[LE] Custom Cell provoking save bug among other issue

[turielo]

Hi everyone!

I'm working on a quite massive mod adding places and quests among other things, and I am curently facing an odd issue when creating custom cells.

 

First, I'm working in Skyrim Special Edition, and have only a few mods installed: USSEP, FNIS SE Behavior, SkyUI SE. I'm using the CK64Fixes mod for working into the CK, and load my game with SKSE. My mod has no other master files than Skyrim and its DLCs. No other mod is installed.

 

Simply put, when I load the game and load a save where I am in one of my custom cells, the game put the message box "Mods are currenly loaded, achievments will be disable, etc...", and I've noticed that other minor issues can occur.

Now to begin with, I always test my mod work by loading a clean save (saved without any mod, 100% vanilla) and proceed. I get this message when loading from the main menu, which is normal as this save doesn't have mods on it.

I have currently quite a lot of custom cells and when I load a save in them I never had this message again (which, again, is normal as the mods are loaded where at the time I saved in those cells).

 

The problem here concerns the most recent of my custom cells. It happens only when the save loaded is in those specific cells. If I load another save where I am in one of my oldest cells or in vanilla cells, I don't have this message or other bugs, everything loads normaly.

It happened before, and I've noticed that I didn't put an NorthMarker in the cell. Same thing, when I loaded a save with my mod enable, the message saying "mods are enabled,etc..." always showed up, and only in that cell. I've then created an brand new cell, copied/paste the static elements from the "bugged" one, redone the Navmesh, and put a NorthMarker in it. This seemed to fix the issue, and I hadn't any problem after that.

 

Of course for the custom cells where I experience this issue again, I've checked everything is okay, including NorthMarker, Navmesh, Location, no RefID from another cell, etc... There are just "blank" cells, as I didn't put anything on it that you can activate, no actors, no activators, no scripted elements. Just the static environnements, lights, doors and a few FX like mists.

 

About the cells:

The first two custom cells concerned are located in Solitude, next to the Woodchopper Mill. This is a Sanatorium I'm making, consisting of a main building, and a cave. The exterior uses the same buildings as the Thalmor Embassy, and a cave entrance. The inside are two custom cells: the main building after the Thalmor Embassy interior, and a cave with the area where you meet Esbern.

Those interiors where duplicated from the vanilla cells (Thalmor Embassy and Esbern location), and cleaned up of everything but the static elements, lights and doors. Navmesh was redone. Doors were properly linked to the exterior. The cells infos were cleaned of any faction, locations, and got a basic lighting template. No room marker or room portals are in thos cells.

 

The second area concerned is a cave leading to a dwemer ruin, located next to Dawnstar. Exterior is a simple cave entrance. Interior is composed of two cells: the cave itslef with the entrance to the dwemer ruins, and the dwemer ruins. Currently, they are not linked together. The cave is linked to the outside, and the ruins, which I did first, are linked to my very first custom building (a main hall of a castle near Whiterun) for testing purpose. They are both concerned by the mod message bug, but not my first building. The cave is again empty of anything but basic construct and lights, while the ruins contains only dwemer ennemies and basic construct. Again, Northmarkers and Navmesh are okay, and I set the cells data to a custom location, with specific lighting data and names.

Contrary to my Sanatorium, those cells were created by duplicating a complete blank cell that I use when creating custom cells. Building I put in those are either put directly from the CK object list, or copy paste from another cell, and cleared of any RefID. For example, the dwemer ruins are 100% constructed from the CK object list. The cave is mostly constructed from the CK object list, except for the dwemer ruins entrance: I copied/pasted the entrance of Markarth, replaced each elements by a custom one (duplicated from vanilla object, to add an icy shader) and the main door of Markarth (which has a RefID) deleted and replaced by a normal big dwemer door. No room marker or room portals are in thos cells.

 

About the bug:

First thing is that message that bump in every loading of a save where I am inside one of the custom cells mentioned before (except my Main Hall). However if I quicksave/quickload, it doesnt appear. Only when loading the save from the main menu or by loading a save manually. It doesn't happens in the exterior area, only inside.

Secondly, I've noticed whenever I save, or quicksave inside one of them, my savefile is not in my character save list, but separated. I have to go to "all saves" to find them. In every other cells, custom or not, the saves are listed in my character save list.

Third, and I didn't yet tested it for those cells, some minor bugs can occur when this issue is happening. When this happened in a previous custom cell (the one where I forgot to put a NorthMarker), the quest that happenend inside was randomly bugged, actors not doing what they were supposed to do, or just standing there, sometimes however nothing abnormal happened. On one occasion, it even prevented another quest to start. The quest was not happening in this particuliar cell, but was following the one that does. Again, putting back a Northmarker fixed it all.

The one minor detail I've noticed is in the cave cell, where I've put a static ice door object in front of a dwemer door. When loaded ingame, the object is not in a correct position, whatever I can do in the CK. This is the only problem I've found so far.

 

So anyone experienced this issue before? What seems to be the problem? I've checked and double-checked that nothing can be linked to another cell or quest or object, and that everything is correctly put. I've even completely reinstalled SKyrim and my mod, no changes.

I just want to understand what I did wrong, or why this bug occurs on recent custom cells. Honestly I don't really want to start again each cell, some have nightmarish Navmesh to apply... And mostly I want to understand the reason to be careful in the future when creating custom cells...

 

If anyone can help me figure it out?

Thank by advance!

Cheers!

[maxarturo]

1) Remove "Underscore" from your cell's name, underscore will cause save file glitch/corruption in SSE.

2) Don't add and then remove northmarker, if you remove a northmarker from a cell (that has been save and load in CK), can cause some weird issues ( this is not documented anywhere but it's an observation of mine after a lot of cells creation and experimentation ).

3) Don't duplicate the "aaaMarkers" to create your cell, but create it from scratch.

* This is SLE forum, SSE forum link below.

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/forum/4070-skyrim-special-edition-creation-kit-and-modders/

[turielo]

Thanks a lot maxarturo!

Underscores seemed to be the issue here, those last cells I created were all named with underscores. Removing them seemed to fix the issue. At least I didn't had the message anymore on load.

I never added then removed Northmarkers, but good to know! As for the aaaMarkers, my very last cell is created from it. I didn't knew this cell could cause issue. I only use duplicate of vanilla cell (when it is approximatively what I'm looking for as a result) or by duplicating a custom empty cell, itself duplicated from a vanilla cell then cleared from anything (it was a test cell, so I don't recall if it was a Northmarker in it...).

 

I didn't paid attention that it was only SLE here, sorry. At least if somedbody modding SLE find the same problem, he will have the answer here also...

 

Thanks again!

Cheers!

[maxarturo]

Duplicating the "aaaMarkers" can bug out, the correct and recomended way to create a cell is :

- In Worldsapce > Cells > in the window that appears right click in the cells section and then click "create new", from here everything is the same, with the major and important difference that your new created cell is completely empty from any data that all those other ways of creating cells have.

[turielo]

Good to know! I never did that before, always duplicated vanilla cells. Thanks for the tip!

[maxarturo]

:thumbsup: