Plagued with issues...

[ElricOfGrans]

Firstly, the specs. i7 2.8GHz quad core, 3GB DDR3, Radeon HD5770 1GB GDDR5, 1TB SATAIII 7200RPM, Windows 7. I can run unmodded Oblivion very well (and even better with a few performance mods).

 

I manage my mods with OBMM, then use BOSS to order them. After this, I tweak the order with Wrye Bash (BOSS puts the Bash Patch before the Streamline and the Duke Patrick's mods) then rebuild the patch (I merge in all mergable mods, but only use the Darnified Books tweak). If relevant, I will then rerun TES4LODGen. I launch Oblivion with OBSE, which has the Pluggy (v135), Stutter-removal and Fast Exit plug-ins.

 

I have attached my modlist. It does not show the Bash Patch last, but it definitely sits last when I view it in Wrye Bash. I also notice the list includes all esm files, even the deactivated ones. I make `lazy omods': I put everything in there (when I can get away with it), then deactivate the options I do not use. If you see a mod in the list where there are two options (eg Enhanced Water ND/HD), I deactivate the extra esm(s). I also have many texture mods (QTP3, Improved Fruits, Vegetables and Meats, HGEC high-res, Improved Faces, etc) and RAEVWD that do not show in this list.

 

My issues were three-fold:

* If I run (or gallop a horse), the game will usually crash within a minute or two. This only happens when outside cities: I can run within them fine.

* If I move into the area north of Kvatch (around Fort Linchal), I get an instant crash, no matter what.

* I get very poor framerates outside the cities most of the time (sometimes I get brief moments of 30+FPS, but usually poor).

 

I have spent some time investigating this. To confirm it was mod and not texture related, I deactivated all my esms and ran Oblivion. I got 30FPS in cities, 25FPS outside and no crashes, even around Kvatch. Good. I then reactivated only a hand-full (survival mods, Streamline) that I was highly doubtful could cause me problems. I got 35FPS in cities, 30FPS outside (Streamline rocks!) and no crashes. I then reactivated all my esms *except* Better Cities and Unique Landscapes ones. Back to 30FPS in cities, 10-15 outside, crashes when running and crashes around Kvatch. I removed Enhanced Weather, then Qarl's Havest, Alive Waters, MMM, each of them made no difference. Removing Tamriel Travellers did, however, see an improvement in framerate (18FPS outside), which surprised me. By this point, I was only left with mods that made no sense to cause issues, so I started removing them in bulk. Somewhere along the line, the random crashes when running stopped and the framerate improved, but I still got the Kvatch crash. After several hours of this, I finally pinned the Kvatch crash on Duke Patrick's Actors Can Now Miss(!) --- I should note that it never caused me a crash in combat, and there were no enemies in this area at the time I was testing. I turned all esms back on, removed the suspect mod, and was back to poor framerates, crashes while running, but could now enter the area north of Kvatch without issue.

 

Can anyone possibly explain the Kvatch crash and how I could perhaps fix it and keep the mod causing it?

 

As for the crashes while running/low framerate, none of the mods I removed immediately before it went away made any sense. Most of them related to cities (eg weather inside, Let the People Drink, Cities Alive At Night) and I was never anywhere near a city when the crashes happened. It did not `suddenly' disappear either. As I removed mods, it gradually became less-frequent, then finally disappeared. I would guess, rather than being caused by any particular mod, it may be there is too much `fat' in my mod selection and I need to trim it a little. In other words, it went away because I had uninstalled so many mods, not because of any particular mod. Could my guess be on the mark, or is there another sane explanation to this? What approach should I take to solve this issue? If I need to `trim the fat', are there any obvious places to start here, or do I just have to hold in the tears and decide what is most important to keep (I want them all!!)?

 

While testing, I was running with debugging output on. I saw some interesting errors at times that may be related:

 

*``An expression failed to evaluate to a valid result

File: [name.esm] Offset: 0x[hex] Command: <unknown>

Error in script bf00ac85

Unexpected token type 110 (6e) encountered''

This one span past too quickly to catch all the output, but I saw `Map Marker Overhaul.esm' and `Supreme Magica.esm' in the files. The rest of the output was static for every error. It actually was `<unknown>', not that I do not know.

*``Error in scipt ee00080e

Operator " failed to evaluate to a valid result

File: Oblivion Graphics Extender Support.esp Offset: 0x011A Command: Let''

I again missed a lot out output here, but it seemed to complain about OBGE a lot. I got these OBGE errors at a different time to the others.

*I also kept getting spam-output about changing wheel, `1 -> 1' when in game, or `(inventory menu)' on the inventory. This spam did not happen on the map, I noticed.

 

Does this output mean anything to anyone?

[bben46]

First, disable streamline when troubleshooting any FPS problems as it WILL mess with your FPS as that is how it works. Your high graphics quality mods are fighting with streamline, it trades graphics for FPS if the FPS drops below the streamline minimum fps setting.

 

If your system is good, you don't need streamline as it is intended to help people with weak systems to play at a reasonable (not fantastic) fps of around 15 -25.

 

Streamline will reduce all of your graphics settings while you play to maintain the fps you specified. Then programs like the graphics extender are trying to increase the graphics detail while streamline is trying to reduce it.

 

If you can, play without streamline. If you still have very low fps, start removing some of the mods that increase the video detail. or reduce the graphics settings manually to keep fps up.

 

I suspect that some of your crashes are due to the in game changes made by streamline

[ElricOfGrans]

That makes a lot of sense. I removed Streamline and a few fluff mods (eg Get Wet) and tried things out. Unfortunately, that did not seem to help, and I dropped down to an unplayable 5FPS when outside. I have been reading around, and read that turning off sound hardware acceleration can help when getting random crashes. I tried this, and it did seem to make a difference. I can now play 15-20 minutes without a crash, albeit at poor frame rates. I tried installing Oblivion PolyGone Overhaul to see if that made a difference, and it brought me up to 8FPS. I then turned off shadows on grass, which bought me 10FPS (I already use LowPoly Grass, in case you were wondering). I still crash eventually, however. I wondered if there may be anything significant in that audio detail, so I tried turning footsteps off, which bought me 15FPS (sometimes 25-30), except in combat where it fell to 8-10FPS. I still crashed just the same as before too (around 15-20 minutes).

 

While doing this, I checked out the tweaks in the bash patch and noticed I could drop the chameleon refraction fix and do it in there. I also noticed things required for Mayu's Animation Overhaul and Better Redguards (both of which I am running, though I noticed neither seemed to be working). I found that turning on any of the options for Tweak Actors (*any* option) resulted in an error when I rebuilt the patch:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Mopy\basher.py", line 4921, in Execute
   raise
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Mopy\basher.py", line 4883, in Execute
   patchFile.buildPatch(log,SubProgress(progress,0.8,0.9))#no speeding needed/really possible (less than 1/4 second even with large LO)
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Mopy\bosh.py", line 14426, in buildPatch
   patcher.buildPatch(log,SubProgress(subProgress,index))
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Mopy\bosh.py", line 20501, in buildPatch
   tweak.buildPatch(log,progress,self.patchFile)
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Mopy\bosh.py", line 20448, in buildPatch
   if not record.full or not record.eid or not record.model.modPath: continue #for unnamed creatures else next if crashes.
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'modPath'

I am not sure if there is any relevance here, but I felt it best to ask.

[bben46]

It looks like you are on the right track. Here is a site the has a lot of tweaks, Not just for Oblivion, but many games. Start with the system tweaks, then the video board tweaks - these will be the same foe all games. Then do the tweaks for the individual games. Sometimes a few little tweaks can add up to a big improvement.

 

http://www.tweakguides.com/ :thumbsup:

 

I have written a few articles that may help

Here is a link to Bben's Crash Help

http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=298.

Here are my Slow Game suggestions

http://tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=255

[ElricOfGrans]

I had already gone though Tweak Guides (I believe it is stickied around here somewhere), but I had not seen your articles. I took on some advice from them, and a few ini tweak guides I found around the place. I also put Streamline back in (just for the Streampurge and Streamsave options). I then trialled LowTriPolyGrass, which I had heard was even better than LowPolyGrass. I also added OperationOptimisation and cut a few more smaller mods that I could do without. I have not noticed any change in FPS or the crashing.

 

One thing struck me as weird. Disabling music seems frequently cited, and disabling hardware acceleration seemed to make a difference, so I thought that may be worth trying. I set bMusicEnabled=0 in my Oblivion.ini and gave it a go. No change. Literally: the music was still playing! Any ideas?

 

EDIT:

I tried disabling sound altogether, which worked. Complete silence, but no real gains. This does not seem to be the direction to go.

 

I think I may be onto it now though. Out of curiosity, I tried making a new character. No errors in the debug output, good FPS. I only played five minutes to test it out, but everything was fine. I then reloaded the save of an old character I no longer use. Again, no errors, almost-solid 30FPS (even in combat), and I played 10 minutes without issue. I suspect something must be corrupt in the saves of the character I had been playing. Unfortunately, though I retain a long list of saves, even the oldest has these issues (I have obviously carried whatever it was a long time). Is there anything that can be attempted at this point, or do I just have to scrap the character and start afresh?

[Shadowfen]

I think I may be onto it now though. Out of curiosity, I tried making a new character. No errors in the debug output, good FPS. I only played five minutes to test it out, but everything was fine. I then reloaded the save of an old character I no longer use. Again, no errors, almost-solid 30FPS (even in combat), and I played 10 minutes without issue. I suspect something must be corrupt in the saves of the character I had been playing. Unfortunately, though I retain a long list of saves, even the oldest has these issues (I have obviously carried whatever it was a long time). Is there anything that can be attempted at this point, or do I just have to scrap the character and start afresh?

 

Can you recall (or do you keep a record) of mods that you upgrade? It is possible that upgrading a mod that you have played or are in the process of playing can adversely affect your game. I've suspected several times that mod state, items, doors, etc that got saved into my save game were modified in a mod upgrade so that the upgrade would not work properly with the old version of the state/items/doors/etc.

 

If you can narrow down to which mods might be the cause, you could try doing an "uninstall"/new save of your character and then readd the mod again and see if that helps. It would cost you the history of doing that particular mod if it works, but it could be worth it if it fixes the problem.

[ElricOfGrans]

I had not upgraded too many mods with this character, so that was pretty easy to remember. I removed all the upgraded mods and, on a hunch, also removed the ones that had been putting out errors to the console. I then made a clean save and reinstalled those mods. Unfortunately, that did not seem to work --- it also resulted in some very bizarre changes to the character! I guess I will just restart the character over, since that seems to solve the problems. To put a positive spin on things, I can try a few things slightly differently this time, as I had contemplated on before.

 

Thank you for all the help and advice. I may lose a little progress, but the performance in a fresh game is definitely better than I had ever seen before. In fact, it is so smooth it seems almost wrong ;)

[goggles2]

for future reference pluggy has been shown to actual increase rather than decrease instability :down: