LE Random invisible collisions in my player house mod

[mrpdean]

Hello experts, I'm really hoping someone might be able to shed some light on a possible cause for this bug.

 

I'm working on a heavily modded version of Lakeview Manor: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55154/?

 

I'm getting a very strange bug where every now and then when I enter the house there is an invisible object of some sort blocking the top of the wooden stairs. Usually only one of the two sets of stairs gets blocked at a time but I've have the blockage on both stairs at one time or another.

 

This only happens maybe once in every 20 or so times when entering the house so whatever is causing it, it isn't always there.

 

The only possible lead I've been able to find after a lot of searching was related to mannequins. There where 2 mannequins fairly close to the top of the stairs (a few meters away) but even after removing them the bug still happens.

 

I believe I might have the ID of whatever is blocking the stairs (from using the console in game) however I've not been able to find that ID in the creation kit.

 

It's a very annoying bug which is proving really difficult to solve.

 

Has anyone experienced this before and would anyone have any suggestions on what else I could try.

 

Thanks!

[AaronOfMpls]

I believe I might have the ID of whatever is blocking the stairs (from using the console in game) however I've not been able to find that ID in the creation kit.

The first 2 digits of the RefID will probably be different in the Creation Kit, since the CK isn't loading all of the other mods before yours in your load order. If the ID is, say, 68001d8d, in the CK it might be 01001d8d or 02001d8d or 03001d8d, depending on how many master files (or other mods) you have loaded with the mod you're editing.

 

If the RefID starts with ff, then it won't appear at all when you load that cell in the CK. (ff is the ID of your current save file; dynamically generated things, like randomly-spawned bandits and most dropped items, will have IDs with this.)

Edited August 1, 2014 by AaronOfMpls

[mrpdean]

Thanks AaronOfMpls,

 

With your advice I was able to locate id in the CK but unfortunately it tuned out to be an ambient dust beam which has no collision on it, so it can't be what's causing the bug :(

 

Will have to keep looking I guess.

 

Cheers

[Tamira]

Have you tried to hit F4 to make collision visible in the render window? It shows you where there is collision and you should be able to track down to which object the blocking collision belongs. Maybe a custom mesh made out of a vanilla mesh where the original collision has remained.

[mrpdean]

Yeah, nothing shows up in the Creation Kit, just in game and even then it only happens once in every 20 or so time when entering the house. Whatever is causing it, it's only intermittent.

 

Really wish it was possible to view collisions in-game but there doesn't seem to be any console command for that.

[mrpdean]

So I worked out that it is the actual stair mesh itself that seems to be causing the problem.

 

When the random collision glitch is happening, if I disable and re-enable the stairs using the console in-game the problem goes away.

 

i still don't get why it's an intermittent problem though. It's as if the collision on the stairs (which are custom made by the way) is shifting on some game loads.

 

I've noticed by looking at how Bethesda do collision on stairs that sometimes they use a gradual ramp for the collision and other times they use an actual stair shaped collision mesh. In my case the ramp seems to lead to more problems so I've changed it to a stair shaped collision and will see if that helps. The problem with the stair shaped collision is that the player sinks into the stairs quite a lot. Far more then with a ramp for a collision mesh.