Patches of Missing Detail

[DITRO 15]

Hello,

Two of my cities have several areas within which nearly all detail is missing (see below).  The affected patches may change in size/shape each time I load the city, but it's generally in the same place.  It affects Maxis and custom content.  Initially I demolished/re-plopped the affected buildings and saved immediately -  this had mixed success.  I switched from hardware to software rendering, but the program would crash when loading the city.  I played it on 2 different machines, and it occurred on each.  Current game was downloaded from Amazon.com.  The only version number I was able to find was 1.1 (from the readme).  This has occurred on the original CD version too.

If anyone has seen this before and may have a solution, I'd appreciate it, because this really detracts from the enjoyment of the game.   Thanks.

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.00 GHz  (Game runs on 1 core)

GPU: Radeon R9 280

RAM: 16 GB

OS: Windows 10 Home

 

Missing Seawall:

Minor League Stadium:

Lots of detail/props missing from this park:

[rsc204 21,866]

Whilst it's never easy to be sure, it looks like either disappearing props, or the Prop Pox to me.

Do some digging in those threads, hopefully you will get to the bottom of it :).

[DITRO 15]

Thank you for linking those threads.  This is textbook Prop Pox.  It's a shame, though, since I've been working on that region for about 6 years and all of the cities have been saved with PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat in my plugins.   Probably best to start fresh anyway, I've learned a lot since then.

  

[rsc204 21,866]

If you think it's prop pox, don't assume it is. Check the save files first, some information that may help is provided in this post.

You may find the issue is constrained to only a few cities, doubtful it would be the entire region that needs ditching. If indeed this is the source of your problems, that obviously sucks, but hopefully you can get things back together with only the loss of a few tiles at most.

[DITRO 15]

The two cities that have pox symptoms are New Adamsburg and Summers.  A 3rd city, Haven,  does not appear to have it.  It is comparable in size but has not reached full buildout like the others.

From the reader:

                                   .sc4 File Size                  2977aa47 Size

New Adamsburg     47.7 MB                               19.8 MB

Summers                  33.5 MB                               23.6 MB

Haven                        10.7 MB                               4.8 MB

 

So New Adamsburg and Summers appear to be lost because they are past the 6 MB subfile limit.  However, Haven likely used the modified Maxis props at one point or another.  Based on the Bap's post, once Haven passes 6 MB it should also develop Prop Pox, even if I remove PEG-OWW2_BDK_RESOURCE.dat or any other custom content file that may cause it, correct?

 

[rsc204 21,866]

47MB is very large for an SC4 city. Just trying to be abundantly clear, a 19.0MB prop subfile, would be read in reader as 20,761,805 bytes approximately. Does this correspond with the value of this file in reader for you? If it is, then prop pox would appear to be there :(.

In which case there is no fix to the problem. Even your backups will be affected. Any cities made with the affected plugin would also have the potential for further problems.

[DITRO 15]

Yes, that's it.  With binary instead of decimal conversion the subfile is about 18.9 MB, but who's counting at that point...