Hi folks,
I see some similar topics in this section, so I'm sorry to bring this up again. I have a problem with a single city tile - it CTD's upon loading. The exception report gives me the dreaded ACCESS VIOLATION, which really isn't very helpful. I am not able to run the city, even with an empty plugins folder.
Before the problem occurred: I datpacked my plugins except the mods, NAM, essentials etc. I then laid out some RHWs across the region including the tile in question. Then I decided to switch terrain mod, because I couldn't find a HD water mod to go along with Orange's Pyrenean terrain. Doing that caused a couple of CTD's due to missing textures and a datpacked water mod. When that was sorted out, I put down a powerplant, hooha's parking lots, a blam coal-dock, some brt-whimps docks and a couple of pegs cdk-docks, Fukuda's large coal pile, some SG canals. Then i zoned some industry and commercial, saved, and started the time and then... CTD. I figured it must be the terrain mod or the water mod, so I've tried switching back and forth, but nothing seems to help. I also tried with no plugins, and with non-datpacked plugins, but alas, to no avail.
The neighbouring cities work just fine in any combination. However, I'm reluctant to play them before I get this sorted, so any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
turtle
First thing to do is to check the checksum. There must be a way...
Turtle, I feel your pain. Whenever this happens to any of us, it always amounts to hours, days, years, of life you simply can not get back. Allow me to share you my occurrences of CTD's during loading.
When I first started playing SC4, I did not realize that too much game alteration via DAT files can compromise stuff. caused crashes during loading, because somewhere something was incompatible. I can't help but wonder if DATpacker compromised whatever you were doing.
I had noticed, quitting a city that has been changed, not everything saved, exiting to region, then reloading the city you just were at, I have had CTD's during loading there. It seems they did not do a good job of undoing and restarting.
If the save is damaged, it simply won't work. The other lethal situation this game can cause is saving right before a crash, that can corrupt the file that next time it loads, it don't load proper.
If your save has Prop pox, then it is also is game saves getting corrupted, but rather then fully being broken, it can not load every lot item or T21 item that should of been saved, and no matter how many times you go back, not everything will be saved.
Turtle, because of the situation you have had, I myself have encountered, I have to back up my saves by making copies of the same city at different dates, so just in case, it gets corrupted later, there is the option of going back to an old save file.
I mean, there are just so many deadly natural disasters that can occur, that a city can get wiped out, and not saved, but it seems to get overlooked as there so much focus on all the innovation that
goes on.
When I got tired of looking at that blue grid in the background, I thought I could try altering it myself, boy was I mistaken. That caused so many crashes during city tile loading. I personally feel that the other problem is trying to do a city without the needed plugins will cause crashing, if two much stuff is missing.
So Turtle, for your sake, because you talked about swapping stuff in and out, I really hope this can be fixed, if not you have to start all the way over, but this is why on Windows, there are extracheats so it does not take as forever to rebuild a lost city.
Hi again,
Thanks for the replies Wiimeiser and j-dub - I appreciate it. However, since the problem occurred in mid-January, I've moved on since then and restarted the tile. Nevertheless, having a large (and old) plugin-folder, and though I take care to follow installation instructions and reading read-me's, I'm probably prone to having this problem again at some point.
@Wiimeiser: I'm not sure what checksum you are referring to. Could you be more specific?
@j-dub:
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
I can't help but wonder if DATpacker compromised whatever you were doing.
There's really no way I can refute this. But my instinct says this is not it.
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
I had noticed, quitting a city that has been changed, not everything saved, exiting to region, then reloading the city you just were at, I have had CTD's during loading there. It seems they did not do a good job of undoing and restarting.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that loading a city and playing for a while, then regretting and quitting
without saving, or that somehow it's possible to save, and then not all changes are saved? Either way, it's a pretty nasty problem.
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
If the save is damaged, it simply won't work. The other lethal situation this game can cause is saving right before a crash, that can corrupt the file that next time it loads, it don't load proper.
I believe this is what happened. For some reason I did something to crash the game, just as I started the time. Having saved just before crashing, I guess I'm out of luck. Thing is, the game would crash just after having loaded the city. So what I should do is find the reason for the crash in the first place.
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
If your save has Prop pox, then it is also is game saves getting corrupted, but rather then fully being broken, it can not load every lot item or T21 item that should of been saved, and no matter how many times you go back, not everything will be saved.
I checked the save in savegame explorer, and it checked negative on the prop pox.
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
Turtle, because of the situation you have had, I myself have encountered, I have to back up my saves by making copies of the same city at different dates, so just in case, it gets corrupted later, there is the option of going back to an old save file.
I know, this is good advice. My machine is not what it used to be, and I'm also suffering random crashes from hardware failures.
Quote from: j-dub on March 02, 2011, 03:01:02 PM
I mean, there are just so many deadly natural disasters that can occur, that a city can get wiped out, and not saved, but it seems to get overlooked as there so much focus on all the innovation that goes on.
When I got tired of looking at that blue grid in the background, I thought I could try altering it myself, boy was I mistaken. That caused so many crashes during city tile loading. I personally feel that the other problem is trying to do a city without the needed plugins will cause crashing, if two much stuff is missing.
So Turtle, for your sake, because you talked about swapping stuff in and out, I really hope this can be fixed, if not you have to start all the way over, but this is why on Windows, there are extracheats so it does not take as forever to rebuild a lost city.
I feel you here. Looking at the fantastic pictures people show off here, you don't really get a feel for the trouble and hard work that lies behind. Stability in the software is definetly needed when all these goodies comes out to all of us ordinary mortals. On the other hand you really want to try this stuff on your own.
J-dub, thanks for your words of comfort :) Luckily, it was a fairly new city.