What causes Prop Pox (and how to avoid it)

[Vizoria]

Sorry for the bump in this thread, but I have spent today reading through most of it. Anyway I have experienced prop pox once in one of my cities, but I managed to minimize it and stop it spreading by rebuilding prop poxxed areas, saving and retaining saves where the prop pox reduced in size. I wasn't using Peg's BDK nor did I have it in my plugins but I still managed to get the prop pox anyway.

Anyway, from reading this thread I see comments that Pegasus never altered the BDK file and the four infamous props. But I checked the BDK development thread in Simpeg4 and in the last post Pegasus added this edit;

EDIT:  Attached is a patch file for the BDK.

This patch file returns 4 modified props used in the BDK back to their default values. Although this patch will do nothing except detract from the appearance of the BDK lots... it was created in anticipation of panic stemming from a soon to be
annouced prop issue.

If you have experienced any issues with the props on these lots or worry that you might, just copy the DAT into the BDK folder. No need to redownload any BDK material or bulldoze any lots.

   
« Last Edit: February 24, 2009, 03:45:42 PM by Pegasus »

If these four props are restored to their original values does that mean they are safe to use, and thus the BDK mod can be used without causing prop pox? Have people downloaded the patched file and experienced prop pox because of it?

I just want to make sure that Pegasus hasn't been slandered here, because if some people are saying he never fixed this particular file when he had, then maybe that's why Pegasus feels hacked off?

[noahclem]

I just want to make sure that Pegasus hasn't been slandered here, because if some people are saying he never fixed this particular file when he had, then maybe that's why Pegasus feels hacked off?

It's nice that he finally decided to release a fix for that (five years ago), even if he continued to deny any responsibility. His answer to the (alleged) problem was quiet enough that it would never have had a chance of fixing things for any significant fraction of the people that downloaded the files in question. And from my experience all these old bitter conflicts that seem stupid or silly are rooted in some legitimate disputes that we should mostly just be happy aren't relevant anymore.

The prop pox issue isn't black and white. You'd probably be safe with the fixed files but I really don't know. I am pretty sure prop-pox-style problems can also be caused by other problems with plugin management, as has happened to me, but if I were you I don't think I'd take the chance of messing with those files. Have you seen the historic harbor release on the stex and plex? As nice as those BDK files looked back in the day I think they're more or less superseded.

[bap]

Anyway, from reading this thread I see comments that Pegasus never altered the BDK file and the four infamous props. But I checked the BDK development thread in Simpeg4 and in the last post Pegasus added this edit;

EDIT:  Attached is a patch file for the BDK.

This patch file returns 4 modified props used in the BDK back to their default values. Although this patch will do nothing except detract from the appearance of the BDK lots... it was created in anticipation of panic stemming from a soon to be
annouced prop issue.

If you have experienced any issues with the props on these lots or worry that you might, just copy the DAT into the BDK folder. No need to redownload any BDK material or bulldoze any lots.

   
« Last Edit: February 24, 2009, 03:45:42 PM by Pegasus »

If these four props are restored to their original values does that mean they are safe to use, and thus the BDK mod can be used without causing prop pox? Have people downloaded the patched file and experienced prop pox because of it?

I just want to make sure that Pegasus hasn't been slandered here, because if some people are saying he never fixed this particular file when he had, then maybe that's why Pegasus feels hacked off?

I sent Pegasus a PM the day before starting this thread (1) to let him know in advance of the prop pox findings, (2) to let him be aware that I was opening a thread here to let people know about those findings, and (3) to ask him if he would consider releasing an updated version of the BDK file with the needed corrections. In his answer he denied the problem and did not mention any intention to correct the file. I never got any other message from Pegasus.

I just checked at Simpeg. The message you quote is an edit to a 2007 December 13 message, that goes unnoticed in the before-last page of the BDK development thread. And the patch file is not attached to that message. Nor does the main BDK release in the PLEX has been updated. The BDK beach development kit page says "Uploaded: Dec 11 2007 - 12:01pm, Updated: Never". So, no patch available, no update to the affected file at PLEX. It seems the file have not been fixed after all. But the solution is simple and the affected props can be easily corrected in ilive's Reader (as explained in reply #3). 

[tkuzz]

this is my first post in this forum and im not sure im the right place ...
my city was struck by prop pox in the past, i searched the internet and found this topic...and i would like to thank bap for his tests...it was caused by the bdk file...i edit the file (deleting the said exemplars using ilives as instructed) and never get prop pox ever since...
i did add more files to my plugins folder...making backups and testing it with sc4save as i add them...i downloaded the props needed for uki agricultural http://uki-sim.seesaa.net/ (this particular files doesn't cause prop pox however)...
when i tested two of my downloads from http://hide-inoki.com/bbs/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=3187#3187
- jim parking pack (quite a few files from here)
- jim carprop pack 1.2 (Jim CarProp v1.2 SC4Desc & Jim CarProp v1.2 SC4Model )
i got prop poxes, at least thats what the sc4save tells me...im not sure wether it is true, can anyone confirm about what i just found out...

*note:
-i didn't notify the author of the prop packs as im not registered to that site
-sorry for my bad english.

[dirtguru]

My largest city just yesterday came down with pox after which I of course read this clear and very informative thread.
No need to discuss all of the details as they have already been explained here.
Couple of important notes for future reference.
I did have the BDK file in question in my plugins for over three years. Have also had the Maxis residential blocker in my plugins for just as long.
I recently removed the Maxis blocker in an attempt to grow some late stage Maxis Euro Modern Apt's I have noticed in some CJ's.
The prop pox did not occur until I removed the Maxis Blocker. Thus confirming an observation that someone else noted regarding the Maxis blocker in a previous post.

I have since removed the BDK file, obliterated my city and will soon embark on a static landmark and park creating binge.

[nas786]

ahh!! just got infected with prop pox!!!

I'm not tech savvy at ALL, so the only thing I can really add is in my case I was on a large tile, LOTS of maxis low density housing, and lots of PEG random woods v206 (which is basically a square filled with maxis trees).  I know I was reading somewhere that there might be correlation with all these maxis props showing up on low dense housing, and from what I imagine my random woods parks.

I did what some people suggested and put graphics to low, saved, then back to high, and played.  Is this something I can do over and over?  Or is there a limit to how many times I can do this?

Also, I play different cities, each has its own separate plugins folder.  I just swap plugins folders whenever I want to change cities.  Are my other cities and other separate plugins folder for those cities at risk for the same thing here??

Any answers appreciated, thanks

[mgb204]

Are you really, really sure you have got prop pox, because the reality of this problem is that it is very unlikely. Why don't you start by telling us exactly what is wrong with your city, when it happened (were any changes to your plugins made for example) and any other useful information. If you have prop pox you can pretty much delete that city because it's toast.

[nas786]

Well, let's see, this city I basically didn't play for maybe a year, but last week I started playing it again since I got my new computer.  What I do is every city I make, I save the plugins folder, so that way if I want to start playing it again, I just put that plugins folder in and walaa, I got everything I need.

So I first noticed this last year when playing, one of my huge subway stations, the entire model was missing and it was just the tile there.  When I query it all the stats were normal, and it was functioning normal.  I didn't think much of it, I thought it was just the plugin itself that was tripping out, so I was like eventually I'll just get a diff station.  One wierd thing tho, at that time, I demolished it and put a new one there, and it was still missing model.  So wether this is actually prop pox or not I can't say for sure.  But thinking back, I also noticed my city seemed a lot more empty compared to the amount of trees I thought I plopped (I have PEG random woods, which is basically a 1x1 square with a bunch of trees on it as props I'm assuming). 

So I started to play again, and then I noticed for sure something was wrong.  Some recently added tree parks had the trees missing, as seen here.  You can see the base texture there for many of the parks I plopped, but the trees are missing.  Some of the parks still have the trees.



I also noticed that the university was missing some buildings.  Also the parking lot to the right, it is supposed to have cars and light poles sticking out.  Sometimes the cars disappear, but the light poles don't, and they never look as empty as it does in this pic.



And here's a shot of the entire city, as you can see A LOT of low density residential, and those tree parks are used A LOT.  The extreme amount of trees may be a contributing factor.



At this point I knew something was definitely wrong so I started searching the internet to see if I can figure out what's going on, and I came across this thread and a few others.  I did what I read in this thread, I put the graphics city detail to low, saved, then high, then played and all of a sudden everything was back.  However, I've noticed since then a few of the parks lost their trees again.  Its nowhere near as bad as before, but I wouldn't be surprised if its heading back down that path.

I know there's some other stuff people were saying to do, but honestly, all that stuff went over my head.  I have no clue what livereader (is that what its called, I forget..) is, or if I even have it.  So I haven't verified through anything except for my gameplay experience which certainly seems to mimick prop pox.

What do you think?  It def sounds like prop pox, I don't know. 

I was pretty bummed out as it seemed I had to delete the city, and it was hard for me to make the highway, I didn't want to have to do that all over again.  But I saw that the graphic setting trick temporarily fixed it, and honestly it doesn't bother me to have prop pox as long as I know I have the option that whenever I DO want to be able to see the props, I just have to mess with the settings.  Lots of times when I'm in build mode, it doesn't bother me if some props are jacked up.  Like for example, I'm bout to build a huge GLR network, as long as the lots are working its ok if the props are missing.  So if this is something I can just keep doing over and over, and whenever I want to take pictures, or just see the city in full detail, I'm completely ok with doing that.

[mgb204]

Well for sure something looks wrong, I would say if features that will not display properly in this particular city tile are appearing correctly in others in the same region running the same plugins folder (so the university is an easy way to check this) then prop pox is the most likely reason. If other city tiles have problems then that would point to errors in your plugins folder itself.

As for how it was caused, that's really a very difficult thing to answer, the fix with the Reader outlined is only for a very specific plugin. If you don't have the BDK from PEG in your plugins (assuming you never did also) then it could be quite difficult to track down the actual cause. As for saving the city, to my knowledge this is like a disease with no cure, it can only get worse as the save files are corrupted and there is no way to fix them.

It's worth going through the first few pages of this thread, as it might help you to avoid running into problems in the future, but it's also worth noting if this has happened that somewhere in your plugins this time-bomb must be lurking, and your other cities are likely infected to, however it is not certain that they will also develop the problem, certain other conditions must also be met for it to come to the surface, related to the size of the save file.

[HappyDays]

It is possible to use Datanode and check every single overwrite that exists within your plugins folder.

Somewhere in that list of possibly 20,000 plus items will be whatever Rep 4 prop is overwriting a Rep 1 prop.

Of course, this course of action is only needed if your cause of Prop Pox is currently unknown.

[CahosRahneVeloza]

I remember a while back when Haljackey did his "Starting a City from the Ground up" series on Youtube, there was one episode where he did mention one of his city tiles on the same region where he was filming his video series suffered from Prop Pox and he did say the cause was the PEG MTP Trees. And I asked about that on here as well...

Can someone confirm or debunk what Haljackey said on his "Building a City from Scratch" series on Youtube that there is also an item (or several items) within PEG's Mountain Theme Pack (MTP) series that causes Prop Pox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4i4UudLzcQ

...to which jdenm8 then replied with...

There is an item in a very old version of an MTP resource pack that is confirmed to cause Prop Pox. That prop is not used in modern (The ones you can download) versions of the MTP and is no longer available for download. At the time of diagnosis, the only way to obtain it was to obtain a discontinued donation CD from Pegasus that contains the original versions of the MTP and CDK.

So I would say no, there is no evidence to support the notion that the Modern version of the MTP causes Prop Pox. However, the Coastal Development Kit's Beach Development Kit module on the other hand has a publicly downloadable prop that does cause Prop Pox.

So yeah, nas786 if your copy of the PEG Tree parks are from that older, unsupported version then there is your culprit right there.

[nas786]

Well for sure something looks wrong, I would say if features that will not display properly in this particular city tile are appearing correctly in others in the same region running the same plugins folder (so the university is an easy way to check this) then prop pox is the most likely reason. If other city tiles have problems then that would point to errors in your plugins folder itself.

As for how it was caused, that's really a very difficult thing to answer, the fix with the Reader outlined is only for a very specific plugin. If you don't have the BDK from PEG in your plugins (assuming you never did also) then it could be quite difficult to track down the actual cause. As for saving the city, to my knowledge this is like a disease with no cure, it can only get worse as the save files are corrupted and there is no way to fix them.

It's worth going through the first few pages of this thread, as it might help you to avoid running into problems in the future, but it's also worth noting if this has happened that somewhere in your plugins this time-bomb must be lurking, and your other cities are likely infected to, however it is not certain that they will also develop the problem, certain other conditions must also be met for it to come to the surface, related to the size of the save file.

Ok, I'll build a university somewhere else and run it a few times and see what happened.  No other cities are nearly as filled up as this one though, so it might not show due to smaller size.  Worth a try either way, thanks for the pointer

Also just to mention, after I put the graphics detail to low, then high, the university's been fine.  I've probably played a few hours and saved a half dozen times since then, so far the university is fine.  I just noticed a few trees from those tree parks mentioned earlier missing.

[nas786]

It is possible to use Datanode and check every single overwrite that exists within your plugins folder.

Somewhere in that list of possibly 20,000 plus items will be whatever Rep 4 prop is overwriting a Rep 1 prop.

Of course, this course of action is only needed if your cause of Prop Pox is currently unknown.

At the moment, I don't know if I'll do this.  I have no idea what Datanode is, where to get it, or how to use it.  Like I said, I'm real bad with software.  I'll try a couple things already mentioned and if that doesn't help or points toward doing this as a next step, then I'll try and do it.

**altho if this is something which will help the community at large, then I will go ahead and do this.  Let me know

[nas786]

I remember a while back when Haljackey did his "Starting a City from the Ground up" series on Youtube, there was one episode where he did mention one of his city tiles on the same region where he was filming his video series suffered from Prop Pox and he did say the cause was the PEG MTP Trees. And I asked about that on here as well...

Can someone confirm or debunk what Haljackey said on his "Building a City from Scratch" series on Youtube that there is also an item (or several items) within PEG's Mountain Theme Pack (MTP) series that causes Prop Pox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4i4UudLzcQ

...to which jdenm8 then replied with...

There is an item in a very old version of an MTP resource pack that is confirmed to cause Prop Pox. That prop is not used in modern (The ones you can download) versions of the MTP and is no longer available for download. At the time of diagnosis, the only way to obtain it was to obtain a discontinued donation CD from Pegasus that contains the original versions of the MTP and CDK.

So I would say no, there is no evidence to support the notion that the Modern version of the MTP causes Prop Pox. However, the Coastal Development Kit's Beach Development Kit module on the other hand has a publicly downloadable prop that does cause Prop Pox.

So yeah, nas786 if your copy of the PEG Tree parks are from that older, unsupported version then there is your culprit right there.

hmm, so the exact plugin I'm using is this here

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/4526-peg-random-woods-v206/

It seems as the PEG MTP woods came after, as stated in the description, that was the one which supposedly replaced this one that I'm using.  Not sure if there is any connection or what.  I don't have the PEG MTP resource pack tho.  This one seems to just use the default maxis trees. 

[CahosRahneVeloza]

@nas786: Well there you go, as the download page you posted even states up at the very top of the page that the download is already "discontinued" meaning it is both outdated and unsupported. You should have used this one instead...

http://www.simpeg.com/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=9

...incidentally you should update all of your PEG plugins you have downloaded on the STEX for the ones hosted on Simpeg just to be sure.

[HappyDays]

It is possible to use Datanode and check every single overwrite that exists within your plugins folder.

Somewhere in that list of possibly 20,000 plus items will be whatever Rep 4 prop is overwriting a Rep 1 prop.

Of course, this course of action is only needed if your cause of Prop Pox is currently unknown.

At the moment, I don't know if I'll do this.  I have no idea what Datanode is, where to get it, or how to use it.  Like I said, I'm real bad with software.  I'll try a couple things already mentioned and if that doesn't help or points toward doing this as a next step, then I'll try and do it.

**altho if this is something which will help the community at large, then I will go ahead and do this.  Let me know

Finding more sources of the Prop Pox is always beneficial.

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27675-sc4datanode/

It comes with a manual that explains each function in detail. Don't worry if it seems overwhelming, as it is at first. It's just an informational tool, however, so it's impossible to break anything.

[nas786]

Hey guys. 

Ok, so personally, I'm just riding it out.  Basically playing my city, and every now n then do the low detail back to high detail graphics thing, so everything reappears, and slowly disappears again.  I just love my city too much, I don't wanna see my baby go 

But as mentioned, the more we know about this whole prop pox business, the better it is for the simcity community, so I went ahead and install that datanode thing, I ran it (I scanned by plugins folder, I'm assuming that this is what I was supposed to do?).  So now the thing is, how do I convey whatever information it is that the datanode gave me to all you guys?  What should I look for, and what info should I post?

Its basically like a list, which has different columns, columns being -
Seq#, Entries, Dead, DIRs, Bytes, File

I was just gonna take a pic and post it here, but the list is way too long, it'd take like 50 pics just to get the whole thing up (1197 rows).  I would just copy paste this beast, but doesn't seem to give me that option.  So yea, anyone that knows about this program, please let me know how to show my findings.  Or if I should just manually go through it and look for something and let you know, what is it?

[HappyDays]

Even if you provided pictures, it would do nothing. The problem is located within the plugins themselves. No, this is going to be a pain. I apologize.

When you've loaded your plugins, you'll a list of filters on the right side of the program's window. First click on "TGI View" and then "Overrides". You'll see a very, agonizingly long list appear on the left. I suggest you do this on a nice, quiet weekend where you have plenty of time.

There are multiple columns. The column you want to pay attention to is "Entry". The only thing you're looking for are Props. Every entry that isn't a prop can be ignored. No, these lists cannot be sorted much to your chagrin.

The column next to "Entry" is "IID". Items that share the same IID that are right next to each other on the list is the prop being overridden and the prop(s) that overrides it. Clicking on an item in the list brings up its information in a window to the right. At the top of this information window will be a mention of whether the item is overriding and what it's overriding, or if it is being overridden and by what.

Your goal is to check the "Resource Key Type" property in each prop's information listing. The prop pox occurs when a Resource Key Type 0 prop is overridden by a Resource Key Type 4 prop. Ideally, you'll eventually find this occurrence somewhere in your plugins.

Once identified, you can remove it using Reader. Datanode tells you what file the prop is from and its TGI, so this process will be quite easy. Finally, tell us the name of the affected plugin so that others can avoid your pain in the future.

[nas786]

ok, so this seems pretty hardcore.  I've gone through some of the files, it'll probably take me a while cuz I got a few thousand.  All I've seen so far is the ones that have a resource key type (this line isn't there for EVERY file, some say something else like lot resource key, which seems a completely diff thing) they will say resource key type 0 or 1, if its being overridden by a type 4 it will say so on that same line?

I'm just ignoring anything that doesn't state "resource key type 0".  When I DO see that, I guess i'm just checking the entire line to see if it says anything about being overriden by type 4....

[HappyDays]

Datanode will not mention what portions of an overridden file are different. Lot resource key is something else, yes.

You want to focus on finding props with a Resource Key Type 4, not Resource Key Type 0/1.