this?

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

3 minutes ago, durbancic said:

Or maybe putting the updated CAM core file will help this?

Have you installed CAM in an already developed region?

[durbancic 9]

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Have you installed CAM in an already developed region?

Yes. I installed CAM 3.0.0  28 days ago and after that I started the region I am currently working on. Tuesday is when there was an update to CAM core 3.5.0 that has caused these problems.  I do not know if there was a CAM core file installed initially when I installed CAM through sc4pac?

I updated to 3.5.1 through sc4pac and my cities and regions seemed to run fine. The demand is more normal now.  There is one thing that I still notice though. It is long and tedious to make cities grow. On a large square I am using a variety of things in my city to try and break demand caps. I have many hours played on this city and I am only at 35,000 residents. There is a fair amount of water in the city, but I probably have 33% of the map covered. I have a picture attached of the city. I remember when I was working on a couple cities pre CAM I was able to grow cities quickly, larger buildings would pop up, etc.   Is this the intended behavior of the game now? This particular city has 35,700 R, 15,800 C and 18,000 I. Any tips for growing cities quicker?

 

Thank you! 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

11 hours ago, durbancic said:

Yes. I installed CAM 3.0.0  28 days ago and after that I started the region I am currently working on. Tuesday is when there was an update to CAM core 3.5.0 that has caused these problems.  I do not know if there was a CAM core file installed initially when I installed CAM through sc4pac?

I updated to 3.5.1 through sc4pac and my cities and regions seemed to run fine. The demand is more normal now.  There is one thing that I still notice though. It is long and tedious to make cities grow. On a large square I am using a variety of things in my city to try and break demand caps. I have many hours played on this city and I am only at 35,000 residents. There is a fair amount of water in the city, but I probably have 33% of the map covered. I have a picture attached of the city. I remember when I was working on a couple cities pre CAM I was able to grow cities quickly, larger buildings would pop up, etc.   Is this the intended behavior of the game now? This particular city has 35,700 R, 15,800 C and 18,000 I. Any tips for growing cities quicker?

 

Thank you! 

CAM is pushing for regional development, so if you want to boost the city's development, you also need to develop the neighboring cities.

[memo 1,444]

@Ulisse Wolf Please give us a Post-Mortem of what the issue was.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

3 hours ago, memo said:

@Ulisse Wolf Please give us a Post-Mortem of what the issue was.

The crash issue is related to the fact that when LUA tables are generated for counting Occupant Groups, they must have an IID lower than 0x4a5e8f3f. The LUA file had an IID higher than this and caused crashes. 

The problem does not cause a crash on Windows systems, so the SC4 Lua Extensions log generates the error but the game continues to run normally. However, it appears that on Linux systems, the error causes the CTD.

For UDI missions, a code reset command must be inserted before the mission code where a parameter has been modified. 

[Kel9509 1,363]

3 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The problem does not cause a crash on Windows systems, so the SC4 Lua Extensions log generates the error but the game continues to run normally. However, it appears that on Linux systems, the error causes the CTD.

I have been holding off on releasing my Department of Education lot/query due to this issue so I'm glad you reported a post-mortem.  As I saw that this had something to do with the custom Occupant Group tables, I figured I'd wait until I understood what caused the crash-to-desktop.

@CorinaMarie, I had mentioned that I'd probably change the IID of your file you provided to me to something different.  Right now your LUA file has a TGI of ca63e2a3-4a5e8f3f-f8b445be.  I don't have any reported errors in SC4LuaExtensions.log (except, ironically enough, some Simgoober entry that's failing to count something called "SG_DentistCount").  But would I still need to edit the TGI of your file, specifically the "f8b445be" portion, to something else?  I'm not sure if that's "lower" or "higher" than what Ulisse Wolf reported.  The group ID is the same: 0x4a5e8f3f.  

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

But would I still need to edit the TGI of your file, specifically the "f8b445be" portion, to something else?  I'm not sure if that's "lower" or "higher" than what Ulisse Wolf reported.

The "f8b445be" is way higher so if you need it to be less than the reported threshold you could easily just change the first hex digit to 0 or 1 or 2 or 3. I'd prolly go with: "38b445be".

[Kel9509 1,363]

11 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The "f8b445be" is way higher so if you need it to be less than the reported threshold you could easily just change the first hex digit to 0 or 1 or 2 or 3. I'd prolly go with: "38b445be".

That's what I thought.  But I don't get any errors reported in the SC4LuaExtensions.log file.  I wonder if @Ulisse Wolf was referring to the Group Instance instead?  I'll lower the IID just in case anyway but I'm still curious about this.  The BSC Essentials edits the tracked buildings in their LUA file with a TGI of  ca63e2a3-4a5e8f3f-ffb0a8d0.  You noted it before also.

So I'm wondering if the CAM issue was that the Group ID was incorrect.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

7 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I wonder if @Ulisse Wolf was referring to the Group Instance instead? 

While I've been reading all the posts in forums I follow, I confess I'm not really mentally processing it all very well right now. (RL is being extra difficult.) So my answer was just about where the original was a hex value higher and what it need to be made lower.

For the full integration part, I'll leave that to Ulisse Wolf to work with you.  

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

17 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

So I'm wondering if the CAM issue was that the Group ID was incorrect.

No. GID is correct, while IID was incorrect because in the original version it was 0xd0e84BE4. In fact, the log showed that the LUA file could not find _constants.lua.

By setting IID to 0x0431f16d, the system was able to load the table and did not generate the error where _constants.lua was not found.

I assume that LUA files have specific IIDs because with some IIDs the game ignores these LUA files and does not load them. This happened to me several times when I tested the economic simulator for importing and exporting resources.  Same thing with Ticket news

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

I assume that LUA files have specific IIDs because with some IIDs the game ignores these LUA files and does not load them. This happened to me several times when I tested the economic simulator for importing and exporting resources.  Same thing with Ticket news

AFAIK the Lua system uses package ids to determine the order that Lua files are loaded, with lower numbers loading first. It may also require the presence of the package id for mod Lua files.

The Maxis scripts only used package ids for the retail release, and all their package scripts do is setup some Lua state for the retail release then load and parse their Lua files by name using the dofile command. The reason all of the main Maxis Lua scripts use IIDs with the 0xFFAABBCC format is that the 0xAABBCC portion is the hashed script file name, the game's modified dofile command hashes the file name to get the IID of the script it needs to load.

The hashed file name system should be usable by mod scripts, but I am not aware of any that do so. Probably due to it being a recent discovery, and the fact that using a higher package number would have the same effect.

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

By setting IID to 0x0431f16d, the system was able to load the table and did not generate the error where _constants.lua was not found.

You can force the game to load that file using the following line at the start of your script:

dofile("_constants.lua")

This is what the Maxis Lua files do for their script dependencies.

[durbancic 9]

23 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The crash issue is related to the fact that when LUA tables are generated for counting Occupant Groups, they must have an IID lower than 0x4a5e8f3f. The LUA file had an IID higher than this and caused crashes. 

The problem does not cause a crash on Windows systems, so the SC4 Lua Extensions log generates the error but the game continues to run normally. However, it appears that on Linux systems, the error causes the CTD.

For UDI missions, a code reset command must be inserted before the mission code where a parameter has been modified. 

I just wanted to mention that while Geechan was running on Linux, I am running mine on a windows 11 machine and was getting the CTD.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

8 minutes ago, durbancic said:

I just wanted to mention that while Geechan was running on Linux, I am running mine on a windows 11 machine and was getting the CTD.

Strange. I use Windows 11 and haven't encountered any CTDs.