GECK saves changes as new items

[Nadin]

After I alter something in the GECK and save, it claims that I modified whatever it was correctly. But, when I load, I get warnings about duplicate ID's and find out that it was all added in as new. This has been going on and off for a few months and is a major wrench in the works for anything I try to get done. Is there a way to fix it or at least find the cause?

[pkleiss]

Have you used FO3Edit to check your mod for errors lately? If you have ever deleted vanilla objects in your mod, you can get this sort of behavior. If you have no errors in FO3Edit, then I am unsure what might be the issue. Usually this is a sign of database corruption, though.

[Nadin]

Yeah, I've checked for errors repeatedly. There's some weirdness with the dialogue topics concerning a new companion I added, but nothing else I can interpret. I'll have it "Undelete and disable" just in case, though.

What's database corruption?

[pkleiss]

Mods are really nothing more than databases filled with records. When you create a new object, the Geck assigns a new Form ID for the new object based on the next available unused ID. When you get corruption in the database, this ID can sometimes not be an unused ID and thus you get two objects with the same form ID. That is bad. When you reopen the Geck, it will usually notice this and reassign form IDs for duplicates, but this doesn't alway remedy the main problem. I believe there is an option to renumber form IDs in FO3Edit, but I have never used that function, so I can't really give you a how to or even know if it will fix your issue.

 

Sometimes when deleting vanilla objects, the form ID becomes available again for use with a new object and this can throw the pointer off and the Geck will start assigning used IDs to new objects. In this way the problem gets worse.

 

Have you looked at your editorwarnings.txt file after opening you mod in the Geck? There are a list of errors in there as well and sometimes you can identify which objects have the bad (duped) IDs. You may have to remove those objects and save the mod and then re-open it and start over making those objects again. To be honest, its a hit and miss sort of procedure. Its hard for me to say exactly what you might need to do to fix up your mod when these sorts of errors occur. But I would start by fixing any errors you find in FO3Edit first, then tackle what you find in the Editorwarnings.txt file in your \fallout3 folder.

[Nadin]

I thoroughly purged it in F03edit. It now crashes when I load. Don't you just LOVE the stability you get from the G.E.C.K.?

And the problem isn't that it's assigning used ID's to new objects, it's that it's assigning used ID's to objects that SHOULD be getting modified.

The text file for editor ID errors is 1.26 megabytes. I skimmed it, and most of it seemed to be standard errors--no model list, effects not defined, Etc. Turns out that the last few hundred lines were one perk, so I'm betting that's the culprit.

[pkleiss]

1.26 MB? Holy crap! Do you have a backup of your mod in the \backup folder that doesn't have these annoying ID mess ups that you could start over with? It sure sounds like you may have a few issues going on there. My mod, which has 13K records has zero editor warnings. I feel for you man, I really do.

[Nadin]

I have the backups, but they are quite old, so I just randomly deleted a bunch of stuff I didn't really need and hoped for the best.

So far, it's working great.

And the editor warnings was the geck trying to deal with a self-referencing form list that referenced itself. Don't know how the hell that happened.

Thanks for the help, by the way. I'd give you kudos, but this new layout is a bit...confusing.

[pkleiss]

I glad to hear things are going better. Keep us updated if things start to go south again.

[Nadin]

It did it again. I'm gonna try updating the relevant files to ESM. Except the one I'm altering, of course.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

The problem you're describing is exactly what will happen if you're making changes to a plugin that is not an esm (or not an active esp). It will create a newID, not modify the existing one.