Missing lot texture issues

[monkeywater 910]

I broke something, and it coincidentally started with my first uses of SC4PIM. Also when downloading paeng minstral jaune, when I opened it in LE I saw white textures where industrial were supposed to be.  I changed them to something acceptable and went on my day.

Maxis lots are missing tons of overlay textures, as well as props.

Custom lots sometimes behave weird when they dilapidate:  note the presence of rail textures where it was supposed to be dirty grass

I don't know where to start in looking for a solution to this.

[rsc204 21,805]

7 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

Apparently this custom overlay (0x25a77000) doesn't really like to show up on growable lots, only on ploppable ones. 

I have to say that the effect is the same as you'd get when the textures are in a wealth family, although the ID seems to suggest otherwise. When this happens, the actual texture you see will be based on the wealth of the lot itself, rather than the specific texture you added in the LE. Change the wealth and let them grow again, if you see the texture change, then you need to start looking at the textures and their IDs for everything involved. Feel free to continue this with a PM if you need some more assistance.

3 hours ago, monkeywater said:

I broke something, and it coincidentally started with my first uses of SC4PIM. Also when downloading paeng minstral jaune, when I opened it in LE I saw white textures where industrial were supposed to be.  I changed them to something acceptable and went on my day.

Suggests you were missing a texture pack, I'll need to dig through my copy, but I'm fairly certain there is an unlisted texture dependency for this building.

3 hours ago, monkeywater said:

Maxis lots are missing tons of overlay textures, as well as props.

Could be a number of things, but if the Overlay Textures and Props that are affected exist in the Lot Editor, we can be pretty sure at least your game files are fine.

3 hours ago, monkeywater said:

Custom lots sometimes behave weird when they dilapidate:  note the presence of rail textures where it was supposed to be dirty grass

This looks like you've an override hanging around somewhere that's got the same ID as one of the Maxis Dirt textures. You'd need to know exactly which texture was in use for the affected tiles of the lot, then you can look for other instances of the same ID in your Plugins.

[rsc204 21,805]

Just to follow up on this problem, here is a thread explaining how these Wealth Groups function (found by Tibi).

Basically because the Corner Path (ID 0x25A72000) exists as part of the Maxis textures, any textures using the family 0x25A7 will be grouped together. Therefore the textures 0x25A72000, 0x25A75000 & 0x25A77000 are all linked together. When placing any of these three textures onto a lot, you aren't placing the exact texture on it, rather the family from which the appropriate wealth texture will appear. There isn't really a simple fix for this behaviour, since it might have negative consequences for existing content.

[monkeywater 910]

On 02/11/2022 at 11:52 AM, rsc204 said:

Just to follow up on this problem, here is a thread explaining how these Wealth Groups function (found by Tibi).

Basically because the Corner Path (ID 0x25A72000) exists as part of the Maxis textures, any textures using the family 0x25A7 will be grouped together. Therefore the textures 0x25A75000 & 0x25A77000 are all linked together. When placing any of these three textures onto a lot, you aren't placing the exact texture on it, rather the family from which the appropriate wealth texture will appear. There isn't really a simple fix for this behaviour, since it might have negative consequences for existing content.

Thanks for the assistance!

 

I had a little time to look into this tonight, and the texture listed that shows as white is 0xf5f842ca

I checked in lot editor to see what is going on and I do not have a texture by this number.

As for the props and overlay textures

 

This is what mayor house looks like in editor

I can go into the lot editor overlay texture list, and it is there and looks fine.

 

Here is what it looks like in game.

 

Note that the surrounding lots have props and overlay textures just fine, but the mayor house, and numerous other maxis lots, all lose both props and base texture.

 

So I don't think I have a texture conflict causing this and I am not sure why only some lots lose overlay and props, it only seems to be maxis stuff.  the custom content appears fine.

[monkeywater 910]

Another comparison between custom stuff (top)

and maxis (mostly, other than a peg utopian park) below

[rsc204 21,805]

5 hours ago, monkeywater said:

I had a little time to look into this tonight, and the texture listed that shows as white is 0xf5f842ca

I checked in lot editor to see what is going on and I do not have a texture by this number.

So you are indeed missing said texture then, I recognise the family ID as one of Paeng's own, I'll try to track it down but I don't have this texture on the machine I'm using.

I'm guessing it's essentially his own Sandstone Sidewalk though, so if you've already switched it with another, then it's a non-issue.

5 hours ago, monkeywater said:

This is what mayor house looks like in editor / Here is what it looks like in game...

Note that the surrounding lots have props and overlay textures just fine, but the mayor house, and numerous other maxis lots, all lose both props and base texture.

So I don't think I have a texture conflict causing this and I am not sure why only some lots lose overlay and props, it only seems to be maxis stuff.  the custom content appears fine.

Well some folks might rush to assume this is Prop Pox, a bug that can lead to Props going missing, but that doesn't affect textures.

Is there any chance you've turned down the detail setting in Graphics Options? If that's set to Med or Low for the following:

• Visual Effects
• Texture Quality
• City Detail
  !!This last one especially!!

Then you will see less items on lots, the reason why this only appears to affect Maxis Content, is because the mechanism that makes this work is usually ignored by modders, so rarely does custom content bother to cater to this. Ultimately there isn't a good reason to reduce any of these settings on a modern PC, they were originally included for systems that would have been overwhelmed by showing all the detail in game, a problem that essentially is non existent today.

[monkeywater 910]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

So you are indeed missing said texture then, I recognise the family ID as one of Paeng's own, I'll try to track it down but I don't have this texture on the machine I'm using.

I'm guessing it's essentially his own Sandstone Sidewalk though, so if you've already switched it with another, then it's a non-issue.

Well some folks might rush to assume this is Prop Pox, a bug that can lead to Props going missing, but that doesn't affect textures.

Is there any chance you've turned down the detail setting in Graphics Options? If that's set to Med or Low for the following:

• Visual Effects
• Texture Quality
• City Detail
  !!This last one especially!!

Then you will see less items on lots, the reason why this only appears to affect Maxis Content, is because the mechanism that makes this work is usually ignored by modders, so rarely does custom content bother to cater to this. Ultimately there isn't a good reason to reduce any of these settings on a modern PC, they were originally included for systems that would have been overwhelmed by showing all the detail in game, a problem that essentially is non existent today.

AAAND that solved it!

 

I had set some of these to low as I have like a billion trees per tile and wanted to speed things up.

 

Thank you!

[rsc204 21,805]

SC4's needs graphically speaking won't tax any modern or even some quite old GPUs, if your Video Card has 512MB or more RAM, almost certainly the game is not hitting a hardware barrier in this respect.

Unfortunately the system that handles the shadows, regardless of what hardware you have, will beyond a certain number of objects slow considerably when refreshing the view. Actions such as rotating, zooming or even scrolling require loading a new set of 'data', but it's the calculations needed for say thousands of trees with complex shadows, that overload things. However, simply setting shadows to Med or perhaps if necessary Low, will greatly improve the speed at which the game can re-draw everything.