Striker879

Also keep track of where you are getting crashes and what you were doing leading up to the crash. If you get your load order without Better Cities and everything seems stable (and I mean after testing for a couple of weeks) then you could make a Data folder backup and try installing Better Cities. That will give you something to compare against. It's more accurate to compare your own game with fewer mods to your own game with more mods than to try to compare to what other people have (different hardware, different load orders, and they do different things in game). Slow and steady wins the race Wolf.

I understand. I remember when we did the installs the first time and I was impressed by how much you were able to keep working on it. The game didn't start out as a game known for stability, and it hasn't been updated at all to take advantage of what new computers can do. The last time the game was updated we were still using Pentium 4 CPUs and the GHz Wars were still in full swing between Intel and AMD. If you run into any snags you know where I hang out.

That depends a lot on where I am in Cyrodiil plus what sort of things I'm doing. I have two mods that I know can create crashes ... NPCs Yield Refined and SPAWN. I have made INI tweaks to both that hurt stability. Sometimes to make it past one of the trouble spots I may need to save move a short distance and then save again, hoping I don't crash before the next save (and if that happens when I load my save I don't go as far before I save again). In those cases I'm minutes between crashes. Other times, when I'm not close to one of the trouble spots and I haven't done anything to add extra stress to my system I can go an hour or maybe a bit more (that doesn't happen very often for the next reason I'll outline). So another thing I do that adds stress to my system (and thus increases the chance for a crash) is I have a way of "making friends" with bandits, marauders, conjurers and necromancers and then I take them to one of my houses (or another cell I've "taken ownership" of). If I stop by and visit them it depends a lot on how many NPCs I have stashed in that cell. If it's only two or three it's not a problem, but there are some cells (like Ayleid ruins) where I might have between 20 and 50 NPCs stashed. Most of the time I'll need to go through a save/exit/load cycle to leave that cell (and sometimes just to enter it, if I have used a lot of video memory before I got there). The main culprit in these cases is all of the NPCs that I have Blockheaded (given unique bodies and/or body textures). If you try to compare yourself to me you need to know what you are comparing to ... I am way off the beaten track. - Edit - Here's a stat that tells you a lot about what I'm talking about. I have played this same character for over six years. His latest save has 5,639 hours playing time. When I divide the playing time in minutes (so 338,340 minutes) by the number of saves (40,327 saves) you get 8.4 minutes between saves on the average. Granted sometimes there will be much more than 8 minutes between saves, but that means there are enough times with less than 8 minutes between saves to average out.

So there's two ways to go ... use the backup from before installing Better Cities (which means installing all mods that came after it) or we try uninstalling Better Cities and hope it goes smooth. Your call.

The issue with Qarls is that it increases the size of textures, and that puts more strain on your system. Qarls stresses the video card and Better Cities stresses both the video card and the CPU. The random crashes happen when one more straw gets added to the camel's back and it can't carry the load. If crash free (or as close as possible) is your goal then you need to think about which mods you keep and which you don't install. With both Maskars Oblivion Overhaul and Better Cities you have two mods that put strain on the system.

A question for you Wolf ... remember back when we installed the list the first time and we were making backups of the Data folder before adding major things like Better Cities. Did you make backups this time as you were installing mods?

I studied Latin for a few years back in high school (so more than half a century ago) ... these days it's all just Greek to me I'm afraid.

I'm no help on scripting matters. One thing I can offer is the spelling should be dying instead of dieing.

That one did come to mind for me, though I've never actually seen it in action in the game. Something else that did occur to me was that the attack would only be to areas of the body using the Skin designation for material (so no biting armor ... bad for dental health and such).

Hmm ... I thought that zombies just ate the tax men and then presented the poop to their necromancer masters as gifts. At least this keeps me off the Mishkax Eternal Damnation list.

A new biting attack animation perhaps (and now you will be cursing my name for all eternity).

Wolf does have some sound replacer/enhancer type mods, and I was giving those a close look too. Let's see what Wolf has to report after yesterday's troubleshooting. If you are basing your troubleshooting on a single area in the game you are experiencing problems with (that is also a known trouble spot) you could easily throw the baby out with the bath water.

That spot near Fort Vitue is a problem spot for me as well. Usually I don't have trouble going from Franacasecul towards Fort Virtue, but fairly often when going the other direction (so from the Dibella wayshrine towards Fort Virtue and then Fanacasecul) I'll crash just before getting to Fort Virtue. It's one of those spots I always make a save before I get to (and remember I don't use Better Cities or MOO with my current character). The Waterfront District (and especially the tunnel that Better Cities adds) is another of those spots that has a bad reputation. I often see people talking about how they don't have a big problem with Better Cities except the Waterfront. I have read some posts in Maskars Oblivion Overhaul mod comments about people having trouble in some of the dungeon extensions that MOO adds. Maskar usually asks for a save that has the crash to troubleshoot, but the save needs to be consistently crashing, not just sometimes crashing.

What is the name of the dungeon you are crashing when fighting in?

OK ... so I thought you said in the PM that Oblivion Stutter Remover was OK when you installed it the first time. The one that you want to use is the third one down from the top of the files list ... OSR_4-1-37 (which is the newest version). To install it you download to a folder and extract. Next you copy the Data from the extracted download and then paste it into your game's Oblivion folder. You will get a Windows prompt about merging the folders ... answer Yes (or Yes to All). OSR is an OBSE plugin so there is nothing to activate, just start the game. If it starts OK then you are good to go test ... if it doesn't there are some things we can try tweaking to see if it helps. Try just the base OSR first. If it starts but you don't hear weapon hit sounds when you test then we'll try the Sound Fix version. Use your problem save as a first test. If the problem save still crashes try the save from before that and then go to the same dungeon to see if it still happens.

When uninstalling a mod you will usually get a warning from the game about missing content when you load your latest save. Most of the time you can just ignore the warning and the save will load fine and you can just continue your game. Other times you need to follow the instructions for uninstlling the mod (Enhanced Economy is one that come to mind). Better Cities has no special uninstall instructions so it should be in the first group (just uninstall and continue playing). If you need some step by steps for uninstalling I can put something together for you. Did the crashing get worse after you started using OSR again?

For existing non-voiced mods the retrofit would be just a matter of using the text of the non-voiced lines (which are needed for the subtitles anyway) and then running them through OBVA Synth. It sounds to me like longer dialogue needs to be split up into smaller chunks to get acceptable results and there are tangible benefits to spending time using the tools to tweak the results, so time consuming would be a fair description. It would be illuminating to find out how much time Vorians needed to spend on the project mentioned in the OBVA Synth mod comments.

If OSR didn't cause a problem immediately after you installed it (meaning if the game started after you installed it) then it's OK to keep using. When people have trouble with it they can't start the game or have problems right away (like the missing weapon hit sounds problem we talked about in the PM). If you didn't have those problems it's OK to use. Things like large mods like Better Cities hurting the game's stability is a judgment call. For some the benefits outweight the cost of sometimes having a crash ... for others they value stability over how the game looks. Neither way is right or wrong ... it's just opinions that are different. If you like Better Cities keep it and just save more often.

I'm not a quest type either ... of the quests that come with Arthmoor's villages I have done exactly zero, same with some others that crept into this load order but haven't even been started (examples of my "what was I thinking" moments). Heck I didn't even start the main quest until my guy was level 40 (thanks to my MOE Alt Start, before that you wouldn't have any idea what was to come). A lot of things suffer from "feature creep" (Better Cities springs to mind as an example). If the authors pay attention to requests in the mod comments they will be unable to avoid it. No is not a word that comes easily to people who are seeking to please their audience. The only ones who don't suffer from this are the authors who have made the mod for themselves, and care little of what others think about it. They will have the repuation of being aloof and unresponsive to "suggestions" with their detractors. My installation/testing regimen doesn't leave a lot of doubt for how any particular mod affects game performance/stability, but it is time consuming setting up a load order. My current load order was over two weeks in installing and testing, working 12 hour days at a minimum. Granted probably two days or more was spent getting RF and BPA tweaked to my liking, and even outside of those two many of my "testing sessions" would have appeared more like gameplay sessions to an outside observer but there was always a specific aspect being examined and assessed (for example Arthmoor's Faregyl has a noticeable impact on frame rate as it loads, but isn't implicated in increased CTD or lock up ... findings from my testing born out by years of gameplay). Have you noticed the recently uploaded OBVA Synth - xVASynth? Vorians (of Better Cities fame) has used it to add voices to a Russian version of New City SI Passwall, and it looks like anyone with sufficient determination could voice any mod currently using non-voiced dialogue (within the limitation of races currently supported). It's a big download, and so far I haven't succeeded in getting it to run (perhaps Win 7 related ... I haven't spent much time tinkering to be honest) but it does offer an avenue around the non-voiced problem.

Getting between and hour and three hours gameplay before crashing isn't really all that bad Wolf, especially with a mod like Better Cities which is known to add a lot of extra stress to the game. Even the base game without any mods is likely to have crashes. If you only added mods that reduce the chance for those crashes (so things like 4GB Patch, EngineBugFixes, Oblivion Stutter Remover and the Unofficial Patches) you will still not have a completely crash free game ... the chances for a crash will be reduced but not eliminated. The best defense against crashing you can use is making frequent saves. As the crashes come randomly you can't say OK I'll save every 45 minutes and then not lose too much progress. In my own game I know certain areas where crashes are more likely to happen, so I always save before getting to those spots. When I forget to I curse a few times (OK maybe more than just a few) and load the last save I have. A note about saving ... always save to a new slot (so don't quicksave or overwrite previous saves). When your saves folder starts to get more than a hundred or so saves either delete all but the most recent few or move all but the most recent few to another folder as backup.

Yes I use Silent Tracks Expanded ... but you could call mine Expanded Squared. I have copied more copies of each length from Expanded and included them, as I have a lot of music tracks added to each category so the extra silent tracks help keep things well broken up. I use another of shadeMe's mods ( Trifle ) to not only control track changes between cell types but also to tweak the distance an enemy needs to be before combat music starts. No more knowing an enemy has turned aggressive until they are almost within striking distance behind my guy. The reason I asked about Ashes to Ashes is it's a mod that I had to stop using due to a side effect it was having for me (NPCs dropping dead near city gates for no apparent reason). It's not widely reported (i.e. nothing in Ashes to Ashes mod comments) but it was clearly associated with Ashes to Ashes as it stopped occurring after I uninstalled Ashes to Ashes (this was on a previous character, not my current load order). Just fishing for info, as I would like to give it another go. I'll probably do an extended test using my current guy's load order before I commit Ashes to Ashes in my next guy's load order. The dropping dead is a fairly rare occurrence, so that's why the "extended" gets added to the test.

On the subject of shadeMe's mods Jathom ... have you ever tried Ashes to Ashes?

Congrats on your mod release Pipi ... looking good!