Persistant Crash When Looting Armor off Males

[originslayer]

Greets!

 

And now, for your enjoyment, the Great Wall of Text! :biggrin:

 

I've had this problem before, when attempting to remove clothing from any character, dead or alive, would cause CTD. In frustration, I reinstalled and went through the whole plugin ritual again, for the sixth or so time since I started playing Oblivion on the PC. By the way, never heard of Oblivion or even the Elder Scrolls until Xbox Live had it available in Games on Demand. Shocked.jpg

 

For nearly six weeks all has been fairly well with the latest install. Though in the last week, that same problem has arisen again. Except, for now, the problem is mainly affecting the human type males, both original and those added by mods. The humanoid types will produce a CTD when looting armor in a very random manner. I'd estimate ten percent of the time; this also applies to all female types. My own Breton male character will randomly CTD when trying to change from armor to clothes, or when trying to change a Mage Equipment robe to anything else. Seldom do I loot the general Mage Equipment robes from standard NPCs so I can't say if there is a problem in looting that stuff.

 

Trying to avoid another complete install, I've reinstalled the compatibility skeleton, all body meshes and textures, along with the few mods that I have so far suspected as having corrupt files. For good measure, I re-installed the plugin files to those mods as well. Also, during the last install, I made a backup of the data folder before the first mod was installed. In desperation, I've overwritten all the original/dlc bsa files, for fear they've become corrupt.

 

Here is the layout, according to load order:

 

HGEC OMOD

Mage Equipment 2 (calls for Robert's Female, but there is no exposed skin anyway, also female robes are overridden below)

Robert's Male Body override

Colourwheel's Stock Female Armor/Clothing override

and then I placed a few skimpy female robe meshes from another mod, overwritting Colourwheel's.

These were arranged using BOSS, though I've arranged Cobl Races TNR/TNR SI along with Colourwheel's Sexy Female NPCs (in that order) towards the bottom, to keep other mods from overriding them. These were replaced to their original position, but that didn't help.

 

Looting worn clothing or other items never causes a crash. Looting custom armor from other quest mods has about 50/50 chance. For instance, VHBloodlines would crash every time I tried to loot custom night brethren armor from male or female NPCs. Blade Song custom armor has caused no problem whatsoever. Still yet, stock armor seems the most troublesome. What has me really confused is this little trick I've formed to get around the problem for now. For example, in the VHBloodline ending quest to hire servants, there is a trainer to hire. Upon hiring him, there is a scripted change into his (stock) armor. CTD. Finally, what I did in order to complete the quest without blatant cheating is this: I got the NPC reference ID, left the cell, console removeallitems, save, reload, re-enter the cell, NPC is naked, no problem. Used the magic version of Toaster Says Share in order to add clothing and armor, using custom armor from Blade Song. (Though, using Toaster magic to try removing the original armor produces the same result as looting.) Went through the process, the script ran, the NPC changed into the armor and all was well...

 

Apparently, there is no problem with the body meshes or textures, according to the process above. The armor, stock or custom, has no visual problems, I'm careful to use armor specific to the body types. Also, this isn't restricted to looting or trying to change equipment through unconventional means, such as Toaster's Magic Share. If the male (on rare occasion female) NPC attempts to remove armor because it's broken, that will cause a CTD on cell load. Additionally, if the afflicted NPC is controllable, I can have them wait, leave the cell, save, reload, re-enter the cell and everything is fine. Their broken armor is removed and they're either naked or clothed according to their inventory. There are no problems in taking the armor at that point, so only when they're (un)equipping it does this crash occur.

 

Mage Equipment overrides robes, Colourwheel adds female biped armor/clothes and overrides Mage Equipment on females. The trouble mainly rests with stock male armor when (un)equipping, on human type male NPCs. O.o

 

I'd like to know the technical aspects and implications of this problem. That way I can better trace it to the root of a specific mod myself. I really can't figure what else there is that could produce this sort of crash beyond body skeletons, meshes, textures, or, bad armor meshes/textures. I've double checked to ensure any required mesh/texture files are present in the proper folders... I'm wandering if this is a container problem, but I'd have no idea where to begin searching if it were.

 

FYI, the crash prevention dodad spits out lots of "Invalid _THIS_ pointer", faulty links and NULL-pointer references. Though, it never helps with this specific problem.

 

So, does anyone out there have any ideas about this mess?

 

TIA for your consideration.

[colourwheel]

Greets!

 

And now, for your enjoyment, the Great Wall of Text! :biggrin:

 

I've had this problem before, when attempting to remove clothing from any character, dead or alive, would cause CTD. In frustration, I reinstalled and went through the whole plugin ritual again, for the sixth or so time since I started playing Oblivion on the PC. By the way, never heard of Oblivion or even the Elder Scrolls until Xbox Live had it available in Games on Demand. Shocked.jpg

 

For nearly six weeks all has been fairly well with the latest install. Though in the last week, that same problem has arisen again. Except, for now, the problem is mainly affecting the human type males, both original and those added by mods. The humanoid types will produce a CTD when looting armor in a very random manner. I'd estimate ten percent of the time; this also applies to all female types. My own Breton male character will randomly CTD when trying to change from armor to clothes, or when trying to change a Mage Equipment robe to anything else. Seldom do I loot the general Mage Equipment robes from standard NPCs so I can't say if there is a problem in looting that stuff.

 

Trying to avoid another complete install, I've reinstalled the compatibility skeleton, all body meshes and textures, along with the few mods that I have so far suspected as having corrupt files. For good measure, I re-installed the plugin files to those mods as well. Also, during the last install, I made a backup of the data folder before the first mod was installed. In desperation, I've overwritten all the original/dlc bsa files, for fear they've become corrupt.

 

Here is the layout, according to load order:

 

HGEC OMOD

Mage Equipment 2 (calls for Robert's Female, but there is no exposed skin anyway, also female robes are overridden below)

Robert's Male Body override

Colourwheel's Stock Female Armor/Clothing override

and then I placed a few skimpy female robe meshes from another mod, overwritting Colourwheel's.

These were arranged using BOSS, though I've arranged Cobl Races TNR/TNR SI along with Colourwheel's Sexy Female NPCs (in that order) towards the bottom, to keep other mods from overriding them. These were replaced to their original position, but that didn't help.

 

Looting worn clothing or other items never causes a crash. Looting custom armor from other quest mods has about 50/50 chance. For instance, VHBloodlines would crash every time I tried to loot custom night brethren armor from male or female NPCs. Blade Song custom armor has caused no problem whatsoever. Still yet, stock armor seems the most troublesome. What has me really confused is this little trick I've formed to get around the problem for now. For example, in the VHBloodline ending quest to hire servants, there is a trainer to hire. Upon hiring him, there is a scripted change into his (stock) armor. CTD. Finally, what I did in order to complete the quest without blatant cheating is this: I got the NPC reference ID, left the cell, console removeallitems, save, reload, re-enter the cell, NPC is naked, no problem. Used the magic version of Toaster Says Share in order to add clothing and armor, using custom armor from Blade Song. (Though, using Toaster magic to try removing the original armor produces the same result as looting.) Went through the process, the script ran, the NPC changed into the armor and all was well...

 

Apparently, there is no problem with the body meshes or textures, according to the process above. The armor, stock or custom, has no visual problems, I'm careful to use armor specific to the body types. Also, this isn't restricted to looting or trying to change equipment through unconventional means, such as Toaster's Magic Share. If the male (on rare occasion female) NPC attempts to remove armor because it's broken, that will cause a CTD on cell load. Additionally, if the afflicted NPC is controllable, I can have them wait, leave the cell, save, reload, re-enter the cell and everything is fine. Their broken armor is removed and they're either naked or clothed according to their inventory. There are no problems in taking the armor at that point, so only when they're (un)equipping it does this crash occur.

 

Mage Equipment overrides robes, Colourwheel adds female biped armor/clothes and overrides Mage Equipment on females. The trouble mainly rests with stock male armor when (un)equipping, on human type male NPCs. O.o

 

I'd like to know the technical aspects and implications of this problem. That way I can better trace it to the root of a specific mod myself. I really can't figure what else there is that could produce this sort of crash beyond body skeletons, meshes, textures, or, bad armor meshes/textures. I've double checked to ensure any required mesh/texture files are present in the proper folders... I'm wandering if this is a container problem, but I'd have no idea where to begin searching if it were.

 

FYI, the crash prevention dodad spits out lots of "Invalid _THIS_ pointer", faulty links and NULL-pointer references. Though, it never helps with this specific problem.

 

So, does anyone out there have any ideas about this mess?

 

TIA for your consideration.

 

Its hard to route out a problem with a specific mod when you have heavily costomized your game using parts from one mod to parts from another mod.

 

very possible your issue might not even be related to data folder configuration but a corrupted game save. Not sure if this applies to you but Recently I have had a huge issue with my game crashing when trying to save a game after certain quests. Ironically routed out the problem to be a mixture of The Unoffical oblivion patch and OBSE. lol A suggestion would to try to play your game without OBSE for a while 1st and see if your problem continuse. If it still does then try to play it without OBSE and the Unoffical oblivion Patch.

 

After this discovery for myself I aviod using OBSE and the Unofical oblivion patch when play through Vannilla questlines.

 

If it is a corrupt game save best to refer to the "how to prevent crashes" sticky giving you good info to prevent Crashes like remembering to turn off autoo save and never save over existing saves etc...

Edited March 22, 2011 by colourwheel

[originslayer]

Thanks colourwheel. I'll try your suggestions, using OBSE 20 beta 5, btw.

 

As for the meshes I overwrote, there are only a few robes - red silk, monk and two or three more that were mucked about with. Those cause no problems, your stuff causes no problems except on the rare occasion, which to me rules out your stuff. Then add the fact that the clothing never causes problems.

 

Hmm. Corrupt save game... With this current character, the last save number is 2141 and the backup folder for that character measures 8.23GB... that's only over six weeks! I find myself saving every five minutes, sometimes sooner. I learned early on to not overwrite the saves when a crash during a certain save wiped out two hours of intense progression through quite a few quests. That was the only time I've had a crash while saving. The saves themselves average 6-6.5MB each. After taking so much care and this turns out to be corruption in the save file, I'm really gonna just... blow my top.

 

Guess I'll also try loading a game from the fifth week and see what happens...

*EDIT: Wow. So now the previous saves that had no problems are now afflicted as well.

 

**EDIT2: All the way back to level one, save number 53 (seemed safest for testing) and this problem exists there. Perhaps I simply didn't notice before, because in truth looting isn't a top priority in the beginning...

Maybe if I'm forced into yet another new game then a reinstall will only hurt about half as bad.

Edited March 23, 2011 by originslayer

[colourwheel]

Thanks colourwheel. I'll try your suggestions, using OBSE 20 beta 5, btw.

 

As for the meshes I overwrote, there are only a few robes - red silk, monk and two or three more that were mucked about with. Those cause no problems, your stuff causes no problems except on the rare occasion, which to me rules out your stuff. Then add the fact that the clothing never causes problems.

 

Hmm. Corrupt save game... With this current character, the last save number is 2141 and the backup folder for that character measures 8.23GB... that's only over six weeks! I find myself saving every five minutes, sometimes sooner. I learned early on to not overwrite the saves when a crash during a certain save wiped out two hours of intense progression through quite a few quests. That was the only time I've had a crash while saving. The saves themselves average 6-6.5MB each. After taking so much care and this turns out to be corruption in the save file, I'm really gonna just... blow my top.

 

Guess I'll also try loading a game from the fifth week and see what happens...

*EDIT: Wow. So now the previous saves that had no problems are now afflicted as well.

 

**EDIT2: All the way back to level one, save number 53 (seemed safest for testing) and this problem exists there. Perhaps I simply didn't notice before, because in truth looting isn't a top priority in the beginning...

Maybe if I'm forced into yet another new game then a reinstall will only hurt about half as bad.

 

Wow! you mean to say your game saves are corrupted all the way to game save 53? O.O

 

I would highly doubt that OBSE would be the route of the problem if you have to go that far back. Also you have to take note when no longer using OBSE to load a game you have to deactivate all mods that are dependent on OBSE too.

 

I had a problem a long time ago when using P1DKeyChain.esp constantly crashing my game. never thought about deactivating it because for such a simple mod that is dependent on OBSE you tend to never think it could cause such problems. sadly P1DKeyChain.esp in the past has cause many problems crashing and corrupting game saves in the long run, when its such a useful mod to have to consolidate keys in inventory. :(

[originslayer]

P1DKeyChain.esp huh? Sounds very useful, hate the whole key mess, was hoping darNified would take care of that... Oh yeah, the OBSE issue, that was such phun. Forgot all about deactivating the extended *global* mods. Gave up quickly on that route, there are too many "can't play without" mods that force OBSE dependence on me. In fact, I bought Oblivion for the fourth time just to use OBSE. When transferring to PC, I got the D2D version before doing any mod homework. That will never happen again!

 

Good news! (Especially for anyone who my have the same problem who happens upon this.) Turns out that a lot of this problem stems from the game engine using the wrong shader for my video chip set. Installed OBGE recently, I noticed weird glitches with LODs and such, but it didn't seem to hurt anything but my eyes. Refusing to give up on this particular character, I've been looking at everything and making efforts to understand things that I don't already. Got around to the shaders and the problem with Oblivion using a lessor shader with newer video cards.

 

This has not completely solved the problem, but with the better shader in place the game is at least playable, with a crash happening during looting only half the time. Resist the urge to loot armor, deal with random crashes upon entering various cells when someone is sleeping there... check. This brings to mind a question: Why does the game wait until the PC enters the cell to change NPC's armor to clothing if they're either sleeping or scheduled to be sleeping? Is that like a low level process that simply hasn't had enough free cycles to complete?

 

During this process, I've noticed lots of seemingly irresponsible things in the mods I use. For instance, why in the world would a companion mod have characters that aren't used still included? Why on earth would a companion mod include records for all of the stock races when it uses only one custom race? (which explains why I had to place my preferred race changes nearly at the end of the load order) Seriously, WTF? Oh, and why, oh why, would a Neeshka clone have CM Partners listed as a master?

 

Of course, this gives me hope that I'll eventually find some strange container usage that also happens to inflict global impact, thereby causing this problem... As luck would have it, I can run OBSE Editor, except I can't open any scripts. So if I do find something that looks suspicious and it's an extended script, I won't be able to tinker with it, apparently... Haven't figured as to whether TES4EDIT, the BASH or GECKO is capable of compiling scripts. I know, RTFM!

 

I don't mean to seem harsh or judgemental. I've yet to fully understand Oblivion's scripting syntax, the vocabulary or the CS. My most recent modding experience is with Warband.

 

At any rate, I'm still reluctant to believe that this problem stems from save corruption. Could be that a mod or two installed since starting this character aren't playing nice. I won't be satisfied with removing any mod, if I can ever pinpoint the culprit. I'll want to fix the problem by rewriting script or merging or whatever. Which brings me back to the original question. It's like, what components should I be looking at when scanning through the mods? Like, for starters, what stock script references would be involved when opening containers and (un)equipping items or armor/clothing if there is a difference? The answer to this question would be a huge help, I think. My own searching hasn't turned up anything useful.

 

Sheesh. Okay, so finally, I've found that removing helmets and gauntlets causes no rift in the harmonious balance of my gaming experience... :teehee:

[originslayer]

I killed this legionary, the dead body was normal and intact. Since I can't loot and just for fun, I resurrected him to do it all over again.

 

Below is the result of the second death:

 

 

 

And after reloading the save:

 

 

 

Just reinstalled compatibility skeleton a few days ago and this is stock legion armor.

 

The good thing about this problem is that my game is running a little smoother each day as I clean useless records from my plugins while searching for the root of this problem. If only I knew where to look.

 

Any ideas?

[Oax]

sorry i don't have any answers, but don't feel alone I'm having the same issue

mine seems to occur only when looting cuirasses

[mapkob]

Yepp. Guess I have same problem

 

Random crashes when looting bodyes >:(

 

 

Running Oblivion + SI +KoftN

I m using OBSE 0020 + deadly reflex 6

 

I m was trying to run game without OBSE and it seems like problem was solved.

But deadly reflex doesnt works without OBSE >:(

Without deadly reflex oblivion :down:

[Nephenee13]

Don't bump two year old threads.

[KenJackson]

Yeah, otherwise you get people like me accidentally posting before they realize this is a dead thread.

Edited April 4, 2013 by KenJackson