[Darian Ennels]

I dunno if it's intended or not:

But you got to re-patch AV.esp every time you disable or enable a new/old mod.

Example: I downloaded the newest Warzone - Civil War mod. Set everything up as usual, and got CTD on startup. Then I disabled av.esp, and it worked. So I concluded I had to re-patch AV.esp, I mean it makes sense of course in hindsight. After a re-patch with the new mod, it works.

IMO the crash was probably due to an outdated masters list on your AV.esp. As it was in Oblivion and Morrowind, a crash on load/startup just about always means a missing master .esm file. Rebuilding the patch will definitely fix that problem.

[celebrity]

So just to clarify, as it stands now, AV works as intended when used with a new savegame. And if installed as such, dropping in new AV packages as they become available will be safe? or must everything remain constant?

[RaeAnne]

Just to make sure: if I run the package converter and it adds the skin folder to the folder structure that's all I have to do?

[des lynam]

Just to make sure: if I run the package converter and it adds the skin folder to the folder structure that's all I have to do?

I can say that that is what I did to convert Bellyache's and sounaipr's packages myself rather than redownload them, and it works fine. So yes, that should be all you need to do. I noticed that not every texture gets a skin folder, so it depends on the specific needs of each based on the new folder structure, I guess.

By the way, StarX, will you ever be uploading your packages anywhere else other than TESAlliance? I noticed that some of the AV package artists, including you, only offer their work through TESA right now, but many people won't bother making another account for downloading, so I just wondered if the works will be spread more broadly in the future. It might help AV as well as the artists.

[Neliel Kudoh]

I dunno if it's intended or not:

But you got to re-patch AV.esp every time you disable or enable a new/old mod.

Example: I downloaded the newest Warzone - Civil War mod. Set everything up as usual, and got CTD on startup. Then I disabled av.esp, and it worked. So I concluded I had to re-patch AV.esp, I mean it makes sense of course in hindsight. After a re-patch with the new mod, it works.

Well, I wouldn't use the word "intended" but yeah, that's definitely how it works. You need to rebuild AV to incorporate the new Warzone changes.
AV should be rebuilt every time you add a new mod that changes/adds NPCs or LLists. It's similar to Bashed patch where you usually rebuild whenever you add any/remove sizable mod.

Just be careful when adding/removing large mods on an existing savegame. With or without AV, it's dangerous territory for bugging out saves.

So just to clarify, as it stands now, AV works as intended when used with a new savegame. And if installed as such, dropping in new AV packages as they become available will be safe? or must everything remain constant?

AV does work as intended if you install on a fresh game.

As for adding/removing packages after that on the fly:
The new prepping system should make it safe, but it hasn't been tested extensively yet to say for 100% certainty.

Just to make sure: if I run the package converter and it adds the skin folder to the folder structure that's all I have to do?

Yup, it basically shoves everything you had down another folder level to "make room" for Variant Groups. It could easily be done by hand but the tool took me 5 minutes to make, so I just uploaded it rather than typing out detailed instructions.

[Umpyre Records]

@Lev: Yup, I figured that much. The tool is a great help!

I can say that that is what I did to convert Bellyache's and sounaipr's packages myself rather than redownload them, and it works fine. So yes, that should be all you need to do. I noticed that not every texture gets a skin folder, so it depends on the specific needs of each based on the new folder structure, I guess.

By the way, StarX, will you ever be uploading your packages anywhere else other than TESAlliance? I noticed that some of the AV package artists, including you, only offer their work through TESA right now, but many people won't bother making another account for downloading, so I just wondered if the works will be spread more broadly in the future. It might help AV as well as the artists.

Thanks!

There's a few reasons I'm just using TESA right now:
- AV is still in Alpha and not available anywhere else except for Lev's own download location. Can you imagine the crap flooding the comments section when I put this on Nexus?
- I always have trouble when uploading to Nexus, while TESA is a convenient place for me to upload to. I might try Nexus again in the future.
- Not wanting to sign up to TESA is really their loss, if they just want to stick to a one stop and shop place they might as well just use the Steam Workshop.

[Kelvin Diaz]

ok i got a problem installed AV and all the packages ran the av patcher and now most of my creatures are invisible whats going on?

[Chloe :)]

Thanks!

There's a few reasons I'm just using TESA right now:
- AV is still in Alpha and not available anywhere else except for Lev's own download location. Can you imagine the crap flooding the comments section when I put this on Nexus?
- I always have trouble when uploading to Nexus, while TESA is a convenient place for me to upload to. I might try Nexus again in the future.
- Not wanting to sign up to TESA is really their loss, if they just want to stick to a one stop and shop place they might as well just use the Steam Workshop.

Personally, I had a REALLY hard time getting access on TESA after signing up, I wasn't automatically even allowed to post or even LOOK at the help forum. The forum flat out refused to load and not even the HELP forum would load, or the help form. Tried 3 different browsers etc. All couldn't work. Had to get InsanitySorrow here to manually allow my new account that I hadn't even posted with o-0

If I wasn't deadset on using AV that time, I'd have given up after signing up for the 2nd account and the 2nd time trying 3 different browsers :[

[Sista Sila]

Personally, I had a REALLY hard time getting access on TESA after signing up, I wasn't automatically even allowed to post or even LOOK at the help forum. The forum flat out refused to load and not even the HELP forum would load, or the help form. Tried 3 different browsers etc. All couldn't work. Had to get InsanitySorrow here to manually allow my new account that I hadn't even posted with o-0

If I wasn't deadset on using AV that time, I'd have given up after signing up for the 2nd account and the 2nd time trying 3 different browsers :[

Just bad luck I guess. Happens sometimes to me on other forums as well, a hickup in the software or something like that. This doesn't mean that this happens all the time to every new member that signs up.

But I do admire your dedication to AV!

[Nuno Castro]

ok i got a problem installed AV and all the packages ran the av patcher and now most of my creatures are invisible whats going on?

I need some more details, maybe even a report. Could be a lot of things.
Did you start a new game? Did you install pre 1.3 packages with the wrong structure? Did the textures get properly moved out of AV Packages?

[Mrs. Patton]

i guess the problem is the pre 1.3 packages i will try again and see what happens

ok are all the packages listed in the first post valid as of av 1.3.1?

[Breanna Van Dijk]

i guess the problem is the pre 1.3 packages i will try again and see what happens

ok are all the packages listed in the first post valid as of av 1.3.1?

Mine are not and I don't think the others are either, except for Bellyaches packages. Will probably update my own packages tomorrow.

[Kelli Wolfe]

@shadowfx78

Yeah, things are in a transitional period atm. You can usehttp://www.mediafire.com/?t3qikbzck04jjdm to convert all your packages to the new setup. 8)

Let me know how it goes after that. If things still don't work, I would suggest just trying the new bellyaches and seeing if that works okay for you.

[Kayla Bee]

im gonna just try the new bellyaches and go from there thanks for the work. guys keep it up

[xemmybx]

Well, I already converted all my packages. But as it's very late now I'll upload the updated packages tomorrow.

[Amanda Furtado]

First, man do I love this mod. Yes I do.

Second, the sliders were an issue I ran into with a mod called Real Wildlife of Skyrim long before I had AV installed. There were compatibility issues with any other mod that changed animals. I have not seen them since I removed those mods and I am still using Real Wildlife with AV and no sliders. In my case the sliders seemed to be any creature (usually deer) that would not have been there as normal in the vanilla game.

Third, I have found an issue with AV, at least to the extent that this happens when AV is installed and it stops when it is uninstalled.
In Shroud Hearth Barrow, there encounters with Draugr that are in coffins that detact you and theatrically bash the tops off of there boxes and climb out to kill you. However something odd happens with AV installed.
As I approach the crypt I can see the Draugr who are supposed to be inside coffins. Instead they are standing motionless on top of them. They do not appear to be active. Once I am in "detect" range the coffin blasts open as though the Draugr were inside and exploding out - as they do with normal unmodded vanilla game. The Draugr atop the coffin gets shot into the air a little and then lands on the ground and attacks as normal.

This is a bug I can cause or fix literally by unchecking the ESP for AV.

As I said, this is one of my favorite mods. This is a game changer and I really think it could be one of the best ever. The lack of variety in the game is one of the most jarring negative elements, and I really hope you can get this mod running right.

[No Name]

Third, I have found an issue with AV, at least to the extent that this happens when AV is installed and it stops when it is uninstalled.
In Shroud Hearth Barrow, there encounters with Draugr that are in coffins that detact you and theatrically bash the tops off of there boxes and climb out to kill you. However something odd happens with AV installed.
As I approach the crypt I can see the Draugr who are supposed to be inside coffins. Instead they are standing motionless on top of them. They do not appear to be active. Once I am in "detect" range the coffin blasts open as though the Draugr were inside and exploding out - as they do with normal unmodded vanilla game. The Draugr atop the coffin gets shot into the air a little and then lands on the ground and attacks as normal.

This is a bug I can cause or fix literally by unchecking the ESP for AV.

As I said, this is one of my favorite mods. This is a game changer and I really think it could be one of the best ever. The lack of variety in the game is one of the most jarring negative elements, and I really hope you can get this mod running right.

This is a known issue... draugr packages won't work properly sometimes and they get some weird animations too. This is probably the same thing as the sliders/skaters. Are you using an existing save? If you are, you probably visited that location before installing AV. Because this problem never happened to me on a new game. Only on existing saves did this problem occur (and it's not limited to a specific location, any location with draugr will do).

[gandalf]

Actually, I was planning to patch, but I realized the current system can support blocking normal humanoids.

Open up "Files/Blocklist.txt" and make it look similar to this:

==ARMO BLOCKS==  //FormIDs000D64Skyrim.esm //SkinNaked069CE3Skyrim.esm //SkinNakedBeast==EDID BLOCKS==  //Strings case insensitiveAudioTemplate

This will block all normal humanoids from being prepped, as they use those two skins.
Rerun the patcher and the humanoids should be back to normal and un-prepped.
I need to rework the block system to be more streamlined sometime, but that should do the trick for now. 8)

I'll include that updated blocklist in the next patch.

Looking at the total list (7 - Prep and add Originals.txt) of prepped NPCs/Creatures w/o the normal humanoids present is actually pretty small. 8(
...or maybe I'm just used to my Oblivion FCOM/WAC dream. Someone needs to go model crazy and make some new baddies to fight! XD

I'm hoping the eventual texture + model + stat variant system will provide a really easy way to integrate "new but similar" creatures. Like my earlier example where a boar creature could be introduced "technically" as a deer variant by making a variant with a boar texture + model + name/stats + (maybe AI?) in its spec file, so it would almost be a boar in every aspect that mattered, and would automatically spawn in the same areas that deer would normally spawn without any CK tinkering. Same could go for introducing falmer pets or many other "new but similar" creatures that you wanted to spawn in the same places as an existing NPC... rather than trudging through the CK and adding your new creature to every LList in the game and releasing an .esp patch that would need to made compatible with other mods, etc, etc... *shudder*.
The AV route wouldn't work 100% of the time over the normal CK methods, but might be a nice route for certain new NPCs.

Hey, first of all, thank you for the great mod!
Now for the trouble shooting, using the above block list worked with Populate Cities, but only for the men, the randomly generated women npc keep a dark head. Probably need another code for female skin? Will try to find it myself with TeSVSnip... Meanwhile I solved the problem unchecking Populated Cities from load order before running AV patcher, hope it dosent bring concequences later.

[Blaine]

Heh, it's because the female templates actually have the fox race, and every female that USES that template sets the correct race themselves (nord, imperial, etc). But the template still gets bellyache's fox race variant dups.

The strange thing is the female NPCs that template to the template don't use traits, so i feel like it shouldn't be a problem? But apparently even if they aren't taking the traits, the NPC dup bug still occurs? It's an odd.. odd situation. XD

I might do some special hardcoding for the FoxRace to make it more exclusive, as it is the "default race" used by the CK when making new NPCs. If I cross-referenced users of the fox race and also checked if their EDIDs or Name actually had the word "Fox" in them, then it would reduce accidental variant duplications for things that just received the fox race "by default" but aren't actually foxes.

For now, it should be fairly safe/fine to just disable Pop Cities like you are.

EDIT:
I have a question. I've got my head buried in SkyProc like an ostrich and I've forgotten. Does the NPC facegen bug occur in mods not using SkyProc? Maybe it's just SkyProc duplicating the facegen data incorrectly? Or is it common across any mods that dup NPCs even in the CK?

[Josh Sabatini]

Just a quick heads up to let you know that all my packages have been updated so they can be used with the latest version of AV!

[George PUluse]

Quick update on my testing.

I added RWS (no food version) again to the currently working load order, including recreating all patches (Bashed, ASIS, AV). Guess what? Adding RWS back in caused freezing at the same place (i.e., on the way to Riverwood when Ralof and I meet the wolf pack). No SkyMoMod, just RWS was added. Either RWS has a problem (even though it didn't previously) or there is some interaction between it and AV, ASIS, or another mod (including possibly the Bashed Patch, of course). Like I said, the odd thing is that I had all four working earlier and the problem just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I'll just suffer without RWS now, though, as I really can't see trying to track down the possible interaction that's creating the problem. I'm posting about it just in case others see it in their games and think it is AV (it may be partly AV, but it isn't all AV, at least, and may not be AV at all... or ASIS, for that matter).

I am absolutely sick of the first hour or so of this game now!

There's a few reasons I'm just using TESA right now:
- AV is still in Alpha and not available anywhere else except for Lev's own download location. Can you imagine the crap flooding the comments section when I put this on Nexus?
- I always have trouble when uploading to Nexus, while TESA is a convenient place for me to upload to. I might try Nexus again in the future.
- Not wanting to sign up to TESA is really their loss, if they just want to stick to a one stop and shop place they might as well just use the Steam Workshop.

It's not about a "one stop shop" per se, but rather about not wanting any more accounts than absolutely necessary. I have too many already, and that is a common problem. I don't use Steam Workshop, either (I only used it for the Space Core mod just to have it and because there was no other way to get it, unfortunately). I do not have a Steam Forums account for the same reason (i.e., I do not need additional accounts to track and my base Steam account is all I need for game management).

People such as Bellyache offer their work through public download without needing an additional account to yet another site. You may want to consider this approach so that more people can use your work. You don't need to use Nexus. I never said that. I am merely pointing out that avoiding placing your work behind an account wall only helps you. It doesn't matter that AV is in alpha because it's right here, the official forums, and Beth has a couple hundred thousand users with access. More importantly, your work can't be used without AV (the AV packages are all I am asking about, of course) so any offering would be in the same group as Bellyache and sounaipr.

The real point is publically accessible versus not publically accessible. People cannot see and test your work if it is behind an account wall even if they want to do so.

It's your decision, of course. I just wondered.

[Isabella X]

@Riverwood freezing
I thought about it again, and the save that I use to test AV actually experiences a similar freeze/CTD when walking from the warrior/thief stones to Riverwood. I just assumed it was a bug because my save was from one of the first Skyrim release versions and I didn't feel like trudging through the intro to make a new one based on the newest skyrim updates. However, if you're experiencing similar freezes, then it may be something legit. I guess it didn't click with me earlier that you were talking about the same area. XD

So you're saying you get the freeze only when you use AV + RWS? I'll see if I can recreate the error sometime this week and investigate into what's causing it. 8) Might not even be related to AV at all, but it's worth investigating to find out for sure.

[Zualett]

@Riverwood freezing
I thought about it again, and the save that I use to test AV actually experiences a similar freeze/CTD when walking from the warrior/thief stones to Riverwood. I just assumed it was a bug because my save was from one of the first Skyrim release versions and I didn't feel like trudging through the intro to make a new one based on the newest skyrim updates. However, if you're experiencing similar freezes, then it may be something legit. I guess it didn't click with me earlier that you were talking about the same area. XD

So you're saying you get the freeze only when you use AV + RWS? I'll see if I can recreate the error sometime this week and investigate into what's causing it. 8) Might not even be related to AV at all, but it's worth investigating to find out for sure.

Yes, that's the exact area! It's nice to know that you have seen a similar issue. (or maybe )

However, I did not get that problem originally. It just suddenly started happening for no apparent reason, thus my days spent trying to solve it at least to the point where I could play again.

I cannot say that it is solely due to AV. The problem happened even when I deactivated AV (and ASIS, for that matter).

I can say that deactivating SkyMoMod and RWS fixed the problem. In fact, the game is running more smoothly now than ever. I did have a couple of freezes earlier today, but overall, the game is running better than before, and certainly had no problem in that area (although it didn't a week ago, either, so maybe that's not such a big point).

I thought that it might be some kind of interaction between AV (and/or ASIS) and RWS, though. Or perhaps pulling something from the Bashed Patch but the "something" was not quite right.

I didn't attempt to reactivate SkyMoMod to test it, either. I am tired of the first part of the game and I needed to get farther in order to do some work on my own mod. Mind you, when I test, I play from the very beginning every time (in this case, that is... not if I was adding the mod in the middle of a game, of course).

Another thing to note is that I play with the Personalized Music mod. However, I also tried deactivating it when I tested and the problem still happened. I only mention it because the music and transitions are smoother now without RWS, for whatever reason. It's noticeable, at least to me, even from a week ago when I was playing with all four creature mods.

It may just be one of those intermittent issues that can't really be tracked, but if you happen to look at it and find anything, please let me know. It certainly isn't because of your save being an early version, though. I'm sure of that, at least.

The major concern that I thought might be happening is if a mod, any mod, had some type of internal issue but the issue didn't usually appear. However, it occurred to me that AV and ASIS might interact with the mod and its issue in such a way that the problem suddenly becomes much more apparent due to propagation effects in the whole system.

PS:

Lev, about facegen... there is a new mod that I think is just starting, but it an attempt to make a facegen exchange feature for characters. Maybe the author of that could share some info on this problem?

[Taylor Tifany]

EDIT: I have a question. I've got my head buried in SkyProc like an ostrich and I've forgotten. Does the NPC facegen bug occur in mods not using SkyProc? Maybe it's just SkyProc duplicating the facegen data incorrectly? Or is it common across any mods that dup NPCs even in the CK?

I never used the skyrim CK myself, but I read everywhere how buggy it in regard to the gray npc heads, dont know if exactly dup NPC would cause the gray head bug, but the lack of meshes/textures exported does.

[Miguel]

Yeah, MoMod doesn't appear too play nice with certain mods. Momod's monster 'Guar' has funky AI when used with Skytest Predators; it does not attack you until you attack it. Also some of the textures get mixed up between the two mods when used with AV. I had a 'red wolf' with the new sea dragon texture from MoMod, it barked and everything!