Weird start up CTD

[CruduxCru0]

Heyas Crudux. Well...

Glad to hear that you've got at least a very small bit of improvement.

Is there any point that you can replicate, where it crashes now? Or is it random? Also, is it toward the start of play, (as in within a few minutes) of when you load your game?

And, have you tried this on a new, clean game? IE: A new character?

 

I started getting some really serious, and I mean REALLY serious CTD problems, when I made some changes to my load order. My dumb arse decided to go back in, and alphabetize my mods in their perspective categories. Such as: Guns/Weapons A to Z.

After I did that, my game crashed so hard it would literally force the computer to try to reboot. And in a lot of cases, the reboot would lock up. It was really really nasty.

AND it would do that on ALL of my save games that had the previous load order.

The crash would start at various intervals from the save load, but usually all within just a few minutes. Sometimes as soon as I panned my field of view.

The only way I fixed it was to replace my plugins.txt file with a backup copy. Granted that backup copy didn't have 3 mods that I'd installed since, written to it. But hey.

If you don't have/make backup copies of the files that your mod manager makes for the active mods in your game, or you don't make backups of the plugins.txt file if you do mods manually...

You may be stuck having to start up all new characters, as those saves for your existing ones might now be beyond being able to be played :sad:

 

I hope, really hope, that's not the case for you.

Haha, so I said I was done, but actually I've been trying new stuff pretty much non stop over the last few days. Well, even with the improvement, it still crashes before it loads completely. And yeah, I tried launching a new game, and if I enable all the mods, still crashes. I tried using eslify and now I'm at 180 esm/esp's but it doesnt seem to change anything. I really don't get it. The other day it was like "oh I found the mod that's causing the problem : it's horrors of the deep fog !" because according to the buffout logs it crashed right when it was loading this one. so I disabled it and was able to launch a game, but then I re-enabled some other mods and suddenly it was crashing when it was loading "recruit Mac" so I disabled it and was able to add a few mods and then it started crashing as it was loading automatron. It's just some obscure, incomprehensible BS I cant wrap my mind around.

 

Now I'm trying some wacky stuff. I noted that the problem occured the first two times when I was buying some Creation Club content, so I deleted the CC stuff and I'm trying to redownload them through mod manager and converting them into mods. I dunno. I'm just getting desesperate right now.

 

It's like a curse, it's my fourth new game since I started Sim Settlements 2 chapter 2. I always encounter a game breaking bug right as I'm making progress on the "HQ" quest. First time it was my character becoming inexplicably a god (could sprint for minutes, reduced all incoming damage by a huge margin), second and third times were cells being terminally corrupted (I think rise of the commonwealth was to blame both times so I got rid of that mod) and now this weird mod loading thing. It's infurating.

I could just disable a bunch of "not that essential" mods, I guess. But I know for a fact that at any moment another new awesome mod's gonna come out and I'm going to add it and I'll be back at square one. Like Project Zeta came out recently and I'm like "establish a settlement on Mars ? WHERE DO I SIGN, MATE ???"

[fraquar]

Run the game with just the game launcher - no F4SE, nothing.

If you can't reproduce the issue - then you at least know it's not an issue with device drivers or the game files.

Sometimes you have to go slowly and work through a process of elimination.

It's not fun, but it gives you a building block for isolating the problem.

 

i.e. If it's not what works that is the problem - it's everything else.

Start slowly adding back "everything else" until you can replicate the problem.

[CruduxCru0]

Run the game with just the game launcher - no F4SE, nothing.

If you can't reproduce the issue - then you at least know it's not an issue with device drivers or the game files.

Sometimes you have to go slowly and work through a process of elimination.

It's not fun, but it gives you a building block for isolating the problem.

 

i.e. If it's not what works that is the problem - it's everything else.

Start slowly adding back "everything else" until you can replicate the problem.

Yeah I tried, game works fine if I just launch the executable.

 

Anyway. I think I found the problem.

Did you guys know... that it's possible to have too many esl's ? Yeah yeah, apparently, this is a thing, check out this link :

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/2575445724482173145/

 

This is the exact same crash I'm encountering, with the exact same quirky behavior.

 

So now, here's the thing. Apparently, I need to flag esl's as esm's, because esm's have more room for reference id's or something. (entering the *I barely even understand what I'm saying* stage)

 

Sooo... Wish me luck, Imma flag lots of esl's as esms... And try to merge some esp's to keep the esm+esp count under 255. It's probably going to be a wild ride, not sure I'll have time to do it this weekend.

[StormWolf01]

The problem with .esl files, is that the count isn't by the number of actual mod count. It's tallied up by the number of entries in each of the .esl files.

So even tho it's not what you're talking about... merging .esl files doesn't do anything to try to get inside the hard limit. Just saying that, for general knowledge.

Also, trying to merge .esp files can lead to tons of problems in itself. Especially mods that require .ba2 archives. The new files won't read into the archives the way that they're supposed to. So you Could end up with missing sound fx, missing textures, missing meshes, any kind of gfx that are stored inside those archives.

You also have to be absolutely SURE that those .esl files are NOT files that are mods of mods. IE: Patches, and whatnot that have to be in a load order AFTER another mod. Because the M in .esm stands for MASTER, which means that they will load before anything else with a lower designation (esl, and esp)

 

I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm trying to be helpful. If you barely understand what they're talking about, then you Don't know Enough, to try to start doing what you're talking about doing. I mean... I've been playing bethesda games for nearly two decades. I know enough about what you're talking about, to know I'd seriously eff things up.

[CruduxCru0]

Well, it's too late I guess, I tried flagging a bunch of esl's as esm and it didnt do anything. My game was already fubar anyway so I've got no regrets lol

 

So I guess I'm really really done this time. I'm pretty angry I lost all my beautiful settlements (I spent a looooooot of time on Sanctuary Hills, Finch Farm, Graygarden, Vault 120 and Coastal Cottage) so I guess... I'll leave it at that until Sim Settlments 2 chapter 3 comes out and I'll try to cut some of the mods out of my load order.

 

In the mean time thank you all, and may that bloody game burn in hell !

[xrayy]

sim settlements is a beautiful mod as long as it does not exceeds limits - but it was reason no1 mod for my instabilities. since i kicked this mod a ctd in my game is pretty rare again. it was an automated clutter adding setting and that settlements even grow in the background. probably my fault but i do not like if a save is permanent trash due to automated actions in the background.

[Guest deleted34304850]

its a great mod, but it pushes the engine to the absolute limit and beyond - and thats going to destabilise everything. i long since removed it - game is almost completely stable now thanks to the engine fix mods that came out about a year or so ago.

[CruduxCru0]

Eh, I'm not sure Sim Settlements is to blame, I was just too greedy. But there's just so many good mods and I like immersing myself in the game for hours, always discovering new things, it's quite thrilling.

 

To be fair, before I added another batch of mods (and creation club stuff), the game was running super smooth even if I had some big "nono" mods that the Sim Settlements team does not recommend running along with SS2 (Like scrap everything and Crime and Punishment for exemple)

Edited June 4, 2022 by CruduxCru0

[BlazeStryker]

One thing could be that your game's startup sequence may be trying to load too quickly. I run... a significant number of mods. A LOT of ESL-tagged numbers. When I am starting the game, during the load section after I select the save to load or just Continue, I hit Enter repeatedly which makes the bootup take just a few seconds longer... and actually boot up the game.