Buildings and props missing

[noahdavis 0]

*** This is my first posting ... so please be patient with me.  I can be taught, but it may take time.  

 

Can someone help me figure out what is wrong?  I have a city that is about 175,000 residents.  Everything was going good until all of a sudden things started missing.  I use PEG's seasonal woods (Love them, by the way), but I they don't show when I open the city.  (I know that they are there because I can query them or delete them.)  If I delete them and re-plop, they appear.

I am also missing buildings.  I justed plopped the major league stadium (along with PEG's sea walls) and now they are not showing.  (I can see the stadium from the regional view.)

 

Does anyone know what is causing this?  Is it a missing file or a graphics setting?  I checked my graphic settings and they are the same as always. 

 

The most frustrating part is that if I delete the missing lot and re-plop it, it appears correctly.  (However, this is very time consuming and costly.)

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.  (I did search the forums and the only thing simular to this was two years old ... and no one had responded.)

[nealos101 20]

Sounds like a graphics thingy... If they are at the same setting, have you had these problems before your population totalled 175K and rising? I think certain lower settings make props vanish, becuase these lower the global prop limits.

Try the highest setting you can do, and disreguard how slow your comp is.  Once you change the settings, exit SC4 and restart it.  If they are still not there zoom in, and then zoom out - the computer redraws the picture, thus, everything on it including props.

 

Also, if you are not being patient with the props being drawn onto the computer screen, just wait a minute or two... If nothing happens, then, that's where my help can no longer help you.

 

It cud be RAM, how much you have?

[noahdavis 0]

Thank you for responding. 

 

This problem only started recently when the population started getting over 150,000 (or so).  The strangest thing is that it is only happening with the recent 'ploppings'.  And to add to the confusion, it does not happen to all situations of the same lots.  What I mean is that I can see some of the seasonal tree lots which are right beside some of the ones that are 'hiding'.  (They were plopped at the same time.)

 

As for my computer, I am running a 2.8 Pentium 4 with 2.50GB of RAM. 

 

I tried changing my settings to all high, but it made no difference.  Here is what my settings currently are:

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//SC4%20Graphic%20Settings.jpg align=baseline>

 

I also thought that it may help if I posted a 'should be' vs an 'actual' ...

 

This is what I am currently seeing ...

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Stadium%20Before.jpg align=baseline>

 

This is what I should be seeing ...

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Stadium%20After.jpg align=baseline>

 

As you can tell, I haven't finished the layout of the area, but I am hesitant to continue while having this problem.  Any help that you can provide is greatly appreciated.

[Thunderman 30]

Have you even tried on setting your renderer (in the graphics menu ingame) from hardware to software, maybe that will help...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Date: 1/1/2006 3:06:30 PM
Author: thunderman
Have you even tried on setting your 'renderer' (in the graphics menu ingame) from hardware to software, maybe that will help...

quote>
...and if it does, then your problem is your video card or its driver. Did you change anything with this hardware/software combination?

[noahdavis 0]

I have tried changing from Hardware to Software, but it made no difference. 

It is only happening in this one city.  I started another city and plopped some of the seasonal trees.  I saved the city, exited and then returned.  Everything was as I had left it.

 

I went back into my 'problem' city and started looking around.  It seems that the issues are with items that I have plopped and it includes a lot of textures.  (The texture below the Major Art Museum looks like a patch-work quilt.)  I have also determined that it is not just PEG's stuff.  I also use the Marrast seawalls and some of them are missing as well.

 

Needless to say this is becoming very frustrating, so ... please ... any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[JayStimson 212]

I'm really inclined to think it's a graphics card problem from looking at your pics.
What graphics card do you have ? Do you have the lastest drivers ?
BTW, you certainly have enough cpu and RAM. Defintely not the problem.

[noahdavis 0]

My computer is the HP Media Center 1070n.  It has the ATI Radeon X300 SE PCI-E Graphics Card w/ 128mb DDR video memory.  I did update the driver, but that has made no difference in what I see.

Here is another example of what is going on ...

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Before.jpg align=baseline>

 

This is what should be showing ...

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//After.jpg align=baseline>

[alex48111 9]

Wow ! , I am having the same problem. It just sarted a week ago and I've been trying to figure it out. City pop. 318k , city size 41.2MB. comp. specs., 518DDR 120GB HD, Geforce Nvidia card32MB. Plugins folder 461MB.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

What happens if you take out the seasonal trees mod?

[noahdavis 0]

I did go in and remove the seasonal tree mod.  When I loaded the city again, everything was still missing.  My next effort was to remove all of the tree lots that I had placed throughout the city (eyecandy, you know).  I also had to delete all of the missing lots and re-plop them.  I then saved and closed the city.  When I re-loaded this time, everything was still there.

Before you get too excited for me, it didn't resolve the issue.   (A little presumtive, I know, but maybe someone was.) 

 

I started playing the city again.  I expanded the city, plopped away, and had myself a good old time.  I saved the city and closed it.  BUT, when I returned, the new things that I had plopped were now missing.  The only thing that I can think of is that there are just too many graphical items in the city for my graphics card to display.  This is why only the most recent things are missing.

 

I hate the idea of having to spend a couple hundred bucks to buy a new graphics card just so I can play this game.  I'm still deliberating as to what I want to do next, but if anyone has any other ideas, I am all ears.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, what size is your paging file? You should have about three times your real memory size allocated.

To check if it is your video card, try running in software rendering. It is a graphics option.

Also, what version of DirectX are you running? Did you run the diagnostic? (Type DXDIAG in the run box and hit enter.)