A Quick Guide on Missing Props on Lots

[lgqxy 0]

Date: 1/31/2004 7:41:01 AM
Author:

bigjim:

What you are asking is a violation of your user agreement which you agreed to when you accepted the user license from Maxis to run the game.

Anyone who posts the Maxis official files on this site will be banned as soon as we know about it (meaning within an hour) and also the post will be deleted just as fast.

You must register your game serial number at the official Maxis site, and then you can download from their site the files which belong to Maxis and are offered to registered users of the game.

Good luck

quote>

Am I the only one for whom the official site doesn't work, then?

Every single time I've gone on to it, it says the server cannot be found. I tried it in different browsers and everything, and I even cached it... only to find a blank page.

It happened with The Sims's site, too (although that worked at the beginning). Seems to me as though Maxis isn't very consistent with their websites.

[Arphaxad Locus 0]

For the life of me, I can not figure out how to make the props appear and this post is extremly confusing to me. Skyscrapers appear as cement pads et cetera. Maybe things will be okay again once I get my new computer. I think that I will have to go through my plugins directories for the tenth time soon and try to figure out what I am doing wrong, even though I have done it many, many times before. I think I may have accidentally deleted some of the nessecary plugin dat files from the mydocs directory, but I am not really sure. If I can figure out my problem more specifically, I will post it in the near future.

[GrampaAl 76]

Sorry this post is confusing. However, I don't think a new computer will do the trick.

A new computer can do lot for you, but this one maybe not.

First make sure your graphics settings are on high.

Now, move all .dat files into the path as follows:

C:\ProgramFiles\Maxis\SimCity4\Plugins (or a subfolder under this directory).

Now organize all of your .sc4lot files into whatever subdirectories you want under the path as below:

My Document\SimCity4\Plugins (or any subdirector under this).

Now move ALL directories here off to a temporary location.

You will no longer have missing buildins. Hoewever you will also no longer have any custom lots. (Well maybe PEGS, which are in .dat files) and those don't have a problem.

Now one at a time, move the sub folders back into the MyDocs path, and see which ones have the problem. Then you will know. It is a pain in the (well you know) but that is the only way for you to find the problem unless you have more clues to give. Like what is the name of the lot that does not have the building.

[Arphaxad Locus 0]

Well I just got my new computer and all of the problems are fixed.
I just downloaded DuskTrooper's Vandium Tower and a microwave power plant from a Japanese site, and they worked. However, the only reason I think were because they included some types of files that weren't .sc4lot files, like .sc4dec or something. I put those to in my mydocsplugins directory, and both buildings are working fine. Whoopee!

[pitch 0]

As nobody wants to answer my other threat, I'll try it here. What props do I miss here:

 

The lot name is Nexis Trucking

[+Guest JetRanger]

I  have a question  (which may have already been anwsered, if so forgive me!) when I have been creating a lot and testing it, the spot where some police or MP's should be marching or PTing there are boxes that say simcity.com on them. Why does this happen and how can I fix it?

[GrampaAl 76]

When you see that dreaded brown box, what this indicates is that the graphic related to the PROP or BUILDING can not be found by the game engine.

This could be that you have removed it either temporarily or accidentally from your plugins (either one) folders.

When you download a prop which includes a .sc4desc file, you also need to keep the .sc4model file.

It is the .sc4model file that contains the graphics.

The .sc4desc file is the Building exemplar with pointers to the graphics, but if you don't have the .sc4model file which the Building exemplar points to, then you get that box.

Now generally when you have a .dat file, this would indicate that both the .sc4desc file and the .sc4model file have been merged into the same file and the .dat extension has been added. This is common. So I believe you do not have the .sc4model file required for the object located at the point where you see the box.

Since it is near marchers, I would be looking for a custom vehicle. Maybe one of those from Gizmo, that you have do download from his personal site.

Good luck

[+Guest JetRanger]

Ok, that doesen't help much, where can I get this sc4.model file? At least give me a URL.

[sabriel 0]

looking for help with the dreaded brown boxes, description comes up as potted plants and trees but I know that I've downloaded the latest version of the props any ideas please!

[Sam 163]

Could it be you need the BSC prop packs? I think they have put out some plant and tree props. Some lots use them. What is the lot you are having trouble with?

[GrampaAl 76]

If you query the lot which has those brown boxes, it should give you the name of the lot.

Now that would help us to find out what you are missing.

Also the readme that comes with the lot SHOULD tell you what dependencies there are which should help you to find the props you need.

[sabriel 0]

The brown boxes are appearing on lots on the main program usually medium density commercial and residential,not from any I've downloaded but they started appearing after I'd started to download so I'm wondering if I've knocked something out

[GrampaAl 76]

If what you say is actually true (which I doubt) then you will need to reinstall your game from scratch.

Before you do that however, remove ALL downloaded files from your plugin diretories (both of them). If the dreaded brown boxes still appear, then you have removed, deleted or corrupted one of your SimCity_x.dat files.

[sabriel 0]

Thanks for the help and I'm hoping to god what you say is not true, maybe I'll just put up with them they look quite nice !!

[sabriel 0]

OK I lied these brown boxes are driving me mad, when I query them they say white roses potted and various trees and shrubs and I realised these started occuring after I had downloaded the trees and shrubs prop and the flowers one. In the readme file in the flowers it says that the pics show up in the parks menu - which mine do, then it says when you click on one and place it on the city it should show as the pic - mine does'nt. I've deleted the file and downloaded it again and still the same problem.
Apologies for keeping on about this but they are getting on my nerves especially when I've just had about 40 of these boxes in a small area

[davidr 0]

As I finding it impossible to register ny Sim City 4 and Rush Hour programmes with the official Maxis site ( does not recognize my log-ins ) how does one go about obtaining the bldgprop Vol 1 etc files if these are mentioned as dependencies in lots etc .

davidr

[red_dragon_2 0]

When i build on of my downloads, i get a simcity4.com box instead of a building, or no building at all what do i do?

[GrampaAl 76]

Date: 9/17/2004 10:47:00 PM
Author: red_dragon_2
When i build on of my downloads, i get a simcity4.com box instead of a building, or no building at all what do i do?

quote>

The brown box package indicates you do have a reference to a model, but you don't have the model.

So, first make sure you have extracted everything and put it the proper folder. If that is not the problem, then
next, you should read the readme (if there is one) and make sure you have all the correct dependant files. It that doesn't help then you should PM the author and let them know that they have forgotten the model.

[calm_blue_sea 3]

Thanks guys for all the great info. I have a few questions. I have many pluggins and they are all working fine (with one exception, see below). All the files are where they should be, but my computer has slowed considerably. I realize this is to be expected, but is there anything I can do (in terms of file organization etc.) to help with this? I have been putting the .dat files and Maxis landmarks in the program file and everything else in the document file - are the desc and model files okay in the document folder, or does it matter? Also, does it make a difference if the files are in a folder? (I only put the required files in the pluggins folders and store the readmes etc. elsewhere).

Finally, on a somewhat related note, I have a custom lot which I cannot demolish or remove (the Risingsun transport lot). When I tried to demolish it the base textures disapeared. When I tried to burn it down, I started an eternal flame (10 years later and it's still burning). Removing the pluggin files does nothing - it still appears. This was apparently a problem with an earlier version of this lot, but I have the latest version (I have tried reinstalling it also). Is there anyway to remove this assemblage of floating, burning props from my fair city?!

Thanks!

[greyveil 37]

calm_blue_sea, I have had this problem before, the solution though sounding strange, is plop the same building right next to the first and delete them at the same time, some times you have to surround the lot that will not delete, then delete all together.

Hope this helps....

[hoonyr 0]

Hey all ...
i'm not sure if this is the right thread but here goes ...
about 2 months ago i downloaded the BSC trail and started to use it
(and like it very much). after a couple of weeks, i had a big hiatus from gaming since it was exam time again ... i kept downloaging lots from ST just the same. Last week i got back to playing and found out that something is wrong the lots of the BSC became all paved and no green in them (so they are no longer trails) ... i assumed i have downloaded something the had textures who clash with that of the trails and started removing all the lots i downloaded after the BSC Trail ... but to no avail ...

does anyone have a good method of finiding which textures clash or are missing ?

10x

[GrampaAl 76]

Greyviels answer to the Rising Sun is correct. However, in some cases there will be no way at all to remove the offending lot of the debris created. It that happens, I suggest you simply zone your trash dump around it and treat the whole area as a dump.

Second question. Organizing your files.

Pesonally I prefer to have anything that should only be used once placed into the Main Program files plugins path. In a subfolder preferably since they can help you if you need to do troubleshooting by removing folders. So this applies to .sc4model files as well as .sc4desc files as well.

Only .sc4lot files should always be placed into the MyDocs/plugins path, and they should also be in subfolders for the same reason.

The only exception to this rule, is if you are a BAT creator or a LOT maker, or wish to work on something with the PIM. In that case you need to think of your MyDocs/SimCity4/plugin folder itself as your working directory and you MUST have your working files in this folder itself, NOT in any subfolders. Everything else should NOT be in this folder during this work session.

For BATTERS, you may find it better to have absolutely everything removed from BOTH folders during the BAT rendering process.

Hope you find this useful.

[calm_blue_sea 3]

Thanks again for the help Greyveil and GrampaAl. It worked, the dreaded burning lot is no more!

[Craigsters 3]

I downloaded this prison a month ago from The STEX


The black prison building in the meddle of the lot was missing,a empty black space instead but this was on my older PC a Dell DimensionL700, which had a NVIDIA Geforce 64mb PCI slot video card, I updated the drivers for it to NVIDIA ForceWare Drivers 61.77, my old PC only had 384mb's of ram as well, and a 700MHz Processor
and keeped dropping into virtual memory when I'd play SimCity4 Rush Hour, with all the plugin's and mods from here, well I got tired of how slow my old PC was and got a New Gaming PC built 2 weeks ago, a Dell, Man I love this PC,it's a Dell, Dimension 8400 with a 160gig byte hard drive and a USB 80 gig back up hard drive, 512 mb's ram with additional room for up to 4 gig bytes of ram, Video:ATI 128MB PCI-Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) Radeon X300 SE Driver, Intel Pentium 4CPU 3.4 GHz Processor and a 19 monitor!. and A DVD burner as well, I'm slowly organizing and sorting out my plugin's into organized folders by creator and lot type, so I can track the lots better, it's a pain stacking process, but I feel it needs to be done, in order to track the bad lots, I don't plain on batting or using the lot editor or B.A.T, sense it well probably be a phew years tell I get advanced enough with PC's to try making lots, Is it true you need allot of props from the STEX here for some buildings etc to work properly in the game

I have all the landmark's installed in my game from maxis site, also where do you get the file that light's up your buildings and Somy's microwave powered plant I looked on the B.A.T. page at maxis's site and couldn't find it, yes I'm registered for maxis site and have installed the 4billion dollar parks and the city wide,police,fire and School lots from LinkinFan01 so far!, sorry for the long post, but fault the more detail I gave the better you'd be able to help and understand my problem, no prop files at all so far have been installed in my game, I have SimCity4 and SimCity 4 Rush Hour installed on my new PC, ran both updates from maxis site as well!..Hope all the info I gave was enough and you can clear up if prop files etc are needed and which ones!.. thx Craig

[GrampaAl 76]

OK, I see two questions here. One about props and another about computers.

First, In order to see the nightlighting you need the very latest PATCH file from Maxis. Don't know if this is on the BAT page or another page, but look for SimCity4 Patch SC4Update4BAT.exe dated 2/5/2004.

Second for just about any lots released after the BAT was released, you will find more and more CUSTOM props, which are available. For ALL BSC lots, you will definately need EVERY PROP released by almost everyone. We make very extensive use of not only custom props but custom buildings, and custom textures as well.

So I recommend downloading EVERY ITEM YOU SEE ON THE PROPS OR TEXTURES tab on ST. Some may not be used much, but many or most are. You have plenty of hard drive space, so I see no problem there.

And lastly, I do still see one rather serious problem with your brand new computer. You may think that 512 Megs of RAM is plenty, but IT IS NOT! If you are to use the custom props and custom lots, I heartly recommend a MINIMUM OF 1 GIG of RAM. Keep in mind that every single building, prop, texture, or mod, that you have in the plugins paths of SimCity4, will need to be loaded into RAM! We can't just have it load when needed. It loads during the loading process of the game. The more you have the more time it takes and the more RAM it takes as well.

The larger buildings with literally millions of polygons are going to take a couple of megs of RAM all by themselves, so if you load a whole bunch of SkyScrapers or ANY large building with lots of details, the more RAM you are going to need, whether they grow in your city or not.

Smaller props like boxes or flowers or such small things and also textures take very little memory, but they still take some. So trot right away to your favorite Dell support center and get that RAM upgraded to 1 gig or more.

All games will want more RAM as well.

Now as for the rest of the fancy stuff, Graphics card, DVD, Soound, and so on, who cares. Almost anything will work here. Even a low end cheapy graphics card is good enough since it the RAM that is used for just about everything!

Good luck

[Craigsters 3]

Date: 10/7/2004 10:27:22 AM
Author: GrampaAl

Now as for the rest of the fancy stuff, Graphics card, DVD, Soound, and so on, who cares. Almost anything will work here. Even a low end cheapy graphics card is good enough since it the RAM that is used for just about everything!

Good luck

quote>





GrampaAl, wan't trying to be a show off giving all that detail about my PC aspects, was pasting in the PC's info from a notepad from somewhere from my PC, I'll get more Ram!.
Craig

[Fairlane500 8]

I am not seeing parts on some of the airport lots, for example, the terminal connection piece is just the base landscape. What could be causing this?

[GrampaAl 76]

Date: 10/8/2004 6:59:49 PM
Author: Fairlane500

I am not seeing parts on some of the airport lots, for example, the terminal connection piece is just the base landscape. What could be causing this?

quote>

Sounds like you are missing a prop or a texture. I don't know which airport lot you are talking, but I don't have most of them anyway.

First I would suggest you read any readme file that came with the lot to see if it tells you what props and/or textures you may need. If there is no readme file, then you can send a PM to the author of the lot, and they can likely help you find the missing item.

[wbelac 0]

I have a few questions...

I like to check to make sure that I have all of the plugins, just in case the lot maker forgot one in their readme. I noticed that if you open the lot files in DatGen and open the LTD file, it will show the dependencies. I wanted to know if this is a correct list, as some files I have checked have been by BSC, and I have known them to be thorough. Two lots that I found this on were the Duke Chapel and the CSX town hall, both of which had PEG file dependencies shown that were not on the readme. Should I download these files, or are they not needed? Also, I noticed that it says dependant .dat plugins, does this mean that it only shows the .dat dependencies and not any others? And my last question, is there a better way to check dependencies other than DatGen?

I appreciate any answers.

Wbelac

[GrampaAl 76]

I am not all that familiar with DatGen, but the LTD file is generated by the Lot Editor itself. So if you see dependencies listed in the LTD file, I would recommend you download them. It does sound like they will be needed.

 

The Lot Editor sometimes also makes mistakes, and if the lot maker does not refresh that LTD file, it can have errors. Those will not affect the lot in anyway however.

 

As for the .dat dependencies, no it will show ALL dependencies that are props or buildings. It will NOT show texture files that may also be needed so if any are needed you will have to rely on the readme files included by the author for information on those.