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Everything sounds like monkey business coming from you. But thanks for being agreeable anyway. No really, I appreciate the serious answer. Sorry it took me so long to compose a reply.
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I generally saw only a straight ctd with no hint of a load screen in the interior crashes. What I am seeing now is a little different in that they are all crashes on exiting a mod interior to Skyrim. The exact circumstances are that, I can leave my mod through a door to a player house - Breezehome for example, go on to Whiterun from Breezehome, rerturn through Breezehome into my mod. That triggers the navmesh bug. I go to my exterior doors out to Skyrim and they now say Whiterun instead of Skyrim (or whatever World the player house was in). If I exit through them anyway, I get one of two results. If the mod is running as an ESP, I get an immediate CTD with no chance of even reaching the load screen on most, maybe a few moments of the mist occaisonally. If the mod is running as an ESM, I get a CTD about half the time, the other half it seems to work, but much of the exterior textures are gone, landscape, mountains, trees, etc. and most (maybe all) of the statics I do not have marked IsFullLOD. I have seen the same reports of this happening to a number of modders without knowing if they triggered the navmesh issue at the same time, because they didn't notice or think to check. The meshes are not there at all either.
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Under these circumstances, the magic texture reload button, would be, well magic I suppose. It would certainly be helpful.

(after having typed all this, I see how long it got... I don't blame anyone for not wanting to read/comment on it)

Arthmoor: It seems you are very opinionated, and not afraid to impose those opinions on others with brute force (http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352954-unofficial-creation-kit-modding-bug-list-3/page__st__60). In that thread you argue with someone over making BSAs in the CK; making a point that I tried to make in this navMesh thread a while back... that isolated incidents may not constitute a universal bug. If I can get my mod (and others) working fine, but you and MAYBE a couple ISOLATED others (post v1.526) still cannot, it seems you should take your own advice. How many people have added back their navMesh and still get bugs (like the balcony thing)? How many tried doing things they should've learned more about before doing them?

I advocate politely voicing opinions... until enough people speak out (lobby) and are noticed to cause action to be taken - the action I was suggesting was allowing more file-types on the Workshop, not to abandon it altogether. Personally, I've never used Skyrim modman software or Workshop - mainly because of all the limitations, potential bugs, etc they come with... so perilous abandonment isn't an issue with me. Although.. I did say abandonment was an option - but for those people who aren't willing to 'contort' themselves for the 2min it takes to make a working ESM (or those not willing to upload an incomplete mod).

3rd party software is NEEDED to make certain mods, and ALWAYS will be - as some 1st or 3rd party software Ma Beth uses in their dev is proprietary and hacked out of the CK before public release. The public will never have the exact tools used to make the game itself, and must find viable workarounds to fill those 'spaces' back in. On this point, I agree with Amethyst Deceiver that your seemingly unique perspective labels ALL texture and mesh replacers as 'illegitimate hacks', certainly a valid statement when viewed from a purist. (so I expect you've removed your nvdey mod by now... as not to advlterate your gaming experience; no pun intended)

The navMesh issue may be ONE example of this. If Ma Beth's CK can create ESMs and make/edit all their data with it, yet the public version cannot... has it occurred to you that the 'fix' to this ESM thing is proprietary and will NEVER be implemented? They seem to have acquired rights to distribute the facegen aspects of the CK (ie: lip synch, which was removed as proprietary for Obliv as I recall), and there are 'bugs' with THAT are there not? It has been shown the grey-face bug is NOT a bug, but a limitation... which people still claim as a bug and still demand it be rectified. I think you (and others) may be demanding the same for ESMs and/or other aspects of the CK. It could be that in their trying to workaround such legalities, they triggered the bridezilla CTD bug; WHICH by the way, lessens my hope/faith that a fix is imminent where your hope is bolstered - as they rolled back their changes... implying that they have to start over again (or in part), or a little hot-fix could have been released.. not a 'complete' roll-back.

While I don't use the method personally, one supposedly does NOT need 3rd party software to make an ESM. While I haven't tested it, there have been plenty of anecdotes relating how to do it the CK itself (even in this/last thread as I recall).... make your areas, save it to ESP, exit CK, rename ESP to ESM, reload in CK (or something to that effect). Had it occurred to you that this method may NOT be a hack, but the way Beth folks have to do it? (though I doubt it, as they still have to 'snip' over changes from ESPs into the master Skyrim.ESM) But none of this helps YOU, as the mod I believe you have trouble with is Open Cities... which doesn't need an ESM (as it already has one... Skyrim.esm).

By the way - using Snip or other software doesn't change the way the game handles data files, it only changes the data in those files... the game still uses the file the same way it always has (albeit in a potentially buggy finished product, caused by the strange data not the game-engine). But I'm sure you knew that already.

I'm dismissive of many INSTANCES of this navMesh thing, as I personally believe many can be rectified through proper modding and using the correct software (not GECK/FO3 stuff). I'm not dismissive of people, opinions, and their problems (as you are in this and other threads), I try to help as best I know how. If it means showing you working mods (eg: my real mod, and the test ESP in this/last thread) and explaining how I did it - then showing how others' method differs or may be problematic, I have no idea how that is dismissive.

I know Amethyst Deceiver unsuccessfully tried the older version of my Tower mod with v1.524 (CTD), but has anyone tried my new version (1.81b) with Sky's new version (1.526)? I replaced all the Vanilla navMesh and hooked it all up like before... works fine for me. No balcony, no NPCs in corners, followers correctly escort, etc etc. This is with over a dozen Vanilla cities/villages navMesh altered, linked to custom interiorCells; as well as a couple exterior Vanilla cells which didn't have navMesh before (as your mod does).

Which brings me to this... I downloaded and tried your mod. As expected, MOST of the NPCs in Riften were on the balcony... but not all. There were still a few NPCs, like one by the gate, another down the lane a ways, etc. I loaded the mod in the CK, and there were several errors - a couple right at startup (besides the Vanilla errors) and some when loading the Riften cells. I don't recall off-hand what the errors were, but I'm sure you're aware of them already... if not, your CK is corrupt and is likely the ultimate source of your problems.

If the errors are truly benign (which I doubt, as at least one was navMesh-related I think), then disregard this paragraph. My Overlook Tower mod has minable Salt and respawning Nirnroot... I did this by creating new Tree objects using static NIFs; but when loading the area they are placed in, CK shows treeLOD errors (or something like that). THOSE are benign errors, as CK is looking for data in the NIF which isn't there, yet it only affects cosmetics in-game; YOUR errors may not be so passive...

My point is that you, yourself (in another thread), chastise someone for complaining about a buggy mod when the CK showed errors in it. That thread is like the polar opposite to this one, as there you advocate that 'corrupt data' causes drama (yet here 'corrupt' is a bad word), etc etc... many of the things which I have posted about here you've denounced, but advocate in other threads. Seems you should run for the American presidency on the flip-flopper ticket. I read that thread a few days ago, and I tried to go back and find it to link to, but I gave up standing in front of the wall of posts... so sorry, I cannot cite which thread I'm talking about (I'm sure you would recall, as you were as adamant in that thread as you are here... though the exact opposite stance).

As for my "magic" - I told you how I did it, the same way we modders have been doing it for like five years now... nothing magic, nothing local to my machine. I even posted a video and ESP proving it works ; though that vid was with Sky v1.4, the process and results are the same with Sky v1.526. The ESP is still in Dropbox BTW... in case you wanted to try it in v1.526. SOOOOO.... unless you can fix those strange errors the CK spits out just by loading your mod and modded areas, I doubt you'll have luck getting it to work correctly in-game.

Now, for constructive advice - my opinion is that you tried to bite off more than you should've for that mod's release. Starting with ONE city, and getting it to work flawlessly, would have been my modus operandi... there are WAY too many aspects in Skyrim to just 'cut & paste' an entire city to a new location (as one may have done in the past..). Too many triggers, scenes, markers, scripts (and their assigned references/properties), etc etc... to expect to get all that working flawlessly in a 'spliced' Vanilla city is fairly unrealistic (in MY opinion).

Hell, I tried simply re-finalizing Ivarstead's navMesh (without ANY changes/additions whatsoever), and it destroyed/corrupted the entire town's navMesh beyond all recognition... but when I tried it by just loading Skyrim.ESM in the CK (then finalize Ivarstead) it works normally. I also just tried adding it back into my mod (just now), semi-successfully... it still had 7 tri-errors (edges not lining up I think), but they were they in Vanilla. So this scenario implies that one of my CK SESSIONS corrupted the navMesh. Before you blindly berate that statement, be aware that there are plenty of known bugs which only happen in the CK (and ye olde CS) after doing certain things... affecting ONLY that session. Restarting the CK and retrying the action (without whatever caused the session-related bug) usually fixes this (apparently as it just did for my Ivarstead).

Have you tried altering the empty Vanilla cells (in an new, blank ESP) with just a basic setup, as I suggested a while back? Try altering the exterior Riften area (in Tamriel), but NOT deleting the Vanilla stuff covering it... ie: navMesh some area inside the empty city (which is behind the non-deleted wall statics), place a door, link it to another door next to the exterior Vanilla door to Riften's interior. Now try bringing followers or placeAtMe some NPCs and test for the 'balcony bug'. If a basic setup in a plain ESP works, you know your issues are related to some other data you changed. It may also be possible that certain areas/cells are somehow tagged as anathema... maybe through regions, quests, or other seemingly non-related aspects.

I'll look into this more - specifically regarding your Open Cities mod... as I need to prove it to myself that this can't be fixed without Ma Beth. I'll try the above and a couple other things, and post back whenever I find something.

The code's in the public build as well. It appears to be tied to the version control subsystem in someway. I only had a cursory glance but it'd probably be possible to coerce it into working with plugins created in a "regular" workspace.

Oooh, CK Coercion! Can it be done with a wrench or perhaps a hammer? If ever, by any means, the CK could have ESM flagged plugins as "Active" and generated ONAM lists when applicable- oh my! Would be amazing if the CK could be ...persuaded. >_>

Yes, I am very opinionated, and not afraid to assert that when I know I'm right. People don't like that. Tough. I'm not going to cave in and be told I'm wrong when I know I'm not.

With that in mind, YOU ARE THE ISOLATED CASE. I don't know how many times it needs to be said, but the navmesh bug has been widely documented, widely reported, widely verified, and you are the ONLY case where this is different. Much like what I told the other guy in the other thread. His report doesn't jive with the general consensus. Yours doesn't either, so in this case it seems you're the one being pushy about how the rest of us must all be total dumbasses for not being able to see where we have so clearly failed in our duty to achieve perfection.


The time for that is long past. The problem is genuine, you're trying to convince people otherwise, and by any standard definition that means you're spreading disinformation. That's bad. VERY BAD. It leads to people assuming incorrect information to be valid and takes MONTHS to correct once it's allowed to spread.

Bottom line, if it wasn't a bug, Bethesda would not be treating it as such.

You trying to make a mockery of those of us who wish to hold them to their promise is not going to fly, which is I think what is being attempted here. Lobbying people to give in and accept hackery as the norm. Not happening. I stand by my convictions on this one. I will not engage in this and will drop all efforts to deal with it should Bethesda decide this isn't an issue that can be fixed.

Further, blanket statements about how I asserted that texture packs are hacks is absurd on its face. You and everyone here know damn well that's not what I said and are simply attempting to use that to make some kind of wild assertion that doesn't apply in the least.


It has, though that would make little sense, so I dismissed it as anything approaching a valid point. The file formats are entirely their own creation. That wouldn't put them up against a Gamebryo license issue.


Bugs with lip sync? No idea. Not that I've noticed. None of the stuff I've done yet has actual voiced dialogue, just silent dialogue. I'd not expect lip sync to work with a silent dialogue file. Not even the ones the CK will generate if you "record" without a mic hooked up.


Where? I have heard no such thing. The grey-faced NPC issue is on Bethesda's list of things to fix. They've confirmed it as such. So I don't know where this notion of it not being a bug came from.


I'm not demanding they allow the CK to produce ESMs. I'm perfectly happy to have it continue as-is. I put forth the ability to save ESMs (and generate ONAM lists) because it's one way they COULD solve it. Perhaps even the easiest way out of all this since it would also solve the grey-faced NPC bug and perhaps a few other things as well.


If this was how things were to be done, then it would have been a documented procedure in the Wiki and someone at some point during the many times the issue has been raised would have simply said "do this to solve it". They have not told us to do it, they're openly and repeatedly saying they're working on a proper fix for it. How many times does this need to be said before you'll believe that it's a real bug and not some made up [censored] some of us threw against the wall to see if it would stick?


Now you're just mocking me, and others, plain and simple because you apparently don't want to admit you're wrong about the navmesh issue being a bug. Am I permitted to be opinionated about how I feel about that or should I ask permission first?


You've already been told by more than one person that your supposedly flawless working test mod doesn't work. Maybe you just think I'm a liar, but if that's the case, have the balls to come out and say it so we can stop this silly dancing around about it. Your test mod produced ALL of the symptoms expected of it. You are refusing to accept that.


You're seeing what everyone sees. It's not my CK that's corrupt, but nice try attempting to blame me for bugs in the software. That's lovely. MUST be my fault somehow, right? Because it's broken and only you're capable of producing flawless work, right?

Those errors are benign. If you think otherwise, feel free to destroy all the navmeshes in Riften and repath the whole city and see for yourself. I've already done that twice now with 1.5.24 and 1.5.26 and with a completely fresh CK install to go with it. Nothing changed. The same errors came back. Riften exhibited the same set of problems.

And once again, no, the other thread is not anything remotely the same as here. This bug, again, is widely documented, easy to reproduce in a variety of scenarios, and does precisely what people have claimed it does. So according to your theory then we ALL have corrupted CK installs and you miraculously got the only one that isn't.

I already did, and as I just said above, no dice. IT DOESN'T WORK. Your video proves nothing. After the requisite number of visits between your test doors, your NPCs cease to navigate the cell. The CTD introduced by 1.5.24 is gone as expected since the change that caused it was rolled back.

So yeah. Can we dispense with calling me a liar already?


Did something like this already. Loaded the CK, started a brand new copy of Riften. Copied all the statics, triggers, etc you seem to think are impossible to do in one sitting, and did it. No deleted records etc. Slapped a crude placement of navmeshing down to connect the north gate through to the plaza area. Navmeshed that out crudely too. Ended up with about 200 new triangles over all. Finalized, and with no doors edited at all even. Ran the test. Sure enough, NPCs on the balcony after the second visit. This was with a 1.5.26 install using CK 1.5.24.

As I said, please do feel free to verify this yourself, but I don't expect to see any sort of different result.

( STUPID QUOTE LIMITS )

BTW, I've said before that if it can be conclusively proven that eradicating the navmesh data and rebuilding it new would solve anything I'd be more than happy to spend the couple of weeks it would take to do so. Having not seen evidence that it is correctable in this manner, you can perhaps understand why I'm not willing to undertake the task on something as large as OCS. A mod with a far smaller navmesh footprint that was not correctable tells me everything I need to know.

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http://www.gamesas.com/user/764276-sluckyd/, I have a set savegame which I prefer to launch my test-runs from. Given that I managed to see some of these bugs from this savegame, then I think it safe to assume that this savegame may be corrupted. However, since the release of Skyrim update 1.5.26.0.5, this (possibly corrupted) savegame has not been able to reproduce the 'CTDs' in my plug-in. But, the pvssyr on this thread suggests that it is still very much a problem for others. There might be something that I am doing differently, or maybe the game has been adjusted to read the corrupted savegames properly at the expense of reading the rest of the savegames...? I imagine all sorts of convoluted questions could emerge from something like this. http://www.gamesas.com/user/793970-ch0k3h0ld/ mentioned a very interesting detail:
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Please note (with all due apologies to http://www.gamesas.com/user/793970-ch0k3h0ld/), I've just shamelessly cherry-picked the key observations and the emphasis is added by me. Firstly, my Plug-in's tendency to divert fast travel and load doors to the desktop never made it to the load-screen misting. Perhaps I have been experiencing a different, although possibly related, problem prior to update 1.5.26.0.5. Secondly, I've found that I can reproduce the texture rendering problem with update 1.5.26.0.5 and that at least some of the meshes (all the ones I bumped into at least) are still loading - just not their textures. This would indicate that I am thinking of a different bug, given the absence of meshes in the bug http://www.gamesas.com/user/793970-ch0k3h0ld/ describes. Whether or not these bugs are related (and tag-teaming us all) is another question. But there are definite similarities - enough to make this a very confusing problem.
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I've found a fairly reliable way to reproduce the texture bug I'm talking about, which I've seen in southwest Blackreach. If I wander over to Alftand and takes the lift down to Alftand Cathedral, and thence across Blackreach to the Tower of Mzark, the tower and the objects in the cell are not visible - but I can definitely bump into them and the invisible bridge across to the invisible tower of Mzark is unnerving - a bit like walking on thin air. The first time I saw the problem I was convinced that is was some sort of puzzle associated with the quest. However, if I save, quit the game and restart from that savegame I can actually see the Tower of Mzark and the attached and surrounding objects - not to mention a few other items including a lumbering giant. Just today, I loaded an old savegame at that point (which was previously used to mark the point for a game restart) but this time I simply loaded into the old savegame (without restarting the game) and not only was the tower invisible but my then companion NPC was invisible as well - nothing but a disembodied voice. On my system, this works every time, both in bringing out and sidestepping this bug and, I'll wager, if it does not do so on someone-else's system then we probably are down to a resource management issue. It is also worth noting that this problem is occurring in several unmodified cells.
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In any case, it is fairly easy to reproduce this problem for the purpose of contrasting and comparing with some of the other similar rendering issues I think people might be discussing on this thread. It does, at least, seem to be related because when I am observing this problem, my follower NPC has great difficulty navigating terrain - and simply won't enter the area. Moreover, this NavMesh problem disappears along with the texture rendering fault if the game is saved and reloaded. So it seems that at least some of the NavMesh has a tendency to disappear along with the texture rendering when this bug makes an appearance. Hence the similarity with the bug under discussion...
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[EDIT]Grammar, diction and logic (or lack thereof): delete "have to" and replace "anyone-else's" with "someone-else's"[/EDIT]

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Thank you for taking the time to reply. I think some of the details you mentioned are very important. By the way, I often take my time getting around to a reply myself. Sometimes it's better to just step back and take another look at things first - and that can take time.

Ah, so very very true. I wish I knew what was going on though. Skyrim is one very complex system with very complex problems.

I personally prefer a rubber cosh. At any rate, it'll be a candidate for the CKE (whenever I get around to that).

Hrmmmm...well if they had chosen not to release a CK, we'd be in a boat that already sank. At least the CK is a boat we can keep bailing the water out of...and it's really not that much water.

As it is, I'm personally thrilled with the 'work arounds' for my tiny little mods, and there is no way the modding community is going to disappear anytime soon, especially due to any issues the CK may have...that's pretty funny. Perhaps some of the much larger projects will be delayed or cancelled, but hell, most of them never see the light of day any way, whether the CK is bugged or not. Honestly, how many huge projects have been proposed and teased in the forums and on youtube? Bet my left butt cheek 95 percent of them will never get finished. And if/when they do, they usually stay in beta forever. No offense to the people/groups building them, they just seem to always bite off more than they can chew and end up sacrificing quality over quantity. Look at how large Bethesda is. Look at how long it took them to develop the land of Skyrim. Some of the proposed mods are even larger than Skyrim...hahah..rightttt. Even the ones that equal some of the larger DLC they released are improbable. I've turned down joining 3 separate teams already working on large, multiple person projects...mostly because of this. Why waste time on something that realistically probably won't get finished? And if it does, it will be no where near the quality of the original game.

It's the smaller projects, tweaks, player homes, dungeons, weapons, armors, etc, etc, that add to the replayability and longevity of Skyrim. Tens or even hundreds of these combined, usually of high quality, made by one or two or three individuals per mod, will see WAY more game hours by players than any of the planned/proposed massive projects.

I look at it this way. If the talented people working on these HUGE ideas concentrated on many smaller projects, they'd be able to produce more over all, and of higher quality, resulting in more game hours played and a larger group of people spending a bit of time using their mod/s. Personally, in less than a month's time, I have built 4 fairly detailed player homes and am currently working on a fifth (so that's 9 or 10 cells already, from small to medium in size). One person I am, with some great assistance from a few talented scripters, and look at how many game hours people have used my work. Since I already bet my left butt cheek, I'll bet my right one on the fact that people will play more hours on little house and location mods like Deus Mons, Ranger Ridge, Domus Dementis, blah blah than most, if not all, of the huge planned worldspace mods that won't be released for a longgg time. Why? Because when/if those massive projects get completed, it will be years down the road, and public interest will have waned. Sure, some die hard modders will still be smashing out killer mods, and people will jump on to play some good ole Skyrim for a few, but that's about it.

Edit: After re-reading, it may sound like I am bragging, which I am not and did not intend...sorry. Just stating a personal observation that people may wish to consider before tackling such massive ideas. Don't blame the CK bugs for destroying your master plan, it probably wasn't going anywhere to begin with. Also, this is not directed at any one individual, so please don't take offense.

Back on the navmesh thing...sorry for the rambling.

Glad they rolled back the esp 'fix'. However, I'm still finding door ctds with esp files from time to time. ESM it and all is good. Bet it's related to navmesh.

No it's 100 mb ...

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2576751


Btw I read some posts in this thread but I still didn't get a "YES" or "NOT" about the fixing of the navmeshbug ...

As for my comments :

I am honestly bored and not interested in all the minor mods that add retextures and remeshes of the original Vanilla stuff ..... bored of the Stuff copied or rehacked from the witcher to make cool outstounding and not made from scratch armors , ...
tired to see manga stuff and other minor mods that change a lamp or a bullon here or there....

What keeps interest in the Game for me are Megamods that add new landscape , new quests , new dungeons , in few .. new stuff to do and see .... but seems we are very much blocked by the CK inability to perform well the simple tasks needed by those kind of mods....

LODS not working , Navmeh Broken , no Tools and most of all on top of that NO SUPPORT FROM THE DEVELOPERS or no Voice to answer the questions .... so where is going the modding community ? I think one after the other are dropping and only the last hardcoe modders will remain till even those will give up unless some support is given by the Bethesda team ....

Over the short term, perhaps. Over the long haul, no. A whole lot of small mods that are small enough to evade the navmesh bug won't buy this game the longevity Morrowind and Oblivion have enjoyed. It would end up more like Fallout where there's a short burst of activity, then a sharp fall-off to an extended period of very low activity. That's just what happens when all you can reliably produce are small mods.

Whether there was this navmesh bug or not, you'd still have the same problem with large projects taking eons to finish, if they ever were. It was a rare thing even for Oblivion to see anything beyond the size and scope of a UL mod see completion, and a VERY rare thing to see a total conversion get finished. That's not changing this time around either.

Not fixed.

I also agree with you that the larger mods are what will sustain Skyrim over the long haul. That can't happen though as long as this bug is left unfixed, which is why it's so important that it not be swept under the rug by crappy hacks.

hmm, well that explains it then. i was never able to upload my mod to steam, kept getting the failed to write cloud error. my mod is 130MB.

and i guess the 1GB is total cloud storage capacity per user. thats kind of.... lame, i guess.

Yep! Stenvar followed me around for 3 or 4 cells and eventualy he stopped and when i go back i find him but other NPCs disapeered. very funny you guys think this is a minor bug?! it's the most major one! Fix it bethesda!!

I agree it's the most major bug at this time. I don't see how anyone can publish altered Navmesh mods on Steam until this is fixed. This is a HUGE deficit for the Workshop audience!

At least with Skyrim Nexus, we can utilize the esm "trick". Of course that doesn't solve all Navmesh issues. In my experience, esm Navmesh works great for interior Navmesh, but it screws-up exterior Navmesh. I may be wrong, but it seems we need to keep exterior Navmesh changes in esp and interior in esm.

Regarding whether using esm is "correct" or not is irrelevant to me. Modding is about....well, modding. We use a rag-tag set of 3rd party tools in combination with whatever we are lucky enough to recieve from the Developer (Creation Kit in this case).

For example, I couldn't live without NifTools for importing new models from 3DS Max, and I've found TESVSnip to be indispensable. There are others.

By utilizing the available tools, I've so far been able to overcome the Navmesh bug entirely - at least for Skyrim Nexus anyway.

Given the apparent difficulties, I do have my doubts if Steam Workshop will ever be able to accommodate custom Navmesh mods.

Agree on the esm comment .. heck if didn't esm some mods and fix would never get them to work for me ... and if go back to FNV most of the large complex mods there all had esm components (e.g. EVE, AWOP, MoMod etc etc etc) so folks could easily use them in their mods or help ease updates. I'd much prefer that we talk about how to make the CK work as is by id'n the problem and then here is how to get around it for modders. Just my narrow view of things, but gotta admit that enjoy this thread more then most on the forums .. so either way I am having a good time just reading the back and forth (yes I know I am easy to entertain).

I don't know. The player base for fantasy type games is much much larger than that of a post nuke game. Regardless, Skyrim is going to be around a while. Can't agree with you on that one.

I do agree that the navmesh bug needs to be fixed, and I hope it does, but I'm not convinced engine bugs are the reason large mods won't be worked on or finished. My mind won't change that it's the size and scope of these ideas that end up causing them to flatline. Look at all the other major overhauls proposed on countless games on moddb. Quite a few have an energetic start with a team of enthusiastic individuals that eventually die off. Most of them are just write ups with a few screens and no real substance. And those that actually come out are buggy and half assed. Not always of course. Every once in a while a true gem shows up, but it's rare indeed. If a person is motivated enough, no amount of bugs are going to stop them from realizing their dream. It's the unmotivated people that give up easily, most likely being the ones that would not have finished their plans in the first place. The fact is there ARE ways around these issues. And the effort involved is not that great. Sure it would be awesome if everything worked peachy, but it doesn't. We have a tool that most developers never provide, that's pretty awesome in my book. It's allowed me to realize ideas of my own in ways not possible in other games. And it's still a complete blast, even with the bugs.

I really believe that both the community and the players would benefit from those talented individuals biting off smaller pieces. At least some of those grand ideas would be realized, just in smaller portions, adding to the massive pool of already quality work. And I'm not talking about the lower quality re-textures and rip off models, uber boobs, manga, and such. Nothing wrong with those if they are your thing, but I'm referring to the subtle changes and additions that blend well with the original game, improving the replayability. That could be anything from a new set of weapons and armor, to lamps on bridges at night, an exciting dungeon crawl, quest, or a well built player home that makes Bethesda's living areas seem shabby in comparison. Smaller, highly detailed lands that expand on the game lore are more interesting to me than some huge landscape that is empty and lifeless in most areas. Moon Path to Elsweyr is a perfect example of someone taking a large idea, making it more compact, and creating a grand piece of work in the process. That is the example people should be following. It's masterfully done and he's managed to seamlessly blend his own models and textures into the game and lore. If all of us had half his talent Skyrim would be massive in a few short months. And he managed to do it with the current tools. Something to think about...

no idea if 1st part is ref to my comment .. never implied skyrim ain't gonna be the boss .. it is for a while, DLCs is a comin. Only point making is esm's are valid and needed .. note Lorecraft, Jaysus, and SkyMoMod .. if you want to allow others to use what you have created in their own mods. i try to look for this if there is something expansive and that should be available to all in those i pick as gotta have. Of course Grim is coming next week .. so may be dragged away for a tad for old style party based dungeon crawl.

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To shed a little more light on the subject, I did a some more stress testing (enough to drive the 24 odd mannequins in the upper Questfall Tower berserk) and, on exiting to the tower-top I noticed that some of the other towers I'd placed (the ventilation tower & Border Tower) were missing - as well as the foundations for the not-so-secret stair. On closer inspection, it was not just the textures which were failing to render (as in southwest Blackreach), but the entire mesh as well. The door into the ventilation tower was there, so I entered and when I left the ventilation tower interior and re-entered the exterior cell, all the meshes loaded this time.
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It seems to me that these separate problems, although similar, have very different work-around demands. One only requires a cell reload whereas the other requires a complete restart of the game. This suggests that the problems are caused by distinctly different bugs. Of course, if the entry into the interior cell had triggered a CTD, it would not have been possible to observe the recovery.
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The exterior cell in question is yet to have the NavMesh applied to the not-so-secret stair and finalized to link it to the ventilation tower doors. If there are no door transfers to interior cells which are causing CTDs through door/markers that lack connection via finalized NavMesh, this may suggest that the problem of disappearing meshes (e.g. as described by http://www.gamesas.com/user/793970-ch0k3h0ld/) is linked to the NavMesh problem discussed on this thread, possibly via the link between doors to interior cells and exterior NavMesh (for example).

I wish I could meet people that talk as much as this guy, then my life wouldn't be so boring.

I have OUTSTANDING news. I have gained ground against the universally hated and most-heinous NavMesh Bug. Here's a video showing a fix for some instances, and a partial fix for others. [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67168394/navMesh%20bug%20video.mp4%5D
0:40 is the first entry to Tamriel-Riften
2:20 is the return-after-fast-travel
2:45 you can see one of the mannequins just sandboxing in place
3:00 another one stuck in-place (both of these are in an "Anathema Cell" explained below)
3:30 return after another fast-travel away
3:40 one of the mannequins which is properly patrolling - inside the custom navMesh (but not in the Anathema Cell)
The video uses a custom version of the Open Cities mod to illustrate working navMesh inside Tamriel-Riften.

After nine hours, of what I now refer to as "The Riften Experiments", and another three hours experimenting with Tamriel-Riften in the Open Cities ESP, I have finally done it... definitively found another cause or two (for NPCs going to the balcony or disappearing), and found a fix for some cases. I will be PM'ing Arthmoor with a copy of his 'fixed' ESP after I post this... I won't post the link publicly unless he gives me permission.

This news will be so shocking - many of you will refuse to believe it... some may soil themselves... and I don't blame you. "It's too good to be true" I bet you're saying... but would I lie about something like this on a thread this high-profile? Eccentric doesn't mean stupid...

Arthmoor's "NavMesh Bug" is not entirely caused by the navMesh itself. It's in-part, caused by the Wandering Bug (aka: the "Wandering Mannequin Bug"), which in turn - may or may not be connected to navMesh in some way. "You're full of krap SLuck" is what I just heard come across the wire.... but it's true and I can prove it... so can you - within minutes.

I called it "Arthmoor's" since he seems to be the biggest proponent of its existence, it was his mod's ESP which I first proved this with, and to illustrate the type of mod which may expect to be helped by this fix (while others' mods' problems may still be caused by other things).

= How I define the "Wandering Bug": A non-persistent actor (no quests/etc) who isn't tethered by AI/script/etc to a marker, and also actively returned to said marker/path frequently (each onCellAttach or for other instances like waiting), will 'wander'.

- 'Wandering' is when actors spawn in places other than where you want them to, triggered by the 'fast-trav-return technique'... or enough cell changes; usually they spawn near the cell-borders of the cell they were originally placed in. They may even sometimes spawn inside large statics (such as buildings or city walls), so may seem to 'disappear' altogether... but if you 'tcl' the entire cell, I bet you'll find em.

- This bug affects more than just mannequins, if affects ALL actors - hence the redaction of "mannequin" from the name... I encountered and fixed it during my mannequin-capades, so that's what I named it at the time.

- It appears that actor AI pathing is broken by the NavMesh Bug, as shown in the ESP I'm sending Arthmoor... but only for certain cells; then the Wandering Bug causes the broken actors to wind up on the party balcony. My Riften Experiments seemingly deduced that it could be because there is no Vanilla navMesh in the cell afflicted with broken AI. This MAY be fixable - by slightly changing the method of navMeshing... but I haven't tested this further to find out yet.

- Testing it with a FOLLOWER shows it very reluctant to enter that center cell (which is the one without Vanilla navMesh). I got Lydia to 'wait there' about a quarter of the way into the cell (almost underneath the party balcony), but she refused to go any further. This implies that the navMesh is at least partially there - or that the data isn't being interpreted properly. Whatever it is, I believe it is NOT completely destroyed or deleted. It also leads me to believe that actors' AI packages themselves aren't broken, but that they can't find a place within that cell to perform it (or something along those lines).

What I did in the ESP I'm sending Arthmoor, is to edit the Vanilla mannequin's actor object. I changed it's ID to "aaMannequinblahblah..." (something different/unique), then hit ok/save. Opened that new actor, removed the mannequin AI and added the masterDefaultPackage AI, clicked ok/save. Then I added a few of them around his Riften... at least one in three different cells. I then placed a patrol marker next to each of them, linked that patrol marker to a nearby object, and set it's idle loop to .25. I then link each mannequin to their patrol markers. Saved the ESP.

That's it. No navMesh, no finalizing, no dramatic fiery hoop jumpage. Testing in-game shows his NavMesh Bug - as he describes... his NPCs are mostly up on the balcony (though several are NOT, and are operating as they should be). It also shows my mannequins - pacing back and forth exactly where I placed them all...

BUT the ones placed in the cell which has no Vanilla navMesh would just sandbox in one place, ie - over the actual patrol marker they are linked to. No matter how many times you fast-trav-return or whatever else you do... they always go back to their patrol markers and stand there; while the ones placed in cells containing Vanilla navMesh (though the actors were actually placed on custom navMesh) will perform their AI patrols as they should.

"But I thought you said the Wandering Bug causes this? Why aren't those mannequins wandering?" ... is what you're probably saying to your screen about now. That bug doesn't affect the mannequins I placed, because they are clones of Vanilla mannequins.. which retain the assigned mannequin scripting... and I WROTE the bloody Vanilla Mannequin Script Fix (with much help streamlining it for the update from Daemonjax).

Since my Skyrim has the Mannequin Fix running, the mannequins I placed in Arthmoor's Tamriel-Riften are automatically forced back to their linked reference (the patrol marker) every onCellAttach, as per my 'wandering fix'. The actors Arthmoor placed, having had their AI 'put on hold' by the NavMesh Bug, wind up on the balcony because there is no redundant script or whatever to 'reset' them to their markers (or they don't have markers).

I also tried inserting an evaluatePackage into the mannequin script's onCellAttach line, and even tried it with the console in-game... but actors placed in that cell-anathema will still not resume patrolling (or movement). They still sandbox in-place, they just don't walk around.

I believe the most likely reason for Arthmoor's NavMesh Bug is a Vanilla cell which never had any Vanilla navMesh in it. This is what I call an "Anathema Cell" - one which has no Vanilla navMesh originally inside it, and apparently triggers NavMesh Bug because of it. Perhaps one of the subrecords/records (like a NAVI or NAVM) is missing or flagged a certain way - because Vanilla had nothing there; and the fix would be to recreate or alter the subrecord/record. I do know that AI isn't broken in other cells... and this may account for why some mods work and others don't.

To trigger the Wandering Bug on the mannequins, I only have to wait in-game for an hour. The mannequins I placed seemed to all instantly disappear, but they simply teleported over to the PARTY BALCONY (just like all the other actors). You have to leave then return to trigger the onCellAttach, forcing them back to their patrol markers again... but they DO come back, and resume their pacing in their assigned places (or just stand there).

One point I'm trying to make is that what it may come down to for some is PROPER AI and marker-linking. The navMesh is PROBABLY fine.... as far as I could tell, Arthmoor's navMesh is fine and many others' probably are as well. Do the above mannequin test in your mod - with my (and Daemonjax') Vanilla Mannequin Script Fix running, otherwise your test mannequins will be 'on the balcony'.

An alternative way to test (if you didn't want to download that mod or just to prove it a different way): simply add a script to an actor which forces them to an idle marker somewhere in your custom, troublesome navMesh.... anything which 'tethers' them to a certain spot or path would work as long as it refreshes when the cell loads/attaches/etc.

"Well why do Arthmoor's NPCs wander? Aren't they assigned AI and markers?" ...would be the next logical question. From what I saw, some are NOT linked to markers... and presumably those are most of the ones who like to visit the red-light party-balcony. There is also a door/gate to outside that is still blocked up in the mod.. behind which like a dozen NPCs spawn (a la Wandering Bug) and cannot return to the the city interior without walking way around, which they do NOT attempt.

Another possibility for why some may wander (even though they may or may not be linked or scripted somehow)... many of those NPCs placed in OC are secondary instances of unique-flagged actors. Whenever I tried copying a 'unique' actor (in my v1.4 Delphine Experiments I think) the AI goes crazy - so much so that I immediately found the cause and fixed it; which is yet ANOTHER bug in the CK....

= CK Bug relating to 'new' actors: If you "edit" an existing actor, with the intent of making it a custom 'clone', you must change the ID name to something unique FIRST, then click OK/save. THEN you reopen the new actor and alter the rest of the data. If you try to remove the scripts, flags, AI etc before having 'saved' a new actor, it doesn't really remove them... it all comes back. (which you wouldn't notice until re-opening that actor)

But anyways... I'm gunna go back to modding my Gokstad Ship - before working this navMesh drama yesterday, I got my ship sailing acceptably smooth in real-time... so I'm eager to get back to it. Lemme know if there are any questions, or if you want to know more about the Riften Experiments and their findings (as chronicled in what I call "The Rise & Fall of Family-NavMesh Bug - The First Five Volumes").

I'll be happy to "mannequin-test" your troublesome mod FOR you if you link to it; then I'll PM you back or post the Dropbox link here... your choice. I believe this mannequin-test is a good triage tool... separating those who suffer from the true NavMesh Bug and those who have other problems.

Are you the author of Wounded Knee Gulch? That guy was almost as frivolous as you. "Veni Bici Bibi! I am the Ceasar of Pre-CK moddery!"

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Thank you http://www.gamesas.com/user/764276-sluckyd/. I think this is outstanding news and I concur that the wandering or, rather, misplaced mannequin problem would not necessarily be constrained to the mannequins but likely affects other actors (i.e. a misplaced actor bug). I can also confirm that editing base forms prior to ID name change is not always persistent - and I've seen this with other objects as well, not just actors.
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And, hello http://www.gamesas.com/user/378305-terra-nova/. At the risk of being accused of plagiarizing a time-honored Cyrodiil cliche: Well met!

As I have relayed via PM already, this video illustrates the problem as it affects Riften. Nothing here is out of the ordinary, other than minor differences in where some of the NPCs have taken to clumping together. The behavior is still very much broken though.

Perhaps I was not entirely clear about the specifics of how it affects Open Cities, but yes, the Riften shopkeepers seem to stick to their markers properly, and sometimes even the blacksmith is seen working his forge, but anyone who is trying to go from point A to point B will be stuck somewhere. The problem is much more devastating in Whiterun due to the size of the city and the number of cells that won't be covered.

Not me actually. A certain individual who is considered a taboo subject here has been quite vocal about it and has videos of his own to illustrate how it affects his work too.

The citizens of Whiterun love this, and the loudmouth Talos priest there will spawn inside the wall between his usual spot and Jorrvaskr.

Look more closely. Yes, the central plaza in Riften contained no navmesh before I put one there, but also the surrounding cells had no navmesh INSIDE the city walls either, and your video shows a clump of folks standing around outside the southeast portion of the Jarl's palace, which is on vanilla navmesh.

Followers seem to be less prone to oddities, and sometimes will follow along the edges of some of the cell borders, but they've never been able to go into the voids where no navmesh data on the ground exists. Oddly enough, the balcony incidents and other similar results seem to be telling me that navmeshes above the ground level are more or less working.

FYI, these are not my NPCs either. They're strictly vanilla, no copies, no clones, nothing. 95% of their AI hasn't even been edited, only the markers have been transplaneted. I have not "placed" any of them. All but a scant few are anchored to an indoor cell as their home spot. They simply come outside as their AI routines process.

Only partially true. A closer look at how OCS is laid out should show you that there have been navmesh parts added to not just the central plaza, but every surrounding cell too. The vanilla navmesh ends on the outside of the city walls. The inside sections are bugged. Riften's NPCs aren't a good demonstration of this because most of them don't normally use the back alley ways anyway. So they won't be seen traveling there.

Also, as has been said many times, the bug manifests itself in entirely new cells that mods added. The farmhouse in my alt-start mod is a prime example of this. Visit it, leave, travel around, come back. IF you show up when the NPCs should be inside, they won't be sandboxing at all. They'll be stuck in one of the corners unable to move and if you're bringing a followe along, they will NOT enter the building.

It doesn't get any more proper than vanilla AI linking. All of the AI is vanilla, all of the idle markers are translplants from the vanilla worldspace. All of the linkages were already set when those were moved over.

Any of them that are not linked to exterior markers are that way because Bethesda themselves didn't link them.

Bottom line: Your test is interesting, but has only illustrated that I'm not in fact a crazy person. Your results match up with behavior one should expect from the mod until Bethesda fixes the bug.