Disappearing Lots/Buildings

[jabezscratch 159]

Here is the situation: I was playing my region's "capital" city and I had a crash to the desktop (the 2.6 million city population and 2 Megs of plugins probably had something to do w/ it .  When I returned to the game, I noticed a few buildings missing (just a base texture in their place).  The "missing" buildings were localized to the centre of the city (map).  So, I tore down those buildings and replaced them w/ the same building and everything looked fine.  When I returned the next time, those buildings were missing again plus more buildings and lots around it were blank or missing (just a flat base texture in its place).  With each subsequent loading of the city, more lots are missing and it is occurring in a pattern: flowing out essentially in concentric circles from the epicentre.  The building stats remain, i.e., I'm not losing jobs or Sims when a lot goes missing -- it is just a visual issue.  If this keeps up, my city just become one big flat texture.

It is very weird and I have never experienced this before.  This only affects the one city.  Other cities in the region are not affected and run normally.

Has the file been corrupted?  And, if so, is the corruption "spreading"?
Does anyone know how to fix this, if indeed it can be fixed?

In any event, I think that I might just wipe out the city entirely and start fresh b/c I noticed all of the ***** things I did wrong when I started laying out and building the city over a year ago.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Rochefort 13]

I had a similar experience about a year ago jabezscratch, but with me it was the maxis in-game parks & civic buildings. One by one I lost all the detail on the parks and then eventually the same happened to police stations, schools, fire stations...it was very very weird and I never got to the bottom of it.

I posted questions about it myself at the time but no one could help...maybe someone has discovered the answer in the meantime.

Anyhow, I had to completely uninstall the game, delete all saved cities and then re-install to get rid of the problem. I also cleaned up my plug-ins and got rid of anything I didn't really use...who knows could have been a conflict issue with a downloaded plug-in but I have that many its an impossible task to test it.

Good luck.

[jabezscratch 159]

Thanks, Rochefort.

Like yourself, I am losing detail on parks and buildings, Maxix and non-Maxis plug-ins.

When you say that you had to re-install and delete all of your saved cities, do you mean that you did not or could not re-load those cities and play them when you re-installed the game?

As I noted, this is only affecting one city, which is the good news (the bad news is that it just so happens to be my 2.6 million Sim capital city and not one of the 500-Sim farming communities). I can only guess that the crash corrupted part of the city file.

[Rochefort 13]

All I can recommend is for you to first demolish everything in your affected city that isn't showing up, then remove the cities you want to save to a seperate folder on your desktop...uninstall..delete all cities you dont want to keep..reinstall SC4, then transfer the cities back into the region folder in SC4....it may not work but its worth a go.

Good luck

[jabezscratch 159]

Ok, thanks -- I'll try that.

[normac 1]

I just posted about this same problem not too long ago. It's also happened in my largest city and happened after a crash. I have yet to find a solution and it's really like a cancer. There's no way yet that I know of to get rid of it. My original post w/screenshots https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=24&threadid=86758&enterthread=y

[david1314 44]

I'm wondering what kind of systems you're using to play the game... And forgive me if I'm not giving you enough credit, but I've seen similar problems in my game that went away by turning up the city detail. Admitedly, I haven't seen the problem where it recurs indefinately, but the way it's being described as geographically localized and 'spreading' sounds more like a display related issue than any kind of corruption of game files.

Mess arround a bit with the display options (I'm almost certain that city detail is the one that controls this), and try zooming in all the way and then work your way out.

I really hope for your sake your problem is as simple as that.

[Rochefort 13]

Well I can only speak for my own experience david1314 and it was nothing to do with city detail. We're talking disappearing props here.

On the positive side, I did as I've described before and I've never had a problem since.

[normac 1]

Unforutnately for me, I did as you perscribed and I still have the problem and it's getting worse.

[Nardo69 51]

I have the same propblem with one of my few big towns. Buildings and textures are not concernered, but all props disappear - including streetjunk..

Replopping the ploppables and bulldoyzing the growables doesn't solve the propblem, On huge lots like the cathedral of Cologne from Bandito the props have been disappeared partially, meaning around third of the lot propless, the remaining part with all props.

I restored the town now for three times, but everytime it reached the 450.000 (from 360.000 sims of the backup) it begins again - on different places ...

Bernhard

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A couple of suggestions:

This could be a symptom of not enough swap space, especially if you have a lot of plugins.  If your Virtual Memory is not set to maximum, set it to 4GB as outlined in the sticky above.

You could also have a very fragmented, dirty disk space.  Do disk space maintenance:

1. Disk Cleanup on the disk containing My Documents
2. Run the defragmentation tool on it as well.

Failing that, your hard disk may be failing.  Run a diagnostic on it if you can.

The other possibility is that the game files may have been stepped on.  If that may be the case, do a reinstall.

[normac 1]

Well I for me it's not swap space related or hard drive related nor is it reinstall related. I wonder if it's a bug in the game simulator?

[jabezscratch 159]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body A couple of suggestions:

This could be a symptom of not enough swap space, especially if you have a lot of plugins.  If your Virtual Memory is not set to maximum, set it to 4GB as outlined in the sticky above.

quote>

 

I think that this probably is the problem, i.e., lack of adequate swap space.  I am experiencing all of the things mentioned in the replies, especially missing a lot of street junk.  Street junk seems to be the major casuality of whatever is happening (although entire buildings are disappearing too).

A question N_O_Body if I could: I read in your main sticky thread on 4GB Virtual Memory that it is best to allocate the swap space on a second hard drive, if available.  I have a WD Raptor 10,000RPM as my main HD and a Seagate 7,200RPM for data storage (plenty of space on both).  So, is it best to use the Seagate for the swap space even though it is a slower HD or use the faster, better main Raptor HD -- or does performance of the HD not affect swap space?

[sim-Al2 4]

I have the same problem with ALL maxis buildings and lots. No props and basic grass/plaza/other base textures.It seems just random and it affects all my cities new and old. I think at least for me its the plugins I've installed but I like so much it's to remove all of them from my plugin folder. In case your wondering my computer's pretty slow but it runs ok my the setting set a little higher than default. It colud be anything like the EH1 update at the offical site or just a nasty bug

[RippleJet 36]

Sounds like you're all suffering from the "prop pox".

[tungston 19]

Originally posted by: sim-Al2 I have the same problem with ALL maxis buildings and lots. No props and basic grass/plaza/other base textures.It seems just random and it affects all my cities new and old. I think at least for me its the plugins I've installed but I like so much it's to remove all of them from my plugin folder. In case your wondering my computer's pretty slow but it runs ok my the setting set a little higher than default. It colud be anything like the EH1 update at the offical site or just a nasty bugquote>

 

Check the game grapics settings, select medium, or high.  When you install the game update, it sets them to low.