FNVEdit Assertion Failures

[NorthWolf]

I was hoping someone could help me regarding the matter of assertion failures in FNVEdit. They happen for me a lot, basically every time I try to edit a significantly large set of files. :wallbash: This corrupts my new mod and makes it impossible to save, and attempting to resolve the issue by removing offending records seems to be impossible. I haven't been able to find any information regarding possible solutions beyond "it's not fixable", though this hasn't come from a reliable source so I'd rather have someone savvy let me know if that's really the case.

 

Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question.

[tunaisafish]

It's not a silly question :)

 

What's the Assertion failure?

If you can link to a mod that always triggers it, that would be helpful too.

[NorthWolf]

Derp. Well, on the current file I'm working with I don't expect help, seeing as I can't honestly expect FNVEdit to work with it.

 

I'm moving stuff from Fallout3.esm into a new plugin to do a content patch, and there's a particular branch of NPC dialog responses that causes assertion failures. The thing is, no single response invokes this behavior. If I copy them individually to a new, different plugin each individual response will not cause an assertion failure. If I try different patterns of adding the branches to a single plugin I can get up to four before it'll throw assertion failures. Different attempts can yield assertion failures after only two files are copied over to the plugin. I'm assuming that this is the result of differences between file structures in FO3 and FNV so it's not like I seriously expect that to work under all circumstances (I'll probably try FO3Edit), but it did spark my curiosity...

 

I've had this happen before when working with another mod to do the same thing, but nothing eccentric about that work. I was using FalloutNV.esm and the mod (Ahztek's Weapon Overhaul? Project Nevada? Maybe a merged patch?) and trying to do roughly the same thing, copy a big ol' list of records somewhere. If I copied it and got an assertion failure I'd have to restart FNVEdit because the file was now blocked from saving, but sometimes I could continue working and the next attempt would copy the file successfully. Sometimes I'd get another assertion failure. Sufficient determination resulted in a file that worked, but it doubled or tripled my work time. Other times it would never stop throwing the failure, which would make what I was working on seemingly impossible to do. It's done this on different mods as well with similar results... I can't really pinpoint it and I admittedly should've paid attention to which mods it tripped up on, but I never did.

Edited July 8, 2011 by NorthWolf

[NorthWolf]

Yup. Resolved for my case, but it's niche. Still curious if there's a general way to handle these errors with normal mods.

[tunaisafish]

Yeah I think you're right as it does sound like differences in file structure.

 

FO3Edit & TESEdit are the same programs as FNVEdit, just with different names.

Same goes for FO3Dump, TESDump & FNVDump.

 

Both of those programs use common source for file format definitions, and those files are available in the FNVDump download here.

So if you're able to record the Assertion errors then it's possible to see exactly what is causing them.

 

The person that said "it's not fixable" may well be right. We won't really know without more info.

Even if it's not fixable, if you know the part of the FO3 record that is not valid in FNV, at least then there's be a way to edit it before importing it into the FNV mod.

 

BTW, I'm not an expert on the source, but have used it with Eliminster's help when creating the FormID Diffs.

[NorthWolf]

I was under the impression that the programs were the same and had the exact same architecture, but FO3Edit was able to do the changes I wanted seamlessly whereas FNVEdit kept hitting assertion errors. Could it be the hardcoded data included with FO3Edit, perhaps? Or maybe the newer version of FNVEdit simply introduced an error? I wouldn't know, really, but it worked.

 

As I said, though, I sort of expected stuff like this to crop up for working with FO3 files, was more curious about FNV mods that look and operate fine but hiccup when I edit them. When this happens again, which seems pretty likely, I'll pose a more concrete question. Admittedly I was more hoping for some general guidelines on how to handle these errors so that I could fend for myself, but I realize it'd be easier for someone to show me if there was an actual problem to be solved. :pinch:

[tunaisafish]

I was under the impression that the programs were the same and had the exact same architecture, but FO3Edit was able to do the changes I wanted seamlessly whereas FNVEdit kept hitting assertion errors. Could it be the hardcoded data included with FO3Edit, perhaps? Or maybe the newer version of FNVEdit simply introduced an error? I wouldn't know, really, but it worked.

 

The FO3Edit you have probably wasn't compiled with the debug flag set. So the assertions wouldn't be there.

If you make a copy of FNVEdit and rename it to FO3Edit you've got yourself the most up to date version with debugging on.

However, there are basically 3 sets of hardcoded data within the exe, and it just decides which to use on its name.

It's not worth going looking without some reproducable error data though. My eyes start to glaze over if I look at those files too long :)

[NorthWolf]

Well, using FNVEdit causes visible corruption of data when I attempt to copy from Fallout3.esm to the plugin. The GRUP will get changed to nonsense characters, as will the form ID take on values it shouldn't, and other things seem to occur randomly like the entire form copying blank but becoming impossible to modify. On FO3Edit I could copy the forms without any corruption, save, and import to FNVEdit. I just got done testing a little and it seems perfectly functional, so I'm not sure what to say. Edited July 8, 2011 by NorthWolf