CTD Caused by no tileset.

[joelyboy911]

In one particular city of mine, it would seem that somehow when I open the 'Architecture' menu, none of the 4 options (NY, Houston, Chicago or Euro) are selected. This is odd, considering that on most occasions when you have only one selected, it greys out to prevent you from de-selecting it.

So there is no tileset selected, but the city seems to be growing buildings from all sets.

When, however, I attempt to select one of the styles, the game crashes. The city is unharmed when I reopen it from the last save.

[cogeo]

Maybe try to change the "Build all styles at once/Change style every X years" setting before changing the style, the program might behave differently. If not, then try to decode the city file format and find where this setting is stored.

More specifically:
- Choose another (properly functioning) city, stop it from running, choose the Chicago style and save it.
- Exit the game and backup the city (better copy the whole region folder somewhere else).
- Run SC4 again, and re-open the city tile.
- Now set style to NY, and without moving the viewing position, rotating or zooming in/out, save and exit again.
- Repeat the procedure for the Houston and Euro styles.
- Now you should have 4 instances of your city, only differring in the selected style.
- Attempt to find where this information is stored (use the fc command-line utility with the /B option). It should be stored in a fixed position (offset) in the city file.
- Use a hex editor to fix the the affected city.

I don't know if this will work, but you can try it. Normally, as said above the city style should be stored in a fixed position. But this might not be the case, it might instead be in a compressed file (city files are dbpf files, just like plugins). In this case you should use the reader to see which files have changed, and fix the city in the reader. It's quite dangerous though, so you should better bcakup the whole region before attempting it.

[SC4BOY]

Can you describe the state of the city... size, pop's, # cities, etc.. I am just shooting in the dark here but a crisis should never be wasted.. . perhaps we can find what brought about the "greyed out" condition.. have you used the tileset in building the city.. ie rotated settings in order to accomplish things, etc.. or did this just turn up and you noticed it.. Do you have any odd plugins applied?

I agree fully with Cogeo's suggestion

[RippleJet]

I know I've experienced the same kind of CTD myself, and more than once...
I've never tried to find out the reason to it though,
I've only kept on playing without trying to change the tileset ever again in such a city.

- Now you should have 4 instances of your city, only differring in the selected style.

Unfortunately it isn't quite that simple...
E.g. the date and time would also be different (at least the time of day, which keeps running even if the game is paused),
and we know that those are saved in some 5-10 different places of the savegame.

Also the time/date subfile itself contains several time/date related properties which all would be different.

[Swamper77]

I've had this a couple of times, and it was due to a faulty "Building Development Simulator" exemplar. The Maxis one works despite not showing all of its contents due to a coding error (One of the HEX bytes is set wrong). If I remember right, I had the same problem after installing CAM and discovered its copy of the "Building Development Simulator" had a very small file size and was missing a lot of properties. I gave RippleJet a fixed one that showed all of the properties so he could fix the issue, but I don't know what he's done after I gave him the file.

-Jan

[RippleJet]

I gave RippleJet a fixed one that showed all of the properties so he could fix the issue, but I don't know what he's done after I gave him the file.

Luckily that erroneous version was only included in in-house beta versions, 1.01 through 1.05.
The latest beta version, 1.06, does not have that faulty building developer exemplar.

And the public CAM 1.0 never had the building developer exemplar included...

Now, what mods would you have in your plugins, Joel?

[joelyboy911]

I have: NAM; No maxis mods for: R$$$, I-R and all Commercial; X-Ports airports and seaports; Street Cul-de-sacs; PEG god mode pines, water mod and rock mod.

I do not have the CAM.

The city, a medium tile, is 3/4 covered in a mixture of high density and medium density residential. It has no commerce or industry.

[joelyboy911]

The tileset pox has struck again. This time in a medium tile consisting only a small number of low-density residential lots. If there are any more technical details that might be of use to anyone in helping to figure this out, please let me know and I will gather them.

[RippleJet]

If there are any more technical details that might be of use to anyone in helping to figure this out, please let me know and I will gather them.

Do you think you could list all DAT files you've got in your plugins folders?

Go into the DOS Command Prompt window,
CD to your plugins folder and write the following command:

DIR *.DAT /B /S >LIST.TXT

Attach the list.txt file (which is created in your plugins folder) to your post here and I'll see if I could spot something.

[joelyboy911]

I didn't get exactly what do do in the CMD window, but I found a way around.

Heres the list.

[RippleJet]

The most suscepticle part of your plugins is undoubtedly the AA_Misc BATs folder and its subfolders...
There are a number of dat files in there that are unknown to me...

Thus, I would start by testing if removing the whole AA_Misc BATs folder would solve the CTD issue.
If it does, then we know it's in there... then return one subfolder at a time from there and test again, till you once again get a CTD.

On a side note, the folder AA_Misc BATs\SWAP 2.2 should be deleted, as it contains airport controllers conflicting with the X-Ports...
If you still want to keep the SWAP eyecandy lots, you should run Install_AC_SWAP_Eyecandy_Lots.exe,
which is included in the zip file Install_AC_Functional_Airports_Version_2.0.zip

[joelyboy911]

That folder was where I dumped everything that didn't fit nicely into the other category folders, when I organised it a while ago.

Why did I prefix it with AA_? I don't know, to find it at the top of the list I suppose.

I think removing it would cause other problems - are there any in particular that seem off?