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The Prop Pox!

Started by snorrelli, May 03, 2007, 08:53:49 PM

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BruceAtkinson

 Thanks again, Andreas.....I'll continue to clean-up my Plugin folder...most likely I'll see an improved performance in the game as well.
  Bruce

jabezscratch

Hi, I had suffered from this problem w/ my capital city of 2.6 million people.  After much frustration, I simply wiped it clean and made a new capital city from scratch which currently has a population of 2.1 million.  I have not seen this problem reoccur since then.

Here are some answers for the table:

CPU = Intel Dual Core 2.4
RAM = 4GB DDR2
HDD: Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM
VCard = ATI 1900GT (256M)
Virtual memory set to - 4GB
Grapics settings = All high, Software
.save shrinks : Don't recall

I think that covers most of the info I can recall.

Good luck and I'll keep following this intriguing thread!







jabezscratch

Just a quick additional note: I started to notice buildings being reduced to bare textures and I lost a lot of street junk.  It just kept spreading and I just assumed that the file got corrupted and the corruption was spreading (somehow).  I don't know if that theory holds water or if there is some other completely unrelated cause.

snorrelli

Hi jabezscratch. Thanks for dropping by the support group... ;)

Whoa - 4GB of RAM! :o I guess that settles the question of whether insufficient RAM is to blame once and for all. I'm also relieved to see this happening with an ATI card, since all the rest of us have nVidia. Looks like we can rule that out too.

I don't guess you remember if you might have removed something from your plugins folder without bulldozing all instances in your city first? Did you ever get the missing plugin pop up at city loading or save the game with brown boxes showing?

Also, was yours a large city tile?
Have you ever had the Prop Pox? Join us to help find a vaccine or a cure.

Totuna e dac-ai murit flăcău ori moş îngârbovit;
Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori ori câine-nlănţuit.

BruceAtkinson

 Hello all....this post is not related to "prop-pox", however, I was just looking at my profile and the Karma section.  Much to my dismay, I have supposdedly smited someone!  How have I done that....the last thing I want to do is upset someone!  Maybe I'm not understanding how the Karma works here....
Bruce

snorrelli

Bruce - I don't see how you could have smitten anyone (here, I mean - I'm sure plenty have been smitten by you in your time... ;) :D). I don't think you're allowed to give either good or bad Karma until 50 posts...

Only you and the recipient of the smiting can see it so if you're worried about it you might want to send a PM.

Have you ever had the Prop Pox? Join us to help find a vaccine or a cure.

Totuna e dac-ai murit flăcău ori moş îngârbovit;
Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori ori câine-nlănţuit.

Shadow Assassin

#66
Now, this is interesting. I suppose I'm lucky in that I have never had this problem happen to me, either on a GeForce or an ATI card. One of my cities is full (taking up 38MB), so it has to be something else.

It's possible that somehow, the save file got corrupted by saving it while the city hasn't properly been rendered? Try zooming all the way out, waiting for the city to fully load before saving. Maybe this will fix the bug (or rather, prevent it from occuring)?
New Horizons Productions
Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dedgren ♦ dmscopio ♦ Ennedi
emilin ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ papab2000
Shadow Assassin ♦ Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
See my uploads on the LEX!

BruceAtkinson

...Snorrelli, I was just thinking, since we are looking for commonalities regarding 'Prop Pox', I am going to start recording which lots have been affected.  Although I have not been in Wesley for awhile, I did re-locate the Refinery Complex to another part of the city and rezoned the old location to medium industrial.  When I go back in to Wesley in the next couple of days, I'll see if the new Refinery has been affected and what the old location looks like.
   I'll post the affected lots here, so we can see if a pattern emerges.  Throughout my three regions, only Wesley is affected, I've been lucky so far.....
   Secondly, how much do you know about the Cam-A-Lot project?  I'm wondering that with such a radical change in the game with this mod...if 'Prop-pox' may disappear!?
  Bruce

snorrelli

Hi all... I've been busy rebuilding my most recently affected city from scratch. No progress or further insights on the cause, but I have updated the table with the last info provided by jabezscratch...



Quote from: Shadow Assassin on July 16, 2007, 02:37:10 AM
It's possible that somehow, the save file got corrupted by saving it while the city hasn't properly been rendered? Try zooming all the way out, waiting for the city to fully load before saving. Maybe this will fix the bug (or rather, prevent it from occuring)?

I think this is exactly what's happening, although I have tried saving at all different zoom levels and it does not prevent the problem from appearing. At the farthest zoom, as Shadow Assassin suggests, the logic is that all the buildings have been drawn and are in the memory, so all should be saved. Unfortunately it doesn't work. It also occurred to me that a full large city at the farthest zoom might be too much for the machine or the program to process and save, so I've tried at the closest zoom and all zooms in between. Still no luck...

Quote from: BruceAtkinson on July 18, 2007, 01:22:49 PM
...Snorrelli, I was just thinking, since we are looking for commonalities regarding 'Prop Pox', I am going to start recording which lots have been affected.  Although I have not been in Wesley for awhile, I did re-locate the Refinery Complex to another part of the city and rezoned the old location to medium industrial.  When I go back in to Wesley in the next couple of days, I'll see if the new Refinery has been affected and what the old location looks like.
   I'll post the affected lots here, so we can see if a pattern emerges.  Throughout my three regions, only Wesley is affected, I've been lucky so far.....
   Secondly, how much do you know about the Cam-A-Lot project?  I'm wondering that with such a radical change in the game with this mod...if 'Prop-pox' may disappear!?
  Bruce

Appreciate your research, Bruce. Let us know what you observe. About the CAM - I don't claim to be an expert on these things but from what I've understood of the mod I don't see any reason to believe it will impact the graphics properties of the game. I do feel pretty confident in calling this a graphics problem as this bug seems to be purely visual and commutes, jobs, residents and other game mechanics appear to be unaffected...
Have you ever had the Prop Pox? Join us to help find a vaccine or a cure.

Totuna e dac-ai murit flăcău ori moş îngârbovit;
Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori ori câine-nlănţuit.

Shadow Assassin

It looks like Windows XP SP2 is the only thing that is common to the entire thing. It's probably something to do with SP2 (unless we can get instances of it happening on SP1 or even pre-SP1).
New Horizons Productions
Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dedgren ♦ dmscopio ♦ Ennedi
emilin ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ papab2000
Shadow Assassin ♦ Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
See my uploads on the LEX!

stewart_garden

Hi again, I have been inactive for about four weeks and have returned astounded at how far you have all come with this!  My computer is in transit right now, but I will try to add my own stats to the table when it gets to me.  I do know that I was running XP home with SP2 though.  Great work here guys.

Stewart
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Nardo69

#71
I said it before -  I never had the prop pox while I was using SC2K Win2K... it began with Win XP Sp2 ...

And since there are nVidia and ATI cards, 32 and 64 bit, single and dual, Intel and AMD CPUs on the list as well as we all have not too less RAM ...

I am "curious" - I just run a large map - with a lot of agriculture and less people though - for a while and it now closes to the "critical" file size ...

Anyway I will tell you if something happens regarding the prop pox (even though I pray it won't happen - my last three mını updates are all from that map ...)

Bernhard  :thumbsup:

edit: Hit the "Post" - button by accident too early ...
edit2: Obviously I hadn't the prop pox in SC2000 bin Win2000 ...

silentbreaker

I got this problem too (and therefore a reason to register here  ;D).



So I took the time to fill in the table:
OS: Win XP Pro SP2
RAM: 1GB
Processor: AMD Sempron 64 3000+
VCard: ATI Radeon 9600 (RV350)
HD: SAMSUNG HD160JJ; SCSI
Virtual Memory: 1534 MB
large city tile: yes
plugins: 750 mb
Graphics settings: all but shadows high; hardware mode
population: ~150.000
sc4 file: shortly before bug appears twice as big as normal; after bug appeared normal filesize
size of affected sc4 file: 12.898kb
buildings: 396612
props: 37515
retaining walls: 570 (flat city)
previously removed plugins without bulldozing all instances first: yes

some stuff I also discovered: the biggest file in the sav file is three times bigger shortly before the bug appears than after the bug appeared (16820973/5421470) Type is 2977aa47.

Additionally every time I save the city and reload it again after the bug appeared once a new part of my city is affected.

And something weird that somehow has to do with the bug: SC4 spawns tons of pedestrians in the northwest corner after the bug appeared:


Just one question: does anybody of you used traffic generators in the affected cities? I used them a lot in the affected city for the first time, so SC4 might just be overwhelmed by so many cars...

Pat


I personaly havent had the problem Silentbreaker but one thought is, have you tried to set your graphic settings to software render instead of hardware and also try and remove the traffic generator. - pat

Don't forget the SC4D Podcast is back and live on Saturdays @ 12 noon CST!! -- The Podcast soon to Return Here Linkie

Nardo69

Traffic Generators ... possible, and doesn't bare a certain logic!

I used some of them in Rhenbrücken (and only there!).

Anyway I am going to check this out on the weekend (Rhenbrücken just takes too long to load on a workday evening ...

Bernhard  :thumbsup:

snorrelli

Hi Silentbreaker - sorry to have to welcome you to our club... ()sad()

I've added your info to the table:



Some interesting observations you've made there. Maybe if we can identify what subfile that is that seems to grow before the bug sets in we can get a better idea of what's happening...

I've noticed the crowds of pedestrians at the corners of cities before but never made the correlation to the bug. I don't use any traffic generators but I've definitely seen similar things. Not sure what that means...
Have you ever had the Prop Pox? Join us to help find a vaccine or a cure.

Totuna e dac-ai murit flăcău ori moş îngârbovit;
Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori ori câine-nlănţuit.

Pat


Snorrelli you might be a bit closer to figuring out or what might be a trigger...

Don't forget the SC4D Podcast is back and live on Saturdays @ 12 noon CST!! -- The Podcast soon to Return Here Linkie

Diamond

#77
I'm currently experiencing the same bug.

OS: WinXP with SP2 Update
RAM: 2GB
Processor: Dual Core, 2x Intel Pentium D CPU 2.8GHZ; running SC4 with only one
VCard: Nvidia GeForce7.300 SE / 7.200 GS
HD: 132 GB
virtual memory: no idea, where can i look it up?
bug affects on large city tiles? yes
Large amount of custom content used? Not at all, my plugin folder has 289mb; it's not packed
Graphic settings? 32bit colors, all details on maximum, 1024x768 resolution
affected cities population: around 1,1million
.sav file shrinks after bug occurs: i don't know, because i recognized the bug after it was too late.
size of affected .sav file: 29,5 mb
previously removed plugins without removing all instances from it: yes

I've never used any traffic generators. Is there a possibility that SC4 only supports a certain amount of props on each city tile and after the limit is reached, it doesn't save them anymore? Another reason might be that we have deleted plugings without removing all instances first. Maybe the game handles its saving just like it draws those props in a grid-fashion style. And once it has to save such a lot with deleted plugin, it just stops saving? That could also be an explanition: because most plugins are used in our biggest cities, and it's quite easy to overlook an instance of an removed plugin. Also, there are so many props and once the bug occurs, there's no way to overlook its effects.

Did you also notice that once you replop those Buildings, they have their props. I still have this "missing plugin" problem and will fix it by finally removing all instances. Maybe after i start bulldozing and replacing the affected lots, the problem will be gone. We'll see.

/edit: It might also be the other way around: When you load city, and the game stumbles over a missing plugin, it just stops loading props. Then after you save, it can't save the props it never loaded. Therefore, your .sav file shrinks.

//edit: I have localized my missing plugin. Have you also just accepted that a plugin was missing for a long period of time without caring about it? I did because i was unable to see any difference in my city (no brown boxes or obvious missing stuff), so i just played and clicked that info box away, that appeared after each time i loaded my city.

///edit: I bulldozed the missing instance and some affected lots. I plopped them again and saved, but when reloading, some just got infected (three from ~20-25 lots) again.

snorrelli

Another victim... Sorry to hear it, Diamond.

New table:


Quote from: Diamond on August 03, 2007, 02:45:12 PM
Is there a possibility that SC4 only supports a certain amount of props on each city tile and after the limit is reached, it doesn't save them anymore?

Theoretically, I think this is possible, but some of us examined the .sav file using the Reader and checked the size of the subfile where props are stored and it does not seem to be outside of established norms.

Quote from: Diamond on August 03, 2007, 02:45:12 PM
Another reason might be that we have deleted plugings without removing all instances first. Maybe the game handles its saving just like it draws those props in a grid-fashion style. And once it has to save such a lot with deleted plugin, it just stops saving? That could also be an explanition: because most plugins are used in our biggest cities, and it's quite easy to overlook an instance of an removed plugin. Also, there are so many props and once the bug occurs, there's no way to overlook its effects.

Did you also notice that once you replop those Buildings, they have their props. I still have this "missing plugin" problem and will fix it by finally removing all instances. Maybe after i start bulldozing and replacing the affected lots, the problem will be gone. We'll see.

/edit: It might also be the other way around: When you load city, and the game stumbles over a missing plugin, it just stops loading props. Then after you save, it can't save the props it never loaded. Therefore, your .sav file shrinks.

//edit: I have localized my missing plugin. Have you also just accepted that a plugin was missing for a long period of time without caring about it? I did because i was unable to see any difference in my city (no brown boxes or obvious missing stuff), so i just played and clicked that info box away, that appeared after each time i loaded my city.

///edit: I bulldozed the missing instance and some affected lots. I plopped them again and saved, but when reloading, some just got infected (three from ~20-25 lots) again.

At this point, I'm about ready to pinpoint this - removing a plugin without bulldozing all instances first - as the cause of the problem. Unless someone can weigh in and say for sure that they have had this problem without having done that, it now seems to me to be the most likely cause.

I have indeed just accepted that a plugin was missing for a long period of time and let it go, although not one that gave me the missing plugin pop-up upon loading the city. The two that come to mind are a pink, wedge-shaped building from swi21 (can't seem to find it now) and this lot from BarbyW. In both cases, they grew like weeds all over my cities and, in the case of the transit-enabled florist lot, would not upgrade, so I took them out. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of instances in multiple cities and while I tried to bulldoze them, I didn't get them all. Months later, I was still coming across ones I had missed.

They never gave me the pop-up warning but, in the case of the pink swi21 building I kept the model, so the model would still show up but with no lot under it. In the case of the BLS GA florist, the TE-ed lot would still be there, with nothing on it.

Anyway, the specific lot isn't important. I think what happens is the .sav file gets corrupted somehow looking for a plugin that isn't there anymore. We can try to reproduce the problem by growing a city and intentionally removing one or more plugins that we know have grown in that city but it will be hard to prove definitively because the bug doesn't appear immediately after you remove the plugin. The .sav file gets corrupted and then this graphics bug can appear any time later on.

Is that correct, by the way? The bug did not appear immediately after you removed the plugin without bulldozing?
Have you ever had the Prop Pox? Join us to help find a vaccine or a cure.

Totuna e dac-ai murit flăcău ori moş îngârbovit;
Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori ori câine-nlănţuit.

stewart_garden

Snorelli,

I still don't have my computer to give more stats, but I am certain that I removed a plugin before bulldozing the lot in my city that was infected. Incredible detective work you are doing here.

Stewart

First things first, but not necessarily in that order.