Graphical artifacts with PEG's ponds

[1337br3w 5]

I have noticed that sometimes my pond lots (from Peg's deluxe pond kit) will have an issue with the grass/background texture appearing blue or black. I tried changing my graphic settings on my PC, but it still happens occasionally. Has anyone had this issue before? I attached an image for reference.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Possible missing dependencies.  As I recall that is a rather extensive download, so you should be sure you have all the items specified.

[1337br3w 5]

I thought about that too, but the thing is sometimes it looks fine. I will double check though.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

This can also be a matter of loading order.  Sometimes things have to be forced to load last.  If you look at the way the NAM installs some of its stuff, you can see the trick is to create a directory that starts with a couple of 'z' followed by at least three underbars (_).  For example, here is the tail of my Plugins Tree:

│   ├── MTP MM2 Scrub Brush
│   ├── MTP MM3 Forest Flora
│   ├── MTP MM4 Old Pine Trees
│   ├── MTP Tree Mod
│   └── PEG_MTP_TEXTURES_vol2.dat
├── ZZZ PEG Facelift Mods
│   └── MTP
├── zzz_SAMTransitions
│   └── SAM_transitions.dat
├── zzz_terrainmod
│   └── z_LK_FloraTuningParameters_Seasonal_Maxis_or_Other.dat
└── ZZZZ_PEG SEAPORTS
    ├── Break-Bulk Seaport
    ├── Container Seaport
    ├── PEG-CDK3_ZBasics_Cement-Patch.dat
    ├── Pier Seaport
    ├── Rail Fleet
    └── ZZZ-Master Seaport Controller Mod

Some of this stuff just has to load after others because it overrides some of the exemplars.

[1337br3w 5]

Interesting. I didn't realize that the directory could actually affect the gameplay. I will look into it!

[rsc204 21,859]

It's worth noting that there are a couple variations of the ponds. The originals do have a grass texture used on the lots, so if you are getting the water bug (black or other weird textures) then I'll bet you are missing that texture. The water bug only occurs when a tile on a lot has an overlay texture, but does not have a base texture. Enter the game, if the issue is not present, open the water menu, select any item then close it. Now you should see the issue appear. Goto the data views panel, switch the zones view on, then off again. Now the issue is once more gone. If that's what happening: missing overlay texture.

Paeng made a set, I think "free waters" which changed these to be fully transparent around the edges and better for MMPing. I'm not sure if that's on the STEX though, but let me know if you can't find it and want a copy.

[NCGAIO 562]

In fact  bug water should  not be a more appropriate name for this purpose because in fact been given only because is seen more easily what happens by the lack of basic texture on the reference plane for the height of the water which is different from that used for land... beyond this in his absence the terrain plane shows the terrain texture in redraw.

 video best explains the construction of the water texture ...

https://youtu.be/-_PY_WhIYvI

[1337br3w 5]

This is all very useful. rsc - I think you're diagnosis is correct, as it really only fluctuates sometimes from the blue/black issue. I will check out the free waters (I found it here on the STEX) and see if that helps. 

One other thing - I had not realized that the actual directory of the plugins makes a difference... I have organized my plugins a certain way, and may have not kept the folder hierarchy as it was during a typical install. I haven't had any issues besides this pond texture one, so do you think it's okay to just leave my files as is? It would take a while to go back and completely redo my plugin folder.  Is there a specific order that things should load? i.e. lots before textures or other files? Thanks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You can organize your plugins any way you like with two provisos:

1. DLLs must be just inside the Plugin header with no subdirectory
2. Some plugins have to be loaded last.  When you using the NAM installer, it will set up some of the items to be last so as to override earlier stuff (if any).

 

[rsc204 21,859]

In respect of lots, you'd be wasting your time worrying about load order for the most part.

If you have a mod, that changes something else, it needs to load after the original files. That's because the original files and the replacement have the same ID. In case of such conflicts, the game uses the last one to load. Usually mods that work this way will say so in the description, but for the average user, you aren't likely to have many such mods.

In no way whatsoever can load order be causing your problems. Even if another set were being overridden, the fact remains, that texture is missing.

Just to update you, when I said FreeWaters, that's just to make MMPing easier near ponds/canals from PEG.

You want the "PEG Ponds Transparent Texture Patch", from the readme:

Quote

To apply the patch, simply copy the included two files into the ..\Plugins\PEGPROD\PEG Ponds  folder and remove the textured versions.

 1. Replace PEG_Ponds_206.dat with PEG_Ponds_Transparent_206.dat

 2. Replace PEG_Pond-WF_Medium_206.dat with  PEG_Pond-WF_Medium_Transparent_206.dat

So you should be able to see if your file names are different. Hopefully this is on the PLEX on the STEX, everything is a bit disorganised since SimPeg closed :(.

[1337br3w 5]

I did what you suggested and it works perfectly now. Thanks for the help!