So, I've been making this overhaul mod. Today I went back in to test something else I made, and the game no longer loads. It does this weird thing where it blinks in and out of the game, and won't load anything. It's like I'm getting .2 FPS or something.
Somehow I broke my game...
How is that even possible?

(NOTE: Tested by using ctest, not a dirty save.

Uninstall and reinstall both skyrim and the CK...that should restore anything you may have accidentally messed up vanilla wise...be sure to make copies of your custom scripts first of course.

Il Ducey,

I've also had this happen in my mod making as well. What cleans it up for me is going back to a save PRIOR to when my mod was present. I won't get all scientific here, but essentially my mod is handled through over 10.000 lines of script, some for questing, some for spells, some for aliases and other things. Inevitibly I add and/or remove properties during my testing, change out major parts of functions, etc,. and eventually you end up with all manner of function states still active in your gamesave and on load....I think....they start to conflict. you might notice, if you turn on debug logging, that you have HUGE debug log file growth full of references to these remnants.

Cleaning your save might help a little, but ultimately going back to a save prior to the mod is a better solution.

I have been able to work around the issue a little, and I don't recommend doing this, by alt-tabing out of the game as soon as the tell tale sign starts while it loads. Then alt tab back. Quiet honestly though, I think it's a sign that it's time for a clean save after all those changes.

My .02. I'm no genius scripter.

-MM

You can usually "Cleanse" a save by just loading the save with the mod uninstalled, doing some stuff (Run through a vanilla quest or two) to make sure any scripts that might still be running have had a chance to stop, then making a brand new save. That save should be pretty much clean.

lol....tell that to my old Dynavision 1.3 version save game file now that dynavision isn't installed. For the most part, from a user experience that'll suffice and I agree. but for a modder, I can't even debug from that save file any longer because of the number of stack dumps that repeatedly occur in it push it over 23 megs in less than 2 minutes.

-MM

At this point my Skyrim won't even launch to the main menu. I think it's time to save my custom scripts and start over. One thing I'll try first is deleting all of the scripts I accidentally exported from DialogueFollowerScript. I have a feeling that is playing a major role here.

Well if you can't even get the main menu, it's probably not the mod, but a serious corruption of the vanilla game files. If you can't get into the game with all mods disabled, yeah, it's time for uninstall skyrim/reinstall skyrim after saving your mod files in a separate folder, and then do the same with the CK.

Lesson: Don't futz with vanilla scripts.
Going to go play some EDH on Lackey. Name is ducey if anyone cares to join.

This sounds similar to something that happened to me the other day. I went to launch skyrim from steam i.e. clicked play in the steam library. The skyrim launch menu opened up (the one with data files and graphics options and what not) and I clicked play there as well. The menu closed and then...immediately reopened. I did this same process for about 5 minutes, getting the exact same result each time and then finally turned to google as I had a sneaking suspicion that steam had failed me once again.
Apparently steam had auto updated, either itself, or just skyrim, or both. During that update the TESV.exe file (the one responsible for running the game) from my skyrim folder was somehow lost, deleted, disappeared, whatevs.
I fixed it by:
right click skyrim in the steam library list > select "properties" > in this window click the "local files" tab > click "verify integrity of game cache" > wait for a few minutes while it does its thing

Already uninstalled. Will remember for the future.