The Prop Pox!

[snorrelli]

The Prop Pox strikes again!

This time a monatery I had built using Kwakelaar's Schiffenberg set was among the victims...


Again, the discreet line dividing the affected area from the rest of the city, seen clearly in this pic of Marrast's seawalls...


This is a different city to the one in the first set of pictures - the neighbor to the north. Large city tile, also fully-developed, this time with a population around 840,000.

This time, using backups of the .sav file, I was able to work my way month-by-month up until the point where the problem appears. I noticed the following:

1. City .sav file starts off at 15.6mb but swells temporarily to 25mb one month prior to the problem occurring.
2. When the bug happens, the .sav file drops to 14.7mb.
3. The bug occurrs on a specific date. Saving one day before produced no bug but saving any time after, no matter how long the game runs, produces the bug.
4. Defragmenting had no effect and my page-file memory is set to 4GB.
5. Bulldozing some buildings prior to the "bug date" allows the game to run longer (up to 2 years) before the bug occurrs but anyway it happens eventually.

This last one tells me that the bug is not actually related to the date at all but to something that grows in that time period. It may either be a bad plugin or that the city reaches some sort of "critical mass" of props, at which point the program or the machine can no longer render them all properly.

For the time being, I can't find any way around the problem. The city is currently at the 25mb .sav file stage, 1 month before when the bug occurrs. If I can't figure out a solution, that's where it will stay forever...

[Andreas]

I remember that I had a similar problem in two of my cities (medium sized) back in 2003, well before Rush Hour was released. All props seemed to be missing until I rebuilt/regrew the lots in question, and when inspecting the filesize, I also noticed that it went down (but the files were not larger than 3 or 4 MB at that time). Anyway, it never happened again, and I'm really glad that it didn't (and maybe it was caused by another bug in SC4 Vanilla anyway). Needless to say, it's extremely annoying, and I can feel your pain...

For what it's worth it I checked my savegames, and all cities (many of them in the range of 500,000 to 600,000 inhabitants) have up to around 15 MB, with two notable exceptions: My two largest cities that hold 800,000 and 1,1 million residents are both about 33 MB large, which can't be justified (only) by the larger amount of buidings, props or inhabitants, since other cities are equally complex (or even more complex). It might support your theory about the "critical mass", though, where the filesize seem to grow rapidly over a short time. Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas how to overcome the problem, but I thought this information might help you to pinpoint the possible trigger(s).

[snorrelli]

Thanks, Andreas. It worries me a little that this problem occurred on a medium city tile for you. I had thought that playing medium cities might be a way to prevent this and recently re-rendered my favorite region with all medium cities instead of all large...

I noticed the release notes to the EP1 Update mentioned the following:

Renderer updates to avoid memory corruption when model instance has an invalid position.

Anyone know anything about this? Maybe they didn't fix it completely?

Anyway, I've tried running the city and paying attention to exactly what grows during the period when the bug sets in, to see if I can identify a problem plugin that causes this. There doesn't seem to be one - the buildings that grow have grown other times in other cities with no problem. It seems to be more a cumulative effect related to the total number of buildings in the city - the critical mass thing - which is why bulldozing some areas can extend the amount of time before the bug sets in. I've tried bulldozing the buildings that will end up located in the affected area after the bug and I've tried bulldozing in totally different areas of the city and the effect is the same - the more I bulldoze, the longer the game will run before the bug appears. Eventually though, the buildings grow back and the bug appears.

I'm going to try to put together a table of details reported by all the people who have suffered from this - city tile size, population, .sav file size, amount of custom content, etc. So far, I'm really mystified what the trigger is. There aren't any 100% commonalities - mainly large city tiles but also reported on medium; mainly populations in the hundreds of thousands but also reported on cities in the tens of thousands; mainly people with bulging plugins folders but also people with a modest amount of custom content...

[wouanagaine]

Hi snorelli

can you make a report of the following entries in the savegame  ( filesize in reader )
buildings              a9bd882d 299b2d1b 00000000
props                  49c05c8f 299b2d1b 00000000
retaining walls      49c05c9f 299b2d1b 00000000

[snorrelli]

You bet - I'll check and post tonight when I get home...

[BruceAtkinson]

Hello Snorrelli.....
     Just read the latest unfortunate strike of the prop-pox...I will be having two and a half days off of work, so I'm going to go through my entire region to see if any of my other cities have been affected.  I will also look into my "Europa" region, which is built on the in-game's Berlin region.  This region has more variety of city sizes, larger overall population and more complicated development.  I have not opened this region for months, so I'll let it run, observe and keep taps on the file sizes, etc.  If the bug manifests itself in this region, we may be able to pinpoint the trigger.
  Also, I had an idea of calling in N_O Body of Simtropolis, however I see that you also reside there, and we have another victim.  The main difference between the two of you and myself, is that the prop-pox seems to be striking in a definite area of your cities, while in Wesley, it is random.  Prop-pox is in the North-Central, Central, and West-Central of my city.  I utilise the Suburban Style bus stops in Wesley, and one can be completely intact, while just down the road, another one has the disease.
  Bruce

[snorrelli]

OK - here's what I've got...

City 1 (from the first post of this thread)
.sav file = 28.5mb, city population = 399,195
buildings - 511,305
props - 22,476
retaining walls - 3905

For the second city (at the top of this page), I was able to track the bug more closely and have info on three separate save files...

City 2 - 6 months before bug appears
.sav file = 15.6mb, city population - 836,000
buildings - 321,071
props - 22,999
retaining walls - 13,911

City 2 - 1 month before bug appears
.sav file = 25mb, city population - 837,800
buildings - 322,297
props - 23,238
retaining walls - 13,512

City 2 - 6 months after "bug date"
.sav file = 15.3mb, city population - 839,112
buildings - 322,457
props - 23,457
retaining walls - 13,536

[BruceAtkinson]

Hello snorrelli....I just read through Fledder200's thread, and realise that you have too.  Did you notice his last picture?  He was concerned about his tram....and according to his content in his post, he was saying that the Prop-pox issue was cleared up, however there is a major lot that is missing all of the props, in the upper left.
  Unfortunately, I do not feel Fledder200 or any of us are out of the woods yet.  You may have noticed that a length of time transpired from when I first started my thread and when I resumed.  All was well in Wesley for that time period, and you have also mentioned that at times all is well with your cities, and then the bug reappears.
  I realise you are looking for the trigger, but I have a question.  According to the thread, Fledder200 thinks it may well be a couple of models he downloaded....I had thought the same thing at first, since most things that went missing were from BSC related models....quickly I found out that was not correct.
  My question....do you think that a)it may be helpful to list on your thread those models, lots, etc that have been affected? b) do you think that the size of the Plugin folder in an individual's My Documents has any bearing on this?
  My answer, at this time regarding 'b' is no, because it would affect those same models, etc., in every other city.
  Bruce

[wouanagaine]

Well, I had thought some of the entries would have exceeded some critical values, but it does not seems to be the case

[BruceAtkinson]

Snorrelli....I'm not sure if this has any bearing, however:  I have been downloading all of the updates and Mega-packs, here and also using the Cleanitol program.  Lately, one thing that I have noticed is: when I put the BSC MegaPacks(1) cleanitol file in, it has come up with missing some dependancies....the three listed are: Smalltown USA Collector's Edition.dat, BSC MegaProps-Jenx Vol02.dat and BSC TexturePack JES Vol02.dat.  Now when this first happened, I proceeded to redownload where directed, knowing that I had already had these.  However, everytime I scan this particular cleanitol file, I get the same message, so obviously something is being misread.
  As of yesterday, I am starting to get a plugin pack pop-up in my game in some cities, including Wesley...and the lots that are bringing up the brown boxes have all thier dependencies, again a sign of something not being read properly.  So, I'm systematicly bulldozing those lots to see if they have any impact on the Prop-pox disease.
Bruce 

[wouanagaine]

The cleanitol megapack file is a little buggy . Those 4 dependencies are always displayed as missing even if you have them. I need to fix and reupload a list. sorry for the inconvenience

[snorrelli]

Hi Guys... Sorry - I've been having a crazy day today and will not be home until fairly late tonight so I can't respond in detail until probably tomorrow...

Bruce - I think you may have two separate things going on. As Wounagaine said, the cleanitol mega pack file lists those 4 as missing no matter what. I've been through that as well and redownloaded everything just to be sure I wasn't crazy.

Problem two is not the program misreading something or needing to download missing dependencies but rather that you have removed something you shouldn't have. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious here. Presumably you plopped or grew those lots and they looked normal or you would have noticed the brown box right away. Since then, you exited, saved and then removed something used by those lots from your plugins. Now when you reload the city you get the missing plugin warning (and brown boxes).

[BruceAtkinson]

 It is me again....Snorrelli, regarding the plugin pack missing pop-up now appearing in some cities of the Region I'm working in, nothing has been removed.  It may be a seperate issue, but I'm not sure.  The one thing that really perplexes me is: why you and the other two I know of that have this problem, have it in a very defined area of your cities, and why I have it all over in mine?  The bright side is that yours is more easily tracked, while mine isn't.  We shouldn't forget that mine started with the RLS Resort, in which the entire top of the Resort Tower was missing...then it went from there.  The aforementioned is why I think, as I believe you do, that something in the save process is causing this, as further evidence is that if one bulldozes the affected lot and re-plops it, it is fine until one exits.  Also if the same lot is used in another city of the same Region, it is fine.  It may appear to be hitting some type of 'Critical Mass', but again, our other cities seem to be fine and can be more complicated than the affected one so the 'Critical Mass' should have hit there as well but did not, so I still feel that it is a localised issue....I think I'll completely clean out Wesley as to the affected BATs and let it run for several years....save and exit and open again to see if other BATs have been attacked.
  Lastly Snorrelli, no need to apologise, we all have crazy days, hope you can relax abit!
  Wounagaine...thanks for the info, and again...no need to apologise, I kinda figured it was something, and as I called it a 'misreading'....I'm one that is very appreciative of the Cleanitol program, as it has helped me immensely and will continue to do so in the future....
Cheers to everyone, and we'll get this 'Prop-pox' figured out yet!
Bruce

[Colyn]

I am thinking ... anybody that has the Prop-pox issue ... dont you by any chance have another computer available so that you can transfer your region there and see if the same issue happens.

What are the chances that we have a memory address issue that is popping out with specific screen cards ...

I am just throwing some ideas into the ring here ...

What about a new program or utility that is sitting in memory waiting for a windoze call and is hogging SC4 memory blocks ... remeber the game is 5 years old and many new windoze utility software has been released since then.

[BruceAtkinson]

....that is an interesting idea, however if that were the case, would not prop-pox appear in all the cities of the Region, and not just one or two?
  Bruce

[Nardo69]

....that is an interesting idea, however if that were the case, would not prop-pox appear in all the cities of the Region, and not just one or two?
  Bruce

Not necessarily. I whitnessed the prop pox going "orthogonal" in speaking of road layout. This would really make sense then.

On the other hand:
when I was experiencing trying to get rid of the prop pox I killed almost any process that was not absolutely necessary to run Sc4.

Another Interesting fact:

I start running Windows XP last year in Novembe. Untill that time I run Windows 2000 and never had the prop pox!!!

My largest city map Gleiwemünde (without the pox but more than twice as much the filesize than Rhenbrücken with the pox) was builty entirely under Windows 2000. I later changed from Windows 2000 to Windows XP because Windows 2000 had a lot of serious and continuous problems with my 160 GB ATAPI Harddisk.

Now I became curious:

Which OS are you running and since when - before or after the pox? Maybe we have a WindowsXP problem here ....

Bernhard 

[Colyn]

Hmmm ...yep ... you may be right ... XP or a XP Patch ... did you do a MS Update thinghy lately.

[snorrelli]

Just a quick note to chime in and say "me too." I've been running XP ever since I've had SC4 and have had this problem occur repeatedly over the past 3 years on 2 different machines, with 3 different video cards (all nVidia). A common element between them has been XP SP2.

That said, who doesn't use XP? A few might still have '98 or 2000 and a few have converted to Vista but aren't like 90% of us using XP and not having this problem?

[Nardo69]

Okay, Windows XP Professional with SP2, old nVidia Geforce2 MX400

A tad late but I finally checked my cities in the reader, too ...

City 1: Gleiwemünde
created and saved entirely under Windows 2000 SP4
no prop pox
Region Census:

Residential:	353,955
Commercial:	192,572
Industrial:	54,683
FileSize:	35,048,928
building:	586,489
props:	324,567
retaining walls:	798,676

City 2: Rhenbrücken
created under Windows XP,
with prop pox

Residential:	468,169
Commercial:	228,642
Industrial:	79,031
FileSize:	14,125,353
building:	324,249
props:	129,251
retaining walls:	698,593

And about 90% using XP (IMHO even more - there aren't that much Mac Users and Win2K is 8 yeasr old!)
maybe it IS a conflict that occurs only with XP under certain circumstances?

For me, at the moment, it looks like that. And becaue of that, even if we don't find the "cure" for the  prop pox we might be able to find out how to prevent the porp pox in the future ...

And again: - as long as I didn't use WinXP but Win2K there has been no prop pox!

[snorrelli]

Whoa! Are you sure those prop and retaining wall numbers are correct? I wonder why they're sooooo much larger than mine?