Lazarou Monkey Terror

Right, this is getting me nowhere I feel so I'm going to try and install every mod I want from this list https://sites.google.com/site/sc4modds/ and see how I go from there. It's pretty comprehensive so I'm hoping will restore much of my previous version's playability while installing everything where it should be pre-Apocalypse (that's what I'm calling it now!) Once that's out the way I can get set on filling in all those brown boxes I'm bound to find.

If a city CTD without any plugins in the folder does that mean the fault lies elsewhere? I've tried loading with only one folder (S) and that crashed my big city and then I've tried loading with no plugins and I get a CTD. Does this rule out a plugin conflict or am I getting ahead of myself? This was my last exception report with no plugins. Does this tell us anything? Exception time: 11/17/2013, at 20:55:11. Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION. Current thread ID: 12328 (0x00003028). Version information: Application/module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe Application/module version name: SimCity 4 Application/module version: 1.1.641.0 System version: Windows NT 5.1 System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 1024 Megabytes free. Exception module: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe. Exception address: 0x006e94ef. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x002e24ef. Registers EAX: 00000000 EBX: 0000000e ECX: 00000001 EDX: 14a31d64 ESI: 14a33d94 EDI: 157ff274 CS:EIP: 0023:006e94ef SS:ESP: 002b:0018f670 EBP:0000001f DS:002b ES:002b FS:0053 GS:002b Flags: 00210287

The old plugin folder didn't work either, but I think it was only from a few days ago. I'm going to try the Binary Method now. First folders 0-9 to M.

OK, the ordering of the plugins in nice tidy alphabetical folders didn't work. I'm now going to try the old plugins folder I found.

I should clear my plugin folders of miscellaneous junk like HTML files, pdfs, installer files shouldn't I? That just upsets SC4 doesn't it?

Thanks. I haven't found that folder but I have found an old folder full of plugins where it shouldn't be which could be a time capsule of plugins from when SC4 worked (Hooray for unorganised me!) I shall tidy up my existing plugins folder into folders of alphabetical order, see how that works and then try this old plugins folder. Cheers for all your suggestions folks!

These are all good ideas and to be honest my plugins folder is as badly organised as my home! As far as I'm aware I've not deleted any plugins but if they were in a different place within the main folder would that be the reason why SC4 can't find them and freaks out? Would it be wise off me to sort all my plugins into folders, perhaps alphabetically as Nonny Mouse suggested, I have a lot of plugin files unpenned so to speak. Should I put them into folders and make things tidy?

In the meantime and still with no plugins in my folder I got a CTD after reconciling a tile with some transport network elements in it. Is this particular CTD be caused by a :LACK of plugins? Here is the truncated exception report, cheers. Exception time: 11/16/2013, at 17:44:12. Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION. Current thread ID: 3824 (0x00000ef0). Version information: Application/module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe Application/module version name: SimCity 4 Application/module version: 1.1.641.0 System version: Windows NT 5.1 System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 1024 Megabytes free. Exception module: C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe. Exception address: 0x006b126c. Section:Offset: 0x01:0x002aa26c. Registers EAX: 0000213f EBX: 00000000 ECX: 4b40003f EDX: 0000003b ESI: 127b5268 EDI: 09239214 CS:EIP: 0023:006b126c SS:ESP: 002b:0018fbec EBP:136051c4 DS:002b ES:002b FS:0053 GS:002b Flags: 00210202

Sadly I was cocky before I ran Cleanitol and didn't backup. Would I be wise to try the Binary method of plugin reinstall? Why would this effect my two largest cities but not the others? Is it because the larger the city the more chance there is of the errant plugin?

Yes please... Not very likely even if I had the source. Yes, I am a C++ programmer, but learning the intimate details of someone else's code is more than I care to tackle these days. There is much more to this than meets the eye: Bug fixes: Have to find them first. This game is positively set up to avoid trace routines. Great care must be taken to do nothing that invalidates existing custom content. Since there are somewhere around a million mods, the testing is really an NP complete problem and I am already 76 years old. Not likely to live to finish even the early stages of this. If the game were switched to 64-bit decor (it is 32) and set up for multitasking, it would still eat processors when the universe of discourse became large. It would be incumbent on anyone doing the work to create a configurable makefile to compile the program for multiple platforms. Among other things that means fixing the OpenGL renderer. I can see no reason to continue to support only windoze. Multiple persons cannot work on this. You can't get a baby in one month by throwing 9 women at it. In my experience the length of a programming project is directly proportional to the cube of the number of people working on it. The game has to be as fast as possible because of the CPU usage curves. I am not sure that it can be made crash proof using the standard mechanism (try ... catch) because of the overhead for this. The last games work I did was in the late 1970s when I helped a programmer fix a chess program (treefrog) that actually won at least one game against big blue. The International Brotherhood of Magicians then modified their program to eliminate this possibility. I am sadly out of practice, and I've also been retired from active programming work since 1990. So you see, there is more to this than most people would care to tackle unless they were under 25 years of age and not very experienced in the ways of the world. Fair play to you though, you are a wise and helpful old moose and I hold out some hope that with the knowledge base and dedicated interest flying around the Sim City 4 community some day we'll gather enough money and brains to build our own custom version of SC4!