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