Missing Prop for "Blank_CS$$$"

[BattleField-2142 9]

I don't know what to really say, topic says it all -- the only other thing I can say is it has about 5,700 jobs. I can't post pics or upload ( TrendMicro [ Firewall ] blocks it )

[Indisguise 0]

well you'll need to identify the lot for us to be help ya...or we just be shooting darts in the dark....I'll guess it's a custom blank lot that notset to be a growable correctly....but that after that not knowing which lot your reffereing to ????? there quite a few CS$$$ lots on the STEX

[BattleField-2142 9]

okay ill go see what i can find about it

Its got:

2x4 lot

2 Signs

6 Shrubs on the "2" side

1 food cart on the "2" side

2 'She She Clothing' signs on the "4" side

[RippleJet 36]

What does it say if you query it (click on it with the arrow tool)?

EDIT 1: I suppose "Blank_CS$$$" is what the query gives... (I should read the heading too)...

EDIT 2:
Would you remember if you heard a plopping sound when that lot started to grow?
In that case it would be a ploppable building that is growing due to the property "parent cohort" being something else but zero.

If that is the case, then you should also be able to find a ploppable lot in your landmarks menu that is also called "Blank_CS$$$", and that might help you indentify the erroneous lot.

EDIT 3:
This might be close to finding your lot... Would you have downloaded this one recently: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?page=1&keyword=Tienda%20Departamental%20Liverpool&type=all That one is tcxalapa's first bat, and the modding would need some checking... (the Parent Cohort is not zero, among other things)

EDIT 4:
Although that one is only a CS$$ building... maybe not the one after all, but look in your landmarks menu (that's where I found this one)

[Indisguise 0]

all I can suggest is to go through your plopable buildings ploping them 1 by 1 and see if theres one that is or has a sign saying she she clothing.....the plopable version (if there is one) might look normal, this will at least give you an idea of what zip the building came from, could be part of a multi-lot download or some sort or the building is named after the "blank" part of the lot, as nothing showed up on a search of "she she clothing" so i don'rt belive that the name of the lot or the download itself

if it growing and this has never appeared before, you could look for your most recently downloaded lots, but it is possible you could have had this lot for a while and it just never appeared (or grew) before

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There is a set of blank lots on the STEX for the use of people doing things in the Lot Editor.  I believe the download specifically cautions against leaving these active when the game is running.

[BattleField-2142 9]

-I had my sound off, so no, I can't be sure about that.

-I have no clue about my most recently uploaded lots ( I've got about 1,000 ) -- A big pain to plop it all.

-And N_O_Body - I usually read the entire description and partial read-me, so I don't think I would download something like that.

I DO think its a short building though. It was a newly zoned area, and a building next to it that began growing at the same time finished after it -- meaning that the 'Blank_CS$$$' is short [ The other building was around the size of Blue Platter Limited ]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now a 2x3 just grew in my city with -

1 Random Floating Sign

1 Flagpole w/ Sail Type Sign

1 'Gourmet Food'

2 Pairs of 'Topiary'

2 Unpaired 'Topiary'

3 Benches between the 'Topiary

1 'Clothing Boutique'

UXXCX                                              U = Unpaired Topiary

BXXXX                                              B = Bench

PFXXX                                               P = Paired Topiary

BXXXX                                              X = Nothing

PXXXX                                              F = Gourmet Foods

BXXXX                                              C = Clothing Boutique

UXXXX

[RippleJet 36]

Those things you can see on the lot are props (including the she she clothing sign that Indisuise mentioned). Some of those signs can be seen in a similar and recent thread started by LP: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=24&threadid=83165&highlight_key=y

Those props belong to prop families which appear on all lots that have the same Parent Cohort as this growing ploppable Blank_CS$$$ we are tracing here. It is the fact that certain ploppable buildings have Parent Cohort values that cause them to grow. Simcity simply takes one random building having that Parent Cohort when it starts to grow. So the size of the lot it is growing on isn't actually telling you anything about the size of the ploppable building. And the name of those props will not give you any clue at what building it is.

However, I would still want to emphasize that, if this is another growing ploppable building, you will certainly find it in your landmarks menu, having exactly that same name (Blank_CS$$$), shown when you hover with the mouse over its menu icon. Just browse through your landmarks menu and you should find it!

[BattleField-2142 9]

So, what that thread is saying is mainly that there is no way for the building to show up? I'm best off just destroying it or keeping it ( for the jobs )

[DOXXP29 5]

BattleField, I had the same EXACT problem! In fact, I posted here several months back about it. I was able to resolve it. As I recall, it was a shopping center or shopping mall lot that had various small stores, She She Clothing being one. A day care was another that would show up on the query. I deleted the lots (sorry, I don't remember the exact name) and the problem went away. I THINK it may've been one of SimGoobers that I couldn't find a dependency for. Got rid of the lot and everything was cool. I remember it being very irritating because the lot would appear quite often and would often be one of very few lots to show up on a 2x4 lot. The lot would appear on other larger lots as well very frequently. Hope this helps. (BTW, don't let this turn you off to SimGoober's stuff. He's one of the top BATters and his stuff is excellent!)

[RippleJet 36]

BattleField, if those empty lots you have are indeed ploppable landmarks that have grown (they most probably are), there is no way for you to get them to function with a visible building.

You should indeed first destroy the lots and (once you've located the offending lot) edit the Parent Cohort in the Bulding's exemplar file. Obviously you should also change the name of the landmark (from its current Blank_CS$$$). By doing those two things you will probably be able to keep it within the landmarks menu (if you'd prefer that), and it shouldn't be growing on its own anymore (unless there is a growable version available of it too).

If you feel you wouldn't want to edit the exemplar, then you could simple remove the ploppable lot from your plugins (but not without destroying the lots in game first).

All this still of course requires that you're able to identify the lot... Still no luck with locating it in the landmarks menu?

[RippleJet 36]

I stumbled across a downloaded lot yesterday that might be the one growing in your city.

It's SOMY's Vertical Mall, uploaded by baro.

That is a landmark with a Parent Cohort of 0x05342861,0x47BDDF12,0x5000003B.

Below is a picture showing how it appears in the Landmarks Menu (indeed with the exemplar name CS$$$):

And this is what the query shows after it has been plopped (sorry for the swedish language...).

At least the number of jobs, 5789, looks promising (you said about 5,700)!

In order to correct this and avoid having the landmark appear as an empty commercial lot, the Parent Cohort of the Building Exemplar must be corrected. I am now showing how to do this in SC4Tools. For those who prefer it, you can perfectly well correct it with iLive's Reader too.

First you have to locate the file that contains the exemplar. If you have it in a subfolder called something like SOMY Vertical Gallery that shouldn't be a problem. Otherwise, if you have all files in the root of the plugins folder, and especially in this particular case, you might be facing a problem, since the name of the file is btower_4dc89a11.SC4Lot

First open the Exemplar Editor in SC4Tool (last button to the right of the start-up screen):

Open up the file btower_4dc89a11.SC4Lot:

Once the file is open, click:

1. on the + to the left of the btower_4dc89a11.SC4Lot (this is the container file)

2. on the + to the left of the Building (this is a listing of all building exemplars)

3. on the + to the left of Blank_CS$$$ (this is the only building exemplar)

4. on ParentCohort, which is the first property in the list that opens up

Change all three numbers of the parent cohort to zeroes (double-click each field in order to edit them):

Note that you have to enter all eight zeroes in each field (0x00000000).

For this particular lot you probably want to change the name of the exemplar too, eg. into SOMY Vertical Mall.

Do this by selecting the second property (Exemplar Name) in the listing to the left:

Save the file and go back to playing SimCity.

After this you won't see this particular landmark grow on an empty lot anymore!

However, all those lots that already have grown will now have 0 workers and should definitely be bulldozed!

There are more of them waiting to grow though, so you might as well try to remember how to do this!

Just repeating myself again (I like doing that LOL):

In every case you will find an item in the landmarks menu with the same name as the name you get in game when querying one of those empty lots. This way you will get at least a visual impression of the malfunctioning landmark (in case the name didn't help you as in the case above).

EDIT: I am in the process of collecting a table of all landmarks known (to me) that might be growing on empty lots like this one. I might open a new thread with that table and the instructions written above, in order to make it easier for people to solve these problems...

BattleField-2142, if you haven't deleted that Blank_CS$$$ lot yet, I would love to have a picture of it in game, so that I could include it on top of these instructions. Please post here or PM me if you could arrange that: Here's how to get the in-game image:

When you have zoomed into the lot in game, move the mouse over the lot to display the name of it and press PrtScr to copy your entire screen onto the clipboard. Then paste that image into a graphics program, eg. MS Paint and save it on disk.

[LP 1]

*notices his name*

Yeah, I had the same problem, still have it too but much less often. If you querry the lot it should give you a name of a downloaded building you have. If you want to keep that building, it will require you to undertake a bit of file editing that was drawn out in the thread linked above. If you have no particular love for the building, delete all the files for it from your plugins folder.

Its a pain, I know, but it works.

[DOXXP29 5]

LP, you're right. What was particularly irritating about my problem (which sounds like the exact thing BattleField was describing) was I'd get the individual stores "like She-She Clothing", and "Sign", etc, but NOT the name of the whole lot. Turned out "She She Clothing", for example, was one store in the shopping mall or whatever it was. Made diagnosing and tracking it a real PITA.

[BattleField-2142 9]

Thats it! The vertical mall, thx a ton!!! Now i gotta find what i need for it. Now, I got a new problem -- I can't enter my main cities. ( Cities over 400k pop )

[BattleField-2142 9]

oh, and for the picture thing -- its hard to find em -- i got about 20 total in my cities, but they're in the center downtown.

[RippleJet 36]

I was 101% sure it was the Vertical Mall when I downloaded it the other day

About not being able to enter your cities... I hope it's not because you already edited some of the lots that have grown in them... The correct way about modding is always first to delete all instances of the building in your cities, then do the modding (or deleting) of the file.

However, at least my experience so far shows that you should still be able to enter a city after you've changed the Parent Cohort of such an exemplar, only the number of workers in them will have dropped to zero.

If you can confirm that the cities you cannot enter would be the ones in which that lot has grown, I would appreciate it. If that is the case, just delete the file you have corrected and reinstall the original one from the downloaded zip-file.

About that picture... (if you would still be able to enter one of those cities, and before you'd make any modifications to the Parent Cohort) ...do you think you could momentarily bulldoze some of the buildings surrounding one of those lots so that you could take a PrtScr of it. Then, just remember to exit without saving (and your bulldozing will be undone)!

In case you would be able to create a .BMP picture in Paint, I would be greatful if you could send it to the email address I've PM'd to you.

Thanx in advance!

[BattleField-2142 9]

Well, I found out it was one of my thousands of plugins -- the 4 ones that are suspected to be crashing it are :

Amtrak California

RCI Query Upgrade

Functional Landmarks ( Newest )

Civic Buildings Construct

That took a long time to find.

[DOXXP29 5]

BTW, Battlefield, there's another one that acts the same way. No building, but you'll see "After 5 snack shop", "Hicks pottery" and "Blimp Parts Store". It queries as HD 1AR Bldg. I don't know what it's supposed to look like, but it does the same thing as the vertical mall, in case you have another incident like that.

[RippleJet 36]

There is not just one other one acting the same way... I have an Excel sheet which at the moment contains 187 growing commercial landmarks plus a number of industrial landmarks and some potential agricultural and residential landmarks, and the list is growing...

I have actually never seen or heard of any residential or agricultural landmarks growing... would appreciate if anybody could confirm having one of them growing.

Btw, that building you have, DOXXP29, is in my "database":

The IAR Building by hdorriker with 2500 CO$$ jobs.

The name of the file you need to locate and correct is:

HD - IAR Building - Ploppable with jobs_52216269.SC4Lot

EDIT:

I will put that list into another thread, with instructions how to get rid of them. I am only hoping BattleField would send me that picture... or maybe you could take a picture of that empty IAR building, DOXX (including its query)?

[Indisguise 0]

yea it can happen rip...think it ussually a badly modded lot or one that uses the custom blank lots and the mayor tries to covert it to groawable and doesn't mod the proper  exemplar #...hey in the hands of the wrong person the Ireader can be  a dangerous weapon.

try downloading T_wrecks stas and value mod and put it in the game without the correct downloads to go with it (aka don't put the original down loads in the plugins with it) creates all sort of weird and wonderful oddities

[RippleJet 36]

Don't worry, Indisguise. I know exactly what causes it!

And I am not gonna upload any fixes... that's up to the original uploader, or to the poor guy who has downloaded tons of them and continues asking what to do... only wanna help (especially) the latter ones.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if the original uploaders decided to correct their lots based on these guidelines

I am only gonna provide a list in the following form (this is only an extract from a table which now holds 219 entries for commercial buildings):

Building Exemplar Name	Type	Jobs		Container file where Building Exemplar can be found	Uploaded by	Corrected / Revisited by
Blank_CS$$$	CS$$$	5789		btower_4dc89a11.SC4Lot   (Vetical Mall by SOMY)	baro
Chelsea Tower	CO$$$	1053		LM4x4_ChelseaTower_d189cd6f-SC4Lot	ks_JPN	T Wrecks
HD IAR Bulding	CO$$	2500		HD - IAR Building - Ploppable with jobs_52216269.SC4Lot	hdorriker
Keio Plaza Hotel	CS$$$	2000		8590_CS$$$_KeioPlazaHotel_English_4f24b666.SC4Lot	APTX

The entries will be alphabetically listed according to the Exemplar Name (or Item Name, or User Visible Name Key, whichever is applicable - the one seen when clicking on the building).

The type and number of jobs also helps identifying the building in those cases when there are several eg. Blank_CS$$$'s

Only in those (very rare) cases when I've found an upload that corrects the Parent Cohort have I provided a link to the uploaded file in STEX (as for the Chelsea Tower above).

Btw, I've had T Wrecks' stats and values ever since he made it

However, he only corrected growable lots. The error with the parent cohort only appears in ploppable RCI's (landmarks with jobs).

Maybe you should read through the thread carefully too ones it's all there... it is indeed not a problem with growable lots, it is a problem with landmarks that grow (although they shouldn't).

[DOXXP29 5]

I'll upload it with the query as soon as it grows again, RippleJet. Damn, I just bulldozed one the other day which is why I thought of it. Reading this post, I noted the info since it was another like battlefield's issue, then dozed it.