Opening a city tile with plugins missing notice...

[blade2k5 1,523]

Seems that after I start working on a city tile, save and exit from the game, then go back to it later on, when loading said tile, this pops up on the screen.....

What the heck is going on and do I fix it?  Never seen this before.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,622]

As far as I know that only occurs when something was built in city which came from a custom plugin and when next visiting the city said plugin was not found.

[blade2k5 1,523]

Then it has to be something like a school, library, museum, power plant, water pump, garbage chute or something wrong with NAM.  It's the only things plopped before I start simming.  And it only seems to happen with one tile, none of the other 98 are affected, yet I use the same schools, museums and things I listed in every tile.  Makes absolutely zero sense why it would only affect one tile after all the years I've had said plugins.  If I can't find out what it is, I can't play the game anymore.

[CorinaMarie 29,622]

It certainly seems odd if there have been no changes to your plugins contents or load orders. We'll have to wait for the experts on this.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

16 hours ago, blade2k5 said:

after I start working on a city tile, save and exit from the game, then go back to it later on, when loading said tile, this pops up on the screen...

I suspect that your missing plugin problem is related to the changes you made during your earlier plugin testing:

Quote

Got this CTD when a city is about ready to load.  Completely shuts down the game.  Does this on developed tiles and undeveloped tiles in developed regions and undeveloped regions.  Cannot figure why it's doing this even after taking out everything I've added in the past few days.

It's likely that something you took out didn't get put back in.

[blade2k5 1,523]

That could be, but trying to figure out which one it may be out of the thousands of dependencies is no small task.  I have noticed that some lots are missing queries, which is a new one on me.  Some are Simgoober's lots + some others.  I'll have to shoot a short video and show what's going on.

[blade2k5 1,523]

I did notice last night when playing for the first time in a week that the Ventura Corp growables just give me a flat gray concrete ground cover and a little black/red/green flag (that replaced the brown boxes).  Some of the residential growables (low density at least) as well (chi/hou sets) turned off.  I think I know what's missing.  Some of LBTs props/textures that I took out because some of their stuff (mostly Heblem's) that I've had for years suddenly lost all their ground textures and all I got for ground cover was purple grids.  He had some nice parks back in the day, but could never use them.  Now that I have some new downloaded content that requires LBT props/textures, I'll be adding those back in.  That might get rid of the missing plugins message I get, on every tile now.  Thanks jerryfisher for putting that thought back into my mind last week.  You may have solved the problem.

 

One other question, does the God-mode terrain tools for mayor mode have a 'slope mod' added to it?  Can't build a road over a non-existent bump in the ground is driving me absolutely bonkers and it's the only new major difference in mayor mode.    I hate slope mods and don't want those cursed mods in my plugins, I never download them and got rid of the one I did have more than a decade ago.  Those mods are way too restrictive in my opinion.    If it doesn't, is there anything by PEG that might?  I need to find out, it's driving me crazy.

 

EDIT:  Found the offending slope mod and erased from my plugins.  It was called Adams Slope Mod, never noticed it before.  That problem is solved.

[twalsh102 1,601]

Dependencies don't just disappear.  The multi-colored flags indicate missing models (as brown boxes did), or model files that can't be accessed due to path length.  Did you by chance do any massive reorganization of your Plugins folder when you started playing again?

If you can't determine the the name of the lot by querying the lots that have flags (and keep in mind that the name you get in the query may or may not give you a clue as to which download it comes from), my recommendation would be to get SC4DataNode and use it.  One of the things it will do is tell you exactly which lots are missing dependencies in a couple of different ways..  Once you determine which lots are missing dependencies, you can go back and double check the dependency lists for those lots against what you have in your Plugins folder

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

21 hours ago, blade2k5 said:

does the God-mode terrain tools for mayor mode have a 'slope mod' added to it?

Almost certainly not.

 

21 hours ago, blade2k5 said:

I hate slope mods...

You should learn how to edit those exemplars yourself. You're right that old slope mods are too restrictive, but you make a mistake to assume that they can't be tweaked to your liking.

In particular, mods like Ennedi's did not mess with the smoothing parameters (reach and number of recalculation passes). Perhaps PCs were still weak back when early slope mods were  being uploaded.

Today's PCs are so powerful that it's way past time to fiddle with the smoothing that can make "restrictive" slopes workable (by spreading / even out a deflection via repeated smoothing steps). I'd upload my personalized slope mod, but there are so many parameters for each of the networks, and the balance between aesthetics versus playability is so much a matter of personal taste that I believe every player should edit his or her own.

[blade2k5 1,523]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

Almost certainly not.

I already knew that when I posted that line of questioning, but always second guessing myself, I needed confirmation I guess.

I played for quite awhile last night into the early morning hours now that the road building issue is over, all the while writing down which lots are missing their dependencies with this dependency issue.  I know the Hilton Hotel 2x2 is missing everything and the Ventura corp is another.  I only play the NYC/Euro building sets, so I don't know how affected the other two sets are. 

3 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

You should learn how to edit those exemplars yourself. You're right that old slope mods are too restrictive, but you make a mistake to assume that they can't be tweaked to your liking.

As for learning how to tweak mods, I'd rather learn how to create my own sign posts for an entire set of Interstate highway markers (primary numbers 1-99 + their 3-digit designations, 990 in total.  Insane, I know), from one signpost model without having to make 990 models.  Angry Mozart has explained what programs I need to do that with, but unfortunately, I have one of those ancient machines that was good for the day, but not anymore.  It still runs XP but was taken offline about 3 months ago and basically only being used to play SC4 at moment.  It's home built by my son 11 years ago, modified over the years, 3gb memory, 3-core processor, can't remember the name of the video card, but Radeon or something similar keeps popping into my head.  My wife and I are going tiny house living in a year or so, so the old clunker is not coming with when we move out west to north-eastern Nevada.  I'll have to get a newer system before I can start playing around with that and making sure I can play the game as easily as I do now.  

[blade2k5 1,523]

Ok, here it is Cyclone Boom, a partially developed city tile from my troubled region....Thanks very much for your help.

City - T.V. North Valley.sc4

[Cyclone Boom 16,939]

Hi @blade2k5, thanks for the PM.

So I'm pleased to say it's good news. Using the method I hinted at in my post here, I've managed to successfully identify the missing plugin.

From your initial screenshot of the warning dialog, it shows the decimal value 1301224044 of the item missing for the Plugin Pack ID.
Converting this to hexadecimal gives: 0x4D8F1A6C

After confirming the error message in the game (importing into an empty large tile in my test sandbox region), the next step I took is to open your city in iLive's Reader (v0.9.3). Then I sorted the list by the Entry column, and scrolled down and selected those named "Exemplar file".

As follows:

Then checking in the "Instance" column for the above hex value, I found the applicable entry and opened it up on the right hand panel.

This happens to match the PluginPackID and also another property named "Lot Resource Key" which sounds like some other sort of reference. These told me it was the correct file which was responsible for the error. Though at first with just the name of the building to work from at the top (offal2), it only seemed like limited evidence to work from. However, I then noticed the menu description suggesting it was a trash disposal facility, and better still the name: Geoignic Ingestor

And a quick Google search later led me to this file by @bluob:

 

The Zip archive contains the following 3 files:

• offal2-0x5ad0e817_0xd7ef20f_0x200000.SC4Model
• offal2-0x6534284a-0x0d7ef20f-0xad92dce4.SC4Desc
• ubergarbagetube_4d8f1a6c.SC4Lot

The first one is the most important since it's the model as referenced in the saved city file. The SC4Lot file contains properties which are an identical copy as the aforementioned exemplar entry. From testing I've discovered this occurs upon plopping and saving a tile for the first time. Then should all instances of the lot be removed (bulldozed), saving at that point will proceed to delete the exemplar entry from record.

Perhaps this could explain if editing the properties of lots, why it's advised to first bulldoze them in any tiles they're built inside. Otherwise I suppose possible conflicts or corruption may result (although that's mere speculation on my part, and may require additional looking into).

After re-loading your city with the Geoignic Ingestor added to my Plugins, I noticed the error specifying missing plugin pack 1301224044 was no longer shown. There were still around 20 other missing ones, but that's only because I've not got those content items installed.

Here's a preview:

The looming continuous jet of steam was a sure sign it was located over in the South East corner.
(This was adjacent to the "V A P P" water treatment plant, and across the avenue from the extremely high-tech sounding "F R E D - Brain Power Plant".)

So, I hope this works for you and may even help other mayors find their long-lost buildings.

[blade2k5 1,523]

I noticed that was missing right away when I first plopped it, but no longer had the original zip file I downloaded years ago.  There are a lot of other files missing buildings like Ventura Corp and a few residential buildings in the Euro set.  I think I still have all the files I removed from my plugins before the clean-up a few months ago, I'll go see whats in there that's not in my current plugins folder that's been reorganized.  Maybe I'll find out what's missing and re-add them and I can't, I'll just remove those files from my plugins folder, after of course blowing up any lots that are missing the models.  I am so not technically inclined Thanks for finding that file to re-download because I had no idea who made it and whether I got here or at SC4Devoion.

 

I have just over 5gbs of plugins, plus another 1+gb not currently being used by the way.  Once again, thank you very, very much for your help.  

[blade2k5 1,523]

I'm happy to announce that it worked Cyclone Boom.  Of course because of the amount of plugins installed, it took about 90 minutes to open, then delete the old lot then save and exit to region with the nine tiles I've started so far.   I then closed out the game and added in the new files after removing the old files in my plugins folder.  Reloaded the game and spent another 90 minutes to reopen and plop the new lot in each of those tiles, save and exit to region, then reopening the tiles and no missing plugins message.    

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

20 hours ago, blade2k5 said:

it took about 90 minutes to open

Ouch! That calls for a solid-state drive, and maybe dat-packing as well.

[blade2k5 1,523]

3 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

Ouch! That calls for a solid-state drive, and maybe dat-packing as well.

It's an 11 year old pc, home built by my son.  Upgraded it about 5 years ago with a new motherboard with a triple core processor.  By the way, I meant 90 minutes to do all the tiles I had developed so far, not each tile.  Didn't word that right, my mistake.  If I take all the plugins out minus NAM, it loads up in about 30 seconds.  That and I don't know how to dat-pack and what I should dat-pak.  Takes me awhile to figure things out as my memory isn't so good anymore now that I'm constantly having to think about my enlarged heart and runaway high blood pressure.  I'm on medication for my heart and high BP, actually have my yearly check-up next Friday (18th).