My city disappeared. It's just gone!!

[system]

So, basically, one city I was playing just disappeared.

One time, my game crashed and when I came back, the city was gone. Literally. I mean, even the city limits and everything. Now it's like there's a hole in my region. Can't click on where it should be, because nothing happens. And its name is around some ramdom place in the region; not where it should be.

Can somebody help????

[system]

Here's a screenshot of the situation:

https://imgur.com/plIIDTU

[MGB]

Any chance that the game crashed whilst saving? If it did, likely the save file got corrupted in the process, in which case it would be toast. The gap though is pretty odd, can you select the empty areas from the region view screen?

A little tip for the future: SC4 has an odd way of saving game-data, it's like a data dump from RAM into a file. This is quite compute-intensive and it's easy to get stuck during the process if other things are happening at the same time. So, firstly, never use "Save and Exit to Region" or "Save and Quit" options. Save your game (CTRL+S), then exit/quit without saving, it's much safer. Also, never ever switch to another application during a save. If you've background apps running, this can cause problems, especially if a virus scan starts or an alert pops up during the process.

Much of this is not the result of using a 15 year old game, it's actually because we're using modern powerful PCs. This means we can stuff the game full of mods and content in a way that no one at Maxis could ever have envisioned. Seriously, imagine running a typical plugins suite of today on a Pentium 4 machine? So yeah, it can lead to hiccups, but if you follow the steps above, it should avoid these from occurring.

Also, and this isn't unique to either SC4 or games, keep a backup of important data. If you have one, you can easily restore the affected city.

[NetPCDoc]

I have seen similar holes before, when messing around with the config.bmp file in paint.

If I remember correctly red dots (1x1 pixels) are small cities, green dots (2x2 pixels) are medium cities and blue dots (4x4 pixels) are large cities. If the city name is still showing anywhere in the region, you might be able to "fix" the config.bmp file and get said city back.

You can get a really warped region by mixing up the 2x2 or 4x4 pixel dots; I have even seen large cities sitting on top of small cities!

[system]

Originally posted by MGB:

Any chance that the game crashed whilst saving? If it did, likely the save file got corrupted in the process, in which case it would be toast. The gap though is pretty odd, can you select the empty areas from the region view screen?

A little tip for the future: SC4 has an odd way of saving game-data, it's like a data dump from RAM into a file. This is quite compute-intensive and it's easy to get stuck during the process if other things are happening at the same time. So, firstly, never use "Save and Exit to Region" or "Save and Quit" options. Save your game (CTRL+S), then exit/quit without saving, it's much safer. Also, never ever switch to another application during a save. If you've background apps running, this can cause problems, especially if a virus scan starts or an alert pops up during the process.

Much of this is not the result of using a 15 year old game, it's actually because we're using modern powerful PCs. This means we can stuff the game full of mods and content in a way that no one at Maxis could ever have envisioned. Seriously, imagine running a typical plugins suite of today on a Pentium 4 machine? So yeah, it can lead to hiccups, but if you follow the steps above, it should avoid these from occurring.

Also, and this isn't unique to either SC4 or games, keep a backup of important data. If you have one, you can easily restore the affected city.

Will indeed keep a backup. Just fixed the problem. Thanks for the info!!

[system]

Originally posted by NetPCDoc:

I have seen similar holes before, when messing around with the config.bmp file in paint.

If I remember correctly red dots (1x1 pixels) are small cities, green dots (2x2 pixels) are medium cities and blue dots (4x4 pixels) are large cities. If the city name is still showing anywhere in the region, you might be able to "fix" the config.bmp file and get said city back.

You can get a really warped region by mixing up the 2x2 or 4x4 pixel dots; I have even seen large cities sitting on top of small cities!

Just went on the region folder and deleted the city file. Unfortunately I lost the city but ain't no problem to me! Thx for the help!!

pic: https://imgur.com/LEAUWrA