What causes Prop Pox (and how to avoid it)

[Diggis]

DS, I have had a large, flat tile, less that 1/3 developed, that got the Pox.  Pretty sure I could manage to get the Pox on a small tile if I tried, definetly on a medium one.  This is likely due to my play style as I don't build a final layout from the start, but rather prefer to watch my city grown from small farming village to megatropolis.  This involves lots of rezoning and relaying of roads and lots.

As has been pointed out before, number of residents bears no relationship on the Pox, it's number of Props.  Generally larger capacity buildings contain less props as the buildings take up most of the lot.  It has been noted that urban sprawl is more to blame.  South Lester (my Poxed city mentioned above) was mostly low and med density residential and medium density industrial.  Heavy on props.

Why should I have to change my play style because there are files out there that cause the Pox.  While slightly masochistic, I would prefer to find them by trial and error, and get them fixed.

[mightygoose]

right ok, i have read this thread and there seems to be very little i can do to monimise the chances of developing POX if i want high fill low density large tiles. So i put it to you, what re the golden no no's to minismise my risk, before i even start developing a region.

[Diggis]

right ok, i have read this thread and there seems to be very little i can do to monimise the chances of developing POX if i want high fill low density large tiles. So i put it to you, what re the golden no no's to minismise my risk, before i even start developing a region.

At the moment, avoid the file listed above, and be careful with what you download.  Short of checking every single upload individually there is little more you can do until more information (on causes and on triggers) comes to light.

[mightygoose]

PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat, so is this the only file known to definitely affect prop pox. Are you suggesting i individually check my entire plugins for duplicate props with different IID's?

[Diggis]

Unfortunately yes, this is the only file we have found to date.  We know it can't be the only one, because there are incidents of the Pox from before that was released.  However, before Bap's discovery, records weren't kept so closely so we aren't able to track down which of the files were the culprits.

Checking your entire plugins would be one way of doing it... however not a really efficient one.   The stuff on the LEX should be safe as Barby and Tage have checked it pretty thoroughly.   Other that that you just have to be careful what you download.

[dragonshardz]

Diggis-

I never said you had to change your play style, I was simply stating what has worked for me in preventing Prop Pox, and that it might work for others as well. Obviously my play style is different from yours; mine gravitates toward small, high-density city areas with a low amount of sprawl and plenty of unused, unpropped space, while yours gravitates towards large, low-density areas. Both are viable play styles, and I would never presume to tell you to play a certain way simply because it is what works best for me.

I apologize if I have caused any offense.

[BarbyW]

I don't mean to bash on anyone's obviously painstaking research, but, Barby, I've had large city tiles with over 500k population, with the PEG file you mentioned installed (unmodified), and Prop Pox has never been an issue for me.

I'm not saying you are wrong; under the correct circumstances, PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat most likely does contain a trigger for Pop Pox. I just feel that the underlying cause of Prop Pox may go deeper than a incorrectly modified Maxis prop.

Regardless, I have found that the easiest way of preventing Prop Pox is to not only take care of the files with known Maxis props that have been modified incorrectly, but also to take steps preventing those files which have Prop Pox triggers that have not been discovered. Those steps are as simple as:

Never build on a completely flat tile, of whatever size.

While completely flat tiles contain the largest amount of room for city building, they also allow for the largest number of potentially Poxy files to have an effect. Make sure not only that your city contains hills, but that there are areas where you cannot build or where it would not make sense to build. One map that I feel hits all this right on the nose is the Invermere Valley map.

My $0.02

I don't think you have understood, dragonshardz, and it would be appreciated if you would not make statements that are not based on fact or research.

1. Population is not an issue. I have had cities of 1 million on perfectly flat tiles and have never had Prop Pox. In fact the Riquelandia files that bap posted for testing have less population than the majority of my old cities.

2. Size/type of tile has no bearing on the problem. Prop Pox has been reported in various terrains and various size tiles.

3. To date, I repeat once more, we have only identified one file but know that there must be others that can cause this problem. I have been searching for other files for months but have not yet been able to find one although I do not have all the old lots from the STEX or other exchanges. bap positively identified the file by binary search and tested his theory over many months before publishing his findings. People who have suffered from this problem prior to the release of the BDK file have offered their cities for examination together with lists of their plugins. We cannot, however, know if there have been any changes in their plugins as many had abandoned the affected cities a long time ago.

4. Custom content per se has no effect on Prop Pox as the Riquelandia tile was developed with none at all - and how I learned to detest vanilla Maxis while testing .

5. Although it seems that a sprawling suburban style may be the problem, many will change the density of zones as the city develops so promoting the building of higher rise buildings. The problem occurs, so far as we know, when a Maxis prop is modded without changing the IID of the exemplar. My research has involved taking each of the four Maxis props involved in the BDK file and testing each individually. The only prop that constantly caused Prop Pox was the beach umbrella which had been modded but retained the Maxis IID. I tested also by taking the beach umbrella and modding it the same way but I changed the IID. No Prop Pox. The beach umbrella, as I stated previously, is widely used on Maxis R$ lots. All cities start out with R$ whatever they may eventually end up as so IF you have the BDK file in plugins AND do not block Maxis R$ lots THEN you are likely to get Prop Pox even though it may not occur for a long time. Until the prop file  of the Savegame file exceeds 16MB, in fact, and that may take years to develop.

Anyone who would care to join in the hunt for other possible files that may cause Prop Pox are very welcome to join in but if you have not done any research or made any positive contributions to this discussion please do not make erroneous statements. We have tried to emphasise the need for research from anyone especially those who may hold older files - those from 2003/2004/2005. The more people hunting and testing, the quicker we can identify and deal with any suspect files.

[RippleJet]

I'm not saying you are wrong; under the correct circumstances, PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat most likely does contain a trigger for Pop Pox. I just feel that the underlying cause of Prop Pox may go deeper than a incorrectly modified Maxis prop.

As evidenced by Lord_Morpheus'es tests (page 12 of this thread and onwards), and also confirmed by every prop poxed city that has been examined ever since, it seems obvious enough that the prop pox appears if at least one lot including at least one of those modified props included in said resource file, is "deleted" (either manually or, most likely, by being replaced in the game by an upgrading lot) during the process at which the prop subfile in the savegame is changed from a compressed one (when the uncompressed size is beneath 16 MB) to an uncompressed one (when its size exceeds these 16 MB).

Until the prop file of the Savegame file exceeds 16MB, in fact, and that may take years to develop.

Indeed! And as has been said here and elsewhere, there are cases where the prop file has been "infected", but still hasn't developed the pox when surpassing that 16 MB threshold.
The difference may very well be in the question, whether any of those modified props have been deleted during that crucial step of the prop subfile's layout in the savegame.

[dragonshardz]

As I said, that is what as worked for me so far.

...Perhaps I should go and change that post so that is more clear.

[BarbyW]

dragonshardz: have you ever had Prop Pox? If not, how can you say that you have the solution? I have never had Prop Pox but at this moment in time would not dream of suggesting a solution as we do not have one.
I would suggest you would be better "employed" researching the problem yourself or check though any old files from 2003/2004/2005 that may have modded Maxis props with unchanged IIDs. There must be some but the more people that look the easier it will be to identify any other problem files.

[wouanagaine]

The best way to avoid prop pox is to not play at all

ok, I'll go and hide

[BarbyW]

 

[callagrafx]

The best way to avoid prop pox is to not play at all

ok, I'll go and hide

works for me 

[dragonshardz]

Barby: I did not say I had a solution, I said that I had found a way of building cities that has helped prevent Prop Pox from affecting me so far. I have changed any posts since my post this past week to reflect that.

Whether my play style actually does help prevent Prop Pox or is just a placebo effect is a moot point, unless I get Prop Pox.

On a less...confrontational...note, Wou, that does work! 

[ldvger]

I just heard/learned about Prop Pox last night when reading a fellow Mayor's MD whose region has recently become infected.  He included a link to this thred and I read all of pages 1-6 before going to bed.  This morning I'm back and skipped ahead to this page to see if the topic was still current and I see that it is, so now I have a couple of questions.

I have a brand new region in which no cities have yet been created.  I have built nothing anywhere, only planted a few scattered God Mode trees in a few of the 140 large city tiles that comprise the region.  I do, however, have a messy and overstuffed plug-ins file that I know for a fact has a number of PEG products in it.  I have not yet gone through my plug-ins to see if I have the one file that is known to create this problem nor have I done any housecleaning to check and see if other files may have borrowed from the known file.  I think the chances are fairly good that I do have the file in my plug-ins folder.

Given that I have been playing ONLY in God Mode in this region so far, if I tidy up my plug-ins folder NOW, before I enter into Mayor Mode play and start building stuff, will my region escape unscathed?  Or, having saved the region many times while in Gode Mode and with a possibly infected plug-ins folder, am I already doomed?

I have full back-ups of the region all the way back to greyscale maps and could recreate the entire region in a couple of hours, so if I have to toss the whole thing out now to prevent possible Prop Pox in the future, I won't hesitate to do that (after cleaning my plug-ins folder, obviously).  Just trying to figure out if I actually need to do that or not.

On another note...it's inconceivable to me that any creator of custom content would not only refuse to fix this issue in the face of the overwhelming evidence his/her work is ONE of what may be many problematic files, but would even deny the problem exists at all.  I'm glad there are folks "out there" who take our devotion to our game and creations seriously enough to invest the tremendous time and effort that has been expended here to help us all reduce or eliminate the threat to our regions and cities.  You guys are all heroes!

Lora/LD

[RickD]

I am the one who recently got hit by the Prop Pox. I am doing some research at the moment. Could anyone provide me with an unpoxed city tile with uncompressed prop subfile? One that survived the jump from compressed to uncompressed?

Just the .sc4 file would be sufficient at the moment. Lord Morpheus' links a few pages back are dead already.

[bap]

Given that I have been playing ONLY in God Mode in this region so far, if I tidy up my plug-ins folder NOW, before I enter into Mayor Mode play and start building stuff, will my region escape unscathed?  Or, having saved the region many times while in Gode Mode and with a possibly infected plug-ins folder, am I already doomed?

Hi Lora. The answers are YES and NO, respectively for the first and second questions.
Even if you have an infecting prop in your plugins folder, provided that no actual lot has been plopped or grown, you are free from getting prop pox. In the specific case of the modified beach unbrella inside the PEG BDK package, as soon as no low-density residential lot has grown or no BDK beach lot containing that particular prop is plopped, you are also on the safe side.

I have full back-ups of the region all the way back to greyscale maps and could recreate the entire region in a couple of hours, so if I have to toss the whole thing out now to prevent possible Prop Pox in the future, I won't hesitate to do that (after cleaning my plug-ins folder, obviously).  Just trying to figure out if I actually need to do that or not.

Since you are just starting a brand new region, may I suggest you make frequent & regular backup copies of the full region. In my case this was crucial to help me get rid of the problem. I replaced infected & doomed city tyles by their backup copies at epochs before I had installed the offending prop package. This would not prevent you from having to redevelop the affected cities all over again, but it is certainly better than loosing them for good (or having to start from scratch in an empty tyle).

Good luck with your new region!
Bap

[bap]

I am the one who recently got hit by the Prop Pox.

Hi RickD, I regret to know that (this might be one of a few threads at SC4D in which a newby receives this kind of message instead of a "Welcome to our thread!") 

I am doing some research at the moment. Could anyone provide me with an unpoxed city tile with uncompressed prop subfile? One that survived the jump from compressed to uncompressed?

If you send me a PM with your email I will send you a savegame file of an unpoxed city with a prop subfile larger than 16Mby.

Bap

[BruceAtkinson]

Well hello gang!......it is Bruce Atkinson.....
  Recently I have had some bad luck with one of my computers, and had to prepare transferring everything of SimCity over to a newer computer with Windows 7 Professional.  Prior to doing this, and as most of you know, I'm one of the original sufferers' of Prop Pox.  Just recently I applied one of the solutions documented here, regarding using ILive Reader in changing some of the lots....and just recently, again prior to transferring SimCity from one computer to another, I was building in a non-poxed city called QueensBridge.  I admit, I was pushing the envelope on this one, as I used a lot of Landmarks and Special lots, and lo and behold on the last opening of the city, Prop-pox appeared!  I have saved the offending city and put it in storage and have replaced it with a back-up, and so far no Prop-pox.
  Secondly, as mentioned, I'm running SimCity in an Acer computer with Windows 7 Professional.  Everything intalled fine and the game seems to be running fine.  I'm also using Nvidia GeForce GT 220, and it is updated with their latest driver.  Does anyone know if there is any issues with this one, or some tweaking with the Display controls....the only glitch that seems to happen is that my monitor will go black for a few moments, with the hour glass appearing, and then snap back to the city.....
Best Regards:
    Bruce

[z]

The latest nVidia drivers are known to have a number of problems with SC4 running under Windows 7.  Some people have gotten the earlier drivers to work OK, though.  I'm afraid I don't recall the thread where I saw the detailed information; maybe someone else could help there.