So what could be causing Skyrim.esm to overwrite the exterior cell changes I've made in the Tamriel worldspace in my own esm? I have WryeSmash sorted by load order (Skyrim.esm is 00, my mod esm is 01).

Its not that its overwriting, more like erasing when you move two cells away and not replacing them when you enter the cell again. For example, in my house mod Skyrim.esm is not overwriting anything in my house.

That's my interpretation anyway.

Again, guys, Gamebryo is not the game engine, it's the middleware they built it off. So, in technical terms, the engine is brand new, and they didn't lie to us. Now, yes it is based off the same thing and has a lot of the same issues and systems, but a lot of it is brand new as well. Did you guys miss how they essentially redid the scripting, music, some of the weather/regional stuff, animation, NPC/Ai handling, quest handling, and much of the dialogue systems from the ground up?

But yeah, if you ignore the huge amount of brand new/redid stuff, it's the exact same, isn't it?

All I know is that the issue wasn't in Oblivion with its pathgrids, so whatever engine that used worked fine. Fallout 3 and on had the NavMesh issue.

It could be also the ESP file creation itself that's the issue since the NavMesh is not Broken with ESMs.

Well yeah, because you made a new interior cell. If I load a clean save with my mod in ESP format, everything is good except for the navmesh bug. If I load it in ESM format, all the vanilla objects in the exterior cells (of the Tamriel worldspace, which I edited) go back to their default positioning, etc. My new interior cells are not overwritten in either ESP or ESM format (since those cells are new additions and not edits of the existing world).

there's _no_need_ to actually _convert_ it to esm. you just need to set the esm flag (in the file header) to make navmesh bug disappear. no further conversion whatsoever needed, no effects to any changed items because it's still an esp, the game just thinks it's not.
there's a skyedit out meanwhile (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:SkyEdit), you can easily do this there (fnvedit also works but needs some tricks to do so)

Only thing is you have to watch out for what you put in the ESM, sometimes things don't work that well.

You can't upload bona-fide ESM files to SW though. They get renamed in transit and come out the other end as ESP files, probably still false-flagged, but useless if you also have an ESP that's expecting Filename.esm to be there.

Hence why Bethesda needs to fix the ESP file NavMesh bug. And as I said before... things don't always work well if you just turn your file into an esm.

The end user could do the conversion, but that's a pain in the you know what. A big part about the SW and distributing mods in general is to keep it easy and simple and unfortunately bugs are getting in the way of that. That's what needs fixing, I don't make big fancy plugins, but even house mods... small caves... and more can be broken by this bug. The issue is is bugs like this smell bad and they drive people away.

I think we should be asking for fixes versus workarounds.

Link to plugin? I'll have a look in FO3Edit.

Yes, getting it fixed is the goal here. But until that happens, we need to do something or the mod consuming public is going to blame *US* for these issues and not the game and/or CK for them.

I don't do exceptionally complex mods either. Open Cities, an alt-start mod, some villages later. Maybe a quest mod or two. The problem is, the type of modding I like to do necessitates the use of navmeshes.

Arthmoor, have you switched to ESM in order to make your mods' navmesh work properly? If so, I'm guessing you haven't experienced the reappearing vanilla objects? It seems like this apparent load order issue is only with my mod, but I just can't figure it out. What would cause an ESMified ESP to have its exterior cell edits in the Tamriel worldspace undone only while in ESM format?

I haven't switched to an ESM. I also haven't tried to see what happens when an ESM edits vanilla stuff. That wasn't something you could do with Oblivion without breaking the game.

If I had to guess, the false-flagged file doesn't have any ONAM records to list what it's overriding, so the game is saying it overrides nothing and blocks the changes. Someone more familiar with this would need to chime in.

As i am working on a series of new dungeons, i'm also very interested that these bugs get fixed soon.

Would be very nice if a staff member from Bethesda reads this topic, he/she could leave a message here, if the navmesh bug and the fact that it is impossible to upload .esm-files to SW are already on their buglist and we can await a patch for these problems in a near future or not. Or if the team needs further info on these bugs, i am sure, many people will try to help and will deliver needed data.

This is crazy! It is going to affect every single house and town mod, quest mod etc etc,... I miss pathgrids. *sigh*

Surely Beth will fix this issue, otherwise their fricken editor is not very useable except to add in the odd new weapon. Already you have to jump through hoops to do the simplest things you could do in the CS, this just breaks it entirely.

Bump. Hopefully we can get Bethesda to respond

I'd have to agree with you there, it would be at least nice for a Bethesda employee to knowledge this bug exists and maybe even say why or issue a fix

Hmmm...so what to do?

So far it seems that individuals have asked Bethesda for a fix and have seemingly been ignored. I believe that a larger group asking will result in a response. I don't think that we should be looking for work arounds until we get a firm response from Bethesda saying that they will not or cannot fix it. Seriously, we need to band together and at the least get an answer.

This is a major issue that will seriously affect our ability to mod and I am sure that Bethesda is very interested in ensuring that the CK is useable. They have certainly demonstrated and gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the CK was bug tested and ensuring it's smooth distribution and as much help for Steam mod user/uploaders as possible. So perhaps the NavMesh bug reports just didn't reach the right ears....

Has anyone pm'd Gstaff this video and alerted him to this thread? As commmunity manager he seems the logical one to pm and may be able to find why all reports have seemingly fallen on deaf ears and also if and when this bug will be fixed.

I'll do that, he could at least pass on the word to the devs, I'll PM him this entire thread since there is already a discussion on it.

EDIT, I gave Gstaff a PM, I hope he directs this thread and Gisk's vid at the appropriate person. Skyrim has so much potential and this bug honestly kills it.

I'm officially discouraged from modding..

Don't give up just yet. We may get an answer and a fix.

So I sent JustinOther the esp of my mod so he could try and figure out how the navmesh bug was effecting the pathing issues. Basically, I had modified the existing navmesh of some exterior cells in Ivarstead, but by doing so it somehow messed up the existing navmesh and became seriously glitched.

If I'm understanding correctly, it's necessary to assign Editor IDs to existing exterior cell navmeshes (vanilla navmeshes) to prevent the game from completely replacing them (still don't understand this fully). So JustinOther went through my esp's navmeshes and cleaned up a bit; when I loaded into the game afterwards the navmesh bugs that I had previously witnessed were gone, as far as I could tell. This is what he said he did:

"I removed the deletes, then changed the FormID's of the replacements to match the originals and rebuilt NAVI as it needed to be entirely rebuilt."

I'm a little fuzzy on what this means exactly though... JustinOther, just to confirm, did you remove the triangles that I had deleted? And then somehow changed the new triangles that I made so that the game would recognize them as the defaults? That seems like very tedious work... finding the FormIDs of the originals and then injecting them into mine? And once that was done, how did you rebuild the NAVI? Just set the 'ignore' flag in the Details section?

I didn't touch any individual tris, only the NAVM forms and NAVI.

http://i.imgur.com/nVIQU.png | http://i.imgur.com/IRgjP.png

*is a very visual sort* Hope that better explains it?

Oh, albeit the two pointed to as not being deleted over having EditorIDs didn't, in fact, have them initially, there were other cells with no replacement NAVMs whose NAVMs were given EditorIDs. That is, none if the ones you assigned EDIDs were inadvertently replaced.

My current project involves editing interiors to match their buildings, and thus will entail editing of vanilla nav meshes.

I have no idea how navmeshes work (last time I modded was Oblivion), but do we now have a 'best practice' workaround? What will break if I set the flag to esm? (aside from Steam Workshop, which I don't intend to use anyway)

Be absolutely certain that, before you touch a Skyrim.ESM NavMesh with a 10' pole, that you assign it an EditorID so it won't get replaced. For Skyrim, at least, it might not be necessary to ESM'ify.