Gamebreaking bug for worldspaces bigger than 4 quads in widt : V - Skyrim

» Tue Jun 19, 2012 2:14 am

I absolutely agree - everyone is affected by navmesh: it must be fixed. But the worldspace bug will still cripple everyone who will still be modding large worldspaces long after all the excitement has died down and the devs have all been firmly directed away from post-launch support.

This is hardly surprising, the Devs never fix much post launch.

For example, the Oblivion CS had 1 update, and that was to support Shivering Isles. That one update fixed a couple of things and removed the lip sync tool. Thats it, it wasn't until shadeMe made his CS update that the tools got finally bugfree.

I was hoping the beta test before launch was going to catch more bugs, but I think part of the problem was the testing group was mainly from Oblivion modding, so they didn't know about GECK problems to test for, and they didn't have the time to make worldspaces.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:49 pm

Actually there were plenty of folks in the beta that were deeply familiar with the GECK. The fact that Oblivion modders were also present just means they were thinking about having a broad enough sample of experience.

You are right though, as far as I know, those of us who only modded up through Oblivion had no idea what GECK issues to look out for.

The navmesh bug surfaced immediately for me in my testing, but I had no idea what I was dealing with until after the beta period had ended. Especially since it appeared to resolve itself one day after I refinalized all my cells. The wildcard there was that in testing I hadn't left the area and come back. So I never connected the behavior until after launch and saw it described in gory detail.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:27 pm

Actually there were plenty of folks in the beta that were deeply familiar with the GECK. The fact that Oblivion modders were also present just means they were thinking about having a broad enough sample of experience.

You are right though, as far as I know, those of us who only modded up through Oblivion had no idea what GECK issues to look out for.

The navmesh bug surfaced immediately for me in my testing, but I had no idea what I was dealing with until after the beta period had ended. Especially since it appeared to resolve itself one day after I refinalized all my cells. The wildcard there was that in testing I hadn't left the area and come back. So I never connected the behavior until after launch and saw it described in gory detail.

I know what you mean. I used the GECK for quite a bit, just didn't release much, and I never noticed this issue. if it had happened to me I wouldn't have known it was a recurring problem either.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:26 pm

I was hoping the beta test before launch was going to catch more bugs, but I think part of the problem was the testing group was mainly from Oblivion modding, so they didn't know about GECK problems to test for, and they didn't have the time to make worldspaces.

Not to criticize any of the testers (I'm grateful for their contributions) but testing LOD for custom worldspaces could have been done in an hour or two, so it's unfortunate that it wasn't tested. The process is almost identical to the process used for the GECK, but a heck of a lot faster and more user-friendly (if it worked). It took me all of 20 minutes to figure out that neither the LOD object mesh texture atlas or the LOD tree processes had been fixed. Both of those problems existed in the GECK. LOD trees haven't worked properly since at least Oblivion. They need at least one person working on custom world spaces testing. It's kind of a big deal as far as modding goes.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:37 pm

Is everyone else starting to feel like demanding their money back. The CK is the worst crud I have used in ages. Bugs galore.

How would that work? We didn't pay for the CK. We paid for Skyrim.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:37 pm

As much as I know this bug severely hamstrings you guys in what you're doing, you have an acceptable workaround.

The one bug that, IMO, is far more insidious and has NO ACCEPTABLE WORKAROUND, affects you guys just as much, perhaps more, than the specific issue. Navmeshes. Even if all the noise yo make gets someone's attention on the dev team and they fix it, you guys need to navmesh all of your new material and once you realize how insidious THAT bug is, all of your efforts will have been entirely wasted.

None of your outdoor cells would work. None of your interiors. None of your caves, dungeons, and other stuff. Nothing. Converting your file into an ESM will not work to correct it. The game will simply ignore the changes instead and all your connective tissue between vanilla Tamriel and the expanded areas will be non-functional at the connection points.

So while I get the fact that you guys want this -64 thing fixed, it really would be of far greater benefit to everyone to concentrate the attention on the bug that affects the entire community across the board.

There is no good reason why we cannot ask Bethesda to fix both so we need to combine our efforts rather than divide into two camps. Without Navmesh, no large worldspaces, without large worldspaces Navmesh potential and usefulness is much, much less.

So with one voice we should be pushing for a patch:

Please fix

Worldspace bug, navmeshes, LOD generation.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:51 pm

and any other new land space you can think of. Cant.

You can do Westeros! (from A song of ice and fire)

Edit: ok, joking aside, it looks to me that there are some serious issues with CK/engine. Even if province modders use different worldspaces, how will they generate lod?
I support your actions on notifying staff/devs about the problems and I hope that they will take it into accout.

And also...

Spoiler

By no means I don't intend to 'feed the trolls' by replying those that comment Karithian's statement about the money refund, but I have to say to them that EU has 10 basic principles of customer protection and among them:
- if it doesn't work, send it back
- customer should not be misled
- sometimes customers can change their minds
So quit attacking Karithian.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:32 pm

Bump:

Bethesda, serious mod crippling bugs that we are asking be fixed by patching the game/CK

1. Worldspace havok/collision beyond -64 and +64 east/west on game area is wrecked and no cells beyond these are useable.
2. Navmesh is seriously bugged and unuseable.
3. LOD creation is broken and cannot be used.

Combined, or each on its own these are complete worldspace mod breakling and for major projects render game and CK useless.

» Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:28 am

Number 3 we can avoid though, I'm sure we'll eventually have third party applications that will generate object and tree lod as well.

I would really love to get some confirmation that this collision bouncing bug is at least seen by the devs... Right now for all we know they haven't even heard about it.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:20 pm

Well the Devs posted they are fixing the navmesh issue.....hopefully they've also taken stock of this thread.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:30 pm

Well the Devs posted they are fixing the navmesh issue.....hopefully they've also taken stock of this thread.

This may be our one and only opportunity of getting this fixed. They have said they are fixing the nav,esh but there is no word on the collision bouncing bug, we need to make absolutely sure they are aware. Anyone got any ideas of how to make sure they know?

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:17 pm

I tried to PM one of the Devs, and had a look through his profile at the topics he has commented on, ours is not one of them. Sorry folks, at a loss here.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:27 pm

The real worry is that this mod-killer isn't even on their radar.

We could try expanding the twitter campaign to @Bethblog as well as @BGS_Dev - anyone who is affected needs to tweet #SkyrimWorldspaceBug to these accounts - it does look like they read them and respond.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:01 pm

The real worry is that this mod-killer isn't even on their radar.

We could try expanding the twitter campaign to @Bethblog as well as @BGS_Dev - anyone who is affected needs to tweet #SkyrimWorldspaceBug to these accounts - it does look like they read them and respond.

the big thing is, people won't recognise this problem....until in several years time when people start asking 'whatever happened to MERP and Mesogea?

To which the answer will be, Bethesda never bothered to patch a bug and they couldn't happen......it effects so few modders, but it will end up denying so many mod users of the big world mods.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:58 pm

I always wondered why Fallout 3 had a lack of decent quest mods or large land add-ons. I just figured Fallout 3 modding community just liked ridable gatling-gun motorcycles, spaceships and teh sixx0r mods. These bugs put it in a whole new perspective.

Once the devs are done with the navmesh bugfix, the 4-quad world collision thingie really should be a high priority.
We don't want Skyrim's mod scene to look the same way as Fallout 3's in 4 years. I can only stand so many wieldable lightsaber and MJOLNIR Powered Armor mods! Maybe an Anime maid suit or two is okay, but I digress... :whistling:

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:54 pm

Just done to Bethblog and BGS_devs

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:22 pm

Try DCDeacon too he does read twitter posts

» Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:43 am

I always wondered why Fallout 3 had a lack of decent quest mods or large land add-ons. I just figured Fallout 3 modding community just liked ridable gatling-gun motorcycles, spaceships and teh sixx0r mods. These bugs put it in a whole new perspective.

That they do. Did Fallout have this worldspace bug too?

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:26 pm

That they do. Did Fallout have this worldspace bug too?

Hmm... Not really sure, I had just about the navmesh one in GECK. I don't know if the worldspace bug was in GECK as well, I just don't remember ever seeing any large add-on mods, except for some flying fortresses and mansions/bases, etc.

Sorry to give the wrong impression. I was just trying to convey that with severely flawed tools, most people who want to create quality works aren't even going to bother and just move on to something else. For example, I had several mod projects I ended up shelving or abandoning due to either not having animations/resources (Morrowind) or having the heightmap errors when trying to edit large areas (Oblivion CS) or having the editor crash regularly (both MW&OB CS).

I am glad they seem to be more proactive about fixing things this time around.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 12:20 pm

The heightmap in Oblivion could be ridiculously tetchy and needed a merge to master and convert to master throughout to make a large landmass. However we never had this collision issue in Oblivion. its entirely unique to Skyrim. There are third party tools that can make the heightmap (take a bit of learning but theyre ok) and also to produce LOD, so we can work around those. The collision issue looks to be game related though, rather than the CK (we think) just fingers crossed that we get it fixed.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 12:34 pm

The fact is, we can make external tools to get around the LOD generation, heightmap importing etc....but we cannot get around a bug in the actual game.

I don't care if they leave the rest a buggy mess, the most important thing to do is fix the big worldspace bug as we cannot get around it.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:12 pm

The fact is, we can make external tools to get around the LOD generation, heightmap importing etc....but we cannot get around a bug in the actual game.

I don't care if they leave the rest a buggy mess, the most important thing to do is fix the big worldspace bug as we cannot get around it.

This. It's great that the NavMesh issue is being fixed, it proofs that if we make a loud enough noise they'll hear us. In my opinion after the NavMesh bug this is the worst bug in the game, so it's number 1 now.

@BGS_Devs: Cells beyond -64

Shouldn't -64x>64? I'm not great at math, but x is bugged cell here and it only happens when x is smaller than -64 or greater than 64. Right?

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:02 pm

I think you're right. Hopefully Bethesda will address the issue anyway, but we just need to keep it topical.

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:46 pm

MERP is going to get a new Skyrim ModDB page very soon... We could add that call for a twitter message on the main page. On the other hand, whenever we post an update we get like 12000 views on a day, so I'm somewhat afraid it would become more like a ddos attack in the form of twitter messages, which might actually have the opposite effect? I don't think they'd appreciate mass bombardment.

I am sure you are right. Here's hoping they will see it in the spirit it was concieved.
I am not a modder myself, but have been very excited about the idea of MERP in Skyrim, and I am actually feeling slightly depressed at the thought of a (seemingly small) bug like this twarting the effort (not to mention aspirations) of thousands of modders and players who like me would love to be able to enter Middle Earth with the Skyrim engine.

Bump (with hopes of a response from Bethesda soon).

» Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:44 pm

I agree. make loud noise for every nasty bug you see. Skyrim must have a long life, and if plagued by bugs this won't be possible. Bethesda, don't do like Oblivion that you left us in the cold with atstounding bugs (like landmasses disappearing...)