Newbie is stumped, periodic CTD, much brain hurt. Sheson has all my kids!

[Odamanmishca]

Hello cats,

 

I'm a newbie to TES modding, and I truly knew nothing about it 9 days ago...

 

When I started modding, I fell down a black hole, and splat! hit a very cold dark place, but there was a light... and a shiny Gopher helped me out.

 

SKSE? Wassat? I asked ... Ah, let me show you... Aw neato, thanks! (an so on and so forth) SkyUI, to textures, meshes, which mods use what - scripts, ermergerd, brain!! But I could follow what he said and... what was more... it actually worked!

 

Memlogger, yep, I know how to use it, and I even gave Sheson my first borns for the next god knows how many lives, and enough pints to drown the lot... He must be able to populate a small planet by now I expect.

 

So after a couple rage-quits... I can get no further on my own with vids, which have been immensly helpful, and I r stuck...

 

But to cut straight to it:

I still get the odd crash.

 

I uninstalled Immersive Patrols, a mod I installed which brought me to Sheson's patch, but even though the mem log said the max I had used of the preallocated 512 of memory was, on numerous checks, between 209 to 250, and even though I got a little further without Imm. Patrols, I still crashed.

 

But from what I understand, if I has looooads more of mem, than before, there should be room to run the srcipts Imm. Patrols would create. Right?

 

Tes5Edit says all mods stuff loads, it finishes. There are about 90 mods. Some from Steam, that I liked, but which I couldn't find on Nexus.

 

The report I get from LOOT to sort the load order, would seem to look good ^^ (for all I know so far), with a few yellow notices only to clean a handful of mods with Tes5Edit, but they are mostly the official addons, which I assume writes over the last - (like updating content? Would that be right?)

Ult.Followers (UFO) has a few dirteh bits. So does Moonpaths, and Crossbows revamped, Cloaks and FishingInSkyrim. They all have 1 to 4 items flagged with a yellow notice to clean with Tes5Edit.

 

There were others, but they righted themselves with patches :blush: , or I don't use them now.

 

The only textures mod I have going, I believe, is W.A.T.E.R., and I studiously went about checking that i had all the right patches for it and other mods to use RND, the rainy mod, Wet n Cold, oh and Climates of Tamriel, (I spose that's quite big innit?) Frostfall. Great mods.

But most of my mods are for gameplay, cos I'm not too fussed about looks atm.

I could have a dirty save. But I wonder how to know. File I use isn't bloated, and is nearly the same size as early saves of the same character.

Should I just start again? Maybe the level 4 save, the earliest save I have, is mucked up too... Or is there something I can do to see WTFFF is going on, hhehehe gah, hayelp meh!

 

I haven't studied Tes5Edit yet, should I do that? which I take is modifying mods, n I'm a bit concerned about messing with ppl's work.

Be happy to provide more info, like specific stuff, just looking for what's probably wrong, so I can learn what I need to learn next.

Edited May 18, 2014 by Heoricdafaq

[Ayporos]

If you aren't too far along ingame, yes just do a clean restart. This is recommended -by default- and if you've done lots of changing it is very highly recommended as it is likely the cause for your crashes.

Don't worry -too- much about BOSS warnings, I have a few warnings and even 2 errors I can't seem to get rid off (the errors are for mods I don't have enabled (cba to manually delete the files) but for some reason boss still decides to throw a tantrum)
Keep in mind also BOSS only goes so far.. it will sort out submitted/known conflicts for the bigger mods but other than that it doesn't know everything and thus in the end it'll just do an alphabetical sort.
It may be necessary to manually sort some of the more unknown/unpopular/obscure mods -after- running BOSS or also some of the more popular ones that just haven't been used in conjunction by other users.
Keep in mind also that BOSS will overwrite any custom manual load order you've made so DON'T run BOSS again after you did your manual positioning (using NMM or other) or it will reset the load orders back to BOSS sorting+alphabetical for the rest.

Regarding the memory thing, even if you aren't running hd textures and stuff I'd still recommend looking into memory tweaking because there's more advantages than just preventing CTD's.

Here's two useful links regarding ini tweaking:

Read this first:
http://itcprosolutions.com/skyrimguides/tweak_guide.htm
Then this:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48387/?

The second one isn't a mod, just a PDF (text) file that you can read through. I recommend reading through all of it instead of just searching for the ini lines and copy-pasting them.


Hope that helps!

[Odamanmishca]

Tyvm

 

I will defo check out the tweaking

 

oh

 

and yes

 

hehe "reading"

 

Yeh, new save... I could just turn them on one by one, and by related groups, till I find a problem. But I do wonder about things that might not show up till I'm in a certain area or until I attempt a cetain activity or quest.

 

Regarding load order tweaks, I really have no idea where to look, apart from new objects like player houses. I guess starting small is the way to go, and that hours of time would be involved for a an extensive list of mods.

 

Might chop a few out.

 

I guess there's no real guarantee, that one who would mod might encounter some kind of problem along the way.

 

Still a lot of fun to learn this stuff and get some kind of handle on the thinking.

 

Tahnks again for your reply, Ayporos.

and please if anyone else has info, be glad to hear it. o/

[Georgiegril]

The report I get from LOOT to sort the load order, would seem to look good ^^ (for all I know so far), with a few yellow notices only to clean a handful of mods with Tes5Edit, but they are mostly the official addons, which I assume writes over the last - (like updating content? Would that be right?)

 

No, that would be wrong. You need to take care of all the messages the LOOT is giving you. TES5Edit cleaning is required.

I agree with Ayporos, your best bet is to revert to a clean vanilla skyrim following the STEP Guide on how to do that, then start over adding mods or making other changes one at a time, reading the LOOT log and taking care of any messages, and playing in game to test a bit before making the next change. This requires patience, but taking time in the front end makes cure you get to play the game instead of spend all your time trying to figure out what to fix.

 

I suggest you take a look at Gophers video series for beginning modders, it will help you set up a solid game.

[bben46]

Odd crashes are a part of the Bethesda experience. You will get one from time to time even with a pure unmodded vanilla game. No matter how well you optimize and clean your game, you will still get one occasionally. Some can be traced to a particular thing - such as running out or Video ram or system ram, or some bug in the game that you have no control over. Sometimes I can play for hours with no CTD. Then the next time I play, I can get several within a few minutes. Then, after restarting - I can again play quite a while.

 

Not every crash is game related - some can be traced to things outside of the game. Background processes all take a small number of clock cycles - if they don't return control back to the game soon enough - you will get a CTD. I have seen this with IM programs that automatically check for messages, and once with a HP printer driver calling home to check for updates every 10 minutes ( how often do you think a printer needs updates?) It turned out to be a bug in the HP program where it was calling the wrong site EVERY 10 MINUTES! A manual update fixed it.

[Ayporos]

Georgiegril, I wasn't talking about redoing his whole installation, merely starting a new game (ingame).
While I am sure completely redoing skyrim from scratch would be the preferred way to go I don't believe it is necessary.

I started out installing 150 mods from steam workshop and a few from nexus in a completely random order (I just browsed through the entire mod list sorted with most popular on top) without booting up game once, found out it CTD at startup and -then- learned about mod compatibility and install and load orders. Since then I've uninstalled, reinstalled deleted and found new mods countless time and my current count stands at 210 active mods and 42 inactive ones (still installed tho) and 37 aren't recognized by BOSS.
This without ever doing a clean install.

My game runs smooth as silk (albeit at reduced FPS due to some HEAVY graphical mods, TrueVision ENB and high settings) and I've had 0 CTD's during all of my playtime consisting of 30+ hours.

So it isn't -necessary- per se to do a step-by-step clean careful install although I must admit I've spent approx 2 weeks total on my 'getting skyrim to work' endeavours and it'll take some more playing before my playtime surpasses my install time.. oh I also am a programmer by trade and a heavy hardware/software enthusiast so that might have helped too. :geek:

Edited May 18, 2014 by Ayporos

[Georgiegril]

@Ayporos--sorry I misunderstood you.

 

While I fully accept that it is possible to add a bunch of mods at once without problems, it is more likely that doing so will create problems, and if it does, those problems will be much more difficult to diagnose.

Ultimately it is a matter of personal preference--would you rather take the time up front to set up a solid game, or risk having to spend days or weeks trying to fix the problems.

And of course your skills set aids you in your strategy.

 

@ OP-- If you decide to try to troubleshoot your current set-up, the first thing you need to do is take care of all of the messages in LOOT. The file conflicts it is reporting are one of the biggest causes for seemingly random ctds.

[Ayporos]

@Georgiegril it wasn't so much a strategy, more like an unfortunate accident. I didn't realize the mods might cause problems and as I was just browsing randomly I didn't really read the descriptions intensively. I just kind of (hopefully/naively) assumed Skyrim had a solid game-engine with solid mod-support (this assumption was made by the sheer amount of skyrim mods available).
The reason I didn't start from scratch upon figuring out I had created a big tangled mess of bugs, incompatibilities and rubbish is due to the fact that I am a very very stubborn person.
Oh well, it might have costed me a lot of time but I can safely say I have learned -a lot- from it and am currently manually fixing misbehaving/unwanted mods in the development kit myself (as per my very first post on this forum was regarding a problem I had that I eventually figured out myself). :laugh:

Oh heroicdafaq, check out: http://www.skyrimgems.com/
I found that site in particular VERY helpful in setting up a nice solid modbase and it lists basically everything you might really need 'experience' wise that's lore/RP friendly, I cannot recommend it enough.

[Odamanmishca]

Back again! Thanks guys!

 

Mod shoppin' + newbies = youguessedit

 

That was what I did, which, after numerous WTHs, led me to Gopher's video series, to get a fix. And the steps I followed there minus most texture/mesh stuff, led to a good game.

 

Then, by utter excitement, I went mod silly, and viola! CTDs. and then anfter some success and much reading, a dead end led me here...

 

So I need to get a handle on Tes5Edit then, np, I can get to there I think.

 

As it turns out, I reinstalled the game, and I've just installed SKSE, SkyUI, iHUD and A quality world map. So now, instead of a "fix", Gopher's vids are a foundation. And the experimentation with mods has pretty much given me a plan of which mods I want to include.

 

I suspect that turning mods on and off ruined the save from the previous installation of the game, (saves, I will learn to take better care of, too) and since it was a level 4 character, not a problem at all really.

 

I did since find a patch for Improved Fish that made ImpFish compatible with RND, and which LOOT doesn't place in the right order in the load order it suggests to use.

 

For now, instead of using Tes5Edit straight off the bat, as a first port of call I am going to scour the net for other patches I may've missed, (wups) and check info authors give specifically re Load Orders on whatever I might find that is new, and check info about LOrders on stuff that is okay too. It's info that I can make better sense of now, and may have over-looked previously.

 

Thanks again for popping in, and giving me a hand guys, really very appreciated. N good luck in your adventures!

 

____

 

I have to say, this is a very busy, intelligent and exciting gaming community. I am very happy to have come across it, and wonderfully smitten by people's creativity, and rather awed by others' tenacity and experience. The creation kit seems to be an excellent product.

 

Oh, one last thing, what type of game do you guys play, like the mods you use, and also, what is your character like? hehe

Personally, I like the survival mods really so much (so clever and many, many a wish made true) and I like the 2Hander Nord type, who typically runs through dungeons, to get a good fight in a doorway with multiple enemies. And it takes a lot of mead to get him drunk.

[Ayporos]

I am still working on getting a gaming experience set up.

I'm -mostly- settled as far as actual mods go (although I might encounter the occasional "oh that might be nice" thing but it won't be anything requiring a new save).
The problem I have is, I restarted and decided I want to roll with an actual party (I previously played without any followers) but have encountered the problem of stupid followers and crippled follower functionality/AI.
Firstly of course I got insta-gibbed by my followers casting long-range spells that hit myself instead of enemies, that was fixable with a simple mod.
This is what I want for my followers:
- myself: Destruction fire magic + <whatever the hell I feel like>
- mage: Destruction lightning magic + <undecided yet magic school>
- mage: Destruction ice + <undecided yet magic school>
- mage: Restoration (dedicated party healer) + <undecided yet magic school>
- Archer: just bow and arrow, legolas style
- one handed + shield (dedicated tank)
- two handed (secondary tank)

Secondly I ran into the problem that some characters come with standard spells (from their mod) that cannot be removed by Advanced Follower Tweaks because they are of a special type (SparksLeftHand & SparksRightHand for instance, instead of just 'Sparks' which is a bothhands spell) so my mages would keep casting spells I didn't want em to cast and I had no way of removing them.
It took me 2 days (figured it out today) to fix this by manually removing them from their respective mods using the creation kit... which didn't work at first... found out I have an AI/NPC patcher (ASIS) which was the offender so I had to add those NPC's to the excludes list of that patcher and generate a new patched mod.

Now I am stuck on a different problem though.. because I've managed to take away all combat spell from my restoration (healer) mage this has made apparent that she doesn't, in fact, use healing hands or healother on myself or other followers... so right now I'm working on finding a fix for that. Using Tweak Spells from AFT 'kinda' fixes it (workaround) but in an unnatural way that breaks my immersion so I'm looking into AI scripting/patching and found two dedicated healer follower mods. I'm sifting through their work to figure out how they did it in what way and if I can copy/enhance it for my healer mage (I'm dead set on using my own picked character, don't want to use their actual follower npc).
It's starting to feel more like work than entertainment though so unless I conjure up an acceptable answer within one or two days I might just drop it and settle for using the less-than-ideal AFT tweakspells option.

Obviously when I've got that all sorted out I'll still have to tweak/mod the difficulty to set it more in line with my 'pretty large' party, luckily I already have two mods for just that (aside from upping the difficulty from master to legendary which I'd rather not do because it means I die from even one landed swordhit by an enemy)

Edited May 18, 2014 by Ayporos