How to detect alias errors with log files?

[caracal5]

I  noticed my quest sometimes failing to work at random. Then I figured out it is caused by an alias failing to fill. I would like to access some way to debug what alias is causing it.

I have:

1. set warn on alias failure to on in the quest's main tab.
2. I set show trace on the first trigger that sets a quest stage (which starts the quest) however I am not sure what the tooltip means:



3. I have looked at all available log files and there is no trace of anything from my quest (likely because the faulty alias is causing nothing from the quest to load.

4. I know the quest works and that it was only recently not working because of aliases I added. I would like to find a way to debug this without deleting the aliases.

[SKKmods]

The way I handle that is to start with ALL aliases OPTONAL during devleopment so the quest can always start and I can Debug.Trace each alias contents in an OnQuestInit script to find non fillers. Developing with non optional aliases is mad.

Then when you know whats happening start making the aliases that should stop the quest from running on fill fail non optional. I infact never get there as I always end up doing all of my failure handling in quest scripts so I can report useful messages to the user like [ Unable to find a killer ] or [ No free target locations ] & etc rather than a usless generic [ Quest failed to start ].

 

[caracal5]

I started wondering exactly about this, why not just make everything optional?

I got so scared of alias errors I just use object reference in properties to avoid any alias errors.

Is there even any type of log that shows what alias fails?

For example when starting the creation kit I get various errros like "alias 8" failing in a quest. However that quest works and I do not know what alias 8 is

[LarannKiar]

For general mod development/debugging purposes, you can add these to your StarfieldCustom.ini under the [General] section:

bEnableSpeechChallengeLogging=1
bEnablePlanetContentManagerLogging=1
bEnableConditionLogging=1
bEnableStoryManagerLogging=1

Story Manager logging is probably what're after. The .log files are created in ..\Documents\My Games\Starfield\Logs\StoryManager.

Every Alias has an ID or Index. You can see the indexes in Creation Kit >> Quest >> Quest Alias tab.

[caracal5]

These debugging things are very useful, thanks!

I have an issue with debugging my quest where I do not know if it is connected to an alias failure, because the storymanager log appears to not show anything (or I do not know what to look for in the log)

When attempting to run startquest or setstage commands on 2 of my quests (one real quest and a test quest I made for testing things) it says "item not found for parameter quest"

 

The 3rd console command appears to accept a quest because it is a base game quest.

My  quest will still start normally in the normal way by player stepping on a trigger. However I would like to use a setstage command to test something late in the quest.

I also used the command with a test quest in the same esp file which has no aliases at all, and it fails too to accept any setstage commands. So it appears it is not an unfilled alias error

Edited October 12 by caracal5

[LarannKiar]

According to the error line, no quests exist with the given FormIDs such as 0107646D. Either the load order prefix is not valid or the mod that contains the quests is not enabled.

I use Report Load Order Info to quickly lookup the load order prefixes of active mods.

Note that you need to convert an ESP to ESM before you can active it (Starfield can't load properly ESP files).