Cori's Partial Water Bug Fix (Ready for Testing)

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

As many of you will know, the "water bug" is a glitch in SC4 which occurs when lots have an overly texture, but no base texture. It gets triggered when switching to certain views, such as pipes and subways, and other data views.

 

So, I'm playing along and I've plopped some nice dirt paths. These were created by @JayStimson and use an overlay texture only so the terrain can show thru.

^ That's all well and good, but like any lot which has an overlay without also having a base texture there's the water bug problem.

I go underground and lay a water pipe:

 

And upon return to the surface, it looks like this:

 

Ofc, we know the workaround is go to the DataViews, select Zones, then select All Off (or just click the $ button after Zones view to return to the budget view). This got me wondering what is so magical about Zones View that the others don't have? After some trial and error it turns out to be Force zones when set to True (0x01). It seems that internally the game only knows to restore the underlying terrain if it knew it removed both the base and overlay textures when told to display the color coded zones.

The exemplar properties list for this says: If true, developed lots will show up as plain zone coloring.

^ So I added that to the DataView: Pipe Tool exemplar (6534284A-690F693F-4A0B68F0).

Here's how it looks now after going into pipe view and back out:

^ No Water Bug!!!!

Going into and out of pipes view then also becomes a secondary way to fix the water bug.

 

Can this fix be used for all the other data views which also cause the water bug? Yes! But... there's a caveat to it.

Let's start with a normal view in a city tile:

^ You'll see I added those dirt paths so we can watch for the water bug.

 

Go to the Maxis Traffic Congestion view and the bug appears:

 

Clicking back to the budget view and it's still there:

 

So, I added that Force zones to it (set to 0x01) and now when using that view the paths simply disappear rather than bugging:

^ However, this also causes the zone colors to replace the textures of grown lots.
And, sometimes, plopped items like the Country Club will show the water bug while in the data view.

 

Fortunately this is only temporary. Clicking back to budget view and all is well again:

 

Now the really odd thing is there is no rhyme nor reason to the textures on plopped lots disappearing. I can bulldoze and replace the golf course and then it's fine.

In a different tile there are high schools that show the texture bug when using the Force zones thinger:

 

And then one where the textures just disappear:

^ So for this part I'll just say: I don't know what's going on, but they are back to normal when exiting the view.

Note: The fixes currently only apply to the two edited data views above. Switching to any unfixed view can re-trigger the water bug.

Every data view can have the Force zones property added which would prevent them from causing the water bug. The thing we have to ask ourselves is if we can live with the partial goofiness if all Data Views were updated to have the Force zones as a fix. Ofc, this would also mean one is willing to abide the loss of base and overlay textures when in those views.

Thoughts?

 

As a complete fix for the water pipes water bug only, here's the file: Cori's Partial Water Bug Fix (Return From Pipes View Only) v0.01.dat

And if you want to test the altered Traffic Congestion: DataView - Traffic Congestion - Sort of a Water Bug Fix v0.01.dat

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

This is a magnificent discovery, Cori!

You do have such a talent to find new inventive discoveries like this, and I know the past few days you've as ever been diligently delving into lots of things modding-wise to see what can be achieved. To have the dreaded water bug fixed in any form (even partially) is a marvellous achievement.

In terms of whether base textures are missing in the other data views, it seems a bit of a trade-off which may well be acceptable. To see the water bug on large lots is very noticeable, and I'm leaning towards thinking how each of them fixed in the various views would be ideal yeah.   Edit: I've changed my mind on this! See discussion below...

(In time I can imagine this is something we can integrate into our  ModPacc Zero  too.)

Anyone reading this topic do give Cori's mods a whirl, and I know she'd greatly appreciate feedback on this.

  Edited June 27, 2021 by Cyclone Boom  

[Paulo S.M. 321]

Awesome discovery.
And step by step we will get rid of some of the most annoying bugs in the game.
But it's funny, because the effects you describe about using the "force zones", I have them every time I go into the Miscellaneous Transportation menu.
Every time I enter that menu, every lot on my city looses its base texture.
Probably nothing to do one thing with the other.
But if you find a way to solve the force zones thing, it may work to solve my problem as well
You can't imagine how hard it is to plop a bus station without knowing if there is a house on that spot or not. Several times I had to rezone areas do to a single bus stop 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 minute ago, Paulo S.M. said:

Every time I enter that menu, every lot on my city looses its base texture

That's bizarre. I don't recall hearing of that sort of bug.

My guess is something in your Plugins is the culprit, but that is really me just trying to sound like I have some insight.

[Paulo S.M. 321]

5 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

like I have some insight.

Don't be so modest about your knowledge.
You know a lot about the game.
Without many of your findings, most of us would still be on the middle age in the game   

 

[rivit 3,391]

5 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Going into and out of pipes view then also becomes a secondary way to fix the water bug.

I think this is a better way to fix the effects of the bug - even if we dont quite know why/when it pops up - because the underground view is much faster to flick in and out of than the zones view. So for me I'd minimise the flag change to the fastest view(s) only so as not to make the cure worse than the curse.  

It is quite strange though about how randomly it (the water bug) appears - makes me think that Force Zones flag is a late addition in an attempt to fix a bug they (Maxis) couldn't quite pin down.  They didnt reckon with one Cori finding that fix though.  

 

[hugues aroux 3,784]

On 27/06/2021 at 12:01 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Thoughts?

Well ... two trains behind ... well here's my thought, Cori.
Like many, the WaterBug annoys me. I even made a plugin with the help of @rivit to plant a Base-texture adaptable to the Terrain Mod to bypass the bug.
I read, tested, checked, observed, the behavior of the elements of the city with the discovered property. Pfffuuuu !
I did a lot of tests to understand/learn.
Indeed [DataView: Force zones] in other panels causes very surprising behaviour. I saw a Maxis square lose its base-texture and produce transparency on the City Background (waterbug) and its neighbour (identical, same orientation on the grid) show the Terrain texture. The Golf maxis does not like to be "ForceZones" as well as some iteration of the baseball field ... !
Finally ... to modify all the Exemplar Dataviews it is nevertheless a little annoying, beyond the fact that the bug appears for various display of the Data Panels, let us note that the NAM brings modification on its side on 5 or 6 Exemplar Dataviews.
Personally, I think that I would support to see the bug when I display Datas, but that the display of the city is systematically done without, as soon as I leave the Data panels and Pipe tool, subway tool and subway building tool.
All this to say that I implemented the [forceZones] property in the cohort file 0x4a0b6700 (a personal overload, of course!). All exemplars concerned point to this one.
For a first test, it's a good one. With the NAM. With your "Park Aura" plugin !

I assure you CB that it is bearable ;-)
I used for my test. A Lot from which I voluntarily made absent the base-textrue. Missing dependency.
This is what your discovery inspires me.

Water bug nearly, partialy, ...  fixed ... !!?? "Allez, on en est pas loin ?"

What do you think of it?

scoty_ForceZone_dataview_cohort.dat

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

13 hours ago, hugues aroux said:

What do you think of it?

I've downloaded it and put it thru its paces. Nice work looking into this.

I have one city tile where I plopped some dirt road trails and which do suffer from the water bug. For perspective here's how said water bug looks:

 

Using your Cohort does remove the water bugged part:

^ And, as expected, the trade off is the zones show their underlying zoning and the water bugged textures simply disappear.

As long as peeps don't mind these side effects, your Cohort method makes it quick to add that to all Data Views. Brilliant!

[rsc204 21,808]

Looks like I totally missed this one.

15 hours ago, hugues aroux said:

Personally, I think that I would support to see the bug when I display Datas, but that the display of the city is systematically done without, as soon as I leave the Data panels and Pipe tool, subway tool and subway building tool.

Absolutely, I couldn't really care about temporary glitching in an area where it just doesn't cause me any great problems. Provided the dataviews still work and any texture glitches don't interfere with the data, then this is a non-issue for me.

However, what I never could live with was having to constantly 'reset' the bug when playing, that was a deal breaker and has kept me away from the ALN paths, which I believe are essentially equivalent to those Cori used to highlight the problem. Having messed with every kind of hack I knew, mostly my foray into S3D based texture models, there still remains two scenarios I was never able to resolve. The first involves such fillers on any sort of even very modest slope, S3D's just don't handle that well. The second was specifically the kind of paths that I just mentioned, precisely because things like that work best over free-flowing landscapes, i.e. essentially again it's slopes that are the issue.

So I definitely am going to play with your fix @hugues aroux, great idea linking it to a Cohort for simplicity. I know a lot of users won't like much editing the files necessary to expand this to every data-view, but it's no more than copy/pasting one Property into the custom NAM DataView exemplars, which is literally as easy as I can envisage would be possible. Everything the NAM doesn't cover, could be released in a ready-to-use DAT (if it isn't already), which could have instructions on how to apply it to the NAM files.

But yeah, to sum up it looks like I might finally be able to have the sort of winding country footpaths and road tracks I've always wanted to be able to use. Fantastic work here @CorinaMarie, the 'like' isn't sufficient, we need a 'WOW" button to more accurately reflect how I feel about some of your findings.

[hugues aroux 3,784]

16 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

we need a 'WOW" button

I support this motion!

Yep, releasing this patch on the cohort allows all plugin creators to stop worrying if it's compatible with this or that plugin. It would be really amazing if someone made a plugin that overwrites this cohort ;-) There aren't many plugins that alter/overload DataViews already.
We'll be able to have fun with a lot of new and old plugins without base-textures. Yippee ...  

[memo 1,444]

There's now a DLL-based fix for this water bug problem. With this, entering the Zones data view temporarily or editing the data views themselves is not necessary. The fix will also work for existing lots that were affected by this issue, without having to update or rebuild them.

(Just lots such as the Lightrail-Subway transition, for which the hole in the ground is intentional, still require an occasional switching to the underground view to get rid of the terrain.)