Hey!

Is it possible that the newest update for the CK is glitchy? A few months ago, an update of the CK would make mods broken when saving them with it (for example, the third person stopped being rendered when the player character was modified by the mod) - it is confirmed that this was an issue with the Update for the CK.
Now, a few days ago, another update for it has been released, after which I made an update (version 0.97) for my current project - I mostly tweaked minor vanilla stuff (spells, misc items) and added some custome stuff - but when loading the game with it, many quests seem to have become broken.
For instance, the game has become unplayable because the starting scene glitches fataly, with General Tullies not mounting his horse (it seems to follow the last carriage many yards away while Tulliues just walks), the carriages going way too fast, the dialogue being interrupted at half its duration, then, Helgens Gates do not open, so the carriages just ran into them, further glitching actually makes the carriages go up to the Sky and fly over the entire land - I know, this sounds insane, but it happened to me. Twice.
My testers also report other parts of the main quest being broken (Retrieving the Dragon Stone doesn't trigger Irileth to appear) and the Greybeards do not react anymore when trying to do their quests, Delphine also seems to glitch and not show any quest dialogues. Now I can hardly think of the changes I made to be responsible for this, especially because everything worked fine before this update.
Has anyone else been having such problems? I am really afraid about my project because of this and would be relieved if there is any more information about this stuff, and if it is already confirmed if the new CK update is bugged.

Please, I really need more information on this, as I really am at a loss what to do!!!

Yes, there is a bad bug ... which has not yet quite been nailed down by us (nevermind Beth) that effects Quests and Quest Dialogue.

There's a locked topic on it: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1399783-dialogue-no-longer-works/
And a new topic when the first one got full: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1403919-dialogue-no-longer-works-thread-2-quest-bug-dialogue-scenes-etc/

As yet, no word from Beth on a fix (or whether a fix is possible) ... indeed, very little word from them at all ...

Ah, thanks for the reply. However, those links only point out to custom quests/dialogue being broken - but I have encountered broken vanilla quests I did not even touch at all in the CK - has that happened to anyone else?

"Newest"? That implies there has been a recent CK upgrade, but since I'm not seeing one, what CK version numbers are you talking about? (I just verified my local files and everything is up-to-date. My CK has been on version 1.6.89.0 for a few weeks now.)

Regarding this: yes, I've seen this too with the carriages... I call it the "Havok Bug" because of how the carriage goes crazy with the havok engine - but it's really not a bug, it's a result of the havok settings in the carriage NIF and can be modified.

Anyway, regarding your overall problem, since it's not due to a recent CK upgrade, I would suggest checking to see if your project became corrupted or had unintential edits. Go back to a recent backup and start testing again. The lin h4vent gave you is the only new bug I am aware of, but it's in the game engine, not the CK.

Ive noticed some random issues with spells/ scripts that are specific to Nords being cast on races that are not. wierd stuffs!

Well, I already tried a backup file of my mod which does not show these bugs - the thing is, almost all quest related NPCs stopped working with the last version, which did not edit a single one of them, that's why I am thinking it had something to do with the CK - If it has not been updated, why was the "Creation Kit is being updated" message popping up a few days ago? I run the CK practiacally every day so I do not think I just missed an older one.
This is just weird... Especially because the NPCs and Quests that proved to be problematic did not even show any edits or something on them.

I don't remember the exact date CK version 1.6.89.0 was released, but I do know there haven't been any CK updates since Skyrim 1.7... though there's been lots of anticipation for an update soon. I run almost exclusively offline so I checked for any updates before I responded and there were none, so I'm not sure what message you saw? I imagine you are using 1.6.89 also... but you can always check.

I have heard of random CK corruption problems and your issue seems consistent with that. If you've opened your backup and saved again (of course, keeping a backup) and don't see the problem, hopefully that's all it was.

Hmm... I did not hear anything about random corruption before - is there anything I should check out? Threads, official comments by Bethesda or something like that? Something that helps me understand that problem some more?
I really would like to continue on my project with the knowledge that I won't have to delete a few dozen hours of work again...

Edit: Just checked the version - it says 1.6.89 - which makes it even weirder why I got that Creation Kit Update message.

Edit: I just found this source about corruption - If anyone has the time to read through it, can I trust it? Does the Creation Kit really corrupt mods so badly? (http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=creation+kit+corruption&d=4546446904268696&mkt=de-DE&w=5374eb22,c87db39e)

No. That information is not to be trusted as the guy generally doesn't know what he's talking about.

The only thing I've ever seen any random corruption from is using TESVSnip on some of my older mod versions. The CK has yet to do anything strange and I tend to have the thing open for hours on end without it causing any trouble. Even when it just sits idle.

I don't think you can expect Beth to officially announce ANY bug... I've seen them make comments that they'll fix something, but I've never seen an official announcement of the bug. I read through that link and generally, he sounds like he's ranting to me. (But, I think his comments on keeping lots of backups is very good, which you seem to be doing.) With all the hours I have put in to the CK, I have never personally experienced a random corruption problem, but if you scan this forum, comments have come up, like the Navmesh duplication issue to name one. Again, this hasn't happened to me so I can't speak from experience.

Remember, my comments about your issue were to say I didn't see a new CK update. I'm not explaining what happened to your mod - that's what YOU have to do. My suggestion is for you to try to recreate the problem and find out for yourself what happened to your mod. I answered your original post, so that leaves either the CK did something, or more likely, you did something. If you want to have answers, I think you'll need to do the digging.

I do not want anyone to explain to me what exactly caused this issue in my mod! I do understand that is something I have to do, I am just not sure how, as I already checked everything again and again, but I cannot find a clue about what is causing this, escpecially because there were things breaking I am a thousand percent sure that I did never, ever touched them in the CK - I already had quite some trouble with the CK, which was later confirmed to be a severe CK bug, and I still have the feeling that something just is not right. And that's basically the thing - if I do not understand why there are random glitches that cannot be logically explained within the Editor, I have to assume that either I have been sleepwaking and edited the mod during that without the CK showing any changes, or that there actually is something that makes mods go corrupt.
I am just somewhat depressed, as I really love modding Skyrim, and I do not want to stop my project I have worked on more than 600 hours and leave my fans disappointed - especially because this is now the second time I have to redo an entire update because something messed up the esp again I am quite sure of that it just cannot be the fault of editing vanilla spells and items while adding custom stuff in a way that has worked before a hundred times.

I also have run into certain other minor glitches that just cannot be my fault:

- Torches being stopped rendering ingame when you edit the numeric values of the Torchbashing spell (just resetting the damage value of the spell made them rendered again)
- Black boxes spawning on targets killed with the Incinerate Spell (the boxes just spawn there, about the size of an NPCs head and than fade after about 5 seconds

The basic thing is, the longer I seem to work on my mod, the more random bugs are appearing I just cannot explain, as they do stuff I do not even know how to produce in the CK.
I really do not want to whine or flame or something, but for me, it seems there's something pretty wrong with the CK and I just cannot find any clue on what that might be!

I can imagine if you are frustrated... for me, it's not CK issues, it's Beth issues. I spent well over a thousand hours on my two mods and Beth comes along with a single rushed patch and breaks everything. I almost stopped modding that day.

I really wish I could say it's something you did... so you'd know what not to do. The only thing I could honestly suggest is to make more backups and testing along the way. Maybe that would help you know what triggers problems. I know, it's not a real answer. Wish I had them.

I agree that Bethesda's latest actions really took away a lot of joy from modding and dealt quite so harm to the modding community. The only wish I have on this matter is transparency - just to know why something breaks and how to avoid it, but Bethesda's killing silence really does the rest.
Just thanks for your answers, it's good (but also bad) to know I am not the only one having severe problems with the current status of the CK - I guess I will give it another shot, but if that does not work, well, I guess I will quit modding for a while - just does not really feel any good when you work for days on something just to remake it again and again...

Once again, thanks for your time

Edit: I just have realized something else weird: Before doing anything to the esp I had trouble with, it had the size of about 3500 Kilobyte - after my changes, it had 4,300 Kilobyte, though I did hardly change so much that it could have filled 800 Kilobytes - at least, the last time I edited about the same amount of similar settings, it was way below that amount. Just getting weirder and weirder...

Well, I just experienced first hand a rather bad corruption of my mod... so now I can say with first hand experience: It DOES happen... and it also reminds me of where I've read about this before. I think in my case, the corruption occured because the CK crashed when I was closing the file. (That's the part I've read before.) Normally I save before I close the file so I didn't think much about it, but when I opened the mod today, it was FULL of errors and eventually crashed the CK trying to open it.

Well, that's certainly encouraging news....

Crashing while closing a file is usually death for the file regardless of what app did it. That's also one of the bugs that's been listed in the big thread full of bugs. The kind of corruption that was being discussed wasn't talking about this particular known case. As long as the CK doesn't crash on you while saving your file, you'll be fine. It doesn't just randomly corrupt data during your session. If that were true, no mods would work.

BTW, you're aware the CK maintains backups of your file as well, yes? Hopefully you recovered one of them and resumed unharmed for the most part?

Why would that be? The CK doesn't automatically save the file when closing, so it shouldn't matter as the CK doesn't keep the file locked. If I were "saving and exiting at the same time", then I would agree, but I don't. And this is the first time I've had it actually corrupt my file (that I know of anyway) and unfortunately, it locks up all the time.

And agreed, the OP didn't state it crashed, but he was having problems and didn't know why. That could have been the "why". (Since the crash happened on exit, it may become corrupted in a previous session and he didn't make the connection.)

I wasn't, but it sounds like important information. Where are they kept/how do we access them?

Just so I know ahead of time

Skyrim\Backup\*.esp.bak

Heh. How could I have missed that?

Thanks

The CK has open file handles to it even when you don't think it should. Explicitly saving the file is only one such instance. From the moment it comes up in the menu to the moment you exit, your file has at least one open handle to it at all times. It's not a widely reported issue, but the CK has been known to corrupt files when it crashes on exit due to those open handles. Which is why that backup folder becomes even more important. We didn't have such luxuries with Oblivion