Building blockers snag with Cobb & Mattb325

[tariely 4,499]

I've been trying my hand at making building blockers and I hit an unexpected snag with Cobb13thStreet condos and Mattb325 Kendrick Apts (which I can't find a link for -- uh ?)  : they won't open in the Reader. At first I thought there was something in the name of the file (it happened for another lot and slightly changing the name solved the problem) but not this time. This is beyond my SC4 pay grade :-) Anyone has an idea what is happening ?

(And BTW, the ugrade : wow, that was fast... And pretty in pink ! )

[mattb325 28,899]

While it can be symptomatic of other issues, most typically, if a file cannot be opened by the reader (and it just contains standard ASCII characters), the file was either really, really badly modded in the first place, or it has become corrupted. Usually it's the latter, especially if the file has worked/grown in game previously.

Both of the files open fine for me using Reader v093.

I would suggest re-downloading the files in question. While I never made a Kendrick Apartment, I did make a little house by that name a long time ago and it sits within this pack: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=394

[tariely 4,499]

I redownloaded them both l they seem rather identical, but I will see tomorrow ; (and yes it was my mistake its just "Kendrick" :-). I must have done something wrong -- something of yours cannot be badly modded ! :-)

I noticed that the Cobb .desc and .model don't have any numbers ...(Cobb32118_13th_St_Condos_by_Cobb_DESC.SC4Desc Cobb32118_13th_St_Condos_by_Cobb_MODEL.SC4Model)

... but neither have some other Cobb's lots and they open fine in the Reader. (And it doesn't keep them from weeding all over ! :-)

But my first attempt at blockers seems to work ! Yeah !!!

[mattb325 28,899]

Not at all, I've made a few blunders in my time, but they usually remain in my plugins folder  

I've noticed files can bork for all sorts of reasons over the years. Some things that come to mind:

• cutting and pasting your files from your plugins folder to another location and back again;
• dat-packing files (especially using the sc4tool);
• overly long file names;
• non-ascii /special characters

Now of course, logically some of those bullet points should never cause a single file to become unreadable: I know this, just as sure as I know there will be more than one person tell me it's impossible, but I've seen it happen (though happily it is extremely rare). 

More commonly - and I am talking contrary to established 'best practice' modding here - where the creator has embedded the .desc file in a growable .lot file (which has been long held as the correct way to mod) when a user subsequently edits said file in the lot editor, most of the time the previously embedded .desc file often doesn't save with the newly saved .lot file and the whole thing becomes unusable. The Kendrick file had the .desc embedded within the lots, which could explain the corruption. I no longer bother to embed files as I couldn't care less if a user makes changes in the lot editor.

Cobb's file, which is a similar vintage, doesn't embed the .desc, but he has over-written the hex in the file name. It shouldn't make any difference, as all the info is still listed under the DIR file.

Thankfully in all of this, I've usually got  aback up of files, both locally and externally 

[tariely 4,499]

Re-Dled Cobb still won't open. None of the three Cobb files. So if something is embedded in a DIR file I wouldn't know:-)

But Kendrick rocks :-)

Point 3 & 4 (non-ASCII/special characters AND names too long) were the cause of the non opening for the other files I encountered that problem with, JBS offices pack 4.

 

[rsc204 21,869]

Well I downloaded them to check and they opened fine for me, so there is nothing inherent in the files that's wrong. You don't need to keep the IDs in the filename, since SC4 doesn't care about it, it simply reads the data and IDs inside it, so long as those are OK, there should be no problem.

As Matt said, there is a limit to the length of the filename in Windows, but that limit includes the complete folder structure. So it doesn't have to be the file name itself that causes the problem, it can also depend on where the file is located. If that's inside many long folder names, it can cause problems, but most usually if that were the case, Windows wouldn't let you put the file in said folder, you'd get a warning message it's too long. You could try moving them to a root folder, i.e. a single folder with a short name right at the beginning of a drive on your system, for example, C:\Temp\. I don't think it will make a difference, but perhaps worth checking before getting into things.

Next up, rename the files, just give them simple names like CobbCondos.xxx and see if it helps. Assuming you manage to open them, you can always rename them back afterwards. If anything, the name is only there so you can identify what's inside the file, it doesn't affect it's operation in-game.

But more likely the files have another problem, which is either that they are locked from being read somehow or possibly corrupted. The latter is quite unusual and typically indicative of hardware problems, unless an application crashed whilst saving data with them. In such cases re-downloading a fresh set should resolve the problem, not to mention if they were corrupted, you couldn't expect to see them working in-game either.

If there was a permissions issue, that's a little more of a PITA to resolve, since you need to grant full permission or "Ownership rights" to your Windows user account for these files. It would be odd if you've never had this issue before for it to suddenly spring up for these files only though. I wonder too if perhaps any Anti-Virus software might have flagged them as quarantined?, which would also lock the files from being used.

[tariely 4,499]

Redownloading Cobb's files didn't solve the problem. If you have those files (Cobb's ; Matt's are now fine, as I said.)  and they open OK for you, would you mind sending them to me by PM (you have my e-mail :-) so that I can check ? Meanwhile I'll try to rename them completely and see what happens..

Those specific Cobb's files (13th sStreet) did work without a hitch in-game, just being kinda weedy, as well as my other Cobb's lots, which is why I selected them as prime candidates for buildings blockers-- I like them a lot, but not everywhere in my cities :-).

I've had "permissions' problems before, recently, when trying to delete an xPlugins folder  (after doing some tests) ; they vanished after a window-savvy friend of mine did whatever to my windows partition, and I don't even know if what he did was related to that !!! (eyes roll)...

[tariely 4,499]

IT WORKED. Renaming. Sooo many little things about sc4 that I didn't know... Then again, I was not dabbling in the Reader before...:-) (I'm now making building blockers with abandon. So Much Power. Mwhahahahahaha.)