city corrupted, possible connections to NAM's GLR

[Daedalus40]

I built a large city that took roughly 3 hours to set up in my city, I got everything (all the growing buildings) started up, saved it, saved in less than 15 seconds, everything going smooth. So I've decided to set up the Ground Light Railroad in my city, which took another half hour. Saw it in action, everything fine, decided to save it, I waited roughly one minute, then the game exits out on me without explanation. I restart Sim City 4 and...



I'm very certain it has something to do with the NAM's GLR, because it's the first time I've installed a GLR in a city, and the first time this ended up happening to me. This is a major bug you're looking at.

[Tarkus]

The GLR has been a part of the NAM for about 4-5 years by hundreds of thousands of users, with no reports of it corrupting cities in the manner you're describing.  The puzzle-piece-based version does have a well-documented propensity to be an ingredient in occasional crashes when Transit-Enabled (TE) Lots are hovered over top of the GLR pieces, but nothing like this.

Most likely, it's something unique to your situation with your Plugins folder.  A few questions to help diagnose things:

-Did you install any other Plugins around the time you installed the NAM?
-Have you been doing anything involving tree controllers or terrain mods as of late?
-Did you modify anything in the folder for the Region itself (such as the config.bmp file)?
-Did you do any sort of Terraformer work recently?
-Are you using the Draggable GLR or the puzzle-piece-based GLR?  (The Draggable GLR is highly recommended because of the aforementioned issue with TE Lots).


-Alex

[Daedalus40]

-Did you install any other Plugins around the time you installed the NAM?

I had a few lots installed plus sunken highway walls, but the walls weren't used in the city in question.

-Have you been doing anything involving tree controllers or terrain mods as of late?

Installed Meadowshire terrain mods roughly two weeks ago.

-Did you modify anything in the folder for the Region itself (such as the config.bmp file)?

No

-Did you do any sort of Terraformer work recently?

The map was entirely grayscale, so no.

-Are you using the Draggable GLR or the puzzle-piece-based GLR?  (The Draggable GLR is highly recommended because of the aforementioned issue with TE Lots).

I used a combination of both, involving avenue/GLR combos.

[Yermam]

If I'm not mistaken, but when a city is saving and the game crashes, does that not corrupt the city file, making a hole in the region?  If that is the case, you probably just got unlucky that SC4's propensity to crash hit at the wrong time.

[Daedalus40]

If I'm not mistaken, but when a city is saving and the game crashes, does that not corrupt the city file, making a hole in the region?  If that is the case, you probably just got unlucky that SC4's propensity to crash hit at the wrong time.

I was waiting a minute for the thing to save before it crashed, so I doubt luck had anything to do with it.

[HappyDays]

I doubt, somewhat strongly, it is the plug-ins you describe. To repeat what Tarkus said, that particular set of plug-ins has been used by many people over the course of many years, and a bug in them in recent versions would have at least already been found. Onto the crash itself...

This has happened to me on occasion. The causes of my crashes were due to my dual core processor; setting the game to use only one core fixed it. I'm not saying this is the cause of your crashed, but it is possible as I don't know anything beyond the crash itself.

However, these crashes are not limited to the particular use of a processor. It could be memory considerations, as low available memory can cause SC4 to crash when saving. It could be a background program doing something, such as a virus scanner.

A badly fragmented hard drive, virus infected computer, extremely full hard drive, and other factors that destabilize the computer in general can also affect SC4.

[Daedalus40]

It happened again! Crashed during my save. This time I've refrained from using 3rd party objects aside from the terrain mod itself, but the three weeks I've had the terrain mod I haven't had a problem.

UPDATE: I am relieved to say I was still able to access my city after the save crash this time, but I'm afraid to save again. Any thoughts please?

[SC4BOY]

Run the game fullscreen, NEVER switch windows (or alt-tab out) especially when saving, turn off any background programs running before running SC4, pause SC4 before saving and wait a few seconds after pause before the "save".

[Daedalus40]

My anti-virus does run in the background a lot, probably consuming more processor then it needs to be. So I started disabling it for the times I boot up Sim City 4. Also being more cautious with the pausing and everything, zooming in as close as possible before saving and turning off day & night mode, haven't had anymore problems for now. I can't let my guard down yet however.

Anyways, thanks for the considerable advice.

[Scrufuss]

Run the game fullscreen, NEVER switch windows (or alt-tab out) especially when saving, turn off any background programs running before running SC4, pause SC4 before saving and wait a few seconds after pause before the "save".

Ahm.
Oops.

[Blue Lightning]

Running SC4 windowed is perfectly fine, really.

Here's my protip: Don't do anything while saving. At best you'll abort the region thumbnail render and get a flat square (city is fine though) and at worst you'll lose the city (what happened here). And back up your save files regularly.

[Scrufuss]

Running SC4 windowed is perfectly fine, really.

Here's my protip: Don't do anything while saving. At best you'll abort the region thumbnail render and get a flat square (city is fine though) and at worst you'll lose the city (what happened here). And back up your save files regularly.

Ive been getting that big green square off and on and I figure it may be because that my PC is doing other things but its got the cpu for it. Simcity engine is just plain lazy... I back up my regions folder about every other day. IF I play it
I just read about the Prop Pox.. Didn't know Sims could get the pox..  (tooo many jokes can be made on that one...)

[mrbisonm]

Just to mention, I'm not a genius of crashes at all, but...
Maybe nothing to do with your situation, but when I had crashes during saving, I changed the method of saving from *Saving and exit to region* or *Saving and exit the game* to simply *Saving* and then exit to either the region or the game. That was 3 years ago and it never crashed again on saving since.
Sometimes it is the city itself that is corrupted, usually happening with me. I always have a backup citytile of the one I am playing with and that I saved the last time I finished playing in it available in case that happens, so I can change it.

Good luck

Fred