Also, I've done some testing and can confirm that, at the moment, ESM'ifying a mod isn't working the same way that it did in Fallout. Whether I simply changed the header with WryeSmash or made it 'bona fide' by converting in the way that JustinOther suggested, all of my mod's changes to the vanilla game were undone, including the navmesh. It seems that Skyrim.esm won't let another esm change anything that's already in game. JustinOther, I tested this by using your fixed esp of my mod and converting it; when I loaded into the game I attacked some guards and ran around my building, only to notice that the guards' pathing had reverted to default and they would simply run into the wall of the new building instead of following the mod's altered navmesh and going around. If you have a moment please test this yourself just to be sure.

Well this is really, really disheartening, and as another poster mentioned it kills the desire to even do anything like adding new content. This is even made more disheartening because it will be a huge surprise if it gets fixed by Bethesda. If it’s symptomatic of the same bugs that existed in FO3 and it wasn’t fixed between then and now, my guess is that it’s not going to be fixed by anyone but the community. I’m crossing my fingers that you geniuses will be able to come up with something and a clear cut procedure to work around this mess, lol.

But along those lines, I’d like to throw out a couple of scenarios and ask what to expect and how to make it work properly.

• Let’s say I wanted to add a new farmhouse out in the middle of an open area around Whiterun. The entire landscape area for the exterior model of the house is navmeshed, so it needs to be edited to allow for the new collision static of the house exterior. So I delete a couple of verts, move a couple around and add a few to allow for the new stuff. The navmesh around the new house looks nice and clean, and for this example, let’s assume it’s not at the edge of the border so no need to tie into another border etc.
  
• Let’s say I want to add some clutter to an existing interior like Proudspire Manor. There’s a couple of fake walls that can be removed to open up a little area to add some more storage and so forth. Also, I want to add a bed in the room that is supposed to get enabled for Jordis (but it never does actually get enabled) so I have to add a little section of new navmesh, as well as edit the vanilla navmesh for my new bed and some new containers in other spots. Again, I delete a few verts here and there, add some new ones and reposition some of the others to clean it all up.

What specifically do I need to do to make this work. With the GECK, it was simply open the .esp file in FO3edit or FNVedit, put a check mark in the .esm box, and rename the extension of the file from .esp to .esm. Is this still all that needs to be done? I’m also a little foggy on that Justin meant by giving the navmesh an Editor ID.

@Balok

The safest thing to do, as JustinOther said, would be to assign Editor IDs to all the existing navmeshes you intend to edit before editing them. You do this by opening the cell and finding the navmeshes in the Cell View; you right-click and Edit, then in the ID box you type "NAVM". The FormID is just to the right of the Editor ID in the Cell View window, you just have to expand it to see it. Once this is done, save the mod and then proceed to edit the navmesh. I don't think this completely eliminates the navmesh bug, but it seems lessen it. It can get technical so JustinOther can probably give a better explanation.

As for converting to ESM, you should test that yourself; I have personally noticed that it doesn't take into account ANY of my changes, including any changes to the existing navmesh. You could always do your edits, convert to esm, and then test with a follower and see if they react appropriately. For example, to test your new farmhouse I would toggle godmode on, attack a guard, then try and get the guards to follow you around the farmhouse. If they just try and run through it to get to you, that's how you know your navmesh didn't take effect in ESM format. Then test it again in ESP format and see if they follow your navmesh. They probably will in ESP format, and that's good, but the bug still exists in that if you load up the cell with your farmhouse, then load two other cells and return to the edited cell, the AI pathing will likely bug out.

Overrides from within an ESM do work. If what you're referring to is the stuff you wanted gone, marking it "Initially Disabled" isn't enough, that's why it's still showing up. If it's in your save as enabled, it'll be enabled still and only when starting a new game will that flag alone cut it. Marking stuff as "Deleted" is to be avoided as well, so you're best off doing as *Edit does and setting the enable state of stuff you want gone to opposite of PlayerREF, then shove it way under the ground somewhere or set its scale to 0 so you don't have to see it in the editor. You could also use Ctrl+F to replace an item you want gone with something else.

I'm going through your plugin and will set it up as an ESM and as an ESP, but with the stuff removed set up as described above. From there, we can test the overrides to placed stuff and the NavMeshes with both variants and see what happens, for science.

Also, last time around I didn't re-finalize all the NavMeshes as I was under an erroneous impression most of them were 'dirty'. This round, I'll be sure to dot every 'i' and cross every 't'.

Got it, thanks. That’s what I thought he was talking about, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned is don’t assume you know what someone is referring to unless you know for sure! That’s a simple enough thing to do though so that’s good. But theoretically speaking, what if someone else edits the same navmesh and gives it a different ID? Would load order then take precedence?

Conflicting EditorIDs won't do any harm, but it makes sense to just give them their FormID as their EditorID since it will always be unique. Just like any other record save NAVI, the last loaded iteration of a form is the only one the engine reads, so the last loaded plugin takes precedence just like Oblivion's path grids.

i haven't been able to replicate this navmesh bug in my level. i've loaded the level, walked around. left the level, travelled to another city then came back and the NPCs are still walking around normally. what causes it?

i'm using only esp's at the moment

nevermind, i spoke too soon. after travelling to many cities and coming back later, the navmesh bug happened. ugh

This is exactly my current issue as well. I sure hope this gets sorted out by beth.

Here's a question... What happens if you "fus ro da" an NPC suffering from the Navmesh bug? Does he get up and start moving around again, or get up and just stand there?

lol

I think they stand there

I was thinking that we know the navmesh bug does not carry over from one session to another, so when the game is restarted, roaming NPCs start to follow the navmesh again.

So I had a thought that if somehow the NPCs were made to somehow reorient themselves, that they might start following the navmesh again. So I was wondering if anyone did something like hitting one with a fus ro da, which would force them out of their bug-induced daze and make them reorient themselves might result in a solution.

Also, if you go into the console, select one of these NPC and disable them, what happens when they are reinabled?

I guess what I am trying to determine is whether or not the behavior caused by the navmesh bug is on the NPC-side or the Navmesh side. If it is on the NPC side, then somehow resetting their awareness of the navmesh might cause them to start behaving correctly again. If it is on the navmesh side, perhaps if the navmesh were to somehow experience a forced reset, would it cause the NPCs to start wandering around again?

it seems like the navmesh itself disappears entirely when the bug happens

Can the navmesh, as an object, be somehow referenced by a script? If so, could it be made to disable and enable whenever the gametime minutes tick up by one? Whe know it isn't deleting itself, because restarting the game and reloading reactivates it. So if it can somehow be reset within the game, maybe it will fix itself. The NPCs by default search for a navmesh, correct? That to me suggests that if it suddenly turned itself back on (assuming it somehow turns itself off) they should start following it.

I loaded up the CK and looked at a navmesh. If you click Edit, there is a checkbox for Initially disabled.

If it can start disabled initially, then something can trigger it being enabled.

you could do so in geck (DisableNavmesh / EnableNavmesh) and worked fine there (only used it on rather small nm's though), so should be quite the same in ck.
you'd have to give the navmesh a name first though (via cell view / edit), and it was _not_ a reference. (so you couldn't like Navmeshname.disable)

on the same instances i used navmesh disabling as above, i didn't get the impression this worked. (meaning, with initially disabled, an npc on it didn't behave like it was disabled, but did when i disabled it via script instead). doesn't necessarily mean it really doesn't work of course, just that i obviously couldn't get it to do so

Quick question on ESMifying a mod. If I did it a way that was not a false flag... instead with a 3rd party program, would the SW still turn it back into an ESP or keep it an ESM?

It would still turn it back.

I hate to think how many inexperienced modders are out there right now cranking out player homes etc...this absolutely ruins the possibility for 50% of mods most people would have been expecting to do.

They should be glad folks like me took the bullet for them then You should see the flack I'm getting for "breaking peoples games" because of this stupid bug.

Heh, as I said I hate to think. I assume the majority of those modding, and not coming on these forums (ie those treating the CK as a product that works, not a tool to be learnt) will be totally clueless as to what's going on. Anyone reading http://www.creationkit.com/Navmesh would be none the wiser.

What was the solution in Fallout3?

Why has nobody updated the Wiki with a warning about this error?

Would someone be willing to do a video tutorial demonstrating how to get one's navmeshes working? If you can't do a video, please type a detailed step-by-step explanation. Post it in a new thread and I will link it from my tutorials thread at the top of the forum.

Thanks.

I have posted this statement in both my video tutorial thread and on the Video Tutorial page on the Wiki:


At the very least, those visiting these resources will be made aware of the problem.