How to pause the game [EVEN SIMPLER APP AVAILABLE]

A guide how to either manually, or via a very simple app, pause and unpause My Summer Car without any risks.

Introduction

Hello, I am sure that I'm not the only one who had to go do something IRL while on a journy back home, and without an oportunity to save at the moment. Sadly, as I have already discovered, a "pause" feature cannot really be implemented, as it would completely break the physics engine the game uses. But that doesn't mean that there's no way to pause! Only requires a bit of a workaround. And that will be the point of this guide.

What will you need: Follow instructions. Run the operating system Windows Vista and newer.

WARNING - README PLEASE

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES open a paused game. In the current Windows 10, it will no longer allow you, but in as late as Windows 8.1, it would open the window but the app would be stuck frozen and would not allow any other app to display over it.

Option 1 - Process Explorer

(Process Explorer is by Microsoft themselves, link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer )

1) Download the Process Explorer and install/put it somewhere you'll remember.
2) Launch My Summer Car, do something until you need to quickly go and take a small break.
3) ALT+TAB out of the game, launch process explorer, find the game's process (You can quickly type the game's process name [mysummercar.exe], it will find it for you), right click and select suspend. Congratulations, the game is now "paused"
4) When you're done doing what needed to be done, open process explorer again (DON'T, AND I REPEAT, DON'T OPEN THE GAME YET IN THIS STATE OR YOU'LL REGRET IT, AND I AM NOT RESPONCIBLE IF YOU DO), right-click on the game's process again and click "resume"
5) Now open the game, and keep going, nothing changed while it was suspended, and nothing is broken.

Now, I cannot emphasize this enough, but if you open the game while it's suspended, it will be permanently stuck as the top-most window of your desktop and the only way to get rid of it is to kill it, and lose all the progress. Again, there is a work-around but is more fishy. Look for it in the option B.

Option 2 - PsTools

This option is a bit more techy, and requires you to download the "PsTools" administrative package from Microsoft website (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/pssuspend.aspx) , you will get a zip archive that you have to unpack.
In there, out of all the executables that there are, only one is of an interest to us - PsSuspend.exe (Or PsSuspend64.exe for a 64-bit systems).
Rename the executable to something simpler, like suspend.exe, and copy it over to C:\Windows\ (Or wherever is your system folder, a note: Yes, you will need an administrative access)

Now, anytime you want to "pause" the game, just open up CMD (Or click Win+R) and type "suspend mysummercar", that will pause it.
To unpause, simply do the same, only type "suspend -r mysummercar", the -r stands for "resume".

The advantage of this way is that, even if you accidentaly opened the game again, and it froze - don't panick, don't kill it. Only press Win+R, it will open up the "Run" window, even if you cannot see it, and you can still type the resume command, if you do type it without a mistake, the game will unfreez and continue just fine.

A note though for more techy people
The executable can be placed in any directory that is included in the PATH Enviroment variable, for me, I like to keep track of apps that I download and keep in a different folder than sysdrive, and can run them without problems by just adding the folder to PATH.

[UPDATED] Option 3 - Even Simpler Tool

Edit: App updated! Again!

What's new? Anytime the game looses focus (E.g: When you ALT-TAB), it automatically pauses the game.

Usage

• Launch App
  
• It will auto-detect whether My Summer Car is running, and what state it is in (Paused/Normal)
  
• If the game does not have focus (Is not being used), it will automatically be paused.
  
• To unpause, simply click the single butten this app has, it will then wait three seconds for you to open My Summer Car again
  
• If you keep the window minimized / out of focus for 4 or more seconds, it will be paused again

Bugs
For some reason, when the game is paused, the time still continues and skips ahead when it's unpaused again. This may be because the game maybe doesn't use an internal timer but rather time difference of the inner Windows clock.

If you discovered any other bugs, please, report them here, and I will gladly take a look at them.

License
Freeware, do as you want with both, the app and the source, as long as you credit me and the original threads at StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11010165/how-to-suspend-resume-a-process-in-windows )

DOWNLOAD
App only: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6-K4XU7yujUeXdUOEZMbHo5RzQ
Sources: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6-K4XU7yujUWHFwaFcwcTRiY3M

Other resources used
Icon - http://www.iconarchive.com/show/swarm-icons-by-sonya/Zzz-icon.html
Stackoverflow

• How to suspend a process: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11010165/how-to-suspend-resume-a-process-in-windows
  
• How to detect which app has focus: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7162834/determine-if-current-application-is-activated-has-focus

C# Intel - msdn.microsoft.com

Is it safe?
Yep, it won't do anything harmful, I swear.
Virus Total Report: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/6d79200e073e9fb23bdca36dacaf9f18dd44b5b94258acb297d5a8814a1d69fd/detection

Conclusion

Whether you'll pick the option A or B, I hope that this will be of a good use to you! As there is no way to implement pause into the game itself, I dare to say that this is the best second option that there is.

Aldar signing out and wishing you good luck!

[♿️→🚾]

In first option if u accidentally opened up MSC before resuming it, just create second desktop, throw MSC there, and resume it at first desktop.

[Delly]

Hehe, I did it for people, as I know that... Being unable to pause has made me kinda desperate to be honest, and wanted to share my idea ^^

[VlamBallas]

You Sir, Deserve a couple of cases of beer!

Ive taken the CMD commands from Option 2, and put them in a batch file, with a basic
UI to simplify things a bit...
Just select PAUSE or RESUME from the menu and hit ENTER...

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If anyone is interested, my Pause menu can be found here:

MSC Pause Menu (x64).zip
https://mega.nz/#!WYMjxC6I!0NzsthgcOAhi4z_wvPe1--I6yppGjmZPiYV2Hn7Brh0

MSC Pause Menu (x86).zip
https://mega.nz/#!2QMBXC6J!nBIxrXWnvNAVwGBZN5qZMD2SrlIa98hjeOGVA66BhS0

The only difference being the (Included) PsSuspend##.exe, ie for a 64Bit or a 32Bit system.
-Zip files include both a (.bat) and an (.exe) version, same thing..
-All source code included, and (.exe) is unprotected, feel free to have a look.

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