What causes Prop Pox (and how to avoid it)

[wouanagaine]

As explain there is no relation to plugin size, beeing 4gb or 10mb it doesn't matter, it is just the fact that some props are modded in a certain way to make the prop pox happen, and as Bap pointed out, there is not only peg stuff modded that way

I think the term is from Snorelli on ST on the Prop pox thread, but I'm not sure

Did you really read the thread, is there something that make you feel it is not a 100% proof somewhere ?
it seems you didn't read it anyway as you ask for DL links, so instead of giving you the DL links, I'll invite you to reread the thread from the start, you'll find the DL links and all the facts
100% proof has been made since Bap first post, and confirmed by others since then. but this obviously is not a proof to said developer. BSC members reproduced it, but said developer doesn't believe in it just because we're BSC, now Lord_Morpheus reproduced it and make a long post about it, but as he is also not a well known member, I'm pretty sure what will be the conclusion of said developer. Now what will happen if you can reproduce it ? As you're enough well known from peg and not related to BSC, will it be enough ?

Remember he claimed it was a hoax then he claimed that as Bap is not well known member hence his explanation are BS, he claimed that massive amount of growable custom contents might be the culprit ( obviously he claims a lot of thing but without doing any tests, as no one seems to have send him a prop poxed savegame )
I'm really wondering why said developper can't  fix his file ( only 1 along his > 300 he uploaded , not that hard ), and acknowledge that file is part of the problem ? There is nothing wrong in it, no one blame him for modding it that way as no one knew by that time, only blaming for not fixing it once it is known to be bad.
And why said developer doesn't come here and explain his findings ( as we can't get to him ) or his counter argument ? Really I'd like to know his counter arguments on all the facts that has been said here. I want to get rid of prop pox so anyone with a correct reasonning of the problem will be welcome. And if he doesn't come here because there are BSC members here, because we"re blaming/flaming him for not fixing his files etc.. etc... , please agree with me that it is not really an argument. Tarkus already invited him, but he refused for the above reasons.

So if you're willing to help, just make him comes and posts here about his findings.

[tahill79]

actually i did and have been reading this from almost the start.  a lot of my earlier posts have been deleted but you can see them on Andreas off topic thread for PP.  yes i defended Peg and still do, just as you all do the same here. 

also with me being more of a downloader of the LEX and not a poster in these forums i didnt even notice that links were provided.  forgive me for that.  post count says it all. lol.  anyways.  i just want to experience these for myself.  i see the pix posted and believe them to be real.  i mean why in the hell would ppl make up something like this?  that would be some good photoshoping.

if i remember right Barby fixed 2 of the files that are or from BSC that also might have been the problem. right? 

so is it just the 2 BSC files and the 1 Peg Prod file that caused this?  or is it more and just waiting for other custome content to be found?

could it be from a certain mix of custome content from numerous develpers?
my plugins have BSC, Peg, Polska, Somy and others from ST and german sites.

you are obviously a BSC supporter and im a PegProd supporter but im not really here to argue.  i have tons of BSC items.  almost every thing on the lex to be exact and any mod here can see what ive downloaded as proof.  there are very few things here on the LEX that i havent downloaded.

SimPeg is more my style so i choose to hang there, lurk at SC4D and talk every now and then on ST.

*

[BarbyW]

If you read my last post you will see that as of this moment we don not have a full list of which props cause Prop Pox. We have a number of theories at this time but research and investigation are on going. It is tedious and lengthy but I have no doubt we will find the root cause if not the actual files until more people do the testing.
As for said developer, he has been invited here. He will not be flamed, decried or any thing else if he posts. He does not even have to post to read and then collect the files for his own testing.

[Rayden]

tahill, this not a matter of who supports who, it's a matter of having a specific problem fixed. Like has been explained Barbye found among BSC props 1 or 2 with the same problem, and even before it was proved or not they would be the cause of th problem, she fixed them. Everyone that has little experience on modding knows that there shouldn't be two props with the same IID. Even if it doesn't cause apparently any problem, it's bad modding. So, it would be very simple to your said developper to have his props fixed as soon as it was known about the IID duplicating, just for the sake of having done what should have been done on the first place, but nobody knew. Is that too difficult to understand?

[wouanagaine]

There is no real problem of you being a peg defender. I'm not a BSC defender for that issue, I'm a Prop pox defender

There are unfortunatly more than just 1 BSC file and 1 peg file, as Snorelli experienced the prop pox way before those files were released. Barby is doing extensive testing for older files that might have been modded the same way. However it is really time consuming and most of us don't have such old files. I hope that when Snorelli upload his plugins list, we can narrow our search. Of course that doesn't mean there is no others not so old file with the same problem. At least we expect now that no one will ever produce such file anymore. We also expect that any custom content creator be now aware of the problem, and if they are still active, to upload a patch for their files if they modded them that way.

You didn't reply to one of my questions however, and I'm really interested in your answer, where or why do you think the facts and experiments ( and their results ) posted here are not a proof ? As I said in an earlier post, I'll be glad to hear any reasonning about the prop pox, why it shows, why it spreads etc... I'm coding a tool to for prop poxed cities, so anything that can help me is welcome.

[tahill79]

You didn't reply to one of my questions however, and I'm really interested in your answer, where or why do you think the facts and experiments ( and their results ) posted here are not a proof ?[/quote]

i never actually said i didnt question the existence of PP. and again ive seen the pix posted here as proof. so please quit saying i dont believe in PP. lol.   just that i wanted the city to look a little closer.  below is my first post stating this.......

2nd,  ive never had this in any of my cities.  not saying it dont exist.  ive seen the pix that have been posted here.  also at one point i had a 4 gig plugin folder.  has the size of a plugin folder been discussed? 

again in the last post you will see this........

i just want to experience these for myself.  i see the pix posted and believe them to be real.  i mean why in the hell would ppl make up something like this?  that would be some good photoshopi

and now that i think about it aint it a certain prop?  cant remember which one off hand.  enlighten me please?   
is there anything in the German or Polish sights mentioning the PP?  cant read either and translation sites dont work that well.  im just a PCG member trying to help the community.  i will try to talk with Peg and see if he will jump in on this.

[BarbyW]

I have identified for certain one of the props from the BDK Resource pack that does cause Prop Pox. The beach umbrella causes it every time.
Your earlier posts weren't deleted but moved out of this thread as they were not contributing to the discussion. They are still available in the forums.

[callagrafx]

Nothing gets deleted here....we're hoarders    Seriously, this thread is for the discussion of the PP (aha! another new acronym) so everything that went off on a tangent was moved. 

[tahill79]

Nothing gets deleted here....we're hoarders    Seriously, this thread is for the discussion of the PP (aha! another new acronym) so everything that went off on a tangent was moved. 

i know i know.  i even stated where they were moved to.  jeez.  lol.  its cool. 

PP.  i tell my boys to call it a worm.     its PG13. lol.

[Lord_Morpheus]

Well you are right I am not a well known member too. But I am active in the german forum for some years now and I tested this for many hours to verify! And btw I like Pegasus mods. They have a high quality and are looking very good. But he needs to change his opinion about this topic...

If somebody has some webspace I can send a poxed savegame file.

EDIT: Well maybe the bsc should remove the auto link to the prop pox thread if you write Pegasus. This is a little bit stupid. And I think it won't help anyway to change his mind!

[wouanagaine]

I never say you don't believe in PP, but from your earlier post I have the impression you don't believe BDK prop causing it. I may have misunderstood you, so please forgive me

show me 100% proof then ill make the changes.  

So I was only questionning you why you need more proof.
The only thing I can say is that we've not a definitive and complete explanation of why it happen with such modding, but we know 100% for sure it happens with that kind of modding

As I said, I'm really interesting in any theory or finding being in line or not with what we already found
Lord_Morpheus findings for example seem to get to the conclusion that PP will not strike 100% of the time even with a prop modded that way, so that means there are some others yet unknown factors in the problem, and I wish we can get all the factors sorted out so we can fix the PP

As you're willing to test yourself, I will be glad to see your results

So I will sum up some stuff
-Prop pox appears because of a corruption in the savegame file. The corruption appears only if your subfile savegame is around 6Mb ( which can be check with Reader ), which is approximatly when you have around 150k-200k props in your city. If the subfile goes up to 16Mb, then when you save again, it will shrink back to 6Mb and if you didn't bulldoze half of the map ( which might explain the shrinking ), the prop pox appears.
- The corruption appears only if a prop modded the way described is actually in the city
- I can with reader take any savegame and make it prop poxed even without closed to 6Mb, this ensure the prop pox is a result of a corrupted savegame ( corrupted in a certain way )
- If you use Bap's file, the prop pox appears almost all the time on the right side. And I'm pretty sure that any prop poxed city will first shows prop pox signs on this side
- The jump of the subfile from 6Mb to 16Mb is easily explainable and related to how SC4 store subfiles in DBPF file
- As the modded beach umbrella is used in a lot of maxis lots ( growable and plopable ), and if you don't bloc Maxis lots, chance are high that such a prop will be in your city and so chance are high that your city will be prop poxed when reaching the critical mass.
- If you however don't intend to have such a big amount of props, there is nothing to worry about.
- Prop pox can appears in all 3 cities size, as it is just related to the size of the subfile. However it will be very hard to get 150k-200k props in a small or medium city

Things that need more testings:
- Is there an upper limit the size of the subfile ( and hence of number of props  ) for the prop pox to not strike as Lord_Morpheus didn't get it all the time  ( which can also be explain because there might not been that such modded props in his city )
- What exactly in the modding cause the corruption

Well you are right I am not a well known member too. But I am active in the german forum for some years now and I tested this for many hours to verify! And btw I like pegs mods. They have a high quality and are looking very good. But he needs to change his opinion about this topic...

If somebody has some webspace I can send a poxed savegame file.

I hope you didn't take any offense beeing called not a well known member, as it was not the goal of my sentence
You can upload the file using http://www.fileden.com or http;//www.rapidshare.com, you'll need to register but it is free
If you can upload some of the savegames that didn't get prop poxed even with the modded prop, I'll take a look at them and see if the prop is or not in the savegame and hopefully we might find one of the other factor of PP appearance

[tahill79]

wouanagaine
thats what peg had said

[wouanagaine]

Ah , so sorry I mixed it up

[Lord_Morpheus]

I hope you didn't take any offense beeing called not a well known member, as it was not the goal of my sentence
You can upload the file using http://www.fileden.com or http;//www.rapidshare.com, you'll need to register but it is free
If you can upload some of the savegames that didn't get prop poxed even with the modded prop, I'll take a look at them and see if the prop is or not in the savegame and hopefully we might find one of the other factor of PP appearance

I don't take it as offense and I know that your sentence wasn't meant that way 

I will upload the files this evenning.

Oh and by the way, the prop pox always started at the right (or east) side of the city.

[wouanagaine]

I will upload the files this evenning.
Oh and by the way, the prop pox always started at the right (or east) side of the city.

Thanks for the files and thanks for the confirmation of right side. It makes sense as the props are, as far as we can see, saved from left to right, top to bottom. As the savegame corruption occurs at the end, it seems logical it strikes at the right.

[Lord_Morpheus]

Here is my test city:

Big memory management (network file over 16Mbyte), no Prop Pox but OWW2 was in my plugin folder as the memory management change happens.
http://rapidshare.com/files/213419012/City_-_Berlin.sc4 Size ca. 24Mb

Small memory management (network file under 6Mbyte) and no Prop Pox, this is the initial state before I started testing.
http://rapidshare.com/files/213419013/City_-_Berlin.sc4 Size ca. 13,7Mb

And here for everyone who doesn't believe in Prop Pox. The same City with Prop Pox.
http://rapidshare.com/files/213432998/City_-_Berlin.sc4 Size ca. 13,2Mb

[Diggis]

On the issue of where they dissapear from, would it possibly have anything to do with where you start development?  So Baps city will always start in the same place, cos it's the same city?

[wouanagaine]

I hit the wrong key, and lost a long post

I'll try to rewrite it

Thanks Lord_Morpheus for the savegames

I have first downloaded the big city and used my tool to explore it ( my tool will be uploaded at LEX very soon )
The tool confirm it is not prop poxed
The tool find 18 instance of the umbrella beach ( one of the prop identified to be trouble )
None of them are timed, which might explain why the prop pox didn't strike. Even on small city, the modded umbrella beach is saved as a timed prop.
Then I downloaded the prop poxed one, to see if I can find a timed umbrella beach prop in it
This time, the tool found only 8 instances of the umbrella beach prop. and one of them is saved as a timed prop, in state 0 ( ie it is visible and I bet you saved between 9am and 6pm in game hour time ).
One thing worth noting, is that the same instance of the prop exist in the big savegame ( ie at the same location ) around 4090,2565 so on the right side a bit below the middle . The lot from which the prop belongs to is on the very side of the map
So to be sure I downloaded the original non prop poxed city, that prop exist also at the same location. By that time you have 19 umbrella beach prop, none of them are timed as you didn't use the modded file.

So further research are needed to understand why the prop change from non timed to timed version, as in almost all tests we've done previously, as soon as we put the modded files, all props become timed in the savegame. If anyone has any ideas to look into, please post

On the issue of where they dissapear from, would it possibly have anything to do with where you start development?  So Baps city will always start in the same place, cos it's the same city?

The props are saved in a pattern that seems to be from left to right, so the rightmost props are at the end of the subfile. if a corruption occurs, no prop after the corruption can be read, so this lead to having no props on the right side

[bap]

I changed the format of the first post of this thread so it now contains links to the set of 4 initial messages as well as a link to the message explaining how to download the test city and check Prop Pox by yourself. Hopefully this will make it easier & clearer for newbies.

Bap

[owlsinger]

I took a few minutes to play with the new savegame tool (Great Stuff!) on the poxed city I have, and came up with this:





The link for the zips are:

City: http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/3/12/2361237/PPCity.zip

Plugin Folder: http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/3/12/2361237/My%20Documents/PPPlugins.zip

Thanks,
Kendra