Lighter-colored city tile in region view

[sumwonyuno]

Hello everyone,

Background info:  I am working on a region for a future mayor diary/city journal.  I use both my desktop and laptop [plugins and config settings are synchronized, as well as the cities].  On my desktop, I use Ubuntu and play sc4 through wine [OpenGL].  On my laptop, I use Windows [DirectX].  The only terrain mod I have is a self-made plugin that raises the global water level.

A few days ago I was using my laptop.  I started a new tile, saved it, and returned to region view:

[picture removed]

The city tile was lighter than the surrounding tiles.  I went back to the city tile and zoomed in.  The grass looked dry, with patches of exposed dirt.

About a week prior to this, the same thing occured on another city tile, while working on my desktop.  The reason was that I accidentally unpaused the city, and later re-paused it when it reached the 7th month.  When I unpaused again and then paused it back at the 1st month of the following year, the region shot was fine again.  It seemed like there was some sort of a seasonal graphics effect that I never knew about.

However, for the above picture, that city tile has not been unpaused.  There is currently 26 other city tiles in my region so far, all created on either the desktop or laptop.  Except for the city tile in the previous paragraph, the others haven't had any region view graphics problems.  Yes, I've tried resaving the city on my desktop and unpausing, but the problem persists.

I feel I could rule out using different OS's, and even the 3D renderer.  I do have considerable computer knowledge, and I am stumped.  The different computer specs may contribute, but I have doubts.

Help is appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Custom-built Desktop:
Ubuntu 7.04, OpenGL
AMD64 X2 + 4200
Gigabyte Geforce 7600 GS 256MB
monitor at 1024x600, 75Hz

Acer Laptop:
Windows XP Media Center 2006, DX9
AMD64 X2 TL-50
Integrated Geforce Go 6100
monitor at 1400x600, 60Hz

SimCity settings on both:
800x600x32, windowed mode
All high settings, except automata and shadows on low.
Clouds or variable speed automata unchecked.
Hardware rendering

[kassarc16]

Hmm, that's a good question. The likely culprit would be a terrain mod, but yours doesn't change textures? Is anyone aware of the base maxis textures changing based on time of year?

[Jonathan]

I have got that before, I thought it was because that city was slightly higher than the surronding ones, but not a big enough difference for the reconcile tool to recognize.

[jplumbley]

I think this has to do with the month the city tile was saved in.  Fall and Winter months would be lighter and more dry than the Spring and Summer months.

[Jonathan]

So there is very basic weather in Simcity?

[Tarkus]

So there is very basic weather in Simcity?

There is indeed.  It took me by surprise, too.  It's built into the Terrain Parameters.  There's also the Snow cheat as well (enabled with Buggi's DLL file), which, to my knowledge, is also affected by the time cycle. 

-Alex (Tarkus)

[sumwonyuno]

My custom mod just changes two maximum water level properties in the terrain exemplar in SimCity1.dat.

I checked in other cities and the lighter city tile.  All of the land in my cities is at 270m, and the new water level is 269.9m, instead of 250m.  The bottom of the water is at 230m.

The only elevated land in my region so far is the currently-unfinished Capitalis-version of Diamond Head [which I hiked up today].  It is at a height of 338m.  The grass texture is still darker at that elevation than the lighter city tile, btw.

Now, I think I may have found out what may have caused the lighter city tile in the first place.  In the region.ini, there is the Min Water and Max Water values.  It seems that they don't do anything, but they do.  The default is 60/100.  The max automatically resets to 100 if set higher.  However, the min can have a higher value than the max.

I did mess around with the region.ini of Capitalis previously.  Earlier today, I set the min to 0.  I tested out by making a new tile and I got dry-grass/dirt texture.  I saved it, and indeed, it had the same lighter city tile look in region view.  I quit SimCity, and then changed the region.ini again, this time the min to 60.  I opened a new tile, and it had the default green grass texture.  I repeated this process several times, and got consistant results.

However, it seems changing the min values only affects unmodified tiles [ones that do not have a file in the region's folder].  Saved, and existing cities are not affected by the changed values.

With these findings, I hope that there some solution other than to delete the offending city tile and remake it.