pollution everywhere, but why???

[rob9926 0]

i've got an unusual problem...firstly i have a mod which removes traffic pollution, a mod to increase network capacities, speeds and commute time etc and i am building a region with 3 cities, one for each zone type. the funny thing is in my residential only city i got pollution like you never seen before and none is coming from traffic or anything like that. i was looking at the building exemplars one by one and i didn't notice any that produced any kind of pollution. on the other hand if residential buildings produced pollution...*****!!! ok so if anyone knows what is causing this i would appreciate any help thanks.

[Hamish 1,369]

Do you have any power plants that could cause pollution.

And try posting a picture so we can see what the problem is.

[Wizard of ID 1]

It sounds like you've got the same problem as me. It's a bug, and I don't know how it's caused, but it seems to be related to plopping some (not all) parks downloaded from the STEX. The bug will probably affect all your cities, and the only way I've been able to get rid of it is to uninstall SimCity, run a search of my C: to delete every file connected to SimCity, and then re-install the game. This does of course mean that you will lose all your cities and have to start over.

There are a number of downloads available on the STEX that will cancel out the pollution. The one I use is called a "pollution eater" -- you can find it if you do a search on "pollution eater". It costs very little to plop and maintain, eliminates all your air pollution except traffic pollution, and looks like a parking lot. This should save your city.

If you continue plopping parks, you may find that the pollution comes back again. Just plop another pollution eater.

I should emphasize that I don't think the pollution is coming from the parks, just that the bug is triggered by them.

[His Divine Hand 244]

If my memory serves me right, if a pollution removing lot has too radical of values (i.e. removes too much pollution), it can roll over and instead of removing the pollution, increase it by the factor that it is supposed to remove it. Kind of funny, even ironic.

[Wizard of ID 1]

Interesting, HDH. I haven't found that with the "pollution eater" lot, and I have three in one of my cities. So I think that one, at least, is safe enough.

The other thing I've found with the pollution eater is that, despite all that clean air, that annoying environmental advisor still carries on whining about the need for more parks!

[rob9926 0]

the problem really has me stumbled and also thanks for your contributions and suggestions  i know that a pollution eater would fix the problem and i reckon even placing the default parks (tennis courts etc) would remove some of the pollution, it's just how did the pollution get there? also it's a residential only city looool...now i've pretty much covered the description of the city, now to solving the mystery...i believe there's something causing this pollution (just like cars cause traffic pollution) and if it's a bug i still think that changing an option in the game file would solve the problem. any help would be really appreciated and thanks to all previous posters.

[SC4BOY 20]

There is a "count wraparound" which can occur in pollution (and other areas as well) .. the number which represents pollution is a non-floating point representation .. I think 8 bit, but this doesn't really matter.. unfortunately when you continue to subtract from a this type field, if you go more than, in this case -255, the number "wraps around" becoming positive again.. so if you add a -1 to a -255 you get +255.. just the nature of the beast

[rob9926 0]

can i fix the problem by changing any properties in the game files. cause if that is true then there must be a way to stop/control what it is doing. anyway thanks for your post. PS: i don't want to have to stop playing the game again because of a silly bug in the game stopping me from doing what i want looool.

[Wizard of ID 1]

SC4Boy, In one of my cities, my air pollution soared to 120,000 from about 40 within a Sim month after I plopped something. I plopped a pollution eater, and the pollution disappeared. Twenty Sim years later, it suddenly returned, jumping to 80,000 from 0.  I dropped another pollution eater, which took care of it.  Some years further on, pollution jumped again to 40,000 from 0, and then back down to 0 after I plopped a third pollution eater.  

Could this have been the result of a sudden, dramatic fall in the pollution production of my city, causing the pollution eaters' reductions to wrap around?  That is, if the first pollution eater was reducing the city's pollution by 120,000, and the combined pollution production of all the city's buildings dropped by 80,000, the pollution eater wrapped around causing the city's air pollution to jump again?

Is it possible for the city's air pollution to drop that much without something remarkable happening in the city -- which it hadn't, in this case.

I'm asking just for the information. I'd like to get rid of the bug also, rather than relying on pollution eaters, but I haven't been able to track it down. If anybody finds any information out, can you please post it here? Thanks.

[rob9926 0]

i thought i would mention that the pollution in my residential city, if i query a building it says pollution is high even though the map says it is only low pollution. the data view in the game is pretty wrong anyway. aside from this i looked at the city info and it said pollution was like 80 (how did you get 120000 wizard looool). this value might be low compared to others but that's cause i thought i removed every aspect of pollution from the city. no traffic pollution, no power plants, no dirty industry or anything etc etc. anyway we really need to find out what is causing this and thanks for your contributions so far.

[SC4BOY 20]

Once you start using poorly mod'ed "cheat lots" you're on your own.. these issues have been known for many years, but people still post lots that are just out of hand, either knowing or not knowing the damage it does to the game.. once you have this "negative wraparound" it usually becomes not worth fighting.. the lesson.. play the game pretty much as it was designed and only use "tried and proven" mod's to ameliorate the games negative issues or "you're on your own" .. it is possible that if you are patient and use moderate lots that the game will eventually resolve itself.. but since that isn't really a "readable value" in the sense that is outside the scope of the game design, it makes "adjustment" of the problem very difficult..

[SimFox 801]

Idea of Wrap-Around is somewhat exotic...

Cant' say anything about it, but what i CAN say and with high degree of confidence that pollution is caused by ANY building, rob9926. and yes there is an exemplar devoted to it that specifies two things: amount of pollution and the spread of it from the center of your building. Many custom buildings suffer from incredibly high levels of pollution (all three of them - air, water and garbage) that are assigned by default by Plug-in manager. WAAAY out of the line of comparable Maxis buildings. To be totally fair it there are also discrepancies withing Maxis stuff as well. But it is generally fault of those creating custom stuff, people just don't care to be bothered... So the best advise is to check stts of ALL buildings, or parks etc, you download

WizardofID, when you call something "a bug" that should imply that you a) understand exactly how it suppose to work, b) know exactly how it does instead. Calling something "a bug" just because you either don't like or understand isn't right. Problem is caused by "plopping something"

[DocRorlach 25]

There are lots which cause excessive polution - some inadvertently, and at least one I know of on purpose: a radio antenna which is  (who knows why) powerd by nuclear energey (see details here). That one cost me a fully developed CJ city!

Your best bet really is to remove all but the essential and save plugins (leaving CAM, NAM,SAM, if you have them). Then check the city (don't save, since you probably see a lot of brown boxes). If the polution levels are down after a couple of game days, it will surely be a lot that's causing it. 

Next step is to start reinstalling plugins in batches - checking the polution levels each time: this way you can narrow down the offender. If you levels go up after a re-install, you know the trouble maker is in the last re-installed group - and you now got to uninstall that group, then reinstall it one by one. 

I know it's a lot of work if - like me - you have a couble of gigs in plugins, but it surely beats losing an entire region.

[rob9926 0]

ok we seem to be getting somewhere and thanks again for your contributions...well i've looked at the game file over n over and i couldn't find any conclusive evidence that pollution comes from residential buildings or parks etc. now simfox you are confident that pollution comes out of most buildings and what i see in my game completely agrees with you. the only problem now is how come there's nothing obvious in the game files that says this building produces this much pollution. that's what i ultimately wanna find out. i don't think the pollution problem is actually that big because i am using a mod to get rid of traffic pollution and i am building my cities seperately so residential is all by itself. now the problem might be small but please continue to help me and others get to the bottom of this. also if industry is easily quadrupled with a mod then shouldn't pollution be easily changed. that is the question lol.