Hey modders!

Ive been working on a mod for some time now and I ran into a strange problem.

The mod works perfectly, does not collide with anything and everything works as intended BUT since I stepped over some magic line my older savegames will always crash on load.

I thought I could pinpoint it to some specific reference so I snipped my newest cell and it worked again. Then I snipped the new cell back in and deleted half of the content. It still worked. When I added some more random statics the game crashed again.

I completed building the new cell staying under the limit to make it crash. However, whatever I add now will make the savegame crash, no matter if I use a new cell and fill it with barrels and plants or add something to an older cell. It seems to be about the amount of data only. Sad thing about it is that the mod isnt completed yet.

Coc'ing from the mainmenu works though, some other savegames too.


Does anyone have the slightest idea of what is going on?

Thats actually a good question...

Since the 1.5 patch my game has bene crashing on startup when it reaches the menu, the weird thing is it seems to be random.

I tried unchecking some mods including my mod which laters a GREAT deal of the game items which seems to help but again the crash is random.

It may be the new patch or an required update but I just hope it can be fixed.

I shouldn't think so.

Although for Oblivion, the formats are similar, and my Immersive Interiors is almost 9MB in size there in just the ESP file. I imagine the official DLC ESM files will be much larger.

Does the mod still crash if you convert it to an ESM? Or false flag it?

Converting to an ESM didnt help.

Does no one at least have an explanation?

That's a known issue. The current beta fixes that issue. 1.5 broke something that causes crashing with many mods. Once the new patch it out it wont occur anymore.

The Steam workshop has a limit of 1024mb (1gb) in total mod size, but other than that there is no technical limit to size. Look at it, Skyrim is basically a 10 gig mod, so other mods would have to be able to be that size as well.

Hope this dude is right for the sake of my sanity...

Of course there are limitations, there are limitations on every sub-system of the game. Rendering, sound, scripts, etc., everything has limits, and before you ask what those are, I don't know.
Well with one exception, only 4 shadow casting lights can rendered per frame, which was said in the lighting tutorial.

Now, without knowing more about your mod or the mod itself, I doubt we can be of much help. Though, I don't know much about level design so I'll probably won't be of much help regardless.

I don't understand this. As far as I know (And I'm by no means an expert) modern video cards can render up to 8 shadow casting lights per frame without taxing the card more at all. So, why in Skyrim, is it 4? Is that the limit on the console graphics? If so, why don't they make it 8 for PC so us modders can have more shadowy levels?

This is not limitation by your GPU but by the game itself, although I believe it is an INI-settings, so basically a changeable soft limit.

It's pretty clear that technically Skyrim though beautiful is not on par with other modern games, visually. Not too surprising, it's an old codebase and utilizing modern features might require extensive code changes, which typically for AAA games takes years.

1.5 was doing this to me until I deleted my INI and let it re-create it.

Well something like more than 4 shadow lights will result in flickering shadows. I experienced this once in the beginning, without having knowledge of this problem. Bad references can result in "dirty saves" easily solved by snipping the reference which corrupts the file. I had this as well.

But the problem now seems to be of a different nature. As I pointed out, the step from breaking the savegame to making the savegame work was by adding/removing static objects, or any objects in the cell.
I made different test runs with different kinds of objects but in the end it seemed to be exclusively about the amount of added data. It didnt even matter if this was in a new cell or in a cell which already existed!

The mod is rather extensive adding numerous interior cells, but I wouldnt assume that there could be any limit for adding new cells. (however, I got the impression that there has to be some kind of threshold value)

Strange though that only "some" savegames broke so I seriously wonder what the variable is which determins the crash.

That being said I fear that once published the mod is more likely to crash for subscribers than running smoothly. I really hope this is fixable and the fault of Bathesdas flawed patch.