Immortal Model on Feroxx Warsaw Main Railway Station

[Lowkee33]

@cubby420:  I am glad we solved your problem .  Interesting that yours too was caused by NAM (or not proper use of NAM)   

I have been able to create the immortal prop/texture with NAM pieces when placed next to a lot.  It is pretty clear when it happens (and with practice might look good).  To avoid the problem just make sure that they have the space they need (like 3x2 for FARR) before you plop.

The problem is connected to base textures, but passed that I am not sure.  As you have noted, Maxis plops can become immortal, but my first sighting of this was with growables that had no base textures.

A growable will retain the construction textures if it does not have base or overlay textures.  Throw a overlay on it and it will appear to be normal.  Sometimes the textures become immortal though.  I made a 2x1 lot with no base textures and overlay textures on both tiles, and had no problem.  When I deleted one of the overlays the textures became immortal.  Strange.  This can be done with Maxis textures too, so I am thinking Instance has nothing to do with it...       

[psander5]

I've managed to break this lot too, but in my case it's clear what events cause it to go immortal.  I don't know what the technical reasons are for this problem... I know nothing about transit enabling or transit modding, but I thought I'd show these pictures anyway in case the information is useful to the relevant people. 

In this example, the problem seems to be caused by the NAM's 'auto complete' feature on FARR pieces. 

If I plop the lot next to existing roads, this happens:



As you can see, its tried to make FARR pieces at the point where there are adjacent transit enabled tiles.  To confirm it, when I plop the lot first, then draw the roads around it, you can see the blue highlight that shows when the FARR auto complete function is trying to work:



Knowing that it's caused by the FARR auto complete vs the way the lot is transit enabled, it's possible to know how to avoid it going immortal.  One way is to not use a road up that left hand side of the lot, and to use an avenue, one-way road or street instead.  However, that's not always ideal. You can still use a normal road too, by doing the following:

Plop the lot first, with no road on the left hand side (so it doesn't try to auto connect), then draw the road stubs into empty space, like so:



Then just draw the road as normal, and It works:



On second thoughts, an avenue might be better... all those traffic lights make it look funky!


I've tried all the suggestions in this thread, but nothing I've tried fixes this particular immortality.  Luckily, this station was the very first thing I've built in the region, and I have a virgin backup, so I can just roll back to that.  I was lucky I hadn't tried to plop it in an existing city!

Just to add a bit more evidence, I used this lot in a city I made over a year ago, before the auto complete FARR pieces were a part of the NAM, and It never went immortal:



As I said at the start of this post, I know nothing about transit modding, so I don't know if the lot modding can be altered to prevent this conflict happening, but I hope this info is useful to anyone who might know better. At the very least, this post might help people prevent their Warsaw Main Station from going immortal!

[Lowkee33]

Nice work 

I will have to check this lot out as well.

[cubby420]

Interesting discoveries psander5. If it helps at all, when I had my problem it was surrounded on three sides by the maxis ave-4.

[catty]

I honestly can't remember how I had the roads set up ... interesting find   

[Lowkee33]

One way I removed the Warsaw Main Railway Station:

Step 1) The station is plopped and then roads dragged over the TE to make the FARR pieces auto-build.  This creates the first of Psander5 images.

Step 2) The entire lot is demolished.  This leaves the lot as only an immortal/reluctant building.

Step 3) Roads are dragged over the entire lot.  I think there was a problem with the TE/underground rail, but this solves it.  The roads are then demolished.

Step 4) I placed a Soccer Field where the building was.  I imagine you could place a school, or a open grass area, or whatever.  The building can now be removed.

I tested that it was gone by zoning over where the lot used to be, and everything was fine.

[cubby420]

Yeah, your suggestion to plop a simple maxis grass tile worked great for me a while back when nothing else would.

[psander5]

Thanks for that Lowkee33!  I had tried the maxis grass tile earlier, but I didn't do the roads step beforehand, so they wouldn't plop under the building.  Thanks to your thorough step-by-step, it worked!

[turtle]

Just a little heads up.

I just encountered this problem with [ur=http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=865l]Mattb325's Emu Plains Railway Station[/url]. It has the rail running through it, but no other TE'ing.
It happened because I tried to use the NAM auto wide curves on the rail too close to the station. I managed to remove the model after a few tries with the method outlined by Lowkee33. However, doing that I suffered a couple of CTD's while trying to delete the grass. Also, I accidentally deleted the model by deleting only one of the grass tiles, witch turned the remaining grass tiles into immortal lots (or models). So, it seems this method is not without problems either.

Regrettably, and most important, it seems to corroborate the theory that the NAM auto completion feature for wide curves and FAR can cause this situation. It can easily be reproduced.

The immortal model:


After roads, then grass:


Then I was able to remove it:

[Lowkee33]

Interesting.  Can we say that changing the orientation of a TE texture causes this?

The lot doesn't have to be TE for NAM pieces to mess with it.  I have no idea on how the pieces work, but many times you can plop a piece so that it ends up on an existing lot and cause the texture problem.

Theoretically, you only need to place one grass area on a place where the Occupant Size box exists.  Not too sure what caused your CTD or immortal grasses though (perhaps not covering the whole OS).

With a 3x2 lot you may have better luck with the elementary school.  Perhaps you could quickly make your own lot that is the correct size for the specific purpose of removal. 

[turtle]

Maybe it wasn't clear, but I did manage to get rid of it with the road-grass method after a couple of tries.

Interesting.  Can we say that changing the orientation of a TE texture causes this?

I don't know much about modding, but I did notice the original TE'd texture disappear, so that may be an explanation. However, that doesn't explain why it happens in the examples from maxisland (which I'm guessing doesn't have the NAM). Also, as you said:

The lot doesn't have to be TE for NAM pieces to mess with it.  I have no idea on how the pieces work, but many times you can plop a piece so that it ends up on an existing lot and cause the texture problem. 

The two cases (with and without TE) may have different explanations, but the common factor is the NAM pieces. You're just more likely to have it occur on TE-lots and with the new auto completion feature in the NAM. Especially with lots TE'd like the Warsaw station.

Anyways, maybe the NAM-team should be made aware of this, so the fix maybe posted on their board.

*edit: I posted a msg in the NAM issues thread pointing to this.

[Lowkee33]

I am not too sure why Maxisland has this problem either.  My guess would be that it is a non-rushhour region, and Maxis did something to the texture in the update.  I believe the whole point of it was to show us all a vanilla works.

NAM isn't the cause of this problem, but it is a catalyst.  Somewhere in the relationship between different types of textures things get screwy.