DuskWulf Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 So, this is interesting. This could also be titled as 'uh, Bethesda, what did you do?' I'm not sure if anyone else is seeing this, but I wanted to confirm my thoughts, because after days of testing using sets of mods, and developing novel styles of testing via enabling and disabling (oh, this has been a barrel of laughs, I assure you), it seems to be the case. And only a fool continues to test expecting different results. So you guys are my peer review. If you create content via the Creation Kit, and that content deals with placing objects into the world - if that mod places an object (however small) near an object placed by another mod, it doesn't cause an overwrite but a silent, errorless crash to desktop. This is a marked change from prior Bethesda games, which would merrily just replace the item with what the latest mod has. See, this all started when I began to wonder why New Vegas was so much less crashy. Now, I know Fallout 3 had some crashy moments, but that was due to spectacular bugs rather than mods. (Anyone remember that bug that made the bottom-right 20% of the map inaccessible? So if you stepped into it the game froze? Yeah. That was fun.) New Vegas... I had a massive mod list and I had it setup for A to overwrite B to overwrite C to overwrite D as I liked it, and it worked beautifully. Such overwrites cannot happen in Skyrim. If A conflicts with B, there's no overwrite, just a crash to desktop. You can test this by creating two mods which place an object in the same place and enabling them both, then approaching that area in the game (without teleporting there). You won't get the latest one overwriting, you'll get a crash. And the more far-reaching a mod is, the worse the crashes will be as it's possible that mods will conflict. I suppose what bothers me is the silent nature of this crash. I wish Bethesda, deciding that things crash now, would give us an error message saying that 'object W of blah-X.esp is conflicting with object Y of blah-Z.esp' Which would be nice. But here's where it gets interesting... Say a mod has dirty edits? Let's say a modder accidentally moves a rock near Falkreath and undoes it, and then doesn't touch Falkreath. Now let's say that another modder purposefully creates content for Falkreath. What do you think will happen when you approach Falkreath? Yup! CtD! Thus: What did you do Bethesda? This investigation begun not only because of my own CtDs, but because of hundreds of people complaining on tens of mod pages about endless CtDs. And... yeah, it occurs to me that no previous Bethesda game behaves in this way. So, is there something I'm missing, here? Could someone confirm this research? ---- And if this is the case, then this makes most load ordering redundant, since you have to pick mods which you want the most, and leave all others that make you crash out. For example: I've had to leave detailed cities and detailed outskirts out of my list. Why? They're far reaching AND they have some dirty edits. This means that they conflict with all sorts of other mods. When I was testing them for conflicts, I moved around 20 mods to a 'bad' list, versus just detailed cities and detailed outskirts. I ran this test by putting detailed cities and detailed outskirts at the top of the load order, then adding mods in ten at a time and watching for what causes a crash. And the ones that caused a crash pretty much are ones that put objects in the same places as detailed cities/outskirts either intentionally or unintentionally (dirty edits) did. So yeah, I ran that test and ended up with about 20-odd mods that conflicted. So I had to choose those 20-odd mods over detailed cities and detailed outskirts. And that's the way it seems to be right now. Is this a bug? Is it intentional design? I'm very confused by it, to be honest. Because it means that we can't have a series of mods overriding parts of each other with that being totally okay. That's a luxury we're used to having, and it's weird not to have it in Skyrim. --- Oh, for those wondering - I used a carefully edited plugins.txt to run my tests. And I verified my tests worked in game by checking for evidence of the mods in game. (This topic has been copied over from the official Bethesda forums, where I posted it as well. Hoping to get some eyes on this so that we can get some ideas together regarding it. Also: If this is in the wrong section, my apologies! Could you move it? I wasn't entirely certain where this fitted in...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovahrik Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 If that's correct, and it sounds like it is, then that's pretty terrible. Sounds like it will be a very common problem as time goes by and there are more mods covering larger areas. Could you post a link to the thread on the main Beth forums though? would like to see how the conversation went over there.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cormak05 Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 This would certainly explain the issues I have been having. I have been changing the order of my mods around but nothing helps. I get a CTD when I move near a location and a complete hang (Windows 7 - Skyrim not responding) when I try to fast travel to that location. The location is impacted by several mods, adding NPCs and buildings. Right now Riverwood is completely inaccessible to me. I will uninstall all the mods that change that area and see if it helps. Wish I had seen this post sooner, I have been working on this for days! Thanks for your structured testing. Cormak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MofoMojo Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 I would consider posting this on the official bethsoft forums and report the bug if you haven't done so already. I can't imagine how much testing it took for you to deduce that, but as a dev debugger, I applaud your problem isolation skills. -MM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimhsu Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Pretty terrible if true. But this will underscore the need for a TES4Edit Skyrim version -- one of the unique features of that is form level conflict resolution - if this works with cells also, then this would a) fix this problem and b) obsolete the entire load order system. Hm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan3345 Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Oh dear god.. I read this thinking you are so right. As a much more avid modder of New Vegas than skyrim or fallout 3 there was the elegance of both the latter games overwriting files that conflicted or came later. For example, if you had project Nevada in your load order and wanted the effects to work from EVE then you would simply load EVE last. But this, this completely changes that, so now you are saying it won't work because of the way skyrim was built? So in effect, lets just say for the point of convenience that there is a project Nevada for skyrim (project skyrim) and there is also an EVE. I want EVE to override the effects of project skyrim so I put it later in load order, but when I load the game I get a CTD because skyrim does not simply load things by way of load order? Or am I missing something? I feel like you are on the right track but if this were the complete picture (Again I could be simply misunderstanding) then mods like my Lydia companion mod wouldn't work because the skyrim.esm already has a reference of what Lydia should be and mine is overriding it. I must be missing something here.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korodic Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 whelp. I'm screwed. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cormak05 Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 just an observation. not from rigorous testing. but it seems that if the mods alter an interior space it doesn't cause a problem, but when they alter an exterior space I get the CTD or just "not responding" failure. You may have mentioned this in your original post, if so, I apologize for restating it. Cormak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liaen Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 Does this still happen with 1.5 ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jet4571 Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) I have had different experiences. i make mods and use others mods and know I have had direct conflicts in my game at the same time. A CTD is a fickle beast and may or may not happen with a direct conflict. Example is when i had a backup of a housing mod i made running at the same time as the main version. the backup was maybe 3-4 version behind and all the clutter in it was moved and most of the furniture as well. Game started fine while in one of the mod buildings. entering and leaving another was no issue. I also got random CTD from all the building that were duplicated. keyword is random. I get more issues with dirty edits than direct conflicts oddly enough. i think each game will have a different result but most will follow the same path. we need more testers for this theory. *edit @liaen, yes and worse. 1.5 causes a CTD if you exit a cell near a modded Tamriel location, thus making every house m0od a cause for CTD's. Edited March 21, 2012 by jet4571 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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