"Transparent" commercial zones with people walking about and parked cars

[Ratskin]

Hi all!

My SC4 installation seems to be missing something that I only noticed today. I have transparent commercial zones with people walking about and parked cars. I'm not sure how long this has been going on. I've mucked around with it today but to no avail. I've attached a picture and you can see the zone arrow down in the center at the bottom. You can see people milling, parked cars and benches. I must be missing something.

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[HappyDays]

Yes, this is a warped variant of immortal lot syndrome I like to call "Suiciding lot syndrome."

At one point, you had a lot in that area. Something occurred, perhaps due to the influence of an immortal lot, and all lot information was lost except, oddly, the props. I'm not sure how it happens, but I've only seen it occur with lots that can go immortal. It's possible an immortal lot was made immortal by another immortal lot which itself became immortal, wiping out the first immortal lot's information.

SLS is particularly nasty because the numerical influences of the building in the simulator becomes permanent when the lot vanishes in this way. I know this because I've had entirely empty city tiles with several thousand 'ghost' residents affecting education, mayoral rating, and the like.

There are no cures when it happens short of demolishing the city or erasing the city tile. All you can do now is figure out which building it was, then edit its building occupancy size to where it will no longer go immortal.

Based on my observations, SLS is uncommon because the circumstances required for it to occur seem uncommon themselves.

[Ratskin]

Thank you so much for your speedy and well-explained reply, HappyDays!

[FrankU]

Are you sure this is not simply a result of a deleted plugin? Mabe you had some commercial lots in your plugins that you have deleted?

[Ratskin]

I have a feeling (well, I KNOW) it was my own doing, FankU. I was moving around and datpacking my Plugins folder and a move operation was accidently cancelled. I thought I got everything straightened out but evidently not. I think I have the issue licked now though. All the lots of the commercial lots that exhibited that "transparent" behavior I bulldozed if I could. Then I tested them out by planting trees and bulldozing. Those I considered almost good to go. I plopped parks on those lots to track them. If I was unable to plant trees or bulldoze the lot I used the Immorality Killer lot. Planted and bulldozed trees and plopped a park. Then I waited a couple months and rezoned to commercial.  The thing I noticed was when the transparent shield issue was resolved explosive construction typically occurred nearby. I'm keeping my eyes out for the transparent lots and the parks I may have missed the first time around. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the issue is resolved.