Having trouble with a custom navmesh

[EPDGaffney]

It doesn't make any sense for anything to be broken if you're using a totally different file (your back-up) to the one that you were saving when this happened. My guess is that everything would work perfectly if you started a new game.

[Mktavish]

I don't know if this will fix it for you ... but with Fo3 ... sometimes backups would have problems , unless you copy/paste it to your desktop ... then rename it there ... then drop it into your FNV Data folder.

 

Maybe was just a problem with older OS ... but might be worth a shot.

[trashgarbage666]

I don't know if this will fix it for you ... but with Fo3 ... sometimes backups would have problems , unless you copy/paste it to your desktop ... then rename it there ... then drop it into your FNV Data folder.

 

Maybe was just a problem with older OS ... but might be worth a shot.

 

I gave that a try, and unfortunately it didn't change things.

 

What really kills me is that this new problem only happens when I have my esp marked as an esm. So the solution to one problem is now the cause of the other. All because of a completely random laptop hiccup that I had no way of predicting or controlling. I'm honestly afraid to continue working on the navmesh now, because I'm not sure what the source of the problem is anymore. And what if I take the time to redo everything only to find out the problem is still there? I can't believe how much of my time and effort just went down the toilet.

 

All my grumbling aside, I do want to thank you guys again. You solved my original problem so fast!

[EPDGaffney]

Well...you're not really supposed to edit master files, far as I remember. That's why I was saying you should back up your .esp and read up on it. To me, that's what your last post appears to indicate you'd been doing, but I'm not positive that you meant to imply that.

 

So, did you ever rename the master file extension to .esm after changing it in FNVedit? That probably won't solve this, but you can try.

 

Am I correct in thinking this is a back-up that worked fine at one point and was never touched again? Because unless your hard drive got mildly corrupted somehow, which is really unlikely but does happen, this file should work now if it worked before. Its only connexion to the now-obsolete one you saved during the crash, is the save file from your New Vegas game. So try this file on a new game.

 

Also, FNVEdit backs up your stuff when you make edits, so you can look in that folder as well for a different version of your mod.

 

When saved as an .esp, does everything work perfectly until you reload a save (like in my experience that I was describing earlier)?

 

We were floating the idea of keeping your navmesh edits in a separate mod file anyway. I don't know if you liked that idea or not, but you can try copying over to a new file just your navmesh edits from here via FNVedit.

 

You can check for errors in FNVedit as well, which I would expect would find something like this if it's indeed in the data, and if it isn't, then copying it over has a good chance of removing whatever corruption errors there are, or at least exposing them (though I don't think your back-up was corrupted by the crash if you weren't writing to that file when it happened).

 

I know that it feels as if all your time and effort was wasted, but I've been through stuff like this many times, and I'm telling you now, it always came out better when I redid it, and redoing it was generally a good tenfold faster, so if it comes to that, maybe that can be some comfort to you. But I don't think it will be needed.

[trashgarbage666]

Well...you're not really supposed to edit master files, far as I remember. That's why I was saying you should back up your .esp and read up on it. To me, that's what your last post appears to indicate you'd been doing, but I'm not positive that you meant to imply that.

 

It's actually impossible to overwrite masters! They can't be chosen as the active file. After learning that, I was a little wary of converting the same file over and over again whenever I needed to save, so I would just make backups between every save and convert and play those instead.

 

Am I correct in thinking this is a back-up that worked fine at one point and was never touched again? Because unless your hard drive got mildly corrupted somehow, which is really unlikely but does happen, this file should work now if it worked before. Its only connexion to the now-obsolete one you saved during the crash, is the save file from your New Vegas game. So try this file on a new game.

 

Also, FNVEdit backs up your stuff when you make edits, so you can look in that folder as well for a different version of your mod.

 

Nah, I combed through the entire day's worth of backups (I had about 5) testing each one uniformly: One time as a .esp without the .esm flag checked, and once as a .esm with the .esm flag checked. I didn't touch the backups created by FNVEdit, but since they're functionally duplicates of the backups I made, I assume the results would be the same. I think the issue is actually stemming from either New Vegas, FOMM, or NVSE. Or something else on my computer. I deleted of all of them and worked with fresh installs of each during the tests, but that doesn't necessarily rule them out.

 

When saved as an .esp, does everything work perfectly until you reload a save (like in my experience that I was describing earlier)?

 

The test I ran had three parts:

1) Leave Doc Mitchell's house and watch Victor pass by on his way to the cemetery

2) Load once and check if Victor is now idle

3) End the Back in the Saddle quest early at various stages to see if Sunny walks back to the bar or not

 

Ever since the crash, if my mod is flagged as a master, Sunny never makes her way back to the bar after the quest. She just idles. There is one exception, though. If I end the quest after the bottle target practice segment, she'll enter the bar through the locked door in the back of the building.

 

So if I play the mod as a plugin, NPCs have all the problems I described in the original post, and if I play it as a master, NPCs still idle, and occasionally walk through locked doors.

 

We were floating the idea of keeping your navmesh edits in a separate mod file anyway. I don't know if you liked that idea or not, but you can try copying over to a new file just your navmesh edits from here via FNVedit.

 

You can check for errors in FNVedit as well, which I would expect would find something like this if it's indeed in the data, and if it isn't, then copying it over has a good chance of removing whatever corruption errors there are, or at least exposing them (though I don't think your back-up was corrupted by the crash if you weren't writing to that file when it happened).

 

I know that it feels as if all your time and effort was wasted, but I've been through stuff like this many times, and I'm telling you now, it always came out better when I redid it, and redoing it was generally a good tenfold faster, so if it comes to that, maybe that can be some comfort to you. But I don't think it will be needed.

 

Sadly, FNVEdit's error checker came up empty.

 

Honestly, keeping the navmesh as a separate .esp is probably the best choice. I had originally hoped to release one big, all-encompassing mod with all kinds of fun gameplay and realism tweaks (*cough* my previous threads *cough cough*) but that's kind of turning out to be untenable. Besides, listening to YouTube videos and navmeshing can be pretty fun. And I still have all the other stuff I was working on, so I'm not exactly back at square one, either!

 

I just wanted to say thank you for the words of encouragement!! I think I needed it.

Edited March 12, 2018 by punchbattle

[Mktavish]

Hate to say it but ya ... sometimes you just have to start over ... and do it better next time.

Like for navmesh edits ... keep those in one file and don't mix other stuff.

It is not that much of a redo. You get better by having to redo ... thats life ;)

[Mktavish]

That is a nice vision ... of redoing all the navmesh ... but a very big project. You want some help ?

 

Should be done in pieces that can be merged ... that way many people can be navmeshing at the same time :turned:

[EPDGaffney]

Does the mod require any meshes or textures? If it's simple enough to do, you can just upload it here and I'll have a look. I'm just extremely sceptical that this could be corrupted data. The chances of a file you were not writing to becoming corrupt because of a crash are astronomically low. Unless you're saying this was an automated back-up and it was therefore being written to as your then-current file was being saved. But that would defeat one of the chief purposes of a back-up, so I'm doubting that. Also, if it were corrupt data, the FNVedit back-ups wouldn't necessarily be the same.

 

What I meant about not editing masters is that if I remember this correctly, once you've converted a plug-in file to a master file, you should never touch it again. There are ways to do this, but I forget what they are. If you follow certain rules, I think you can get away with a few types of change, but it's safest not to modify a master file once it's a master file. But yes, the GECK won't overwrite them (which is frankly hilarious and disproves God).

 

I would try starting a new game and ending Back in the Saddle early, without ever loading a game. Just start up New Vegas, start a new game, get to Sunny, and end her quest somewhere where in your recent tests she didn't go back to her spot when she should have done.

 

Renaming your mod to something completely different could help get rid of some vestigial data from a previous version if there was some corrupt data somewhere.

 

Doing your navmesh as a separate file is a good idea, but it almost definitely needs to be an .esm, not an .esp, when you're done with it I mean.

 

Are JIP and NVSE totally up to date?

 

Do you launch through FOMM? Could maybe try launching through Steam or NVSE. I launch through Steam, personally. You could try a different mod manager as well. I think MO is complex to set up, so I'd go with NMM if you tried that.

[madmongo]

I edit master files all the time. As you note, there are rules you have to follow so you don't bork everything.

 

I use master files for resources or NPCs. One rule is add or change, but don't delete. You can delete things while you are creating your esm, but once another mod (esp or esm) depends on your first esm, don't ever delete anything out of that esm or things can go very bad. If you've created a bunch of NPCs and you decide you don't need one, just leave it in the esm and don't place it anywhere in-game. If it's already placed by the esm, then set it to initially disabled and never enable it.

 

Another issue with esm files relates to how you edit them. It's probably easiest to explain using an example. Let's say you want to fill in one of the unused homes in Goodsprings. This home in the vanilla files has a static door and boards across the door. You create an esp which deletes the static door and the boards and adds a real door and an interior cell. All is well. You use FNVEdit to convert your esp to an esm, and all is still well. But then you edit your esm in the GECK (using the GECK powerup because the vanilla GECK can't edit esm files) and all of a sudden the static door and the boards are back, blocking your new real door. There are a couple of ways to avoid this problem. One is to only use esm files for new things, and use esp files whenever you modify something in the vanilla game, or in another master. Another way is to keep a copy of your original esp for editing, then convert a different copy to esm for actual use in-game. If you need to make more changes, edit the esp, then copy and convert to esm.

 

One other thing. If you have something like an NPC or a package or pretty much anything in an esm and something modifies NPC/package/whatever in another esp or another esm, do not ever change the NPC/[package/whatever in the original esm afterwards. That can really bork your mod. You'll also save yourself a lot of headaches if you don't modify things in another esp/esm. In other words, if you have an NPC defined in an esm, then you place the NPC in the game in an esp, do not modify the original NPC definition in the esp. You can modify your reference in the esp all you want. Just don't modify the original NPC definition. And if you do modify the NPC in the esp, do not go back into the esm and modify it there too as those changes will get lost. With an NPC it's not so bad, but if you are editing terrain, you can end up with landscape tears and all kinds of texture or world problems. Basically, once something in another mod references something from an esm, consider that thing in the esm as locked and don't touch it, because if you touch it you'll break stuff.

 

Also, once you change your esp to a master file, make sure you change the file extension to esm to match.

[EPDGaffney]

I found that really useful and informative, mongo. What happens if you don't change the extension, as OP never confirmed having done that (at least, I don't remember reading any confirmation myself). I know that one of the modules for New Vegas Redesigned 3 was a master file that was still marked as an .esp for some reason. I never ran into problems with it, and Dracomies acknowledged it in the installation instructions, as if it made sense (but I didn't understand modding Gamebryo too much at that time, so I just took his word for it and don't remember what the acknowledgement said).

 

So, what are the best reasons to use an .esp for a mod? Is it just load order freedom? Can a master file do everything a plug-in file can?