Hi fellow Simcitiers,
Well last night I hit Save and Exit to Region and the game bugged out and lo and behold a rip in the space time continuum sucked my city into another dimension. After several minutes of swearing, punching inanimate objects, cursing myself for not making backups and for believing that those monkeys at EA could program a reliable save system, I calmed down and hit the forums to see if their was a way to salvage my city. Everything seems to suggest that this a karmic learning experience and that nothing can be done. However I would like to ask you guys with more technical experience for help because I think maybe, just maybe there is a way to get my city back.
Ok first off its a hole with the city name floating above the abyss and is completely unclickable. However the city save file is still in the region folder at regular size (I think 1.5mb) and when I looked at the "last time modified" I'm pretty sure the time was before the apocalypse took place. Now I tried starting a new region and importing no dice (although the population registered). I then read In one of the many posts on this problem a guy vaguely describing how he recovered a city by opening it up in sc4terraformer and modifying it somehow. Just for laughs I downloaded the app and opened up my region and my city is there, no hole. So if it is possible can anyone elaborate on what this guy is saying. If I could just get the tile back with the landscaping I had done intact I would be beyond happy. Cheers
Here is the quote "I've had this same problem occur before. In fact, I have a continual variation where the last 1/8th of large city tiles don't save properly in the thumbnail (The city itself being perfectly fine).
As for when my city disappeared entirely, I've found that the city >IS< still there, intact (Too late in your case, but perhaps this will save someone else...). However, accessing it is a pain. What I did was open up my region in Terraformer (As it detected the city tile fine), unprotected that particular city tile, and made a very small alteration in the terrain. Saved it WITHOUT wiping out Mayor Mode (That confirmation is...tricky), opened up SimCity, and found a single pixel in the city tile I could click on. City loaded up, resaved, the city tile thumbnail reappeared in region view."