What causes Prop Pox (and how to avoid it)

[jeronij]

Well, I feel the need to publically thanks bap for his clever finding, which has finally solved one of the most annoying SC4 "misteries" out there  Thank You Very Much

I suffered "Poxed" cities in SCR and Simtropia, a looong time ago, and I guess that all my current cities are "poxed" in one way or another. It is time now to find out all the corrupted props and fix them... and enjoy the game again without fearing what will happen the next time we open a saved city... 

[TheTeaCat]

Excellent work done of finding a solution to the "pox".
Thank you so much for dedicating your time and effort to finding a solution.


TTC

[Pat]

I think Barby needs a K-point for taking the lead on checking BSC Props to make sure they are of high quality standards!!

[callagrafx]

Quite...it's a noble person that can admit to their own mistakes 

[XiahouDun]

Quite...it's a noble person that can admit to their own mistakes 

Indeed. Its so easy to just ignore a problem, but it takes quite a lot to admit a mistake, then actually fix it too. We could all learn from this example

[Rayden]

Indeed. Its so easy to just ignore a problem, but it takes quite a lot to admit a mistake, then actually fix it too. We could all learn from this example

We and someone else, but I guess it will be a waste of time waiting to some of this problematic lots ever being fixed.

[Meastro444]

Just a tiny question here: Is it safe to assume that any modified Maxis props are the blame for this?

I find it little unfair to say Pegasus is the cause of this. I, for one, use lots of Pegasus' work, but have never experienced any "prop pox" problem.

[JBSimio]

Just a tiny question here: Is it safe to assume that any modified Maxis props are the blame for this?

My understanding is that the issue is with props (in theory it could be any prop, I believe) that was modified but kept the original TGI values.

[callagrafx]

Just a tiny question here: Is it safe to assume that any modified Maxis props are the blame for this?

I find it little unfair to say Pegasus is the cause of this. I, for one, use lots of Pegasus' work, but have never experienced any "prop pox" problem.

No one said Pegasus was the sole cause...indeed, Barby has discovered she'd done the same thing as Peg in an old prop pack, which she has quickly corrected.  Unless your cities grow really quite large and a number of factors come into play, chances are you won't, or haven't realised. Bap's testing has been thorough, rigorous and done over a long period of time.  With Ilive's reader, so much more can be done than Maxis ever figured we could (after all, LE is sooo basic), so I guess they never planned that people would make new instances of their props, change the properties but keep the same TGI.  They also never figured we'd still be playing it in 2009

[RippleJet]

I find it little unfair to say Pegasus is the cause of this. I, for one, use lots of Pegasus' work, but have never experienced any "prop pox" problem.

Very few people play the same city tile(s) long enough for them to get a network prop file of more than 6 MB.

There is a lot more discussion about it in snorelli's thread The Prop Pox!, where distinguished members have posted about it, in addition to snorelli e.g. Nardo69, Bruceatkinson, Fledder200, jabezscratch, silentbreaker, Diamond, Cowcorn, Swesim, ltrskn, Piyer, BarbyW, j-dub, ...

You can probably recognize several of those from having CJ's at ST, where the prop pox was first reported.
I'd recommend that you read that thread to see how to check if your network prop file is even close to 6 MB yet.

[callagrafx]

On a side note, BAP has been accused by certain members of the community of "scare-mongering" and making false accusations.  This thread is neither perceived, nor should it be, of scaremongering but the result of detailed analysis and logical testing, and as such has been endorsed by this site.  While some willl deny the very existence of this problem, the evidence is there that it does exist and the information provided should allow players to avoid this problem in future.  Burying ones head in the sand with a big sign saying "not my problem" is not helpful to this community IMO.

[jeronij]

I find interesting the different points of view in our community about the Prop Pox Theory  ?¿

This Theory has been posted by an important and respected member and creator from our community, and since most, if not all, of the players have the pleasure to use his custom content, which has also been referenced in this topic, I think that this must be posted in this discussion as well. Pegasus is invited to post here whatever he feels the need to post, but usually he is a short-time man, and he is quite busy creating custom content, so I'll take the liberty to post his words here, to save him some time and for everybody to be informed about this new theory. The Non Prop Box Theory 





I invite to all the members involved somehow with the Prop Pox issue to carefully read what is being said here, and seriously re-think about the Prop Pox Thing.... are you all sure that you are suffering such a "syndrome"?¿ . I am really starting to doubt if all the missing props I had in my cities are not just mirages...


In the meantime, thanks Barby for checking the BSC files, and fixing whatever is necessary to avoid the PP?¿ caused by any of them in the future. And thanks for taking care of mine as well. I'll admit that I get really mad when I go into modding    ....

[XiahouDun]

I'm at a loss for words (yet somehow not surprised). I think my words from very early this morning have never held more true. Thank you again to Barby for her honesty and dedication.

[Jonathan]

I have never had the prop pox, but I've read both Peg and Bap's posts, and Pegasus has written thing's that have been explained in Bap's post, so I'd say he hasn't thought about what he wrote.

So just ignore it Bap, and well done on finding the cause of this problem.

Jonathan

[BarbyW]

I haven't experienced the true Prop Pox because no city that I have ever been big enough. My biggest city is less than 10MB saved game with just over 2MB in the network file. However, I don't dismiss the problem as not existing as I have had seen enough reports of it over the years to accept it is a problem for some. Just because I haven't experienced it, even though I may have contributed to it via one file, doesn't mean I don't want to find a solution and correct any errors I may have made.

[XiahouDun]

However, I don't dismiss the problem as not existing as I have had seen enough reports of it over the years to accept it is a problem for some. Just because I haven't experienced it, even though I may have contributed to it via one file, doesn't mean I don't want to find a solution and correct any errors I may have made.

And this would be why I, and so many others in the community, respect you Barby. It would be so easy for you to just feign ignorance, then bash anyone supporting fixing the issues along with anyone who has ever expierenced it. If I could give you reputation points, you'd have gotten one from me for this thread, along with Bap.

[RippleJet]

How do I check if my cities soon will develop the prop pox?

After helping Barby to check the size of her "network subfile" of her saved city files,
I thought others might be interesting in checking their own cities as well.


Let me first quote bap from his findings:

It was discovered ( see here ) that the props in the city (including street props) are stored in the subfile of Type 2977aa47, also called the 'network' subfile. This file grows in size as the city develops. When Prop Pox strikes this file shrinks in size by 200-400 Kby with respect to its size in the previous save game file, causing the sc4 city file to also shrink. The next time you open the city those 200-400 Kby of props will be missing. They were lost in the save game process.

Prop Pox appeared on each city as soon as their network subfile went beyond 6 Mby.

In order to check the size of your city's network subfile, you need to open Reader.
Click Open and find your Regions folder under My Docs\Simcity 4.
Browse further into the region you want to check. In my example below the region is Ireland:



In the example above I've chosen Dublin, which is the largest city I've built so far.
As you can see (if you understand a little Swedish), the size of the file itself is just 5 MB, so that's pretty encouraging.

Once you've opened the saved city, it will look as below in Reader.
Now, click the column heading Type in order to sort the files consecutively, according to their Type ID's.



You may have to click twice in order to get them sorted starting with the lowest number on top.
After this, it should be easy for you to locate the file with the Type ID 2977aa47

In the filesize column you can now see the size of that file (you may have to widen the column in order to see it completely).
As you can see, my network subfile is just 1,851,828 bytes... pretty far from 6 MB (which is 6,291,456 bytes).



Thus, no panic here at least!

[BarbyW]

And no panic in any of my cities either.

[Pat]

So we got a solution to fix the problem and a way to check to see if there is a problem at all right??? Thats what I am understanding at this point at least, so in other words if the prop pox strikes someone there is a way to reverse it or at least keep it from causing further damage... Plus there is a way to examine your cities if you so choose to see how everything is looking, it just takes a bit of little know how of the reader...

Does my understanding of whats happening sound right?

[Tarkus]

bap, thank you for the very enlightening and well-thought out discussion on the Prop Pox issue!  It goes without saying it is greatly appreciated!

And Tage, thanks for sharing that little tutorial there, too.  I just checked my largest cities and didn't find any with Network subfiles larger than about 4.2MB, so I'm good to go. 

-Alex