Random Objects Disappearing

[annoyingdan 42]

I checked out the forums and I didnt find anything that could help

I just got this interesting little bug today... All of a sudden, random props on a wide scale, disappeared.  Here is the quirky part, it only applies to one city, which is unfortunately my main city. If I bulldoze the buildings and replop them, the items reappear like normal. 

I have a few pics of the problem:

 

As you can see in the first pick, not all the objects dissapear, and it affects custom objects as well as maxis objects (the park). All of my devoloped coastlines made up of marrast embankments as well as pegasus sea walls have dissapeared.

I havent installed anything new recently and my game has been up to date for a while. All my settings are on high, and I've tried setting it to low then high again, to no avail. I have also tried restarting the game as well as the computer many times. 

Ive tried searching the forums but they mostly deal with people with low settings, and I know thats not the case. I am getting really fustrated because I really dont know what to do. I dont want to restart the city but I also dont want to bulldoze everything and re-plop it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sounds like wonky hardware.  Tell us more about your machine and run DXDIAG to see if it can see anything.  An intermittent memory chip can do funny things like this as can a graphics card that is too hot or about to fail.

[alex48111 9]

I have the same problem. Ive tried every thing from reinsalling the game to deleteing most of my plugins folder. I saved my cities progress onto CD and reinstalled them but the problem still exisits. Also the divided ave. show just plain green in the middle. I upgraded my  pc from 32mb geforce , 512mb ram, 120gb hd, to 132mb geforce 5500, 1g ram . bty 1.6mh. Plugins folder is just over 500mb. Problem is still there. I am in the process of clearing out my plugins,215mb now,  keeping only the ones im using in the smaller cities I gave up on my big city and just might sart over.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Further thought:  Virus scan?  Lately?  VM settings should be 3 x RAM minimum, 4095 maximum.

[alex48111 9]

I have Avast . No changes to it  in the past year except updates. what are VM settings? What gets me is that I have built  a large city of over 1 mill and everything ran fine. My plugins folder was smaller at the time, no MODS . I'm thinking there could a conflict somewhere with the plugins I'm keeping a close eye on that folder. I work midnights. must go now , Nice to see I'm not the only one with this problem.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

VM = Virtual Memory.  This game is a memory hog.  It is tough on CPU, uses lots of memory and doesn't like advanced graphic cards.

You can change your VM by right clicking on My Computer, going to properties and following your nose.  Your VM(initial,maximum) should be (3 x RAM, 4 x RAM) or 4095 whichever is less.

[alex48111 9]

Oh! ,  in that case my settings are, Space available 16040 MB

        Inital size 768 MB

       Max 1536 MB

       Min 2MB

       Recomended 1534 MB

       Currently allocated 768 MB

Should I reset to 1534 MB, as recomended ?

[annoyingdan 42]

Well my computer specs are:

   -Intel Pentium D  2.8Ghz ES

   -2Gb Patriot DDR2 RAM

   -ATI Radeon X850 XT Video Card w/256MB memory 

     - The card runs a Catalyst 5.8 driver,  version 8.162.0.0 

   -153GB Hardrive

Even though I use a dual core chip, I set the affinity to CPU0

I also have my virtual memory set at 4096MB and using Windows XP which is completely up to date. 

I ran DXDIAG and it didnt find any problems.

One thing of that might be of notice is I accidentally updated zonealarm (firewall) and it conflicted badly with my virus scan, so i had to remove zonealarm via safemode. I now use the windows firewall. I dont know if that could be why... especially considering my problem only affects one city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

alex48111:  The only thing you might want to do is simply set your virtual memory to 4095 for both initial and maximum size.  This is the XP maximum, so beyond that nothing can help in that area.

In software practice, if nothing has changed and something different occurs, you have only hardware to look at.  If your diagnosics on your graphics are good, maybe you should consider running a memory stress test.  If you google for this, you should find one.

[alex48111 9]

N_O_Body:  Thanks I'll try it.

[Fox 1,444]

Well.. after Mexicanboy lost his great San Fran Cj to this problem, I had been keeping an eye out to see if it gets replicated.. and I managed to cause this effect in my own CJ. I can confirm that it is a memory problem. I tested it and retested it on one of my larger Cities.

Your Cities get to a stage where they are so big, so many different props and bats, that when saving the game as you exit, your computer doesn't have enough memory to actually save all the information, as in it runs out of memory as it saves. Cause as N_O_Body says, the game is a huge memory hog.

Now you'lltend to find that it is groups of the same props dissapearing from the game... and it makes it really annoying.

But If you had more memory or designate more virtual memory to the cause, the problem should fix itself for future events. But you'll still need to replace those missing props, as the game hasn't saved them.

I mean, this isn't concrete evidence, but from my own testing and experience it has solved the issue and I have managed to recreate the problem by removing the part of the memory in my machine.

I hope this helps, otherwise, good luck, and perhaps try smaller size Cities in the future.

[annoyingdan 42]

Well that stinks... You'd think that 2gb of memory and 4096Mb VM would be enough, oh well...

I guess I have to tear down the city then... 

Thanks for the help!

[alex48111 9]

Did'nt work, I think Fox is right.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: annoyingdan Well that stinks... You'd think that 2gb of memory and 4096Mb VM would be enough, oh well...

I guess I have to tear down the city then... 

Thanks for the help!quote>

If you are having memory troubles, maybe you have too many plugins.  How big is your plugin load (.dat, .sc4lot, .sc4desc, .sc4model files only)

[annoyingdan 42]

My plugin load is not that big, only around 410Mb give or take like 5mb...

I think I'm just gonna start a new city, maybe even start a city journal...

I thank you all for all your help though, Ill keep an eye for a returning problem. I hope we can find a way to fix this problem.

[zzsim 3]

Its strange that you had such problems with 2 gbs of ram and a plugins folder less than 1/2 gb in size.  I have only 512 megabytes of ram and well over a gig of plugins and still have never experienced anything like this even on completely filled large city tiles (though the load times are unbearable long).  At any rate, good luck on starting a new city, hopefully you won't have the same issues again. 

[ky72x 13]

zzsim: Ditto.  My plugin load is probably 2 gigs, by now.

[alex48111 9]

How large is your largest city size?  Mine was 34MB when I started noticing things missing.

I had a saved copy of the same city half completed at 11.4MB and switched them. I also trimmed down my plugins folder to 225MB (from 556MB).

It seems to be working for now.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Still sounds like memory.  make sure your swap file is a big as it will go.  Set it to (inital, maximum) = (4095,4095).  This is the operating system max.  Beyond this, you can add up to 4GB of RAM.