Prop pox.

[SC4BOY]

The final appearance of the prop pox (as is explained in this thread if you go back and read it HERE) has nothing to do with the city as it gets "pox'd". The "infection" if you want to call it that no doubt occurred A LONG TIME BEFORE IT SHOWS UP... Then BOOM!! it shows.

This seed "flowers" at the time explained earlier (ie when a certain decompression occurs causing "spillover' of the pox which corrupts the items loaded "above" it) When that finally all comes to be, ie after the decompression and the addressing of props that are located in the corrupted area, you get the VISUAL CONFIRMATION of it.. but going back to before it happened likely won't help.

This WILL NOT get rid of the pox unless the "pox seed" was, in an EXTREMELY LUCKY CASE placed in the prob list between the "backup" and the occurance.. In other words if you have backups far enough back, you can recover to before the "pox seed" was planted, but it may be so far back that it would be for all practical purposes a new city.. ie. you would have lost ALL THE INTERVENING development and would have to redo it all (while at the same time avoiding any "pox seed" .. which we all admit we don't really know what the full set of "pox seeds" there are) As also explained above we are at a loss to explain the full range of what "seeds" there are that eventually manifest themselves in "THE POX"


So the bottom line that I'm trying to convey is that YES YOUR CITY IS LIKELY PERMANENTLY CORRUPTED and that it will show up time and time again even though you thought you got rid of it.

[Diggis]

Actually SC4Boy, from what DreamCat said, it sounds like the corrupt file was installed after the backup and he is probably safe with the back up.

DreamCat, do you know what you installed during the rebuild?  It may help us identify other Pox Causing files if you do.

[SC4BOY]

Actually SC4Boy, from what DreamCat said, it sounds like the corrupt file was installed after the backup and he is probably safe with the back up.

This WILL NOT get rid of the pox unless the "pox seed" was, in an EXTREMELY LUCKY CASE placed in the prob list between the "backup" and the occurance..

That would be great! He would be a lucky fellow..

[RippleJet]

The backed-up version of my city is 23MB.  No prop pox.  After the back-up, I completely re-did the plugins.  Then I believe the pox appeared.  So it seems the back-up is fine.  So it must be something I got with the re-doing of mt plugins, right?

So is my city still bust or not?

I'd like to take a closer look at the prop subfile of your city.
Do you think you could zip and upload that 23 MB file somewhere (e.g. Fileden or RapidShare)?

[Dreamcat]

Here you are, dear sir: http://rapidshare.com/files/272141193/Abingdon.zip.html
Thank you all for your help.

[RippleJet]

Thank you and good news, Dreamcat!

This city has an uncompressed prop subfile sized 18,371,931 bytes.
In other words, you have already surpassed the critical size of 16 MB.
And the city is prop pox free!

I also took a closer look at the appearance of the known offending props in your city...

• Exactly 10 Umbrella props (0x29000000)
• Some 1325 Patio Chair props (0x290D0000)
• Some 1360 Recliner props (0x29110000)
• Some 1450 Beach Chair props (0x29B20000)

None of those appear as deleted, and they are all modded the way Maxis made them, with night state and not timed.
In other words, you haven't had the BDK installed previously in this city,
and I'm rather confident that you can keep playing from here without developing the pox.


That, on the other hand, brings us back to Shaun's question...

from what DreamCat said, it sounds like the corrupt file was installed after the backup and he is probably safe with the back up.

DreamCat, do you know what you installed during the rebuild?  It may help us identify other Pox Causing files if you do.

Would you have any idea what new prop packs (that you did not have before) that you installed shortly before getting the prop pox?
It might help us quite a lot if we'd find another offending prop pack...

[Dreamcat]

Thank you, friend. 

As for the prop packs, I'll need to check the backed-up version of the plugins folder and the present-day plugins.  I'll write back later.

EDIT:

Hmm, I'm not exactly sure how to identify a prop pack once it's already installed and the download deleted.  But I looked through my plugins and found these, most of which I hope are prop packs.  Any way to really identify them?

BSC MEGA Props - CP Vol01.dat
BSC MEGA Props - MJB Vol01.dat
BSC MEGA Props - SG Vol 01.dat
BSC MEGA Props - swi21 Vol01.dat
BSC MEGA Props Gascooker Vol02.dat
COBB MEGA Props Vol01.dat
COBB MEGA Props Vol02.dat
COBB MEGA Props Vol03.dat
COBB MEGA Props Vol04.dat
COBB MEGA Props Vol05.dat
CSX MEGA Props - Vol03
LBT Mega Prop Pack v.01
PorkieProps-Vol1.dat
PorkieProps-Vol2.dat
Mas71 PROPs Vol03_080808.dat

All but PorkieProps (I think) are from the LEX.

Also I found these in the folder BSCProps, don't know if they're prop packs or what, they seem to be ploppable livestocks:

jes_CowProps_Family.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppableCows_Angus.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppableCows_Brown.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppableCows_Brown and White.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppableCows_Hereford.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppablePigs_Black.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppablePigs_Red.dat
jes_MayorMode_PloppableSheep.dat
jes_PigProps.dat
jes_SheepProps.dat

And then a folder called this in BSCProps:

BSC Props Jeronij Vol 03 Trees Seasonal Woods

See if you can make any sense of this.

[SC4BOY]

Were these all added after the "good save" and before the "prop pox event"?

[Dreamcat]

No clue, all I know is those are in my plugins post-pox.

[sithlrd98]

Looked at LBT Mega Prop Pack vol.01 ...lots of props  but none seemed to be timed. All seemed to be RKT1.

Jayson

[RippleJet]

Dreamcat, do you still have that city saved after it was poxed?
If I would be allowed to take a look at that one, I might be able to find which props have been deleted and caused the prop pox.

[Dreamcat]

http://rapidshare.com/files/272644985/Abingdon_poxed.zip.html

[RippleJet]

Thank you once again, Dreamcat!

Unfortunately this city does not reveal anything of which props that have caused the pox.
Only one deleted prop exemplar exists after the point of corruption, and this one has all TGI information erased.

On the other hand, the number of previously known offending props have increased a little from your previous save,
and most importantly, still being modded the way Maxis made them:

• Exactly 18 Umbrella props (0x29000000)
• Some 1425 Patio Chair props (0x290D0000)
• Some 1400 Recliner props (0x29110000)
• Some 1500 Beach Chair props (0x29B20000)

I would at least consider this proof enough that there is another prop somewhere in your rebuilt plugins that has caused the prop pox.
And not a prop belonging to the BDK this time...

There are a total of 4,749 disabled props in this city (which are still in their correct places within the prop subfile),
and they all have their TGI information erased.

These are normally remains of props that have once been in the city,
but which have gone missing due to their physical files being erased from the plugins folder,
as explained by Chrisim in Disappearing Props - not to be confused with Prop Pox

This might be a bit far-fetched, but...
would you be aware of any files you might have had installed before or during the rebuild of your plugins,
but for some reason deleted before running the city?

[sithlrd98]

Gahh..I am sooo glad I have not experienced this! It would probably make me crazy trying to figure out which  little exemplar is messed up! Hope that it truly is not PP 

Jayson

[Dreamcat]

Uh, no, not to my knowledge.  All I did was add some things and DAT-pack.
Which brings me to a very far-fetched hunch.  Recently, I read that DAT-packing the CAM was a bad idea.  I didn't know this before, and I found that I had DAT-packed the CAM.  What would this do?

[RippleJet]

Recently, I read that DAT-packing the CAM was a bad idea.  I didn't know this before, and I found that I had DAT-packed the CAM.  What would this do?

It's a recommendation mainly due to the fact that we wanted to make sure CAM can be updated without having to include guidelines on how to return your un-datpacked folders first. It was also important for the reason that the traffic simulators in CAM are installed in z_CAM, overriding those included in NAM. Whenever a user updates NAM, he would have to be able to easily remove those in z_CAM. Otherwise no new traffic simulators could be installed. All-in-all it's a similar recommendation that comes with NAM, which gets updated 1-2 times a year.

On the other hand... Wouanagaine, the creator of DatPacker, personally datpacks both NAM and CAM... and there are no side-effects with that in the game.

[Dreamcat]

This might be a bit far-fetched, but...
would you be aware of any files you might have had installed before or during the rebuild of your plugins,
but for some reason deleted before running the city?

Pretty sure that is NOT the case.  The buildings with props missing are Maxis buildings, so I don't think removing any files in the Plugins would do that.

Then again, what do I know?

So, now what?

[BarbyW]

Can you give us a list of what you did install before DatPacking the rebuld of your plugins?
I have checked the BSC files listed above and none have modded Maxis props in them.

[Dreamcat]

Hmm, what do you mean by that?
If you're wondering what changed in my plugins folder from before to after I redid the plugins, I have no idea, since the previous version was DAT-paked without an Un-Datpacked version... >__<

[BarbyW]

Dreamcat you said:

All I did was add some things and DAT-pack.

Can you say what you added?