CTD when placing certain plugins

[Adamskisc4 20]

Hi all,

I'm happy to be a new member of this community and I wish I coiuld contribute more than asking for advice but I'm sure that will happen. I am on a Mac with Catalina OS (10.15.7) and the plugin buildings that I downloaded from STEX with SC4Macaddons.sit work perfectly, as does the NAM - everything is visible in the menus and work perfectly well. Then I contributed some cash to download the STEX collections 3-5, and this is when I run into trouble. Plugins that I wish to place in my cities (e.g. a Large Freight train station) will cause the game to crash to desktop immediately. The item is visible in the meny where it's supposed to be, it can be taken and put in place, but as soon as I drop it (plop it?) the game crashes. My limited understanding of the inner workings of a Mac tells me that as long as the plugin is a single file ending with .dat, it will work but more complex plugins in folders with 3 files ending with SC4Lot, SC4Des and SC4Model are the ones to avoid. That's a problem because most of the user made great addons and plugins are buiöt like that., even those who claim have no dependencies. Is this a Mac OS problem? I have tried running on both hardware and software graphics but I dont see that that makes a difference. Hope that someone will help me make these 55 dollars worth it... Thanks

[rsc204 21,817]

Firstly the file types in use make no difference on a Mac, so I wouldn’t ignore sets of Lots, Desc and Model files. Ultimately without special tools, this is how content comes out by default. DAT packing is an additional process and some prefer content that isn’t all bundled together.

The problem is well known and likely there is a problem value, see here for details, with the lot you are trying to place. If you tell us exactly what lot that is, ideally the creator and name, someone can fix it up and upload it. Not sure how easy it would be to change for the collections though. But it’s usually a very quick fix, it just requires Windows tools to do it. 

[Adamskisc4 20]

Hi and thanks. I'll have to go through all those files to see wich ar the ones I'd like to use and get in touch with the creator if they have that problem, to see if it can be fixed. Appreciate your initiative to have a section with mac compatible things

 

[Adamskisc4 20]

However, and this is weird, when I installed a few of the things listed as fully mac compatible (the tennis club, the beehive, the rural train station) and restarted the game it crashed as soon as I opened a city in the region...., 

[rare_guava 161]

21 hours ago, Adamskisc4 said:

However, and this is weird, when I installed a few of the things listed as fully mac compatible (the tennis club, the beehive, the rural train station) and restarted the game it crashed as soon as I opened a city in the region...., 

Hi Adamskisc4, I play on mac too.

Mac compatible in the context of those files you listed pertains to night-lighting functionality on macs (more knowledgeable people, please correct me if I'm wrong).  With the move to the 64-bit Mac version of the game, there's another meaning of 'Mac compatible', which is that the plugin works with the 64-bit Mac version of the game without causing a crash to desktop. For example, even though the beehive is listed as mac compatible, it pertains to the first definition, but will still cause a CTD.

Crashing to desktop when loading a city, and crashing to desktop when plopping the lot is caused by the same bug. The majority of plugins with this bug only CTD when plopping, while a few will cause a CTD when loading a city.

Unfortunately a lot of the creators that made the content aren't active anymore, but if you give us a list of the plugins that are giving you problems, I or someone else could fix them and get them working for you. Like rsc204, mentioned earlier, it is an easy fix, but requires Windows tools.

[rsc204 21,817]

On 28/04/2023 at 7:06 PM, Adamskisc4 said:

I'll have to go through all those files to see wich ar the ones I'd like to use and get in touch with the creator if they have that problem, to see if it can be fixed.

Well, yes ideally you would ask the creator, but that isn't always possible as many creators have since moved on. In the case of these types of issues, content on the STEX can be updated by the site staff, since we're not changing how anything works or looks, just making it work on the Mac version of the game.

So yeah, if you can just point us in the right direction to find it, we can fix it for anyone in future to use. If it's not something on the STEX, I can add it to my attached fixes, so at least Mac users can still make use of such content.

On 28/04/2023 at 7:16 PM, Adamskisc4 said:

when I installed a few of the things listed as fully mac compatible (the tennis club, the beehive, the rural train station) and restarted the game it crashed as soon as I opened a city in the region

But the Tennis Club for example is my own content, I literally added the Mac Compatible tag after I found it had one of the faulty values and uploaded a fixed version. It's tested on the Mac version too, so provided you downloaded the most recent version, it should not be causing this problem. However, you mention two other downloads, I'll test them later, since if the problem exists in any file amongst the new downloads, it would trigger the CTD the first question is which new item is behind it?

2 hours ago, mookle12345 said:

Crashing to desktop when loading a city, and crashing to desktop when plopping the lot is caused by the same bug.

Yes and no, the root cause is an incorrectly defined number of reps for the datatype, but when the game crashes shows you which property is at fault. Transit Switch Properties (most commonly used with stations), will be in the Buildings Exemplar and lead to a CTD when trying to Plop them. Whereas a CTD on startup indicates the problem is within the LotConfigurations Exemplar, usually one of three properties related to slope tolerance (all use Float32 data types).

2 hours ago, mookle12345 said:

Mac compatible in the context of those files you listed pertains to night-lighting functionality on macs

Actually not, it is intended to denote certified Mac-Compatible content, in a strictly functional sense.

No similar tag exists for Mac Nite-Lighting and probably never will, since after a lot of messing around trying to find a sensible way to implement it, some rather terrible flaws came to light that make it impractical to do at any scale. SC4BAT (used for making models for SC4), was created after the game itself and whilst going about it, the programmers must have realised that the original ID scheme wouldn't have been large enough so they changed it, then released the 1.640 / NiteLighting patch, so the game could show nitelights for models made with the new ID system (SC4BAT). No Mac version ever included this patch or the even more vital 1.638 / EP1 patch either, hence why the problem exists in the first place. But trying to force all your buildings into the same ID range as Maxis originally used end up with a very limited number of unique IDs that actually work. So yes it can be done, but it really isn't a good idea and had many creators all tried to make their content have lights on the Mac, there would have been huge problem with conflicts. As crappy as this may seem as an answer, the only good solution is getting Aspyr to include the official patches, which seems very unlikely.

[Girafarig 1,379]

As a fellow Mac user, I can tell you a thing or two, though it's mostly the same that the other users have said. Indeed, some files don't work for macOS and, as far as I can tell, it's usually one of two reasons:

• Some files (especially transit station) have a different value that in the 32-bit version was interpreted as extremely low capacities (about 1/1000th of the regular capacity) and, in the 64-bit version, it's a CTD when you load the city or whenever you try to place the lot. It's actually fairly simple to solve, but like Mookle said, it requires Windows tools. I actually used WINE to successfully run said tool and fixed one or two of these lots myself a while ago – but now I have a M1 Mac, so WINE is out of the question and I don't even remember what to do anyway.
• The other type of files I've had problems with is DarkNight (DN) files. Always, always, ALWAYS go for the MaxisNight (MN) files. Not having the best contrast is a bit rough, but just pretend there's a lot of lighting pollution or something.

Whenever I download plugins (and I have 3,4 GB of them) I quarantine them first in a folder. I named mine "new". Put all files there, run the game, see if you get the CTD when loading a city. If you don't, then you can move the files to their respective folders or pack them together. There's plenty of lots that work just fine, especially newer ones. In fact, I've had more trouble with files coming in an EXE (which requires me to ask my wife to lend me her computer for a minute) than with CtD lots.

Best of luck!

[Antoine7 58]

Hello,

I'm taking the liberty of digging up this topic, instead of create a new one, because I have the same problem as the one mentioned in this discussion, with certain LOTs, and I also play on a Mac. I've found out everything (or almost everything) about the plugins that were causing problems and I've made a list of them. I thought that, as well as helping me, it might solve the problems of other players who have the same plugins...

Shinkuku NS building
VanWingerden plaza A and B
Park 20x10 by Benno2005
ML moonlight station square
Kotoni station
Riverside college
TL Glenni hospital

I tried to correct these lots myself with iLive and Parallels, but it didn't work...
Thank you for your help...