This bug also affects any project trying to create new lands east or west of the current landmass of Tamriel!

Video of the bug: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qndePb5jEO4&feature=youtu.be



Anyone with a worldspace bigger in width than 4 quads, try adding an actor to the world outside the X cell coordinates - 64 to 64. For example at coordinates 70, 0. Then try to make it move (if you use a horse simply ride with it, if it's any other actor just get into combat with it).

If the same happens to you as happened to me and a friend of mine, you will notice that the actor starts bouncing through the ground weirdly, as if the terrain under him hadn't existed and then suddenly does exist. This doesn't seem to be a missing NavMesh problem, I added one and it still happened, and the problem never happens between X coordinates -64 and 64 even without NavMeshes. The bug doesn't happen to the player character, but it does to any other actor.

I tried it with both a TesAnnwyn worldspace and a small custom CK-created worldspace in the CK with coordinates far from the centre. It doesn't seem to matter. The Tamriel worldspace fits nicely between X cell coordinates -64 and 64, so hence the problem doesn't appear in the vanilla game.

Is there a sharp cut-off point outside those coordinates? Could you place an actor in one cell (within -64,64) that works fine and another in the cell next to it (-64,64) that doesn't?

Yes, it's exactly that transition. It goes from perfectly fine to horribly bugged by crossing that border.

I thought quads were 32x32 cells each?

-64, -64 to 63, 63 would be 16 quads wouldn't it?

It only affects the width, i.e. the X coordinate. From X == -64 to X == 64 it is fine, so that's an area of 128 cells in width. 128 cells / 32 == 4 quads.

The Y coordinate doesn't matter, you can have a worldspace from (-64, -256) to (64, 256) just fine. (That's a 4x16 worldspace.)

ah yep. Now I understand.

That's a really weird bug......it might be a new quirk of the engine, considering Skyrim doesn't go that far....

Removed comment as some people have become silly in their responses to it.

I don't think this is a CK issue, it's an engine bug. I can kinda live with all the CK bugs so far, because we have third party tools to circumvent them. This bug however, doesn't seem easily solvable.

The problem is that Bethesda have known for a long time there are large world mods in the making, they have had plenty of time to work on this. The best we can do is keep pushing for them to fix it asap. It isnt difficult to patch the game, which is easy in Steam. My god I never thought I would see Steam as some kind of benefit.

Note: I removed the previous comment as it just seemed to invite people to mess up the thread.

Ok, I have just tested this in -197,-89 and youre correct Maegfaer, the horse drops through the ground, as if collision trips in and out. The question is, is there a way around this? If not then the game is useless for Mesogea, Merp, Beyond Skyrim and a host of other large world mods.

Sounds like a game bug.....and considering the many game bugs existing I just do see them caring about this. And considering they don't go this far, they properly don't even know about it. Most likely it was casued by some programmer that wasn't thinking about the modding community when the code was made.


I guess this is a pretty big killer for you guys

I tested a lot and I think it's an engine issue, not related to ESM/ESP data. So I can't fix it.

The only alternative is to butcher your map in separate worldspaces of a width of 4 quads, each centred on 0,0 and make them share the same LOD (which you need to rename the coordinates for), and then script automatic worldspace transition when you reach a worldspace's border. It's an insane can of worms though, especially AI won't be able to handle that properly. Plus it's a [censored]load of work to make it work. Practically it's not a viable alternative, so much would break and not function correctly.


I am not sure, but perhaps the programmers of the community could fix this with a DLL injection, I don't know... It would probably take them very long to find the cause in the first place, I doubt anyone cares enough to help us out.

HAHAHA... The Creation Kit is free! However your right to be p***** off, I was planning on buying a gaming PC and getting Skyrim for it ( I am a console gamer ) but this mod kit seems to be the worst that has ever been released for The Elder Scrolls series. According to the users anyway. Broken worldspace generation, no way to import new animations, no way to create new skills etc...

Agreed, thats likely to be the case. Well its back to Oblivion for me. Skyrim has just been a waste of money and more trouble than its worth. We will just have to see if the developers do care about the community, or its just flannel.

No the point with the CK is that it is part and parcel of the game. It was advertised as being available but it is not fit for purpose. Of course I wont ask for or get my money back, but I guarantee if given a while, if this bug isnt fixed this will be my last TES purchase. I still hold out some hope though.,

Fun fact: It also happens when they stand on Static model collisions. So it's not isolated to the terrain collision. So yeah, definitely seems like collisions turn on/off or something. Perhaps it's Havok that's messing up, I don't know.

Strange that the player character doesn't seem to be affected though.

If you just want to whine, there are threads for that in the general forum. Skyrim's gameplay is deeper and the CK more powerful than Oblivion's by every measure.

I reckon I know what wrong. Somewhere in the code, the programmer has hard-coded in that max width for a worldspace, that it is much larger then they were ever going to use. The Y axis was done properly (reading from the worldspace's size) but the X axis hardcoded.

Its actually a really common programming mistake.....but considering 'fixing' it could open up lots more bugs, I dont see it happening unless Bethesda have to go out that far.

You paid for your CK?

Please stop that arguing, just ignore thekarithian if you don't agree with what he said. Don't turn this thread into a fight about what Bethesda owes us.

This thread is about the bug and to try to find a fix or a workaround, it's a far too important issue to big mod projects to let the thread go off-topic.

Thats a big help and a bit "I'm all right jack." My response is called, being annoyed, its a human trait and given that a lot of time and effort has been spent trying hard to get large worlds to work, I reckon there is much reason to be irritated. That said, moaning about it wont fix it.

As Maegfaer says, its interesting that the player character isnt affected. Is there a difference between player and other character/animal nifs? Do statics also leap around?

Could this be a nif issue? Seems quite odd that its coded into 64x64 cells, I would have thought it would be a generic thing, reacting with the ground.,

Hm no, it only seems to be actors excluding the player.

The only thing they have in common then is that they use pathfinding and AI packages...

it also happens with mounted horses, they don't use NavMeshes. So that's not it.

No idea why this only happens to actors excluding the player.

However when you mount the horse, it still falls through the ground, well leaps about actually, kicks out as if falling and suddenly finding its feet.

Does anyone have a clue about the difference between player and character nifs etc. The two horses I placed were not following any form of path grid, or moving at all. Both were dropping through the ground, then springing back up.

Oops thought I was editing the post above.

Yeah, when standing still they only fall through every 3-4 seconds or so.

Thinking back to Oblivion, I had this happen once in an esp. I had used a weapon mod, whenever I placed them in the worldspace they caused huge collision glitches with the player, as if every few seconds the game was cycling through check collision and causing the player to fall through the ground, then spring back up. I didnt have NPC's in the worldspace then, but no doubt the same would have happened.


EDIT:

Does this also happen if you merge the esp into the esm? I cant do that yet. Is the esp automatically dependent on the esm?