Growing Empty Lots and How to Correct them

[RippleJet]

Feedback is most welcome!
If you encounter landmarks growing on empty lots that are not included in the lists on page 1, please report them in this thread for future inclusion.

[jplumbley]

With all my experimenting and readings.  I had heard RaphealNinja's blank lots were bad things, but I never knew why.  Now that I see this list you have compiled, I have noticed a few lots that in the past for me have grown as "blank lots" and I never knew why, no I do.  Thank you!

And now I can fix it if I want to re-installed them.  Sweeeeet!!

[M4346]

Invaluable information, I have to say! And I might add that I have seen instances of Hattori Clockmakers (or something like that) exhibiting the same behaviour.I have to say though that I downloaded it from the Japanese site.

Thanks again for the information! 

[Serkanner]

The information in this topic is indeed invaluable. I would like to thank you for the great job you have done and investing all that time to sort out the "troubled" lots ... 

[jeronij]

This is a really fabulous tutorial Ripplejet 
One of the most complex I have ever seen. Thanks for sharing it here. It will make our SC4 life easier 

[RippleJet]

Thank you all for the comments!

And I might add that I have seen instances of Hattori Clockmakers (or something like that) exhibiting the same behaviour.I have to say though that I downloaded it from the Japanese site.

Thank you, M!
I missed both the Hattori ClockMakers and the Mitsubishi Bank by APTX when setting up these lists.
They both have ParentCohort = 0x0,0x0,0x0, but instead they contain the property Building/prop Family!
And that applies to the Japanese versions at APTX's site as well as to the English ones at the STEX.
Both have been added.

[SC4BOY]

Is there a cleanitol file(s) for this list?

[RippleJet]

No, this list was compiled before the Cleanitol was made.

[xxdita]

I may not be able to lot or bat just yet, but I can certainly cut & paste. 
Give me a few minutes.

Here we go.
Empty RCI Lots Cleanitol

I needed that actually, as it seems I had about 30 or so of these.

[xxdita]

You'll need to right click on the link, then Save Target As
Empty RCI Lots Cleanitol

[RippleJet]

That was very quickly done, xxdita!
Saved me the trouble to copy the lines from Excel into a txt file!

Do you mind if I post the txt file as an attachment to the first post here?

[xxdita]

It's all yours. Glad to help.

[RippleJet]

Thank you!
It is attached to the first post (with a slightly changed filename)!

[SC4BOY]

Yay people!!! Done while I slept! Was it a dream? *looks at first post* NO!! A file to save me lots of work!!

YAY!YAY!YAY! 

edit: Hmmm.. ok I ran it and found 12 lots in my stuff. I'll take those out. I am concerned about the problem of destroying all before I take the files out to avoid crashes/unpredictable behaviour. That doesn't seem too tough as I only have about 12 cities that they can be in. HOWEVER.. I have a bit of a problem.. and tryiing to be helpful. I noticed some lots grow according to all the signs of this "landmark growth" problem, but when I click on the empty lot, I get a blank query. Since it is blank, I can't really identify the source can I?

Here is an example:


How do I test if these are files on the list or if this is a new problem file?

Oh.. and now I think on it.. what happens if I delete the files and have overlooked a lot in a city.. does it just crash? or does it exhibit other nasty behaviours?

[xxdita]

One way to test is to run the Cleanitol, without demolishing that particular lot. If it is in there, then you will get the pesky Missing Plugin error as you reload the city. Worst case scenario is that it crashes your game shortly after, but since you were smart enough to Back Up the files this shouldn't be too big a problem, as you can replace them all, demolish the lot, then run the Cleanitol again.
Or you could cross-reference the info you do have with the list RippleJet provided on page one of this thread, though I'm not seeing any lot with 895 jobs. So it is possible that you've found an unlisted lot, now we just have to figure out what it is. Wou's already told you about the Extra Cheats dll, which would come in handy right about now, but there's always the old fashioned way, which would be to go ahead and go through all of your remaining Industrial (most likely IM) Ploppables, and matching up the lots themselves, based on lot size and props. Once you figure it out, we can double check it, then add it to the list.
The worst case scenario with deleting the files is a Crash To Desktop. But since you were of course smart enough to backup the files from Cleanitol, all you have to do is restore them, go back and demolish the lot in question, then run the Cleanitol again. The first sign of having forgotten a lot would of course be the pesky Missing Plugin Error message as your city opens up. Sometimes you can still demolish without restoring the files, without any damage. Other times the lot becomes undemolishable (although even then you can possibly plop a park in its place to get rid of it).

[SC4BOY]

Well as it turns out, I have already deleted the lots in order to get on with things. The only thing I have left is the pic above plus this pic. Both are INDUSTRIAL lots and I don't see those in the list. This probably means that they may be "problem lots" that are not on the list.

The process of going through 4Gb of lots and a ton of menu entries (for an unrelated issue I did a quick scan of my parks menu alone and had well over 350 menu entries and that is with all MML's that I am aware of) I am not sure about a handy way for me to do that. I am fully aware tht I have some "un-named menu entries". In fact I have made pics of those and entered the names in a txt file that I keep of problems in order to TRY to track things that I thiink are dubious. I am rather new to the "custom lots" and historically use very few and very few mods.. but I'm playing with them a lot of recent .. I guess because they are "a  new toy"

What probably I will do as time permits is watch for empty lots, and then try to trace back to menu entries to isolate them as they come up.. sooner of later, I will get through them all.. hehe.. To bad some of the menu entries I have are either totally blank or in foreign languages.. not too useful in our persuit..  For FUTURE lots, I may see what I can do with the cheats dll if I don't find other problems with having it there.

Also I am not sure which of the ones removed with the purge are among those I have previously identified.. I'll have to chip away at that as I can. At any rate I'll keep folk updated with whatever info I have as I find it.. we'll piece the puzzle together eventually.

Here's another pic I have at hand.. Its a shame that you can't even tell what the lot size is..



PS: IN order to help FIND lots to EVEN LOOK AT.. is there a characteristic that I can use a windows search on or something like that so I could see a list of ONLY ploppable lots from my plugins folder?

[RippleJet]

SC4BOY and xxdita, thanks for your efforts in here!

Re-reading what you've said I just got a hinch... maybe those ID/IM lots with 895 and 498 jobs are Japanese...
(Industrial §§ are either Industrial Dirty or Industrial Manufacturing).

Some time back virtually every Japanese landmark was made using RalphaelNinja's functional empty lots...

If their names are Japanese they might appear empty in the title of the query, unless you've got the proper font installed.
One way of finding them in that case would be to check your Japanese industrial landmarks in SC4Tool and try to find those with occupancies 895 and 498.

[SC4BOY]

I STRONGLY agree.. I didn't mention it, but for my early stuff, almost EVERY INDUSTRIAL AND PORT lots were Japanese.. So you probably are on the right track. I'm not a "tools" guy, but I may experiment with it.

[SC4BOY]

OK sports fans!! Finally I got some spare time to track down those lots that were giving me problems long ago.

Here is the infamous 895 blank lot


And this is the link to it LNG Plant

And THIS is the evil 498 blank lot


Here is the set elements plopped.. I'm guessing that, although I have never seen them grow, that they ALSO are potential growable (empty) landmarks

Other elements plopped


This is the "download link" image (same site as linked above.. just a couple notches further down the page)

Image as shown at the link page




All of these come from the same download site, and represent sweet little harbor elements. If it would be possible, it would be nice if someone could edit these 2 KNOWN bad lots and take a look at the rest of the set (total of only 5 lots I think) and see if they also have the problem. I'd love to have the altered files and if they might be made available "corrected" to the public. I don't know what would be required for that. Perhaps MAS71 could act as an intermediary if there are reasons that this cannot be readily done. I actually use these lots pretty often as I think they are very nice.

I have given the links to the "bad lots" so that anyone interested could easily get their own file copies.. they are quite small downloads. These (at least the LNG set and the ships.. also available on the site and very nice) and are dependencies to the

Fukuda "harbor pack without bugs" Image and Link



Thanks to all for their help and patience..

[RippleJet]

Thanks to all for their help and patience..

And a big thanks to you, SC4BOY, for tracking these down!
I will soon be checking NOB's files and add them to the lists.