Lot texture

[Manny 0]

I've just noticed that parking lots on buildings  like elementary schools, city hall and others show as grass or flowery textures instead of the usual grey granite type parking.  The cars looked like they are parked on grass.  How can I fix it?  Thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This was recently reported by another member.  There is probably a plugin conflict with the game.  If you have texture plugins for bushes and trees, try  moving them out of your plugins, and run the game.  If the problem has gone away, then bring them back one at a time until you find the conflict.

[Manny 0]

Ok thanks, I'll try that.

[Manny 0]

I removed all my downloaded plugins that I got on this site and others and started the game and still the problem remains. Any suggestions? Could it be a modd? I don't remember installing one though.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, if you have your plugins segregated, save your regions and do a reinstall.  Sounds like one of the game files has been stepped on.

[Manny 0]

Where are the regions at that I have to save? I know there is a program folder and documents folder that hast sim city, do I save both or only one? Thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Your regions are in My Documents\Simcity 4\Regions.  If you don't know how to use windows explorer, I would suggest the Maran Graphics (IDG) book Teach Yourself Windows XP (or Vista)

[wmc78 1]

I have the same problem as manny, i have reinstalled sim city and all the plugins and the problem is no longer there, but the only thing i havnt installed is the sim city 4 update and sku2 b638 but would this cause the problem of textures disappering like the fire station car park and many more???

[teddyb4492 1]

Hello - i hope this is the right place for this as i think it may also be a texture related issue -

It seems that one on my maxis props has just turned invisible - the Straite Road Barrier - id # 0x29bf0000. i can see the blue boxs for it in LE and LE acuritly discribes them in the right window. But in the left window the immage is not visable - i am assuming that another item is "stepping on it" some how - but im not real sure how to tell with out a long process on moving plugings in and out. and as i have about 4 Gigs that dosn't sound to fun.

i do have all of the updates and i am runing RH with all nessary additional downloads - just can't really remember when i first noiced them missing - Dose anyone have a sujestion that may point me in the right path.

thanks

teddyb

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: tvrcars I have the same problem as manny, i have reinstalled sim city and all the plugins and the problem is no longer there, but the only thing i havnt installed is the sim city 4 update and sku2 b638 but would this cause the problem of textures disappering like the fire station car park and many more???quote>

It is OK to update, but remember that the update will reset your graphics options to default (low).  After the update, start the game, reset your options, leave the game and restart to get the change to be effective.  This also applied to update 2 for the BAT night lights.

[Manny 0]

I saved my cities/plugins and unistalled simcity and then reinstalled a new copy and the problem is still there and only one of my saved cities shows up. Any ideas? Thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

How did you do your backup?  And the restore?  You should not lose any content if you do it right.

Try running in Software Rendering (an option on the graphics control panel).  If the problem goes away, the trouble is your graphics card.  Let us know what happens.

[Manny 0]

I saved the regions/cities from the documents folder like you said. Only the first city I made shows up, the other regions are blank. What I don't get is why that city shows up and the others don't. I too installed the sku update, maybe this is the problem?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

What is your method of doing a save?

[Manny 0]

I saved the regions on a flash drive, then uninstalled the game and reinstalled it and then put the regions back. What's interesting is that I recently got a new Dell dual core 2.0 ghz with Vista on it and installed the game there and the copy of the regions I had on my flash drive and the cities appeared. The game was working fine, way faster than on my older XP PC. However, recently the game has been crashing and returning to the desktop ... just when I thought I could enjoy the game on the new Vista OS PC after I found my cities appeared. Is there a patch or something that I have to get for it to work 100% on Vista?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

With Vista and a dual core processor (Core 2 Dual), you probably want to find the executable and set it to run in XP compatibility mode.  Make sure you have lots of virtual memory, at least 4095MB for Vista.  Use your help system to find your virtual memory settings.

[Manny 0]

I did that but it still crashes on and off.  Some times it crashes within the first 10 mins of the game, and other times the game can run find for an hour or so without any problems.  It might be the security features Vista has, but I'm not sure how to shut them off temporarily. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sorry, I am not running Vista.  You'll have to find a manual or a guide.  Have you tried your help system?

As to crashing, I don't usually crash unless I cause it myself.  I have an old machine, but I am running XP SP2 and i did run Vista-32 Ultimate for a couple of weeks with no problems.

I am mystified by all the crashes people have.  It usually has to do with not enough resources or overpowering graphics software that the game wasn't written ot handle.

[Voltaire 52]

Dual-core processors can cause SC4 to crash randomly on all operating systems. Back in teh day (~2001-2003) Maxis wrote the program to be single-threaded, so it does not have facilities for handling deadlocks or race conditions (which are most likely causing your CTD issues).

The way to prevent this is to force the game to run on one processor core... which I don't know how to do on Vista (I have XP Pro SP2)... if the Task Manager is still available via ctl-alt-del and you can get a list of running processes, you may be able to right-click the sc4 process and set the "affinity" (WinXP terminology, may be different in Vista) to one core or the other. There is a secondary process called ~xxxxxxx.tmp (numbers/letters in places of my x's), you'll also need to set its affinity. The main process and .tmp process can be set for different cores.

In WinXP you can only set processor affinity after starting the program, and it doesn't carry over to the next time you run it. Hopefully in Vista you can set up something so the affinity settings become permanent.