chambcra

I'm trying to figure out how to get a Skyrim mesh into Blender. One tutorial said to get the latest version of Nifscope. I had version 1.1.3 working fine for years. I found the download for NifSkope 1.2.0a2.dev11 in a zip file. I unzipped it in my downloads folder and there wasn't any sort of installer in there but just the loose files like NifSkope.exe and fourteen dll files. I double clicked NifSkope.exe just to see what it looked like and now the newer version 1.2.0 is the only version that runs on this computer. The files inside C:\Program Files\NifTools\NifSkope have not been changed. If I double click a .nif file version 1.2.0 pops up. I can even double click the old NifScope.exe dated 2012 inside C:\Program Files\NifTools\NifSkope and version 1.2.0 is what runs. How did that happen? The only thing I can think of is maybe running the newer version for the first time changed a path in the registry. I think I'd like to go back to 1.1.3 and forget about the Skyrim meshes. NifScope 1.2.0 doesn't seem right at all. The mesh in the render window is way off the screen and when you find it it's upside down. Thanks a lot if anyone can help me figure this out.

Okay, thanks a lot forli. That settles that then and that's an interesting work-around too.

What I mean is in the game hit the tilde key and type something like: run scriptname exec scriptname or something like that. I've been searching for days and I've only found one person who asked and didn't get an answer. It seems like something that would be possible but the idea of it doesn't seem to exist. Thanks

I found out a quest isn't added to any list if it doesn't produce a quest pop-up window, even though it's running.

I'm trying to troubleshoot a quest mod called "A Brave Old World" just enough to get through it. Here's the code snippet: scn JohnDragonQuest2Script . . . If Button == 0 Set doonce6 to 11 Messagebox "'I don't think there is another way if you want to go home. But it's your decision. Tell me where to go, and I will take you there.'" SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 1 setStage JohnGetHomeQuest 30 Elseif Button == 1 Set doonce6 to 12 Messagebox "'It's your decision. Tell me where to go, and I will take you there.'" SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 2 setStage JohnGetHomeQuest 30 Elseif Button == 2 Set doonce6 to 13 Messagebox "'Trophy collection? You're assuming there will be something left to make a trophy of. But enough talk. Tell me where to go, and I will take you there.'" SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 3 setStage JohnGetHomeQuest 30 Endif What's happening in the game at this point is the "setStage JohnGetHomeQuest 30" works fine with the quest update window and the quest is properly set to 30. The lines: SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 1 SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 2 SetStage JohnDeadTownQuest2 3 Sort of work because I'm seeing all the dialogue windows pop up that are inside "JohnDeadTownQuest2Script" but the quest "JohnDeadTownQuest2" is not listed as active, pending or completed. The console commands don't show it either. Trying to setstage JohnDeadTownQuest2 with the console does nothing. The console came back with "global value 0" after at least one setstage attempt. Is that weird or what?

Okay, thanks a lot for your help. I'll search my game computer for Archive Invalidation.txt later today. It doesn't exist on my work computer which is pretty much the same.

Thanks for the quick reply Drake. This BSA is being loaded by identical esp name association. Like you say it's mostly working so that seems unlikely to be the problem. "BSA files know no load order" - That's interesting but in this case it seems that nothing is being loaded for certain textures. Maybe if there is a cave01.dds texture in the original game, and there might be, that texture doesn't get loaded from the BSA file. The rock meshes in this cave are custom too and have path strings to the bsa file unique path which aren't loaded maybe? I'm not sure if I ever really understood archive invalidation so at the moment I don't fully understand what you're saying about that. I'll have to do some reading on that and look at what you're saying again. It's been a long but I think in the beginning I was following what I thought was the ultimate advice and I have an "ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa" file and do not have an "Archive Invalidation.txt" file. I'll have to do some more studying on that point. There wasn't a list of files shipped with the mod. I did open the bsa with BSACommander and the missing textures are indeed in there. I've dealt with the size limit before. I'm thinking it's 2GB. The Apache Goddess store is too big. It can always be broken up though just like you said which is something I haven't tried and maybe it's worth a try but I'd bet a $100 it wouldn't help. When you're dealing with a game that requires an amateur mod to even shut down reliably it may not be worth much more head banging on this. I have to take back the "cool mod" statement and say it has some very cool new world spaces and has good creativity but towards the end it's pretty much bugged I think. Thanks again. I'll post back if I figure anything out.

I always make my own BSA file for quest mods if it doesn't come with one. They usually work but maybe one out of twenty cause missing meshes and/or textures when the meshes and textures are indeed present in the loose file structure. It's the most intriguing problem that defies reason. I've searched and searched and often the problem is solved but the solution is never what is causing my problem. If anyone has the answer to my latest particular puzzle I will be forever in your debt. The mod is "Path of the Skull Bearer" It's a cool mod. ( http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/39923/ ) This one almost works but there are just a few textures that are missing in the game which of course work fine if they are inserted as loose files into your data folder. It could be played with just a little purple here and there until you get to the ice cave which has unique textures that default to purple which makes navigating the cave very difficult. I used to think that when only a few textures don't work maybe the path string or the file name is too long but I can't see how that could be the case here. "\textures\architecture\el\icecavern\cave01.dds" does not work. Almost everything else does work. How can that be? I have tried BSACommander, BSAOpt, and OBMM. The BSACommander and OBMM BSA files created are identical by the way. I checked with a hex editor that has a compare function. As an aside, I have never found a problem with a BSACommander file that was fixed with a different BSA tool, for what it's worth. I've probably only made 30-50 BSA files that worked fine. Maybe someone knows this is an age old problem that will never be solved? Or, better yet the answer. I know this could be one of those "D'oh" moments but it won't be the first times it's happened to me. Thanks

Thanks Bess. I appreciate that. I figure it's the least I can do when people spend the time to type in lengthy help, especially when it works! I'm a happy camper now that I have the place fixed up so perfect. I can also speak for Lucy, Gloria, Hamlet, Bruse, Benjamin, Douglas, Bob, Chico, Groucho, Alice, Red Rose Josie, Red Rose Ruby, and the chickens who can all relax now and concentrate on eating the flowers and I can move on to other stuff. :smile:

The kludge seems to be working perfectly. I moved six persistent references and can't find any problems. I now have a large back yard that is perfectly flat which solves the sliding animal problem for me. There's just a couple things I could add: After moving the door with the console, the location where the cursor picks up the activation icon doesn't move. Fortunately, a save - quit to desktop - reload, puts that back in sync with the door. I think the inside doors that matched with the outside doors had this same problem and were fixed the same way which doesn't make sense to me but if it works hopefully I won't need to understand it. I also had some strange problems like the chickens repeatedly dropping out of the sky and animals turning around in a circle and stuck at a spot. That turned out to be the path grid being out of whack with the new landscape which was easy to fix. While doing that I noticed there were a few external path grid nodes that were inside the house which is probably why Vilja sometimes passed through the wall and became stuck on the inside. That was easy to fix. The Blue Moon Cottage had this problem pretty bad so hopefully I have that fixed as well. In the end, an iffy project from the start seems to be working better than expected and I learned a lot in the process so thanks again for all the good help. This is a great forum. If I do find something is bugged with this I'll post back to let people know not to try this at home.

Alright, very good. Thanks for all the replies. Guess what? The struck-through text procedure seems to work like a charm. Page 31 didn't look right for me and I found a page hitting the scroll lock that had the door coordinates but you really don't need the debug text if you know the location you want from the CS. Now I have several good ideas to keep me busy for a while. I will look for some of your mods mhahn123 to see if I can figure out the multiple wander thing. At one point I was starting to think a re-install wouldn't be too bad but then I remembered I also have the Vilja at Red Rose Manor mod and that would surely be dependent on Red Rose Manor so if I restarted the whole thing then Vilja would have to do her masterpiece painting all over again from scratch.

That's good to know about the energy setting. I'll look into that. I was just thinking maybe I could bump up the speed of the cows and pigs because even though the sheep also have the sliding behavior they can maintain their position at the top of the hill where the cows and pigs can't.

Thanks for the replies Striker and Bess ( please do chime in.) I'm curious about the purpose of the lined-through text. That looks like the perfect thing for a hacker like me to try. It makes sense what you describe on how a modder can build and test as they go. Thanks for the link Bess. I've spent some time reading that, which is very informative, and it makes me think I may be in over my head and should start considering a plan B. The only reason I'm trying to do this is because I've added some of Emma's animals which are very cool but they have no traction and slide down the hill. They're all based on the sheep model, except the chickens, and the sheep model has no traction. I've posted at the Nif tools forum and it doesn't seem anyone knows anything about this traction issue. I've tried putting a fence across the slope and they all slide up against the fence and that's where they all stay except when the game occasionally teleports one to the other side of the fence and then it has an up-hill climb and a fence to get through to get back where it's supposed to be. I'm also getting some crashes after being in the area for a while so I also have that to deal with. I could try flattening a smaller area that doesn't come near the house and see if that causes crashes. I was hoping to make an area as large as possible for the animals to wander and spread out (all the way around the house hopefully). I'm finding that too many animals in too small an area causes problems. It seems the game wants to spread them out when it loads the area, and above a certain number you suddenly find them all over the place. Thanks

Thanks for the replies. I'm a bit confused though. If I deactivate the mod, follow the clean save procedure, then when I get to the part ("and you're ready to go.") I assume I reactivate the mod, right? Isn't that effectively uninstalling and reinstalling? When I said "uninstall the mod - save game - reinstall" I didn't necessarily mean removing the files, just deactivate and reactivate. That's interesting what you said, "that some information is stored both in the RAM and the paged memory." I would think that the information in the saved game on disk should override that but who knows what windows might do sometimes. That could explain some unexplainable things that have happened to me. I was hoping I could change the Z value of the door location using a hex editor on a saved file but searching for the original value didn't find it. If I could find a detailed format of the saved game files that might be the easiest. Thanks

I'm a beginner and I wonder if there is a trick to do it so it moves in the game? I've edited the terrain to make it flat around the Red Rose Manor and lowered the house but I guess the door locations are stored in the save game along with everything else that has a persistent reference. I guess I could uninstall the mod - save game - reinstall but I wonder how the creators go back and forth between the game and the CS and tweak these things?

I finally found out it is the triple screen resolution that causes this. I don't normally do a load at startup and just do a continue so it was a long time between adding the triple screens and detecting the problem and I didn't put the two together. Sometimes procrastination pays off. Glad I didn't do a re-install. There is nothing wrong.

Thanks for the replies. I'll try the horseref.update3d if the quest item being checked causes any sort of side effect.

I found this in Maigrets Companion Tutorial: "Making him a quest item gives him loading priority, so he always gets loaded at game start. Otherwise he can also be forgotten by the game engine when cells respawn. Don't do it before putting him in the world or the CS will prompt you about Quest items and possibly give an error message." So, that explains it. Now I'm wondering where do the people who write the tutorials learn these nuts and bolts details?

Very good Legotrash. I checked "Quest item" and that seems to have fixed it. I wouldn't have thought of that in a hundred years. Weird that would cause an intermittent problem. It would be nice to know exactly why that works? Is that field proper and required or a work-around or what. I checked and Toc Toc the Raven has quest item checked. Sometimes you just can't fight success so I won't worry about it too much. I haven't really played the game yet but my two test saves that lead up to the failure are both working now. I went back to the original script so it doesn't look like I'll have to figure out the frames thing. Great I can move on to something else now. Thanks a lot.

I guess it's not really a script problem. For a long time I only fast-traveled to horse stables which always worked. For some reason I did the unusual and fast-traveled to Blankenmarch and the same weird thing happened. I'm wondering if it may have something to do with the way this horse didn't really exist in the flesh until you paid for it and then it appeared in the corral. Probably not. Probably some sort of Oblivion corruption in a saved game or just a bug.

Thanks a lot for the reply Legotrash. It works but with the same problem. After I cast the spell and don't see my horse I open the console and do: prid 1c0030b8 disable enable close the console and the horse appears. So then using your suggestion for a proper script structure I tried this: scn SummonLucyScript Begin ScriptEffectStart ziranh661.moveto player, 200, 0, 0 End Begin ScriptEffectUpdate ziranh661.disable End Begin ScriptEffectFinish ziranh661.enable End and that worked with the same problem. I can't imagine why I'm having this weird problem unless it has to do with the way the Zira's horse stable plugin was made. I'm out of ideas at the moment. Thanks

The problem is sometimes it works fine and sometimes it's bugged. I added it to my horse I got at Zira's horse stable. It seems to always work when the horse is nearby but at a distance it may or may not work. When it doesn't work it seems that the horse has moved to position 200 units to the east but the mesh and textures didn't make the move. I see nothing until I step forward and then I get this: http://chambcra.freeshell.org/SummonLucy.jpgAt this point I can do a quicksave and quickload and the horse is there or I can use the console and do a disable and enable and all is well. I followed Maigrets Companion Tutorial and the script is the basic summon script that I see everywhere I've looked. scn SummonLucyScript Begin ScriptEffectStart ziranh661.moveto player, 200, 0, 0 End Begin ScriptEffectFinish End This is the same thing that always works to summon Maigret's Toc Toc the Raven. I've tried putting the disable and enable inside the script with no luck. I'm not sure if I'm really doing that right though. Any help would really be appreciated. These things drive me nuts. Thanks

Okay Striker. Thanks a lot. I think I was guessing a few years back that C:\Program Files (x86) is where Win7 (32 bit) liked to install 16 bit programs. Actually I will be uninstalling and reinstalling on the same Win7 (32 bit) machine. The XP machine is just my test computer for this problem. Sorry, for the confusion but that shouldn't make any difference for what you're telling. When I reinstall I'll put it in C:\Games. Thanks for your help.

Hello Striker, are you still out there? Yes, I use OAF. I used OBSE for a brief while just to get the FastExit function but I wasn't crazy about doubling the number of save files. Using the task manager to shutdown isn't that bad. Funny how like you say it isn't a permanent fix and I've used it 2 or 3 times but I haven't had to use it now for a really long time. I'm wondering what you can tell me about C:\Program Files (x86) not being a recommended install location? I've copied everything I can think of from the win7 comp. to the XP comp. (entire data and saves folders, ini file) and the XP comp. still works. I've copied the exe and dll's from the XP comp. to the Win7 comp. and no help. I didn't think it would. The only thing I can find in the registry is the saves folder path. The only thing I can think of left is windows which I can see how it might deny access to the time stamp info but that doesn't explain why the words "Are you sure you really want to load this game?" are missing. I've tried running in xp compatibility mode. One thing I've noticed is the xp comp. never fails to shutdown. I'm not quite ready to reinstall yet but it might come to that especially if something else goes awry. At last check I was at save game number 3058. So, to make sure, if I save and copy over a new install, the entire data folder, the entire save game folder, and the ini, and check all the files in the launcher, will I be right back where I left off with no problems? I know it seems like it since my test computer is working okay but it hasn't been really tested very much. Thanks for your input.

Okay, thanks. Sorry I'm slow getting back. I've been out of town. So you've seen the same problem but it was too many saved games? That makes it even stranger. I hadn't thought about windows being the culprit. A long time ago I did something so I don't get a prompt when running any exe so maybe I've disabled UAC. I use the animation fixer program. It works better than the other ini fix which is only good for a period of time. I haven't had to use the animation fixer for a long time. It doesn't really have to fixed. I'd like to know what caused it though. If I find out I'll post back.