Patch 1.6 problems

[BadPenney]

Here is an example of the tree glitch:

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1248316743.jpg

 

It seems that it only affects trees that I have moved. Trees that are still in the same position that they were in vanilla FO3 remain unchanged.

 

Somehow the Tree LOD has lost the data that tells it that it should disappear when you get within a certain range, so you get the double placement that you can see in the top picture.

 

I'm impatient for Bethesda to fix this issue, if ever, so I've gone looking for solutions. I first tried unchecking the [_] Has Tree LOD box on the affected trees. That worked, but it turned off LOD data on ALL trees. So looking out over the landscape showed a really barren scene.

 

My next try has been finding the double exposed trees in the game, then renaming each one and saving them as unique trees with the "Has Tree LOD" box unchecked.

 

Then go into World LOD under the World pull down menu, select Wasteland and Generate Trees. After getting the successful message, click World Testing And Reports and then Update Distant LOD Data. Then save the .esp. (FYI, in case anyone else is looking for a quick fix for this). The only other solution that I can think of is dropping the tree out of sight before updating. Deleting the trees altogether still seems to leave the LOD tree.

 

The unique tree solution seems to work, after a fashion. The tree in the picture is one that I have treated that way. Fortunately, there aren't more than a score or two of trees that I have moved, and most wouldn't be so visible from a distance anyway, so I am running about replacing the trees. That will be my work around unless someone knows a more elegant solution that will reconnect the Tree LOD with its disappearing act data.

 

As for turning my .esp into an .esm, thanks for the suggestion. I thought that I was going to need to do that for patch 1.5 anyway for its issues. I understand that FO3Edit can do that. Is it a self explanatory function or do I need some advice on how to proceed with that?

[gsmanners]

You just rename "FO3Edit.exe" to "FO3MasterUpdate.exe" then run that. Pretty simple.

[Skree000]

the double placement of the lod is working as intended.

 

The whole idea is that an lod is an extremely low poly placeholder of a mesh. So what good is a placeholder of a single polygon with a picture of a tree, when viewed from an angle it dissapears since its paper thin. Therefor artists interlace 2 planes in an X shape, making sure that no matter what Y-angle they look at, the tree will always be there.

 

Its crude, but from extreme distances it does the trick.

 

This is also how they do any grasses or bushes. Take a look up close and bushes and grass is just a cluster of overlapping rotated planes with alpha textures on it.

 

Fallout3 did the weeds and bushes well, when viewed from the top they still hold their shape since the planes are not only rotated on the Y, but also the Z so from the top they are still visible. (most games when you look from top down, bushes and grass revert to paper-thin polygon shapes, since thats what they are made of. (Zelda Ocarina of Time for example, when you look at the grasses from the top it looks like a bunch of lines.

 

as to why the lod's show up after the tree is deleted, im guessing its because of some hardcoded logic.

This is my guess.

MaxLOD tree remains at -100 z height until MinLOD tree is unloaded from memory (ie. hits the preset lod distance for the next Lod to appear).

Since MinLOD tree is removed, MaxLOD tree appears and stays, because its waiting for the MinLOD tree to come back and replace it.

[BadPenney]

the double placement of the lod is working as intended.

This is my guess.

MaxLOD tree remains at -100 z height until MinLOD tree is unloaded from memory (ie. hits the preset lod distance for the next Lod to appear).

Since MinLOD tree is removed, MaxLOD tree appears and stays, because its waiting for the MinLOD tree to come back and replace it.

 

I am not sure that I understand your point. If the double placement of the LOD was working as intended, then they would not both be visible at close range, would they? Here is my guess: the mechanism that recognizes the preset LOD distance that toggles the MinLOD and MaxLOD trees is no longer functioning for trees that have been relocated in a mod, as of the installation of patch 1.6.

[Skree000]

oh ok sorry i didnt understand what was happening in the screenshot, it looked like something else.

 

 

my guess would be when bethesda world builders create all their trees they then swap in the LODs and bury them under the ground and tie them to the lod-swap code, which keeps the lowres one at bay until the hires one dissapears.

 

since you moved the trees it reset the location of the lowres copy?

 

iono. just guessing cos i havent moved trees yet so i havent seen it first hand to experiment w/ it... . guessing is more fun :)

[BadPenney]

I think that you can disregard everything that I have posted about the Tree LOD.

 

After Skree's post I decided to check if newly placed trees had an LOD problem and dropped one to check out. It looked fine, and since I was getting error messages on loading the GECK about references to trees that I had changed, I recovered a backup .esp from just before I changed all those trees, thinking that I would just place new trees at their location and drop the affected trees down -1000.

 

But I started up Fallout to check out the double placed LODs again and all of the trees were back to normal. :wallbash:

 

I can only guess that there was some sort of transient effect that was caused by applying patch 1.6 that affected my savegames but has now resolved itself somehow. Hopefully it is gone for good. Sorry for the red herring post.

 

The pasty fleshed NPCs remain however, unfortunately.

[Skree000]

I think that you can disregard everything that I have posted about the Tree LOD.

 

After Skree's post I decided to check if newly placed trees had an LOD problem and dropped one to check out. It looked fine, and since I was getting error messages on loading the GECK about references to trees that I had changed, I recovered a backup .esp from just before I changed all those trees, thinking that I would just place new trees at their location and drop the affected trees down -1000.

 

But I started up Fallout to check out the double placed LODs again and all of the trees were back to normal. :wallbash:

 

I can only guess that there was some sort of transient effect that was caused by applying patch 1.6 that affected my savegames but has now resolved itself somehow. Hopefully it is gone for good. Sorry for the red herring post.

 

The pasty fleshed NPCs remain however, unfortunately.

 

 

good to hear!

 

can you post again in point for the steps you took to fix the problem then, for people who might later refer to this thread to find out?

 

-you just installed patch 1.6 and rebooted fallout 3 a few times? o.O?

[BadPenney]

can you post again in point for the steps you took to fix the problem then, for people who might later refer to this thread to find out?

 

-you just installed patch 1.6 and rebooted fallout 3 a few times? o.O

It's a bit mysterious, actually, but I'll give it a go.

 

I back up my .esp file at least once a day, sometimes more. I copy the file ShadySands.esp, paste it and then it rename something that gives it a date and order stamp, like ShadySandsBackup23July01.esp. If I make more that one backup in a day then I advance the last two digits ... 01.02,03... so that I know where the backup fits in line. I keep backups for at least a week. This has saved my chops more than once, so I recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to see all their work go into the bitbucket. I periodically backup to removable disks as well.

 

Anyway, before swapping out the trees as I described in an earlier part of this thread, I made a backup. Then continued to playtest and tweak my mod after changing the trees, and made many savegames without the LOD tree problem in them.

 

After retrieving a backup for 21 July that I had made during the LOD issue and renaming it to ShadySands.esp, I loaded a savegame and the trees were just back to normal. I can only guess that I cleared my savegames from the LOD glitch by swapping the trees out with trees that had no LOD sets, because rebooting didn't do it before. I even tried deselecting my mod from the datafiles and saving a clean game without success.

 

I just shake my head at FO3 sometimes.

[Skree000]

I just shake my head at FO3 sometimes.

 

 

lmao yes :wallbash: