Strange Texturing Issue with Medium and High Density Buildings on Windows 7

[creathir]

This is just driving me crazy. I have Windows 7 Home (64-bit) with an Intel Core i7 920 CPU with 6GB of RAM. My graphics card is an ATI 4870 HD.

For some reason medium and high density buildings do not display properly. The shape of the building exists, but SC4 fails to load the texture, and instead places a blue, red, or green overlay in its place. This is not on every building, but most buildings, and like I said, I have so far only noticed the issue on medium and high density lots. Outside of this graphical anomaly, everything else renders just fine.

I am currently using the following as my shortcut:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "Simcity 4" /high /affinity 3 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:2 -w -Intro:off

I have tried messing with the CPUCount and the affinity, and still am not having any luck.

My graphics card has the "advanced features" either off or set to be controlled by the application.

I have tried settings the renderer to software and hardware, have tried the in game graphics settings to low all the way, medium all the way, and high all the way, and still no luck.

I have also modified my graphics rules to recognize my ATI card as a high end graphics card.

I tried reinstalling SC4 (Deluxe) as well as the update, and even did not load any of my normal addons I have used before (on my old PC) and still am having this issue.

I really am at a loss. If anyone has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here is an example of the problem I am having: (From the Big City Tutorial city on a fresh install of the game)


Once again, thanks for your help!

- Creathir

[Andreas]

Does this happen as well if you don't use a call with cmd.exe, but rather using the regular shortcut that gets installed by the game? Usually, it shouldn't be necessary to set the core affinity, but just add a parameter in the SC4 commandline itself, like this:

Code Select Expand

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -intro:off -d:DirectX -CustomResolution:enabled -w -r1440x900 -CPUCount:1 -CPUPriority:high

Use " -d:Software" if the game won't run in hardware mode, " -f" for fullscreen, and of course your desired resolution in the " -r..." command (note that the resolution must be supported by your graphics card and your screen). Personally, I wouldn't recommend a high CPU priority, though, and I doubt that the game supports more than one CPU core (but it appears that it can make use of two individual CPUs if your system has such a configuration).

[creathir]

Does this happen as well if you don't use a call with cmd.exe, but rather using the regular shortcut that gets installed by the game? Usually, it shouldn't be necessary to set the core affinity, but just add a parameter in the SC4 commandline itself, like this:

Code Select Expand

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -intro:off -d:DirectX -CustomResolution:enabled -w -r1440x900 -CPUCount:1 -CPUPriority:high

Use " -d:Software" if the game won't run in hardware mode, " -f" for fullscreen, and of course your desired resolution in the " -r..." command (note that the resolution must be supported by your graphics card and your screen). Personally, I wouldn't recommend a high CPU priority, though, and I doubt that the game supports more than one CPU core (but it appears that it can make use of two individual CPUs if your system has such a configuration).

It still has the issue regardless of using the normal shortcut or my custom one. I tried your shortcut (without the CPUPriority:high and with a corrected path for my installation) and it did not work. Thank you very much for the suggestions though, hopefully someone out there has had this issue as well. Thanks!

[creathir]

Wow... I cannot believe I figured this out...

Okay, so the issue had 100% NOTHING to do with my hardware believe it or not. (I was convinced the ATI card was the issue... I was on the verge of spending a couple hundred on a new NVidia card.)

It was actually an issue with my game disc and/or my DVD drive. The game would install fine using the drive, no issue at all. So, I assumed there was another issue. Well, I was wrong. A few days ago my drive stopped reading DVD discs. I tried numerous discs, and it just would not read them. I have another computer, so I decided to try them in that computer, and they would work just fine. Well, obviously this meant my DVD drive was messed up, so I got another one, put it in, and DVDs magically worked again. So this got me thinking, MAYBE I was lucky, and somehow SC4 was not installing correctly but somehow making it through installation with no problems. So I popped my CDs in, and tried to install. Disc 1 went without a problem, which at this point I was really confident that maybe this shot in the dark might work. Well, popped disc 2 in, and it failed! Amazingly, on my old drive, it would move on through like nothing was wrong, while this one worked fine. so my next step was to get a new copy of SC4. I did this, installed, and it works like a charm! Of course there were a few performance issue as it was an ATI card and it was scaling back performance, but a quick change to my graphics rules file and I was building cities like I have not been able to do for at least a year and a half. HOORAY!!!!

I FINALLY can try all the new buildings and road networks everyone has been coming up with!

Anyway, thank you very much for your help with this, I hope anyone who has a similar issue will glean something off this thread.

- Creathir

[Andreas]

That's a pretty unusual story indeed! I somehow figured that there was something wrong with your game files, but I'd never guessed that SC4 would work properly otherwise and even finish an installation that was done via a bad DVD drive. Glad you fixed the problem, though.