CTDs on Area Transitions, Mostly in Whiterun : V

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:11 am

I'm early in the game, so I don't know if the "mostly in Whiterun" bit is meaningful, but I haven't had any trouble in the little settlements, while Whiterun constantly gives me trouble, so I thought I would mention it.

As the topic title suggests, I get them on cell transitions interior->exterior and exterior->interior both. The most frustrating part is that something also seems to corrupt my savegames and prevent them from loading. Most recent example:

Save, inside Arcadia's Cauldron.
Transition to Whiterun (Autosave)
Go up to Dragonsreach, Quicksave
Transition into Dragonsreach: CTD in the loading screen

Both the quicksave and the autosave CTD on the loading screen, so I have to go back to:

Arcadia's Cauldron
Transition to Whiterun (Autosave)
Go up to Dragonsreach, dungeon entrance, Quicksave
Transition into Dragonsreach Dungeon
Transition from Dungeon to Dragonsreach Proper: CTD in the loading screen

Again, all the saves except the first in Arcadia's Cauldron crash before loading.

My load order is as follows. I'm wondering if there are any obvious culprits I'm not aware of?

Spoiler

00  Skyrim.esm01  Update.esm02  Domus_Dementis.esm03  ApachiiHair.esm04  HighResTexturePack01.esp05  HighResTexturePack02.esp06  Thorald.esp07  Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp  [Version 1.0]08  Chesko_Frostfall.esp09  Better Dynamic Snow.esp0A  Natural Skyrim Rain.esp0B  Realistic Lighting.esp0C  StaticMeshImprovementMod.esp0D  dD - Enhanced Blood Main.esp0E  Mart's Savegame DeBloatifier.esp  [Version 1.4Beta]0F  Cloaks.esp10  1nivWICCloaks.esp11  DragonBoneWeaponsComplete.esp12  RobedSteelPlateArmor.esp13  Smithing Perks Overhaul - Balanced.esp14  Weapons and Armor fixes.esp15  Weapons and Armor fixes - Hacks.esp16  Complete Crafting Overhaul.esp17  Domus Domentis.esp18  RayeksEnd.esp19  Lightweight Potions and Poisons.esp++  Ish's Item Name Lore Tweaks.esp++  HoodlessPsijicArchmageReplacement.esp1A  BetterSwimming.esp1B  UnreadBooksGlow.esp  [Version 1.3]1C  dD - Realistic Ragdoll Force - Realistic.esp1D  Ish's Sensible Item Names.esp1E  ScalingElementalRunes.esp1F  ElementalRunesImpact100.esp20  SkyTEST-RealPredators&Animals.esp21  MidasSkyrim.esp22  WATER.esp  [Version 1.3]23  tSSSSS.esp24  BetterMagic_FULL.esp25  InfiniteCharge.esp26  DeadlySpellImpacts.esp27  DeadlySpellImpacts - Two Fire.esp28  SMLeveledItemSmithing.esp29  Crafting300.esp2A  ishCrafting300SMLeveledItemSmithingCompatibilityPatch.esp2B  Better Followers - SBP.esp2C  Better NPC - Faction Pack.esp2D  BDO.esp2E  AutoCastRacials.esp2F  portal2mod.esp30  Bashed Patch, 0.esp31  Realistic Lighting Patcher.esp

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:53 pm

Hmm, You have quite a few that I am not using myself so the best that I can recommend is to start with mods that make changes to certain cells or spawns and disable those one at a time and test your game. Maybe someone using more of the same ones you are might have a better idea but that is always a good place to start.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:21 pm

Can't give you any specific advice, other than esmifying some of dungeon/quest mods reduced cell transitional crashes. Also tweaking my Skyrim.ini to allow more memory allocation helped a lot too. But that's for random crashes that are due to large content adding mods instead of tweaks.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:17 pm

turn off all the autosaving options, its a vanilla engine problem that gets much worse (causing ctd's) when interacting with some mods. In general autosaves and quicksaves are very poor quality saves to begin with, see the official bethesda best practices for more info (search the blog).

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:32 am

Ishmael,

Can you try the following?

1) Navigate to My Documents\My games\Skyrim, and find SkyrimCustom.ini. If it doesn't exist, create it.

2) Put the following into the file and save it:

[Papyrus]bEnableLogging=1bEnableTrace=1bLoadDebugInformation=1

3) Start the game and make it crash.

4) In the My Games\Skyrim folder, look for a new Logs\Script folders. Inside you should have Papyrus.0.log. Please post the contents of this file (in [ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ] tags, please). This might give some of us more post-mortem data as to what happens right before the crash event, if it's script-related.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:59 pm

Disabling autosaves fixed similar issues for me. I've personally never had any problem with quicksaves, though.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:54 pm

Welp, it looks like the answer is: NONE OF THE ABOVE.

It's SMIM, one or more of the meshes themselves (disabling the .esp doesn't help, but uninstalling the mod altogether fixes everything).

I'll message Brumbek and see if he and I can work out exactly which meshes are the problem and why.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:32 pm

Are you using BOSS to determine your load order? Some of your mods are in different order to my list where we use the same mods. I've played through Whiterun on multiple saves with SMIM and never had those problems, so I'm wondering if it's a strange overwrite somewhere...

Are you upgrading to 1.4 WATER as well? SMIM and WATER cross meshes for some things like the animated trough water, so it could be strange overwrites between the two.