Game Crashing Upon Loading Save game when testing Mod

[kane4355]

My game keeps crashing every single time i try to open a save game with my mod active.

 

I have spent the last month and a half building this mod which is adding a large castle to the game and even more in the future. Recently, I was working on an interior and when i went to test it in game, it would crash upon loading save game. Around this time i switched from using FXAA to using RCRN and did not like it so i switched back. So i thought maybe it was a graphics issue since it does it right after the message "SSAO enabled" pops up on the screen. Well it wasn't this issue because even with FXAA post injector, ENB, and RCRN uninstalled it still crashes. SO i went through and looked at what mods I had that could be causing the crash. no mods had been added at the time but i wanted to make sure. SO i went one by one disabling the mods until i found one it did not crash with: Realistic Water Textures. With this mod and all other mods including mine it was working in game, i could go in without it crashing. SO i updated Real Water textures to the current version, and it seemed at the time to fix the issue. So i continued on working with my interiors. Once i made a finalization i wanted to test, I went in game. Upon loading a save game, it crashed.

So i went through the whole process again, even disabling all my mods except the house mod, and it crashed. My mod turned off it works perfectly fine. So i went into TesVsnip to see if i could delete lines that weren't needed in my mod, such as cells and other things that were effected by me just touching it. The only thing that was left was what my mod added - several interior cells, 2 world spaces, and alterations to a location in Tamriel. it also added location references and i created through nifscope, statics that i needed for my interior as well as a script that I'm using that overrides the default bookshelf script. making those changes did nothing as I am still having crashes. I even restarted my computer, shut off steam, rebooted that.

then i decided to make a completely new clean save game all the way from character creation. saved my progress as an actual save game, enabled my mod restarted game went in - crash. disabled my mod, restarted game, save game load fine. I just don't get it. How is my mod causing a crash? and is it even my mod that is causing the crash?

Other than the normal navmesh error upon loading the creation kit i also get errors but objects in the game having errors I never even messed with. Like some door on some ship saying it has an error and I don't even know where it is. Dummy axe, dummy bow, etc. i get errors for those and they been coming across for the longest time when loading my mod so i paid no mind to them and my mod worked fine previously. But lately I am getting this error when I try to save my mod:

 

Assert

 

File C:\_Skyrim\COde\TESV\BSPathfinding\BSNavmeshbounds.cpp

 

Line 1051

Too many triangles in BSNavmeshBounds

 

could this be causing a crash? the only option it gives me is abort, retry or ignore. SO i hit retry and it goes through. but anytime i open a new instance of the creation kit and hit save i get the above error.

 

anyone want to help or know what the issue could be? i am willing to send my mod to anyone who wants to look at it. maybe a second eye can help with figuring out what is wrong.

 

I have a topic posted on the beth forums too:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1359234-game-crashing-upon-loading-save-game-when-testing-mod/

[GrindedStone]

You should clean the mod. You would do this with TES/FO3/FNV edit I don't think it exists for Skyrim yet. TES snip has spells to clean but it was never obvious to me how well it worked. I would read into TES snip if it was me. There's also a Sky Edit being developed though I can't say yet if it offers the ability to clean mods. It looked similar to TES/FO3/FNV edit so it's a good start. There's also Wyre bash/bash gary though I never used it.

 

Creating a mod the clicking an clacking, loading an saving, 1000 times an again. This process locks in extra data into the mod, often this has very little if nothing to do with what you did to create the mod. There are also a few key areas where you can make a mistake, but cleaning typically fixes these types of issues before you upload. Now ask me how many of these modders know or care about the fact that even a tiny amount of this can cause crashing plus random issues. Maybe 10% if that.

 

In your case it's a bunch of things. DLC tends to be the most dirty, but we can't clean it without breaking it. A few dirty mods after that. Your dirty mod. Then the changes between your mod an the save game you loaded. As you've seen it's now a crash fest. The more of this you have the worse it is. The real problem is later on some person gets 200 hours in a playthough an because some modder slipped up the game is broken. Whoopz sorry dude.

[kane4355]

You should clean the mod. You would do this with TES/FO3/FNV edit I don't think it exists for Skyrim yet. TES snip has spells to clean but it was never obvious to me how well it worked. I would read into TES snip if it was me. There's also a Sky Edit being developed though I can't say yet if it offers the ability to clean mods. It looked similar to TES/FO3/FNV edit so it's a good start. There's also Wyre bash/bash gary though I never used it.

 

Creating a mod the clicking an clacking, loading an saving, 1000 times an again. This process locks in extra data into the mod, often this has very little if nothing to do with what you did to create the mod. There are also a few key areas where you can make a mistake, but cleaning typically fixes these types of issues before you upload. Now ask me how many of these modders know or care about the fact that even a tiny amount of this can cause crashing plus random issues. Maybe 10% if that.

 

In your case it's a bunch of things. DLC tends to be the most dirty, but we can't clean it without breaking it. A few dirty mods after that. Your dirty mod. Then the changes between your mod an the save game you loaded. As you've seen it's now a crash fest. The more of this you have the worse it is. The real problem is later on some person gets 200 hours in a playthough an because some modder slipped up the game is broken. Whoopz sorry dude.

 

I have been using TESVsnip to clean my mod and got it cleaned quite drastically by doing it manually, deleting records that had no part in my mod. it has reduced the size which is good to be honest. But when i try to do the auto clean under spells, i get an error that says: "One or more dependencies are not loaded, and will be ignored."then it tells me that no records removed. I have no clue what dependency it is talking about, i have had no mods loaded or needing a load while constructing my mod. In fact, under the TES4 on the mod loading in TESVsnip it lists the plugin dependencies, and they are the master files Skyrim and Update. Those are the only two dependencies. do I need to have those loaded when cleaning?? and how do i load those?

 

On the Beth forums, someone came up with the idea I need to create a master file. simple enough i guess, except i dont know how to do it. Reading into some of what others have said on doing it, it came to my assumption that it was done through TESVsnip as well. Under the spells drop down, it has an option "make ESM". but when i select my esp and highlight that, i get the following error: "Plugin has no TES4 record". and you can clearly see on TESVsnip it does have a record!

 

I have used Skyedit before but never got too far into it so i dont know if it has a cleaning utility. i can always download the most up to date.

 

In Wrye Bash when i go to clean my mod Under scan for UDR i get this:

 

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "bash\basher", line 14687, in Execute

File "bash\bosh", line 13588, in scan_Many

File "bash\bosh", line 13718, in _scan_Python

File "bash\brec", line 301, in unpackRecHeader

File "bash\game\skyrim", line 779, in unpack

bash.brec.ModError: housemod(snipped2).esp: Bad header type:

 

What does bad header type mean?

 

When i try to remove orphaned cells I get this:

 

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "bash\basher", line 13796, in Execute

KeyError: 'CELL'

 

is that normal to get errors???

 

Now here comes to the fun part! I found in Wrye Bash the ability to create ESM's with the click of a button! and when i tested the newly created ESM in game it worked! no more crash upon loading save game. i was able to free roam and everything with all mods loaded.... But with a catch.

 

This may be only a problem because it was done utilizing Wrye Bash but, all the worldspace edits i made, were gone. Edits such as movement of existing trees, landscape alterations... all gone. the only thing that persisted was what i added which were the statics. also there were things i deleted too that were in the tamriel worldspace, that are back!

i disabled the original esp too and only used the esm. is this normal? do i need a seperate esp for landscape editing on the skyrim esm? or did a problem occur during wrye bash transfer?

[GrindedStone]

Well with TES snip all you would to is open all the masters an the mod thus loading them into it. The cleaning process is going to look at what's in your mod then look at the master an where entries exist where there wasn't an edit made by you, then remove those. It isn't the best method because TES snip isn't a heavy editor. I would make a backup copy of your unchanged mod. Then clean it with TES snip an test an hope for the best until you find something better.

 

If it was me I wouldn't edit the worldspace or anything Vanilla. 62% of your problem is because of what you changed. I know it's a solid months work, but all the things you learned allow you to be able to now make the same thing you just did only much better. It's iteration. First time is good, second time is better, third is best. To a degree if you totally botch this mod an it flops over dead, it doesn't matter because you learned how.

[kane4355]

Well with TES snip all you would to is open all the masters an the mod thus loading them into it. The cleaning process is going to look at what's in your mod then look at the master an where entries exist where there wasn't an edit made by you, then remove those. It isn't the best method because TES snip isn't a heavy editor. I would make a backup copy of your unchanged mod. Then clean it with TES snip an test an hope for the best until you find something better.

 

If it was me I wouldn't edit the worldspace or anything Vanilla. 62% of your problem is because of what you changed. I know it's a solid months work, but all the things you learned allow you to be able to now make the same thing you just did only much better. It's iteration. First time is good, second time is better, third is best. To a degree if you totally botch this mod an it flops over dead, it doesn't matter because you learned how.

 

 

Well if i cant edit the world space then my mod is botched, whether i work on it time over again. its a castle added to the worldspace and if i cant add the castl then it makes no sense. I can redo the landscape, apparently i just wanted to know if there was an error in trasnfer when converting to esm and if anyone else experienced it.

 

I know how to Use TESVsnip and believe me its much easier doing it manually. It was at least for me and understanding what is what in the game as well as what is in the creation kits own editor has allowed me to delve into exactly what my changes are. yes iteration time over again has taught me things and sometimes the hardest problems teach you even more, thats where the forums come in and people pass me their ideas of... did you try this or this? and see if that works.

 

as far as cleaning using snip, i think the errors i got was because i went through already manually and cleaned out what cells i never made changes to. i also used wrye bash to clean out any orphaned cells too. this still wasnt the cause to my crashing of the game issue because it still crashed even with a completely clean mod and compeltely clean save game. and when i say completely clean mod, yes i went through and deleted everything that had nothing to do with my mod. i even deleted statics and references i was no longer using! i went from a 5 MB mod down to a 2.6 MB mod. all that crap took up a lot of room. it was cleaned, the save games were started fresh, no mods. still crashed. created a ESM, and it works perfectly fine... i dont know why... others may point fingers at a faulty creation kit and end up quitting on making their mod because of it. I on the otherhand will thrive off a workaround and continue my mod until the next hurdle, which is the issue with landscape editing.

 

Can landscape editing persist from an esp to an ESM? and if you make landscape edits in an esm do they override skyrim and update.esm?

[GrindedStone]

.esm an .esp are the same thing. The main difference for us is that you can load in more than one .esm as a master in the CS, but you can't do that if it's a .esp You load Skyrim.esm Update.esm as masters for your mod but also add RandomMod.esp as a master it's going to flop after a few edits, it won't stick. You also can't edit a .esm in the CS. The order of the mods .esm or .esp each override the one before, from first to last or top to bottom. The mod that loads last wins. More than that any entries that have been overriden are ignored, only the last entry is used.

 

What you did isn't cleaning the mod, you took a chainsaw an went BRRRRRR in the parts of the .esp you thought were not needed. Cleaning the mod is going to look at the mods masters, then look at what is in the mod, there will be duplicate entries for nearly everything in the mod as well as random duplicates. If it's in the master then there is no need for it to be in the mod. Inside the load order you have other mods that change things, your mod has duplicate entries which match the Skyrim.esm which override the update.esm as well as the mods before it, but it causes more issues than just that conflict.

 

It's normal to have a fat mod file size if you touched worldspace. I wasn't saying you couldn't edit worldspace, I was saying it's a bad idea given that the game is popular an there are lots of people modding it. The same problem you're having now will be worse for them trying to use your mod with a bunch of other junk. You can pick a unpopular area or along and past the border region, an also inside the only slightly used smaller worldspaces or even as far as duplicating one of those small worlds. It's too late now to do anything about it.

[kane4355]

.esm an .esp are the same thing. The main difference for us is that you can load in more than one .esm as a master in the CS, but you can't do that if it's a .esp You load Skyrim.esm Update.esm as masters for your mod but also add RandomMod.esp as a master it's going to flop after a few edits, it won't stick. You also can't edit a .esm in the CS. The order of the mods .esm or .esp each override the one before, from first to last or top to bottom. The mod that loads last wins. More than that any entries that have been overriden are ignored, only the last entry is used.

 

What you did isn't cleaning the mod, you took a chainsaw an went BRRRRRR in the parts of the .esp you thought were not needed. Cleaning the mod is going to look at the mods masters, then look at what is in the mod, there will be duplicate entries for nearly everything in the mod as well as random duplicates. If it's in the master then there is no need for it to be in the mod. Inside the load order you have other mods that change things, your mod has duplicate entries which match the Skyrim.esm which override the update.esm as well as the mods before it, but it causes more issues than just that conflict.

 

It's normal to have a fat mod file size if you touched worldspace. I wasn't saying you couldn't edit worldspace, I was saying it's a bad idea given that the game is popular an there are lots of people modding it. The same problem you're having now will be worse for them trying to use your mod with a bunch of other junk. You can pick a unpopular area or along and past the border region, an also inside the only slightly used smaller worldspaces or even as far as duplicating one of those small worlds. It's too late now to do anything about it.

 

 

Duely noted... its good to know i cant alter esm's in the creation kit. Yes it is a pain in the ass to alter the worldspace. its a headache as we stand with my mod. I also tried picking out an area that was on top of a mountain but out of normal way that players go. there were minor things i deleted but nothing detrimental to any quest or progress.

 

I also utilized TESVsnip again and loaded the esm's with my esp and tried doing the clean thing - it still says no records were deleted. so i am assuming that is because there is nothing to clean? and what of the issue with it saying there is no TES4 record available when there cleary is?

 

so if i cant edit an ESM but the ESM works in game - but the ESP doesnt, but i can only open an ESP in the creation kit to edit it, and TESVsnip is having issues acknowledging my esp as a TES4 file and it is telling me there is nothing i can clean on my mod - where does that leave me? continue the ESP but only when i want to test it turn it into an ESM? but even them im still having issues with the ESM displaying the landscape changes ive made.

[GrindedStone]

Well it might not work being that Skyrum is TES5 not TES4. I was willing to try anything because it was crashing an you had worked on it for a long time. Do you have the original crashing version of your .esp You can send it to me I don't use any mods. We can see what it does. Email it to [email protected]

 

Then take that original crashy crash .esp an load it into the CS. There's a validate loaded data in the file tab, heck try that, then save it. Start a new game, then crash test your mod. If there are mapmarkers for your area then set them to visible an can travel to this way you can instantly travel there. You can also use the console an TMM 1 to show all map markers, an if you didn't add markers you should.

[kane4355]

Well it might not work being that Skyrum is TES5 not TES4. I was willing to try anything because it was crashing an you had worked on it for a long time. Do you have the original crashing version of your .esp You can send it to me I don't use any mods. We can see what it does. Email it to [email protected]

 

Then take that original crashy crash .esp an load it into the CS. There's a validate loaded data in the file tab, heck try that, then save it. Start a new game, then crash test your mod. If there are mapmarkers for your area then set them to visible an can travel to this way you can instantly travel there. You can also use the console an TMM 1 to show all map markers, an if you didn't add markers you should.

 

ok so i did the validation thing - but nothing happened in the creation kit. hit save mod. tried it again in game and crash... im also doing coc from main menu and it becomes unresponsive, and clicking on new game also turns the game unresponsive.

 

i am sending you the file via my yahoo mail.

[GrindedStone]

use Tes snip to remove the nav mesh that you created because you probalby suck at it like everybody else does when they start. Test the mod when you are done. You need to back up the original .esp first until you find the root cause so you can keep trying new things on the same one. I'll look at it in a few minutes.