Interesting bug in CIII...

Hi catilina, it's nice to hear from you again.

I wasn't able to duplicate your results. Perhaps it happens only on the Mac version? Anyone else?

Hi Brugle and thanks

None of them?
Could you follow my instructions? Was I unclear?

Perhaps the cheats are Mac features in return for the non-working off-the-map dragging cheat?
Any Mac governors? Could you duplicate my results, or are they features of the German Mac version only?

[This message has been edited by catilina (edited 08-24-2001 @ 05:16 PM).]

catilina,

As far as I can tell, your instructions were clear. My reply was not. Sorry.

I could duplicate your first point--in fact, I use it frequently. To generalize, if four 1x1 small tents will merge to a 2x2 small tent in a given location, then they will also merge if the east, south, and/or west tiles are vacant lots.

What I meant to say was that I could not duplicate the formation of a "black hole". I deleted a small villa and then immediately undid the delete. The residents left but the appearance of the house did not change (at all 3 screen resolutions). I couldn't build anything (such as a small statue or an engineer post) in any of the tiles of the vacant house. The same thing happened when I deleted/undid a 2x2 medium insulae.

1.

As far as I observed, only "northern" small tents merge into vacant lots immediately, "non-northern" small tents only merge into occupied lots.
In the example above, the tent merges into the lots before their vanishing. That doesn't work with an "eastern" tent.

2.

My II. only works with houses up to medium insulae. Delete the house, it will disappear, then undo and switch your resolution.
Large insulae and better work somehow vice versa. Shown above with a former luxury palace. The black hole will disappear (and the palace re-evolve), but nothing can be built on it (the black hole).

I'm sorry, the information was false, the post is edited.

[This message has been edited by catilina (edited 08-25-2001 @ 06:36 AM).]

catilina,

Thanks for the clarification. I duplicated your delete/undo results except for the display as a black hole--where you show a black hole I see just bare ground. Very interesting. I suppose there'll always be new things to learn about this game!

Note that four 1x1 small tents/vacant lots will merge into a 2x2 small tent when the northern tile is a small tent only in those map locations that allow such merging.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 08-25-2001 @ 11:11 AM).]

Greetings all,

I duplicated Catilina's experiment in the Valentia CCK and got the same results as Brugle on his second try. I didn't bother changing resolution, but after right-clicking the cleared areas, a "white-hole" appeared in the northern tile.

I was able to fill in the non-northern tiles with statues, engineers, prefects, barbers, doctors, fountains, roads and plazas. Although the prefects, barbers, and doctors all eventually caught fire or collapsed, the engineers remained. After clearing the rubble, the former 2x2 house did not re-expand over the now open land until it evolved or devolved, but continued to hold as many people as a regular 2x2 building of its type. Plazas provided desirability, but neither they nor roads permitted travel across the tile. Fountains functioned and also retained their graphic image causing the house to form an L-shape around them.

Placing a theatre into the cleared land caused the housing to overlap half of the theatre. The half-sized theatre worked fine, except that it was graphically corrupted. Schools worked the same way.

What a find! Indoor plumbing and ground-level shops and offices! Great work catilina!

Wait a minute. I don't think I understand what happens. Say I have something that looks like this:
L = vacant lot
T = tent
- = empty space

---
LT-
LL-

it will turn into this?

LLL
LLL
LLL

I don't understand what point III means, either.

Greetings Smack,

Let’s say you start off with a single tent (north is top left):

Legend

After the tent is occupied, you add three “for sale” signs (aka, vacant lots):

Legend

Even before immigrants arrive at the vacant lots, the single 1x1 tent will merge with the three vacant lots to form a single 2x2 tent (provided, of course that it is in a 2x2 spot per Brugle):

Legend

Now then, if you delete the 2x2 tent, and then “undo” the delete as soon as the tent has disappeared, you will have a “black hole” in the north corner of the former tent. The other three tiles can be built in:

Legend

As soon as the new immigrants arrive at the “black hole” the building immediately reforms into a 2x2 house covering the added structures:

Legend

But the “hidden” structures are still there, producing walkers and desirability effects.

It's been a really long time since I've played, and I've uninstalled the game, but I think I remember deleting-undeleting houses without having black holes form.

It seems that visible black holes only appear on the Mac. Delete-Undoing housing on the PC leaves shows only open land, although sometimes a partial image on the emigrant is left behind.

*bump*

Treborius, I use a PC and in some cities, I have noticed some vacant lots which seem to be undeleteable. I don't know if that's what you all mean by 'black holes'.

North tile: Small Tent	Vacant lot
Vacant lot	Vacant lot

The above illustration is an example of the case. If I delete any one tile of the 4, all of them will be deleted at once. What's more, I cannot rebuild on the empty space left.

DX

That looks very much like the wormholes I have been hitting on lately in my enormous RSW maps. It seems the "small tent" is not that, but rather a link of some kind to a different object on the map. They also occur as standalone small tents. They look distorted in the overlays.

I have had wormholes linked to libraries, houses and small statues. When they were linked to a small tent, at quite some distance away, they provided services to those tents because of walkers passing by the wormholes. When you try to delete the wormhole, you delete the other end instead. Hence the name.

I don't know how they appear, I have been very careful to avoid them, refrained from undo and was careful with the data limit, but I haven't seen a map without them lately.

My suggestion would be to leave them as they are and just build around them.

BTW Have a go with the glyph editor

The Black Hole cheat works perfectly for me, and i noticed dat if u move the screen, the computer(if u use a PC)drags the image across the hole, creating an imprint on the area, hence the white hole after right clicking(due to the whitish background on th infoclick screen),but whats a wormole? Also, in the beginning of the thread, Catalina mentioned an off-the-map dragging cheat... What is that?

You are not charged if you make a set of roads, walls, gardens, or deletes by holding down the mouse button, dragging the cursor off the screen to the right, and releasing the mouse button when the cursor is over one of the construction buttons. Apparently, this cheat does not work on the Mac version.

I never use this cheat except in contests where it's permitted. It quickly gets tiresome, which may be one reason that I haven't entered a contest in a while.

Gov Pius

A wormhole is an item on the map that is actually not there, but it is connected to another building that can be anywhere else on the map. What you do with the wormhole happens with the other building instead. If you delete the wormhole, the other building will disappear and the wormhole will connect to a new building. Wormholes look like small tents or vacant lots in normal view, and as small tents or distorted imprints in overlays.

Brugle

On CBC there is a discussion on banning features. Maybe it helps if you join in. In practice I think whether or not you use the cheat rarely determines whether or not you win the competition, unless the margins are very small. I have not seen such a small margin yet, except maybe in the Pharaoh Grain map, but that was ruined by a bug which is banned now.

Tomek
Would you be interested in RSW maps, even though palaces are impossible? You may want to use the road designs, but I guess the walker limit will be more of a problem. I saw StephAmon had a windmill design for elite housing in Pharaoh, maybe that can be extended to C3. I wasn't very succesfull in using the forced loop design for stable higher level housing, mainly because of poor market supply.

Bumping up again.

I recently found that a similar thing occurs in Pharaoh, so I looked up this thread and did some further research.

It turns out that the half hidden structures, such as the theatre mentioned above, are stable, provided they are passed by the appropriate walkers of course. They can be deleted later, but the graphical image remains blurred, and the tiles can not be used for other buildings. This indicates file corruption.

Also the trick can be repeated. If you delete/undelete a house with a hidden structure beneath it, the full three plots are available for building. You can build new structures on these, while the existing hidden structures remain operative. Moreover when the original house is really deleted, the full spot becomes available for building other structures, while the hidden ones remain as they are.

I know that this is a C3 board, but I'm not really a Pharoah regular so I just mention it here: Once my Osiris temple collapsed, all was left were black tiles which couldn't be deleted or build on. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

EmperorJay,
It's easy to get to the Pharaoh forums from here, but I'll answer you anyway.

In my experience, "black holes" are more common in Pharaoh. There appear to be several things that can cause them--doing something else during a collapse may be one of them. A temple complex reproducably generated one for me when it either collapsed or was destroyed (I forget which) and I removed the rubble (from the built-up part) before the outer part disappeared. For a collapsed/destroyed temple complex, I recommend letting the outer (non-built-up) part disappear before cleaning up the mess.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 09-25-2002 @ 10:51 AM).]

Yes I know, I'm registered there, but I found it easier to reply here, than to post one post on the Pharaoh Forum and dissapear again. Anyway, thanks for your reply, glad it's the game and not my PC which is causing problems.

Another small addition. Also higher level housing can have hidden structures below, but the approach is indirectly.

Delete/undelete the house, wait till it get occupants and expands to a 2x2 tent, then delete/undelete again. Now you can build structures in the three free tiles. When the house re-evolves it expands over the now hidden structures and later into the empty area if it becomes 3x3. Buildings that extend into the second ring of the 3x3 square are partially hidden and block evolution.

So actually structures can only be hidden under 2x2 houses, but they can evolve later to higher levels. An existing higher level house can be forced to lower level by repeated delete/undelete.

The situation is different from Pharaoh, where you can have larger structures hidden below 3x3 level houses.

Have played a bit with the 'Black Hole/White Spot'. I build some tents at a U-shaped road, deleted - undo, paused the game and placed the Senat in the middle. If selecting any building and moving the cursor along the edge of the Senat, the map keeps the red 'not able to place here' marking until the map is turned. People passing by will leave a colored 'shadow' at the tents not hiding anything. Turning the map will show different grafic anomalities like replacing the tents (I tested with tents only) with the road, showing all 4 tiles of a 2x2 tent instead of showing that part of the Senat etc.