SplashDamage

I just encountered this one also, and went through the following: 1) Reinstall steam, which didn't solve the issue. 2) Try to Delete the locale Tool Content which also deleted Skyrim (nice one from Valve, Lol!). I'd backed up the Skyrim folder, and keep my mods in a folder seperate from the Steam install folders using Mod Manager so no loss there. Quick copy from my backup is all that was required. 3) Even considered there were multiple copies of steam_app.dll on this pc somewhere and Steam was trying to load an out of date one first (finding that in the search list first before the one located in the Skyrim folder). I'd noticed the scripts.rar was installed in the Skyrim/Data folder when I reinstalled The Creation Kit through steam. Now if I remember correctly, the Steam CK installer would download and install the script source automatically in the Dada/Scripts/Source folder. This time it didn't. It was like the Steam installer for the CK was broken. Trying to use 7z to open the archive and manually copy them out didn't seem to work well either. It was probably late and the coffee gave out hours earlier, but, when i extracted the folders then clicked on the source file, it seemed like it was trying to reaccess the archive instead of the individual script file - a strange symbolic link somewhere maybe? Booting into trusty Linux I unrar-ed the scripts.rar and copied those folders manually to Skyrim/Data/Scripts... booted back into windows, fired off the CK and lo and behold... started up just fine. Strange, but it seems like any missing folders like the Data/Scripts/Source (which steam didn't install by default when I re-acquired the CK from Steam. Just dumped the Scripts.rar in my data folder) or anything will kick off a no entry point error in the steam_api.dll. A very misleading error. At least for me it did. I'm wondering... is this another DRM on top this game that broke for some strange reason? Who knows. Hope this helps someone else who has the same problem, since reinstalling all my steams games wasn't an option. If I were to venture a guess... DRM update after DRM update has somehow corrupted the registry data required to validate the CK.

I've seen this with a horse on the path between Ivarstead and Helgan, and sometimes with NPC's that die, but keep walking in place - though it sounds like the guard in yours still has some AI connected to it. It makes me wonder if the hit-box coords are still there, just corrupted to the point were clicking on the target doesn't work but an AOE might. There's another game cleaner, can't think of the name right off that first needs a save file created through the console and is output in text format. Might be interesting to see if anything there might really stand out as being strange (very large negative or positive numbers, stuff like that). Since it's a guard and not a specific NPC, I would venture a guess that if the base data for that guard is corrupted, all guards generated with the same ID would suffer the same or similar problems. If it's just one guard, then, I'm still leaning towards that corrupted the main game data. Not sure how to fix that though. In the case of the horse in one of mine, I just left it there and went off to do other things. Came back much later and he was gone. The game at least knew enough about it to clean it up later. Which makes me wonder, if you did: KillAll from the console, does the guard die? I'm guessing he would. If he does, can you target him after that?

So far it turns out to be: Have EnableZPrepass set to true in enblocal.ini AND having bshadowmaskzprepass set to 1 in skyrimprefs.ini. If I also set bmainzprepass to 1 I get solid white images instead of the blueish colored ones - whether or not EnableZPrepass is set in enblocal.ino or not. I've noticed with this type of "actor", being dynamically summoned through SIC, seems to want to go invisible or disappear when killed, but isn't completely gone. Like a bound sword or battleaxe would be. It's invisible, but you can still scroll over it's "hit box" area and loot it - though it appears to not be there. From that, I'm guessing it's an oversight where the npc isn't being cleaned up properly on death.

I've seen this occassionally with NPS's also, but it's kinda rare, though it never happens to me (player). When it does happen to another NPC I can go into console mode, click on that "actor", then type: Disable [Press Enter] Enable [Press Enter] and that usually resets the data for that particular actor. I'm guessing, just from an initial view that game data is being dynamically corrupted somehow. Either by a memory overrun from a variable compiled without boundary checks (a single block of allocated memory that holds many data elements [referenced by offsets, where a text table would return the offset into the primary data block] where a word sized data element is being stores where a byte sized element should be, a script variable being used by more than one script without knowing the full extent of how everything, including the game engine interconnects everything together creating bad data being used by something not editing or expecting it. When using Disable then Enable doesn't work, I'm not sure. I'm thinknig along the lines of a broken linked list pointing to the data elements.

It's very possible, I'll give it a test here in a sec and see if I can isolate the cause a tad bit further. Normally i'll use Optimizer Textures to compress or correct any of the loose game textures. This time though, it seems that it somehow malfunctioned when run against the "mods" directory managed by MO. Strangely, it somehow "deleted" or didn't save few/random modified files back, nor were they in the backup file it creates which resulted in missing textures, which i've only seen and corrected for "Cloaks of Skyrim"; lost a few textures for Whiterun, Dawnguard cloaks and the spinning wheel - the rest was ok.

I've just come across a strange graphics glitch while playing Skyrim. This current incarnation is fairly modded. When spawning "Mudcrab Servant" (from the SIC mod) through the console (this also happens when their spawned normally in the game), the blueish crab which looks normal, goes a solid dull blue color when he dies. This doesn't happen if the white or greenish Mudcrab Servant gets spawned, just the blueish one. It looks normal, then as it dies, there's a magical crackle from it, then it just goes blue. When I uncheck "Use Effect" for the ENB in game, the mudcrab goes invisible with just a hint of texture shadow here and there, check it back, it's solid blue again. If I check "Enable Transparency AA", it almost looks normal, with just a few solid blue polys here and there. AA and it's like are turned off in the skyrimprefs.ini. Is this the result of a corrupt data file? A hidden tint or invis mask in a texture mod somewhere? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've noticed weapons racks initially working when I first put a weapon on them, but once I remove the weapon by clicking on it in game, the rack stops functioning - can't put anything else on it. This seems to happen more when I use a crafted weapon or mod weapon rather than a just plain vanilla one. The way I worked around the bug on the pc was this: Press ~ to open the console. Click on the weapon you want to remove so it's ref id is now displayed. Enter "disable" Enter "moveto player" Enter "enable" Press ~ to close console. The weapon should now be on the floor next to you (off the rack), and the weapon rack will allow other weapons to be placed back on it.

Something interesting i've just noticed. I was having the same problem as others but more intermittant. The problem was on a new character Belethor would give me the speech option to buy/sell items. If I immediately loaded a previously saved game I had the same option to buy/sell with a different character. If I started up Skyrim and loaded the previously saved game first, there was no buy/sell option. At first I was thinking this was a mod problem. It seemed odd that it worked for a newly created character but not and existing one if mods were involved. I tried disabling UFO to see if the buy/sell option came back and that didn't work. Then I unchecked the unofficial skyrim mod only (didn't uninstall it, just keep it from running on game startup to isolate the mod that was causing the problem but left dragonborn, hearthfire and dawnguard still active to see if only one of these might be cause the problem)... oddly enough, with USKP disabled, I now have the option to buy/sell with Belethor again. I'm wonderiing if others having this problem would have the same results as me if disabling USKP. If so, it would really help to isolate the problem for a quicker fix.