Simcity 2013 - Cities in region not loading but crashing

[FlabbaWokei]

HI there,

This is pretty frustrating, for some reason my in a region have been corrupted (other regions too but they didn't happen at the same time so). I first played on the iMac, and from what i recall, the cities wouldn't load / white screen / frozen simcity app when i tried to load these cities again. Never worked after that. 

Recently, since i wanted to get back into the game, i transferred the game file copy to a PC and tried opening it there, but it crashes after trying to load then freezing (all a few seconds or so).

Is there ANY way to recover them? The cities that have gone are one of my most prized ones :'( 

[BlackjackWidow · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply - it's hard being a SimCity lover on a Mac. Good luck! I hope you can get back to building soon

[BlackjackWidow]

Hi @FlabbaWokei - That does sound really frustrating! First issue - as you probably already know - if your iMac is running MacOS Catalina, SimCity 2013 won't run at all. Apple dropped support for 32-bit games like SimCity beginning with Catalina, so the program won't run.

Luckily, you have a PC, so you can run SimCity 2013. When you say you transferred the game files from Mac to PC - did you copy the game files, or just the data files? The city save files should transfer between different platforms, but the game files themselves will have to be installed via Origin. I've never transferred cities from Mac to PC, but I have successfully transferred from one PC to another. I don't think there's a difference in the city save files themselves, but can't say for certain. This is for OFFLINE city files only. Online files are on the EA servers, and you don't need to transfer anything. Just log into the same account you were using on the Mac - select the server and you can continue playing your online regions from there.

So, first thing - download and install Origin on the PC; log into the same account that you were using on the iMac. In your game library you should see all of your registered games. From there, download and install SimCity 2013. Make sure to run installation files "As administrator", and that Origin.exe and SimCity.exe are added to your antivirus exception lists. Then ensure that you can open and play SimCity without the transferred files. 

If you've already installed Origin and SimCity on the PC, then delete the contents of your game files from \Documents\SimCity\Games (this is assuming you have a copy of the folder from your Mac - you can move the game files to a protected area on your desktop or something if you don't). In Origin, right-click the SimCity icon and choose to "Repair Game". This will compare the game files on your PC and replace any that are corrupted or missing. Open SimCity and make sure you can run it. Then, exit SimCity completely and copy JUST the contents of your Mac folder Documents/SimCityMedia/Games to the PC folder \Documents\SimCity\Games folder. When you run SimCity, you should see all of your regions and cities in the offline menu, and be able to open and load them just as you did on your Mac.

TLDR:

• Download and install Origin on the PC
• Install SimCity in Origin
• Log in to SimCity and ensure it runs correctly
• If cities are online, from the Multiplayer/Online tab, choose the correct server and find your region(s)
• If cities are offline, log out of the game and copy the contents of the Mac's Documents/SimCityMedia/Games folder to the PC's \Documents\SimCity\Games folder

I hope this helps - let us know. 

[FlabbaWokei]

@BlackjackWidow

Hi BlackjackWidow, thank you for your reply!

I will give it a try, thank you! Hopefully it will work, i will let you know. Meanwhile, is this the only way to possibly get it to work? I have a funny feeling it won't as i have tried to recover them about a year ago (when iMac did support Simcity) rather extensively to no avail. Hopefully im lying there lol.

Thanks again, you are very helpful - from the tl;dr to the long reply... If i could donate to you i would, i can't believe you don't get paid!

P.S Also, someone on a forum told i could use a 32-bit emulator for iMac catalina - would that be a good way to do so?

[FlabbaWokei]

@FlabbaWokei And also, the file i copied was the 9a3b67c94bc96da0 file (part of the "Games" file)

[BlackjackWidow]

@FlabbaWokei - Thanks so much for the kind words, you made my week

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@FlabbaWokei wrote:
And also, the file i copied was the 9a3b67c94bc96da0 file (part of the "Games" file)

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That's the correct folder - make sure you copy all the contents, too. There should be a whole bunch of numbered folders inside; those are your region folders - which each contain your cities. 

That top folder (9a3b67c94bc96da0) is named with a unique identifier for your copy of SimCity. If you have a different name for the PC folder, you could rename the copied folder to match it, just in case that makes a difference.

So... if the moving folders doesn't work, there is one more thing that you could try. It would involve a lot more work, but you could try opening a new region on the PC and then move just the individual city files from one computer to the other. My thought is if the regions are somehow corrupted, maybe you can salvage the cities. This Skye Storme video shows how to move a city from one save to another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf5PYPRmRPs  

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There are a few options if you want to try to run SimCity on the iMac. You can read about them in This Post. I don't know anything about a 32-bit emulator specifically, but it sounds like it would work? This blog post by BluebellFlora gives very detailed steps on creating a bootable external drive to run your 32-bit apps, as well as some info on other options.

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Please keep me posted - I really hope you're able to get them to transfer. Looking forward to Happy Building! 

[FlabbaWokei]

Hi @BlackjackWidow ! 

Sorry for the Iate repIy, extremeIy Iate haha. just got back into trying to get simcity back but i couIdn't so i just went ahead and got aspyr instead RIP

[BlackjackWidow]

Hi @FlabbaWokei - Good to hear from you, the past few months have been crazy, haven't they? I am sorry you couldn't get the old city back. 

The Aspyr version works great on Catalina and is probably your best choice. Unfortunately, there have been many reports that it stopped working when people upgraded to Big Sur. I haven't heard anything recently, though. Are you running the Aspyr version on Big Sur? That would be fantastic news to hear. I hope they've figured it out 

[FlabbaWokei]

I've tried aspyr yesterday but it seems Iike, at Ieast for me, the graphics aren't as good as they were with the simcity through origin. So im trying to get a refund and if it works iII try getting an externaI drive to boot high sierra from. However, this wiII be deIayed because i dont have an externaI   drive to  back up my current OS first xD. 

And yes im on cataIina right now, big sur is too IOS Iike for me.   

[BlackjackWidow · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply - it's hard being a SimCity lover on a Mac. Good luck! I hope you can get back to building soon