File Specification Reconstruction -- Simtropolis Aftermath

[jplumbley]

This is a post I have posted in the Simtropolis Damage Report thread.  There has been a significant loss of information to the File Specifications Research threads at Simtropolis.  I would like to take this tragedy and turn it into an opportunity.  We need to rebuild this information and update it with the new research that has been done, and the new information about how these files work together.

Originally posted by: Tarkus

Looking briefly at things, there appears to be a fairly significant amount of damage to some of the NAM and Modding-R&D threads. 

The "File Discovery" posts in the Modding-Research and Development boards have perhaps sustained the most damage.  Most notably, the7trumpets' posts detailing each RUL file are severely truncated and no longer useful in their current state. 

Fortunately, jplumbley happened to copy-paste some of them over to the NAM Private Board at SC4D.  But there's probably some other threads of similar nature that have also been compromised, that we haven't been so fortunate with.  This attack has proven quite devastating to modding-related information as well.

This is probably the absolute most important thing on Simtropolis.  The information about the File Specifications and how to deal with the files SC4 has provided for us.  The information in those threads was what made Simtropolis so valuable to the SC4 world, due to the research of the "modding gods" of the past.

Without any of these research threads we would never have had ANY of the custom content available at the the exchanges.  We would not have so many beautiful CJs, MDs, pictures, etc to look at.  We would not have the NAM and all the new additions to the Transit networks.  We would probably have not had a community.

IF ANYONE was able to save any information from the damaged posts in the File Specifications, or IF there is ANYONE willing to re-write some of the information that was lost, please send me a PM either here or at SC4Devotion.

I will be trying to bring together a Team who can build a new repository of information.  We can post it both here and SC4Devotion so we have backups.

EDIT:  Lets keep this relevent to the topic at hand please no posts saying "What a shame...", etc

[jeronij]

I hope most of the info is still available here :  http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=SimCity_4_Modding 

[jplumbley]

I hope most of the info is still available here :  http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=SimCity_4_Modding 

I sent a message off to Karybdis and pointed him to this thread, hopefully he can provide us with most of the information.  I am sure he has alot of it saved on Mod the Sims.

[Andreas]

This is certainly a very bad thing. Unfortunately, I didn't saved anything, but it might be possible that some information can be retrieved by using Google's cache. You'd better be quick, though, since I don't know how long the cached information is available (if it's available at all).

[freedo50]

I've just done this for Jason, I only found about 10 pages of stuff from the 5 thread names he gave me, and two of them didn't turn up any results at all. 

Fred

[dedgren]

I just posted the following over at ST.  I've been able to pull all 53 damaged pages of 3RR out of cached archives using this technique.

OK, I've now spent the last eight hours frantically working to rescue the first 53 pages of 3RR, which were the pages that suffered the most major damage in the recent incident.  I have now been able to obtain archive copies of each of them- here's what to do.

1.  First and foremost, this would have been easy if I'd used the "Save page as..." function in my web browser (Firefox) to archive the pages myself as I went along.  I've done that over at SC4D, but only had about a quarter of the ST pages, and most of them were the newer ones.

2.   For those I didn't have, I went first to the Wayback Machine [linkie].  It was useless.  It is running about a year  behind and only had one 3RR page archived.  So, ignore step 2.

3.  Go to the Google and MSN cached pages.  You get there by using either site's search function.  Type in the exact name of your CJ between quotation marks (i.e.: "Three Rivers Region") followed by a space and then site:www.simtropolis.com  You should be able to find a bunch of your CJ's pages archived that way.  Open them and save them as in step 1.  I note that, as bad as I have talked about MSN in the past, I found twice as many archived 3RR pages there as on Google.

This got me to about three-quarters of the pages I was looking for.  I was in pretty deep despair at that point, then started playing around with the search terms.  In the last two hours, I've found every last page- here's how.

Open a regular browswer tab and (1)go to a current broken page in your CJ that you have not been able to find using steps 1 and 3.  Press [Ctrl] and [C] to copy (2) a short (three or four word) unique phrase from somewhere towards the top.



In a second tab opened to a Google search page, copy (3) the phrase between quotation marks into the text entry box, type a space and then site:www.simtropolis.com



Press (4) [Enter].

...pray...

If you've done it right, a single link should come up with (4) the page number you are looking for.   Click (5) on the "Cached" linkie and go the the cached page.  Save it.

Repeat as necessary.

Now, and this is important:

DO THIS ASAP!!!

These cached pages are updated on at least a monthly schedule.  The next time around, all you will find is the broken page that the attack left.  That's game over, folks.

Good luck!

If I can get a list of threads to look for I would be glad to help.


David

[catty]

I''m not sure if this is useful or not but I have a folder on my hard drive called Network Specs and I've got saved in it the following documents

   1. Individual Network RULs
   2. IntersectionSolutions RUL
   3. IntersectionOrdering RUL
   4. RuleOverrides RUL
   5. INI Network & Bridges
   6. Paths
   7. Type, Group, Instance IDs

EDIT: I've just finished checking my computer I've also got ...

Windows Texture Tutorial
Daeley's Query Editing

and "The Reader" by ilive - Beginners Guide written by Tropod

I don't know if I have the whole documents or just bits, but if any of it is useful to anyone 

[smoncrie]

I made .mht copies of some of these threads years ago.  I have the first six pages of the SC4paths discovery and the first page of the LotConfigProperty discovery, and a few other bits.

Would this help?  If so, I am willing to upload it. It is over 2 Megs compressed.

[krbe]

I hope most of the info is still available here :  http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=SimCity_4_Modding 

Maybe this could be a starting point for the technical aspects of this?

Anyway, the Google Cache is rebuilt every 28 days if I'm right. That means that posts younger than that risk not being in the cache, but that might just be good as there's more time to recover. But that's all about prioritising.

If anyone want some datestamps, the last post on David's 3RR CJ is from the 18 May. If that's valid for the whole site, we have two weeks (15 Jun) to dig up old, but important threads / posts.

[freedo50]

Maybe this could be a starting point for the technical aspects of this?

We're already on it krbe

Fred

[wes.janson]

EDIT: I've just finished checking my computer I've also got ...

Windows Texture Tutorial
Daeley's Query Editing

and "The Reader" by ilive - Beginners Guide written by Tropod

I don't know if I have the whole documents or just bits, but if any of it is useful to anyone 

I've got the entire Daeley's Query Editing PDF file sitting on my desktop still if you don't have the whole document.