Cities: Skylines

Cities: Skylines

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Ccs Savegame Recoverer
   
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20 Nov, 2022 @ 3:35am
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Ccs Savegame Recoverer

In 1 collection by Klyte45
Klyte's Mods - 7th Generation
9 items
Description
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This utility mod is very useful when a save process fail. Generally we used to lose the savedata forever, but the game actually generate a intermediate file with extension .ccs inside a Temp folder in the Save directory of the game (under CS's Appdata folder)

This mod will read all .ccs files exisiting inside the path <Skylines' Appdata Folder>\Save\Temp\ and will convert them to readable .crp files that can be loaded in the game's Load Game screen. Just click the button and wait a little for the process to finish.

Despite any warning this mod could do in game about the current game version, it will always work in any version of the game, since this core feature will never change in the game (due being an essential process).

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Deep technical explanation: what are the ccs files?

The whole game uses a package pattern with extension CRP. It can store a lot of different kind of data, since assets and maps up to a whole savegame data. It's like a compress format, as 7z or zip are also as example.

To save the simulation data (that one related to instance of buildings, citizens, vehicles, etc), it generate another kind of file, the files with CCS extension. It's generated then stored in the Temp folder referenced above to be used in the next savegame processing routine - the CRP file generation.

The CCS data are packed in CRP along some metadata info - like the city name, population, the screenshot and other. This data is read from the current simulation status to compose the CRP file. Having the CCS file ready and all data filled in the metadata data structure, the CRP file is generated to be stored in the Saves folder and then the Temp folder is erased.

But sometimes this CRP save process fail. For me happens with AutoSave when the older file cannot be erased because of some kind of file access error (like being locked for read by the game itself due an error as example), but can happen by any cause in CRP generation process. When this happens, the CCS file still stored in the Temp folder, so this mod is able to convert them to a CRP package to game understand it as a valid savegame file. The pure CCS file isn't recognized as savegame file because it's just a part of the CRP savegame format.

Because the simulation isn't running when this mod is doing its stuff, the metadata information isn't available - that's why the load game screen misses informations like the city name. It cannot be recovered from a CCS file because it's collected in the CRP generation part.

Despite these informations are not being available for recovering the CRP file, after loading a recovered file all data will be restored successfully - except the city name that will be question marks and may need to be rewritten in game. So it effectively can recover a savegame that without this mod would be lost.

11 Comments
ChocChipCookies 6 Jun, 2024 @ 7:03am 
You saved me about 10 hours after 2 days of saves went missing (despite regular saves under different names), thank you my G.
Kyle 3 Apr, 2024 @ 4:29pm 
Saved me from losing hundreds of hours of playtime in my save, thanks a billion!
xilef.builder 21 Mar, 2024 @ 12:15pm 
OMG you saved my life !! Thx
Hans Wormhat 3 Jul, 2023 @ 9:18pm 
I've had this mod work in the past, but this time I'm getting an error saying Simulation Failed: File format version not supported. Not sure if theres anything I can do about this or if the save is lost.
I found the ccs file in the temp fold and the same file name but as a crp file in the regular saves file
♫Furious Storm♫ 1 May, 2023 @ 12:58pm 
Thanks man for saving my save, my city crashed in the savegame and I couldn't access it through the menu, somehow the save in the Steam Cloud bugged and it doesn't save anything...
mathew_collins 18 Mar, 2023 @ 5:23am 
Hi @Klyte45, firstly thanks so much for creating this mod! I have the game installed through Steam and I can see my .ccs files in the appdata/local/Colossal Order/Cities_Skylines/Saves/Temp folder, but when I run the mod it comes back with zero recovered files. Is there a log somewhere that I can use to find out what the problem is? Thanks!
citynax 19 Dec, 2022 @ 7:41am 
@Klyte45, I had several issues in the past 'in game', but no problem saving it. However these issues caused corrupt savegames. I had my CS completely reinstalled and started again without any mods or assets and now I can play the game normally, so new made savegames reload just fine. However the old savegames still won't load; I see in the load screen mod that everything is loaded fine, but after the message 'In Game' the game crashes and I see a split screen, light blue on top and the rest of the loading screen at the bottom. Then I only can kill the game in Steam.
I understand that this mod is not meant to fix this problem, or does it? If not, are there mods or apps to recover corrupt savegames? I've looked for it, but don't find any..
DerKrieger 27 Nov, 2022 @ 12:59am 
So do we have to have it in our load order preemptively or only when the save fails and we then download the mod?
Justin Credible 20 Nov, 2022 @ 2:06pm 
Thanks for the very extensive supplementary description. It's good to know that with this mod we now have a back door if something goes wrong when saving!
Klyte45  [author] 20 Nov, 2022 @ 10:22am 
I expanded the explanation. I expect I had been clearer there