[cosmo valerga]

h4vent: you might-could test our 'overload theory' by doing your in-game testing while having raised your game's detail level higher... enough to cause visible lag (below 30fps). I use FRAPS to monitor fps without any problems, but recording video with it DESTROYS fps (by like 40 or so). If you can get the 'missing NPC' to replicate by doing that - we've found the cause for your particular episode (and possibly others').

I'll whack everything up to very high and see what resource-hog-app I can find to run in the background; to see if it replicates.

But, when I had the disappearing act happen, I only had the CK and the game running (plus the usual AV and Windows startbar stuff) ... And I closed none of that when I quit to menu and started again ... and it worked fine.


NavMesh:
Has anyone tried creating a large dungeon and navmeshing ... but leaving the external cell navmesh - the entrance doorway - untouched?


I have created a very small cellar in a mod and a trap door entrance to it - but not updated the navmesh on the exterior ... So far (fingers crossed) the navmesh in the cellar appears to be working (however far I go away and come back). Is external navmesh (which the wiki hints is a bit of a minefield) causing the navmesh issues (which would then point towards the cell-border theory)?

[James Potter]

Check this out: One of the users (sknight17) of my Gokstad boat mod, did some testing for me; regarding how mods with erroneous scripts might affect MY mod's performance. He has a comparable computer to mine, yet my mod didn't work on his system. We found that by his using several popular mods (you'd have to ask him exactly which), it affected my sailing script so badly that it wouldn't work unless Detail Settings were turned way down to compensate for the loss. (I don't use ANY other mods or scripts) I asked him to post his Papyrus log, and WOW... you shoulda seen it (I copy-pasted it from the discussion thread into a txt file on my system). The thing was literally 111,011 lines of errors over about FOUR minutes of game-time.

Long-story short (South Park anyone?) - disabling the mods and removing the scripts boosted FPS by 5. Not much you say? Consider 5 frames per second not being rendered simply because there are errors in scripts firing for no apparent reason (nowhere near the modded areas/scripts not activated or running). He was also able to smoothly sail my ship; whereas before, the intense timing my script relies on becomes fouled and it simply doesn't work (the ship stops moving or other issues).

So regarding NavMesh Bug and wandering actors, if there are HUNDREDS of script errors taking up valuable threads (or whatever resources they use) during the onCellAttach event (and beyond), what are the implications? I know this won't SOLVE or FIX the Bug, but it may prevent and/or explain certain symptoms.

I'm going to start a new thread dedicated to the impact of system stress & scripting errors on performance... I caught myself about to perp some blatant hijackery...

[Avril Louise]

I hope the 111011 was binary, and in fact, there are only 59 lines.

[scorpion972]

hehehe... I bet that User wishes it to be binary! I assure you it's true... I kept a copy of the log file to prove it! (though I won't post it without sknight17's permission, out of courtesy) NOTICE - that User's errors were 60-80% caused by only TWO mods!! Could you imagine if there were a DOZEN such erroneous mods installed? Also note that many of these types of errors happen even WITHOUT running the script or entering the modded area.

I just finished typing and posting that other thread, regarding these issues.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1370110-impact-of-system-stress-scripting-errors-on-game-performance/

[EDIT: the link didn't show up..]

[Lynne Hinton]

http://www.gamesas.com/user/764276-sluckyd/, I do love that number though; eleventy-thousand and eleven lines!
.
One of my pet peeves (at least when it comes to my own coding) is those unchecked nulls. The was something with a similar effect that was technically "correct" and wouldn't raise errors but, in Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas, would load the engine to breaking point (and you could probably calculate the FPS from how long the game lasted from load to CTD 10-30 seconds later). The problem turned out to be dirty edits which, in these cases, added automatic door monitoring scripts to every single door in the game world. As I've pointed out in threads on Oblivion or Fallout: New Vegas modding, just because something (such as those warnings when you load the Creation Kit or the "harmless" crosslink warnings from Oblivion's pathgrid) doesn't cause an immediately visible problem doesn't mean that it isn't doing other things which may accumulate to breaking point if not arrested.
.
In absence of Elminster's TES5Edit there are, no doubt, a whole host of these sorts of cumulative errors which are not being found and corrected. 111,011 lines of error reporting over four minutes and originating with only two plug-ins seems to bear this out.

[Cheryl Rice]

I think the shortcut response to the above couple of posts is:

"User Warning: If you run this mod with any other mod installed and active, you may experience unintended consequences and issues including, but not limited to, non-functionality of this mod, CTD, low FPS"

Errors in the popular mods should get fixed up, if they cause enough havok with other mods, but those only a few have installed are likely to go unnoticed.

(tbh: No different than any other game for which many mods are made)


That said, 11,000+ log-lines in 4 minutes takes some believing and achieving!

[Bitter End]

something i noticed about papyrus,

if you create and fill properties, then sometime later you decide to change your mind about those, or if you delete ObjectReferences in the world which are pointing to properties, they do not "unfill themselves" they stay in the record (i'm assuming it has a thing written in the VMAD record)

i don't know if this is relevant or just harmless, but papyrus does not clean up after itself. you have to manually clear the properties. save, then reopen the script and delete the property in order for it to be checked out. i found this out one day by re-adding an old property i deleted earlier, and it automatically re-filled itself without me telling it to (as if it was cached since the last time, which it was)

[JeSsy ArEllano]

see... this is why I started the other thread, hijackery.. heheheh.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1370110-impact-of-system-stress-scripting-errors-on-game-performance/

Amethyst: Good point. I think this is a 'bug' in the CK... as I believe it should be programmed to auto-remove properties if the assigned script doesn't have them anymore. That's actually what causes the perpetual "script no longer contains that property" (mentioned in the other thread, and what caused 70% of the 110k lines)... When the author doesn't remove the property from the reference or object the script was assigned to, and only removes the line in the script. Deleting the property itself doesn't cause the error; I'll change the other thread to reflect that little detail.

[EDIT: link didn't come through again... guess you can't just cut/paste but gotta use that link button]

[gandalf]

Stuff not loading ... I am now more confused than ever: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1370690-npc-not-loading-sometimes/

(shameless way around a self-bump, I know )

[CHangohh BOyy]

So.... Bethesda... ES online and Xbox DLC... but no Navmesh fix. That's cool...

[laila hassan]

Gotta go where the money's at, brother... got them dividends and bonuses to pay out... don't forget it IS still a business. I'm not really surprised by the online thing... isn't that something completely different from Skyrim (as in, a whole different dev team)? And xBox-only content sounds like they had a little perk-clause in the contract; "we'll allow your game on xBox, but you have to release exclusive content for us at least once, otherwise take it to IntelliVision..."

[Suzy Santana]

Bethesda has nothing to do with ES Online... It's all done by ZeniMax Online Studios.
But anyway... is there any status on a navmesh fix at all?
Perhaps shademe could move over to the CK since he did a pretty amazing job fixing Oblivion's CS.

[IsAiah AkA figgy]

Bethesda Softworks is publishing the game though, and doing the promotional stuff for it. So yes, they do have something to do with it. I think people don't exactly realize that Bethesda's corporate structure is all for show. They're all the same people, just different legal entities.

No, there's zero status on a fix. Which is starting to cause some ugly problems with people getting fed up with waiting and beginning to flood the market with split mods that take up double the activation slots. Which is exactly what I feared would start happening. The bad message that sends will result in it never being fixed.

[City Swagga]

Which is exactly what I feared would start happening. The bad message that sends will result in it never being fixed.

Oh come on! Blaming struggling modders for Bethesda not fixing their problems is outrageous to say the least.

[Ymani Hood]

Oh come on! Blaming struggling modders for Bethesda not fixing their problems is outrageous to say the least.

He's not blaming the modders. I am refusing to release any mods until the bug is fixed, and I am running out of patience. As much as I respect how difficult problem solving and coding can be, we are starting to get frustrated. Some will simply not release anything, like myself. But if you really want to mod and release it, you're going to use ugly workarounds like Arthmoor has described.

He wasn't having a go at the authors for releasing mods with these workarounds, he was simply stating that the amount of time it's taking, and still no status update at all is what's forcing people to these far from ideal workarounds. It utterly messed up the Fallout modding scene, and it's starting to do it to Skyrim's too.

[mishionary]

With the shear amount of things that already dont work, I'm back to believing this was all intended.

I would go back to Oblivion if that game will let me play longer than 20 minutes. Skyrim is great.. it never CTD's on me, but Im reduced to messing around with spells and magic effects. Far from what I really wanted to do.

[Mimi BC]

Oh come on! Blaming struggling modders for Bethesda not fixing their problems is outrageous to say the least.

And people jump down my throat for selectively quoting out of context?

Anyway, as SWG just said, that wasn't directed at "struggling modders" so much as it's being directed at those who are insisting on feeding them bad advice.

Look at it this way. If you make a mod with a navmesh in it right now and you DON'T follow that bad advice, who gets the blame? You can point fingers at Bethesda all day long but your comment threads will fill up with ignorant people who will insists they can prove YOU broken it.

If you DO follow the bad advice, and everyone else does too, then what you end up with is a whole mess of mods out there where everyone ships with 2 files minimum. An ESM and an ESP. Load order is thrown right out the window and the end result is a whole lot of people complaining about this or that being broken and how everyone is filling up their active slots with duplicate files for no good reason. If you don't think people won't complain about it, you haven't been paying attention to comment threads.

Also, the "solution" can't be effectively carried out without the ability to generate ONAM lists. There's simply no way around that. The CK doesn't generate these. There are no existing 3rd party tools for Skyrim that do either. The only suggestion that's ever been offered is to use FNVEdit to generate them, but you run the massive risk of corrupting your whole file by subjecting it to a tool designed for Fallout.

TESVSnip isn't even safe to use anymore now that the CK has changed the format of the killcam records. That had implications down the line for a lot of other mods that seemingly shouldn't care. TESVSnip also doesn't properly handle record compression, nor does it save mods with a valid version header. So there are in effect no outside tools one can safely use to get by.

This is all compounded greatly by Bethesda actually fixing things and then never providing a changelog of it when they do. The last CK update corrected some bugs, but nobody would ever know that if some of us hadn't noticed it. The unofficial bug list needs to be completely rechecked now to see which issues are still valid and which aren't.

Not that it matters. In the end, if this navmesh bug isn't fixed, Skyrim's mod scene WILL deteriorate into the mess that Fallout 3 became.

[Sanctum]

Well if fix or figure work around probably won't come until release the 1st DLC ... can always hope sooner but who knows not me. Me don't mind the esm+esp pair myself as once get near 80 mods I either dlete or merge .. heck generally with weapon armor mods I always try to merge into a single esp (have done 11 into 1 already and adding to as time goes on). Each to their own but for those over on nexus that have provided the esm+esp the mod works; for others have had luck with getting to work with roombounds (internal cells) another cludge but at least I get to try folks mods and get some fun from the effort they have put into it for us.

Enjoy the read here as said before as always learn something ... thanx for keeping this going to all and have fun

[Cody Banks]

the navmesh bug is only the tip of the iceberg.
even if bethesda fixes it, there are other crippling bugs that make esp's next to worthless. the memory issue is IMO worse than the navmesh bug.

unless the fix for the navmesh also addresses these root problems (if they are somehow related), the esm/esp combo is not going anywhere

[James Potter]

I haven't been following the other tangents on CK bugs, what memory issue?

[Chad Holloway]

esps don't handle memory the same way as esms do (i'm assuming master files are given priority for memory allocation)

loading up an esp with even a moderate amount of clutter and scripted items will cause a CTD when exiting the cell, whereas on an esm it does not.

we have resorted to creating script-travel purgatory cells to "buffer and purge" the memory before leaving custom cells into a worldspace.


if bethesda really intended for esps to be used as small mods only, i think the navmesh issue pales in comparison. because it doesnt take much to send an esp past its threshold. "little house on the prarie" mods are nice and all, but what if you actually want to make something substantial in size? (the problem seems to worsen once you add in custom worldspaces into the mix). and if it doesnt CTD now, it will eventually once the save game starts growing in size

[Kitana Lucas]

It is a shame that these crippling bugs were not ironed out before the ck was released. What was it, 4 months between when the game came out and when they released the ck.

I could have already released my mod but because I'm waiting for the navmesh bug to be officially fixed I ended up adding more to it just out of getting fed up with twiddling my thumbs

Hopefully we'll get at least a progress update some time soon, its not nice being left in the dark

- Hypno

[Jonathan Egan]

yeah it is unfortunate. but if the root cause for the major problems is what i think it is (memory-based or something invovling fundamental software architecture) then i can see why it has taken this long, years in fact, for it to be fixed, if it can even be fixed at all.

regardless, my current project will likely be my last. i don't want to bother with any world-related mods anymore and will probably just go back to doing simpler stuff like armor etc

[gemma]

Damn.

I hope there's at least one person in Bethesda Studios who is reading this thread. And the unofficial CK bug thread for that matter. Its just the deep space silence that makes me fear that they consider the CK to be one of the last of their priorities. Its all about the Kinect/MMO hype to attract more casual gamers from now on.

[Allison C]

esps don't handle memory the same way as esms do (i'm assuming master files are given priority for memory allocation)

loading up an esp with even a moderate amount of clutter and scripted items will cause a CTD when exiting the cell, whereas on an esm it does not.

we have resorted to creating script-travel purgatory cells to "buffer and purge" the memory before leaving custom cells into a worldspace.

How exactly is "a moderate amount of clutter" being determined? What do you mean by exiting the cell? What if the ESP doesn't HAVE custom cells? Are you sure this isn't just because of some issue with using an incorrect patch level on the game and CK? Does it only happen in isolation with only your mod loaded and NOTHING else? Are all of the mods in the mix being built with the correct version of the CK for the currently released version of the game?

There's just too many wildcards here to act on this information. Bug reports filed with this type of information will be ignored. You have to be able to provide something concrete. Something specific. Something a single mod can cause.

Like the navmesh bug. Easy as pie to replicate using nothing more than the version of the CK we're stuck with and a single mod. No need for posting thread after thread full of walls of text with wild speculation and silly theories about what might or might not be happening. WE have no way to determine squat. A properly constructed mod using navmeshes in vanilla cells with normal editing and finalization being done is all it takes to effectively demonstrate the issue. It doesn't much matter. House mod, village mod, expansive open cities mod. Give them something solid and repeatable with an established procedure that works every time.

Hell, the devs asked me to put OCS back online so they could download it to use it to anolyze the issue. An issue they have solidly confirmed DOES exist. An issue only they can find the actual cause for since only they have the navmesh source code available to look at. Only they have suitable debug environments with which to test things internally.