[mrbisonm]

Rail-Plop Jam

I have been playing SC4 ever since it came out and play it regularily at an average of 2 to 3 times/week, doing some BATTing, Lot-Editing, fooling around with the SC4PIM and the ilive Reader and even having played with the Simcity datfiles. I know it is "illegal", but what's on my computer is mine to decide what to do with it. All this gave me a certain amount of experience with the game and files and bringing me out of the "newbie stage".

So....now I have a problem with the game, a problem I never encountered and cannot logically understand. It just doesn't make any sense. Let me explain......

Here is what happened:

I have read an information (a thread) about someone having tried to modify the Graphic Rules file in the maindirectory to quicken the gameplay. Sounding good and logical, I tried this modification and it simply and totally screwed up my game. I couldn't set the city details, visual effects, shadows, clouds/fog and resolution anymore and the game graphics did look quite different. Ok....it doesn't work on my computer or with the custom-files that I have, I thought, so I deleted the file and replaced it with the original that I kept in a safe place before. Nothing changed though, the harm was done.
I guess it "destroyed" other files with it. No problem.......I said. 

Here is what I did:

I made a copy of my pluginfiles, albums and regions and de-installed the game, making sure nothing was left on the computer. Then I re-installed the game, doing the updates and installed all the other things (LE etc) I had before. And I put back those Plugins, albums and regions where they belong......The graphic etc settings are back to normal. Yoooohoooo! (I thought)

Here is what is wrong now:

Now I have enormous waiting time when I plop rails, or roads/street, highways etc near rails. The game totally jams everytime I plop either one or several tiles of one of those for a certain amount of time. Usually for about 30 seconds. (but up to 3 minutes sometimes depending on the length of tiles I plop and the amount of content in the Plugins)
Everthing else is normal, graphics are back to normal, zones grow as usual and traffic seems to be as all the other things back to normal. It is only the rails, or the roads near rails (closer than 4 tiles to a rail) that cause these waiting times.

Here is what I tried and found out:

This took me a few days (5 to be exact). I have a basic play pluginsfolder of almost 8 GB's, plus some extra Plugins that I add here and there when needed. (such as airports, harbours, skyscrapers, farms etc)
I wanted to find the file that does cause this unpleasant "plopping delay" and returned to my Plugins, separating them into pieces, doing the old trick of finding the troublemaker, trying out the Plugins in pieces.
I realized then, that every file seems to cause the ploblem, or at least I have the impression that it does. ONLY with a totally empty Plugins, the game is back to normal, but as soon as I add some files, no matter which ones, the rail plop problem is back and the waiting time destroys my love for the game...........strange.
Then I thought maybe I have too many plugins, but no....why now when it worked quite well before, and besides the problem is there anyways with very few plugins.

But.... I found out when there are more and more files in the Plugins, the "jamming" gets longer, up to a point with my full Plugins of 8GB's which can reach up to 3 minutes everytime I plop a piece of rail........Pouffffffff! That is stressfull.....lol.
It never had this before. So I re-instralled the game again and again in hope that it will get back to normal again......without any positive results. And that is why I am asking You all for help here, maybe someone has an idea or has experienced this before and help me to enjoy the game again.

Thank You, any idea will be appreciated.

Fred

[art128]

I might be wrong, as i don't have a big knowledge on the matter, but for my it seems that your entire plugin folder got corrupted along the first files you modified ( the files that caused the problem)

[vortext]

I've had this problem as well, though it wasn't because I fooled around or anything.

In fact for me it was the other way around, I used to have lots of weird graphic glitches (as shown here) and said rails plopping problem, which both increased as the plugins folder grew larger up untill the point it became unbearable. For me the solution was to change some settings on the Nvidea graphics card after which I experienced no more glitches or any delays while handling rails.

So it seems be a graphics related issue indeed. Maybe some of the settings on your graphics card were changed in the process and though you've reinstalled SC4, those are still out of whack.

[art128]

So a graphic card misconfiguration can make such things? Didn't knew that, well we all learn new things everyday after all.

[mrbisonm]

I've had this problem as well, though it wasn't because I fooled around or anything.

In fact for me it was the other way around, I used to have lots of weird graphic glitches (as shown here) and said rails plopping problem, which both increased as the plugins folder grew larger up untill the point it became unbearable. For me the solution was to change some settings on the Nvidea graphics card after which I experienced no more glitches or any delays while handling rails.

So it seems be a graphics related issue indeed. Maybe some of the settings on your graphics card were changed in the process and though you've reinstalled SC4, those are still out of whack.

Do you know how to find the graphic card and make the changes? I have no idea where, how, why and what to do with this. I'm willing to try this. Thanks.

I might be wrong, as i don't have a big knowledge on the matter, but for my it seems that your entire plugin folder got corrupted along the first files you modified ( the files that caused the problem)

I doubt this very much, impossible to change all the 70,000 files that I have in my Plugins with this little error. Thanks for the idea though, because I tried it with some plugins that were NOT in the game while I modified the graphic file.

Fred

[GMT]

your nvidia card comes with a control center, try to locate it either in the start-programs or where it is installed (c:\ program files\nvidia corporation by default) and here you can create dedicated profiles for applications

so, the rail jam is not a matter of the nam itself, but a bug caused by visuals? oh boy...

[mrbisonm]

your nvidia card comes with a control center, try to locate it either in the start-programs or where it is installed (c:\ program files\nvidia corporation by default) and here you can create dedicated profiles for applications

so, the rail jam is not a matter of the nam itself, but a bug caused by visuals? oh boy...

Thanks, I found the Nvidia control panel, but heck, I have no idea what to do.................

The NAM is NOT the responsable for this, the game jams the same even with all NAM componants removed.

Fred

[vortext]

Fred, I had no idea what I was doing either 

Go to 'Manage 3D settings" and select the second tab 'program settings'. You'll probably first need to click add, browse and select the .exe file. Then fool around a bit (not too much though ). After some trial-and-error these settings turned out to work for me. Don't ask why, it just did.




As for the graphics card seemingly causing transit related issues; my hunch is somehow the rail texture and specifically all the sleepers weren't rendered properly. Or maybe they were rendered in a too elaborated manner which caused the delay. Either way I can confirm it has nothing whatsoever to do with the NAM.

[mike3775]

Fred, I had no idea what I was doing either 

Go to 'Manage 3D settings" and select the second tab 'program settings'. You'll probably first need to click add, browse and select the .exe file. Then fool around a bit (not too much though ). After some trial-and-error these settings turned out to work for me. Don't ask why, it just did.




As for the graphics card seemingly causing transit related issues; my hunch is somehow the rail texture and specifically all the sleepers weren't rendered properly. Or maybe they were rendered in a too elaborated manner which caused the delay. Either way I can confirm it has nothing whatsoever to do with the NAM.

If I could give you  +1 rep I would right now.  I had been having almost the same type of issues for months with the RTMT stations always taking forever to plop or for that menu item to close when hitting escape(A habit I got into when CTD's were common with GLR stations), and adjusting my graphics cards to the settings you posted, fixed that issue big time.  Thanks   

[mrbisonm]

Oh my....this will be quite a challenge for me since I am "null" zero at these computer adjustings.
And to make it even worse, my computer is in french and I only have 16 adjustments and you have 18......

I will give it a try this weekend and come back, probably with a broken neck (hope not).

Thanks Vortext, I hope this will work out for me too.

Oh, and Yes, this problem has nothing to do with NAM, I can confirm that also!!

Fred

[Silur]

Thanks for Your information ...
It's in my "HELP BIBLIO FOLDER"  now ... May be it'll help me tomorrow ... may be after tomorrow 

[catty]

...If I could give you  +1 rep I would right now.  I had been having almost the same type of issues for months with the RTMT stations always taking forever to plop or for that menu item to close when hitting escape(A habit I got into when CTD's were common with GLR stations), and adjusting my graphics cards to the settings you posted, fixed that issue big time.

Done, I am also informing the rest of the RTMT Team regarding this issue, as no-one has reported it before now.

-catty (moderator)

[vortext]

Well well, guess my hunch about rail textures being the culprit seems to have been just wild and uninformed speculation   

Anyhow, glad it fixed your problem too mike3775 and thanks for the rep 

It's rather curious though graphics can cause such issues and I wonder how many players are out there with similar issues but take it for granted, thinking it's an transit artefact or something, which it is not, obviously.

And I really hope you can get things running smoothly again as well Fred, as I know from experience it kinda ruins gameplay.

[mike3775]

...If I could give you  +1 rep I would right now.  I had been having almost the same type of issues for months with the RTMT stations always taking forever to plop or for that menu item to close when hitting escape(A habit I got into when CTD's were common with GLR stations), and adjusting my graphics cards to the settings you posted, fixed that issue big time.

Done, I am also informing the rest of the RTMT Team regarding this issue, as no-one has reported it before now.

-catty (moderator)

I never reported it because I always assumed it was something on my system the entire time, and not the lots themselves, and never even considered checking the Nvidia control panel(which honestly, I don't think anyone would assume would cause issues).  Thanks for giving the rep point.

Well well, guess my hunch about rail textures being the culprit seems to have been just wild and uninformed speculation   

Anyhow, glad it fixed your problem too mike3775 and thanks for the rep 

It's rather curious though graphics can cause such issues and I wonder how many players are out there with similar issues but take it for granted, thinking it's an transit artefact or something, which it is not, obviously.

And I really hope you can get things running smoothly again as well Fred, as I know from experience it kinda ruins gameplay.

I hope it works for him as well, I know it made me happy to not have to wait minutes at a time for a menu item to close to continue playing.  Like I said above, I never would have considered a graphics card to cause issues at all, its simply amazing how a couple little options can bog down a game.  You deserved the rep point, it fixed an issue I always assumed was something on my system, and I love the RTMT, hence always worked with the issue because even though it slowed down the game play, as long as I didn't select it all the time, It was something that was still workable. 

[Fatherted]

Glad you got it fixed. Games are for fun.