Elevated Rail Station Platement Issue (fix, sort of)

[EwokSeventyThree 0]

When I first installed Rush Hour a while back, I had a fairly annoying issue with the El Rail -- I would lay some rail, and try to place a station, and be told the tiles were already occupied.

I didn't have any mods (at the time), and I had the game patched to the latest version. It was a stumper. I tried re-installing, and various other things suggested, but I didn't get anywhere. This was happening even when I'd run the tutorial, and try to place the station where suggested by the game -- it'd bulldoze the rail where the station was to be, and plop the station down, but try as I might, I was unable to get the rails to connect.

So I thought, Maybe it's one of those weird graphical bugs... and turned on some cheets, built a little residential area, laid some el, and some farmland a ways off, and tried to connect the two with the el -- nothing. I ran a road out, and *blam* it worked.

Until I turned Hardware Acceleration on in the graphics options. It had been reset when I installed Rush Hour (ATI Radeon 9700 Pro), and while the rail I HAD lain was still dysfunctional, all future rail laid worked fine.

I decided it was time for a test. I laid some good rail in my little test city, and I zoned out some more farmland in a different direction, laid down stations, and turned the acceleration off, saved the game, restarted, and tried to lay the rail -- worked fine. They connected. I figured, What the heck! and tried to add on to my now-working rail lines, nada.

What I gather, then, is when you have graphical acceleration turned off, plopping down el rail stations is somehow bugged.

I have NO idea why, how, or even what. But there it is, and how I fixed it.

[Tropod 144]

That sounds rather odd. So I thought I'd try this out; no difference. Granted I don't have that particular model graphics card though. But personally, I would find it highly unlikely that that would have a bearing on something specific like that in-game. If it was a graphical glitch sure, but not something functional like that, but hey that's software for you eh.

[Ajaxsouth 0]

I was having the same problem with ATI Radeon 9250,

Finally, I found this topic and tested your theory.

It works! It works! It works!

Steps to fixing the EL bug:

1. Go to video settings in game.

2. Turn on Hardware Acceleration rather than Software Acceleration.

3. Restart SC4.

4. Elevated Railways to your hearts content!

Thanks EwokSeventyThree, you have fixed an ATI bug.

[Peorth 17]

ATI cards do have issues with SC4. One example are buildings disappearing when you scroll, which is due to the absence of a backing store in most ATI cards (including Radeons).

[Bones1 96]

Hmmm... I've never noticed disappearing buildings, and I'm running on a Radeon 9600.

[Peorth 17]

I think the later Radeons have backing stores (a buffer to store data). My laptop with a Radeon Mobility IGP2000 and my desktop with a Radeon 9250 both suffer from the disappearing-buildings-upon-scrolling problem, regardless of driver updates.