Weird garbage overload bug

[bdehnwehn 24]

First of all: the problem described below was solved by closing and reloading the city. So I am not in need of help, but I have no idea what happened and why. I post this more 'for the record' (might someone in future search for this bug) or for the possibility that this indeed never was recorded and SimCity-experts are interested in it.

Well, this is what happened:

I loaded a tile I have been working on for some time. It opened, and after 1 second, the place was scattered in garbage like in the picture. Garbage graph shows why: my sims decided to put over 20 million garbage-units on the street. In fear of the negative consequences for the neighborhood, I tried to google for a solution but found nothing. Then I tried to clean it up as quickly as possible with an army of waste-to-power plants. Originally, there where no such plants in the city, but I had a large landfill. The plants didn't seem to drop the curve, and since I had not had the time to actually develop anything, I could safely not save the tile and go back to region. Reloading the tile gave me my city back: everything normal, no garbage surplus. Landfill was half empty, sims grateful for my nifty garbage collection service.

Strange thing, loading the same saved city with different results. I remember having the same issue some weeks ago. It appears to be random and, fortunately, rare.

If this intrigues anyone, the bad news is that I can't give much information about it: I can't reproduce it and I don't have a saved game with the problem. I didn't install any new plugins recently and played many other tiles before and after without surprises.

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

Thanks for posting to document this issue.

It sure is unusual why garbage would suddenly pile up as such, and also being intermittent is odd. Perhaps it's caused by some faulty custom content item, which could be triggering garbage pollution occasionally. You do say about not adding new plugins recently though, which would otherwise be prime suspects.

So while I'm unsure what might be the cause, it sounds a bit like the problem as described in the topic as @Dougg posted:

Garbage won't reduce to zero
 

[simster007 391]

I experienced something similar:

I use a modded recycling center (unfortunately I lost the info about it, don´t know which one ist....)  that "normally" reduces all garbage problems to zero.

One city tile under dozens suddenly went into the same garbage issue that you describe (in a very early stadium), solved it by plopping a different garbage disposal and: problem gone

[TheMurderousCricket 5,112]

12 hours ago, simster007 said:

One city tile under dozens suddenly went into the same garbage issue that you describe (in a very early stadium), solved it by plopping a different garbage disposal and: problem gone

Yes, there are some garbage disposal downloads which don't work quite the way they were supposed to work.  They should be found and marked for instant deletion. Or at least update.

[CorinaMarie 29,897]

5 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

They should be found and marked for instant deletion. Or at least update.

We agree with the latter as the ideal solution and a Red Banner Message added at a minimum if they can't be fixed. Ofc, it depends on peeps reporting the issue in a well documented way so the mod/lot can be investigated.

[simster007 391]

In my case the mod works well in 99,9% of all cases. Place it once in a city tile and forget about garbage problems.  It was a unique issue in that city tile that happened just a few days ago. So i don´t think it should be marked or banned.

I did some research in my plugin folder:

As far as I understand this just modifies the ingame recycling center - should it be called "cheat"?

[CorinaMarie 29,897]

4 hours ago, simster007 said:

I did some research in my plugin folder:

That file is created as an override for the Maxis Recycling Center. This means if you had ever previously plopped a Maxis one and then added the plugin later, bulldozing the original after will cause bad phantom data in the city tile save structure.

Is it possible that's how it happened to be buggy only in certain cases for you?

 

Edit: So, I've tested my theory and yes it can produce runaway garbage with phantom data, but the circumstance is prolly not overly likely. Install that mod, save the city tile with it in place, quit the game, remove the mod, load and run the city, and bulldoze it.

Edit Too: I've added a warning message banner to the STEX file to mention the issue.

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

5 hours ago, simster007 said:

As far as I understand this just modifies the ingame recycling center - should it be called "cheat"?

Indeed, it is a pure cheat which is fine if anyone wants a mod like that.

Of course, one of the benefits of SC4 is we can each choose which mods suit our personal mayoral agendas. Certainly the awareness about bulldozing before installing overrides is advisable, and even a more important reason for making regular frequent incremental backups of city tiles.

[simster007 391]

12 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

This means if you had ever previously plopped a Maxis one and then added the plugin later, bulldozing the original after will cause bad phantom data in the city tile save structure.

Is it possible that's how it happened to be buggy only in certain cases for you?

Definitely not. It is one of the first plugins I installed and staid in my plugins folder since then.