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Immortal Lot Syndrome - Cause and Cure

Started by RippleJet, March 19, 2010, 12:50:44 PM

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RippleJet

Immortal Lot Syndrome

Immortal lots have been known to exist since early 2004, and they are still occasionally created.
This tutorial explains why they appear and how to deal with them. It is split up into four parts:


If you're only interesting in what they look like, and how to get rid of them, skip directly to part 2 now. ;)

This thread is also the support thread for RJ - Immortality Killer, which is needed in the fourth part of this tutorial.
Feel free to post questions relating to the Immortality Killer, or to overhanging and immortal lots in general.

RippleJet

Technical Explanation

The Occupant Size is a property that you can find in Building and Prop Exemplars.
It is added by Maxis' PluginManager, or by wouanagaine's SC4 PIM, when creating a plugin for the game from a custom batted model.
It contains three values (usually called reps), representing the X, Y and Z measurements of the bat.
X and Z are the width and depth of the bat (in metres), whereas Y is the total height (in metres) of the bat.

When placing a plugin (building or prop) on a lot (in LotEditor), or when creating a lot within SC4 PIM,
the values in the Occupant Group are used to create the "bounding box" (grey for buildings and blue for props).
These "bounding boxes" restrict you from moving a building so that it would overhang the lot edge.

This is important, because it's the Occupant Size that determines what is under your mouse pointer in the game.
When you query a building or a lot in the game, the information shown is available in the building exemplar, not the lot exemplar.
Thus, the building must be inside the edges of the lot, not to interfere with the query of the building on the neighbouring lot.

When making overhanging buildings and props, it is common practice to reduce the Occupant Size though.
However, if you do this, it must be done before using the building in LotEditor, or before creating the lot in SC4 PIM.
Otherwise the "bounding box" seen in LotEditor would not be any smaller.

Something you should never do is increase the Occupant Size of existing buildings on lots.
If the Occupant Size would be larger than the "bounding box" as seen in LotEditor,
you might create a building (the Occupant Size of it) that overhangs the lot edges,
or you would later be able to move the building closer to the lot edge, so that it would be overhanging.

Plopping such a lot in the game would cause the building on this lot
to interfere with the neighbouring lot on the side where the building overhangs.

This leads to you not being able to query the neighbouring anymore, and if you'd bulldoze the neighbouring lot,
the lot with the overhanging building would become empty and impossible to delete.
At that state it is said to have suffered from the immortal lot syndrome.

Note also that only overhanging buildings lead to the immortal lot syndrome.
Each lot must have exactly one building exemplar, but can have numerous props...
A prop can be overhanging, as long as its centre point is within the lot.
Thus, if you place a prop in the corner of a lot, only 1/4 of the prop would actually be inside the lot.

RippleJet

Plopping and verifying a lot with an overhanging building

First of all, I needed to find a lot having an overhanging building.
There are none of them available on the LEX, and I didn't want to use and modify a building of anybody,
whose creations have never been immortal. That wouldn't be fair to that creator.

Thus, I decided to use a lot which at first was reported to suffer from the immortal lot syndrome.
I must underline that those versions of this excellent lot that are now available, do not suffer from the immortal lot syndrome.

In order to clearly show the influence of an overhanging building,
I also increased the Occupant Size of it, so that it overhangs the lot by 5 m on the left side.




Now, let's find a suitable spot in the city for this 4×5 sized lot:



and let's plop it:



At this stage nothing reveals that this lot might become immortal.
Thus, let's take a look at what can be found out now.

First of all, at this stage, this newly plopped lot can be bulldozed, without any problems.
Note that the building and all the props (the trees) go red when you select to bulldoze it:



and nothing will remain out of it:



Now, we know that the cathedral is overhanging on the left edge,
so the lots on that side are the ones that might be affected.

Let's first check the statue, which is facing the avenue in front:



The hover query still works as before, displaying Mayor's Statue.
However, if you click the statue, the query shown will be the one for the overhanging cathedral.

Let's move up to the next lot, a stage 1 R$, sized 1×3, and made by Maxis:



Both its hover query and its ordinary query are unharmed by the overhanging cathedral.
In this case it is obvious that the building on that lot is too far from the edge,
or the cathedral is not overhanging enough to affect the building on this lot.

There have been several cases with potential immortal lots,
where one player has suffered from it, whereas others have been unable to repeat it.
It might seem random, but is really just a question of how much the building is overhanging.
The bigger the overhang, the larger the risk of becoming immortal.

Now, let's move up to the next lot, which is also a stage 1 R$ lot by Maxis.
The building on that lot is placed very far from the road.
Thus the cathedral is interfering with it, in an identical way as it is interfering with the statue.

The other building on that lot (the one that is closer to the road) is in fact a prop.
It's a prop, which is set to "query as the main building".
Querying this prop provides us with a quite obvious (but rare) way of identifying an overhanging building:



The most obvious way of locating an overhanging building is to use the bulldozer tool though.
First, let's see what becomes red if we choose to bulldoze any of the lots that are unaffected by the cathedral:



Then, let's see what becomes red if we choose to bulldoze any of the affected lots:



As you can see, the whole cathedral becomes red.
However, it is only the building, not the props of that cathedral lot that are red.
This is a clear indication that it's the building that is interfering with the neighbouring lots.

Unfortunately several of the lots causing the immortal lot syndrome include invisible buildings,
empty cubes, which would probably not be visible even if they became red.

RippleJet

Causing a lot to become immortal


1. Immortal through Bulldozing

As you have seen above, plopping a lot with an overhanging building still doesn't make it immortal.
After everything that has been done above, you would still be able to bulldoze the cathedral.

It is when bulldozing one of the affected neighbouring lots that things go wrong.
Let's return to the last picture above, and actually bulldoze the mayor's statue:



You can still see the statue going down (and the 330 simoleans going up in air),
but the cathedral has already and immediately vanished into thin air.
Everything else on the cathedral lot; the textures, props and effects are all still there though.

Let's see what the hover query tells us about this cathedral lot now:



Nothing there... and if we click to query it, no query will appear.
The reason for this is obvious... the lot doesn't have any building anymore.
Both the name and the query are given in the building exemplar.

Let's see if we can bulldoze the now empty lot:



The bulldozer is still able to select the lot, but upon clicking nothing happens.
The lot stays put, and has now become immortal.


2. Immortal through Plopping or Growing

Once a lot with an overhanging building exists in your city, immortal lots may also appear next to it.
Let's see what happens if we plop that statue after the cathedral has been plopped:



As soon as that statue is plopped, its building (which is the statue) disappears.
In this case the game finds that the lot already had a building,
the cathedral which is overhanging from the neighbouring lot:



After this the hover query won't work, as there is no building to query on the lot.
Regardless whether or not you now bulldoze the cathedral (which you still can),
the empty statue lot will remain, as that has now become an immortal lot.

RippleJet

#4
How to kill an immortal lot

First, download RJ - Immortality Killer.
Install it and start your game and open your city where you've got an immortal lot.

The Immortality Killer is a 1×1 lot with a purposely overhanging building.
When plopped next to another lot that has gone immortal,
the building of the Immortality Killer (which is a yellow bulldozer),
will interfere with the immortal lot, and thus give it a building again.
Once it's got a building, you will be able to bulldoze both of the lots, sharing that building.

You will find the Immortality Killer high up in the park menu:



Now, first let's place it next to the immortal lot, e.g. where the statue was.
Make sure the arrow points aways from the immortal lot and that the bulldozer is ovehanging it:





Now, use the ingame bulldozer tool and start by selecting this newly plopped immortality killer:



and drag it one tile into the immortal lot:



Hmmmm....
That would bulldoze also the other neighbouring lots on that side...
If we can, we would want to avoid that...

Thus, let's start over on the other side... :)
Bulldoze one tile of the street to the right of the immortal lot,
and plop the immortality killer in that space instead:





Use the ingame bulldozer tool again, and start from the immortality killer:



and drag one tile into the immortal lot:



Note that this time only the two lots become red,
and the cost for the bulldozing stays at 0 simoleans.
No other tiles of the street will become deleted when you release the mouse:



After this the former immortal lot is gone, and the space is unused.
Also the lot on the left with the prop building, which used to be affected, now works correctly again:








Note.

It has always been said that surrounding an immortal lot with several others of the same lot allows you to bulldoze them all.
This is quite true, and is based on exactly the same principle as was shown here.
At least one of those newly plopped lots would thus overhang the immortal lot in the middle,
and bulldozing all five (or nine) of them at the same time always gets rid of them all.

However, to plop nine lots of the size 4×5 would destroy a large part of the neighbourhood.
By using the Immortality Killer, you have better control and can avoid demolishing all surrounding buildings. :)






Let's also see what we can do with the statue which went immortal in the end of the previous post.
In this case it would be completely useless to try to surround the statue with eight other statues.
None of those statues would be overhanging, and the immortal one in the middle would still be without building.

However, the Immortality Killer works perfectly also in this case:



Before we bulldoze them, let's first query the statue.
As you can see, the immortal statue lot now once again has a building,
one that is interfering from the neighbouring lot, the Immortality Killer:



Starting from the Immortality Killer, it's a piece of cake to bulldoze them both:


bap

Tage,

Excellent tutorial, very useful information.  &apls
(vampires of SimNation, your glorious days of immortality are gone!!)

Bap

kassarc16

I've always wondered about those lots. Thanks for ferreting out the issue and giving us a way to fix it.

Lowkee33

#7
I was searching for a campfire animation/prop, and came across this tool (someone said "fire" in his/her comment).  Nice work.  I always appreciate the simplicity of your fixes.  :thumbsup:

Anyway, someone commented about having immortal props.  I have had this problem as well.  I have not isolated it, but I believe it comes from having a growable with no base textures and at least one overlay. (at least one overlay, because that will solve the construction texture bug).

It only happens to some lots, but if it happens to a lot then it will always happen to that lot.  (All of these lots will have the invisible texture bug that can be fixed by going to zone view and back).

If the problem lots are demolished the overlay texture will be immortal.  If these lots are de-zoned, then all of the props and textures will be immortal.  Immortal is the wrong word though, more like determined :).  If any lot is plopped on the overlays then they will be destroyed.

A similar problem was had by Cubby420 (Here).  Apparently, a building in the city of Downtown Weberg in Maxisland has the same problem.

Edit:  More recently I was playing with the OS of props.  I wanted the original OS in LE, but smaller in-game (to place flora tightly around).  I made a copy of the pack with all of the props with sizes of .1,.1,.1 and would switch that with the original for in-game.  I was also testing the timing of the props, and had my props placed in the very corner of the lot.  When I switched the original OS with the smaller one I was able to make an immortal prop. 



pepsibottle1

Great tutorial, and thank you for posting this! This has helped me tremendously.

In a humourous note, I'd like to see a immortality killer that kills the immortal building with a nuclear blast. That'll get the job done! In my dreams!  :D

Again, thanks for the very insightful tutorial
I love Simcity 4!

DAB_City

This tool will be extremely useful for me, thank you very much RippleJet!  &apls
Previously, I had to resort to dragging roads through the immortal lot, bulldozing them, plopping police stations all over the lot and bulldozing them... This tool will make it simpler, quicker and cheaper (and I won't go tearing my hair out!).

Thanks again, RippleJet!  ;D
Hello SimCity Devotees! If you want to find out more about me, why not visit my profile? Free drinks and biscuits, if that would tempt anyone ;)

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/user/360022-dab-city/

Ilikeanrhw

Quote from: conorgraham on December 21, 2010, 05:20:10 AM
How can I download this? There is no dl link on http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2356

That means you are still not logged in or registered on BSC Exchange or LEX.
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