NPCs teleporting around custom cells.

[th3overseer]

I'm having an issue with NPCs teleporting around the custom cells I'm working on, whenever I exit and return. For example, a couple characters who were in cells are suddenly standing outside and not even attempting to go back where they belong. Or a guy who is supposed to be someone the player interacts with will just be stuck behind a fence, with no way out. The cells are all navmeshed, and NPCs can walk around like they're meant to, but if I leave and then return, everything is all f*#@ed up. In the case of the two who were supposed to be in cells, I even put x-markers inside and gave them packages telling them to stay put, with no luck.

[EPDGaffney]

Any chance it's this?

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6459651-having-trouble-with-a-custom-navmesh/

[th3overseer]

In my case it just happens when I re-enter the cell, not dying/reloading an old save. That said, it is an esp, so maybe when I get it in a state fit to be released, I'll try making it an esm and seeing if that fixes anything.

[EPDGaffney]

I would try it sooner rather than later, personally, but that's up to you. Just back up your ESP before you convert it.

[th3overseer]

Yeah, worth a shot.

[EPDGaffney]

Also, if you read through that thread, you'll find that navmeshes can't be too many triangles or it confuses the engine as well, in ESPs and ESMs alike. And for ESMs, make sure there are no deleted records.

[th3overseer]

No worries on that front, I've been fairly conservative with triangles after I overdid it with the North Road and nobody would walk forward.

[EPDGaffney]

Good man. Best of luck, so.

[Mktavish]

I'm having an issue with NPCs teleporting around the custom cells I'm working on,

 

This is most commonly from some broken navmesh. Make sure you select and rotate around (up/down ... side/side) key vertices.

 

Hitting the B button (balance) helps too , every so often as you build the navmesh. Unless it's in a vanilla wasteland cell ... then best not to hit the B button. Or any Vanilla mesh I guess ... unless you want to look over the whole cell navmesh and fix stuff ?

 

Add edit : Just so we are clear ... the "B" button (balance tool) is not something you would use to finalize. So never hit it when you think you're done.

[madmongo]

You know, I have made a lot of navmeshes, in both interior and exterior cells, in both esm and esp files, and I have never had any sort of problem with them, assuming I could get them to build correctly. I have had the GECK flip triangles and completely bork up navmeshes that way. If you get any sort of navmesh error when saving, even if the GECK says that it is fixing the problem, it isn't. The navmesh just won't work properly. If you can find the screwed up triangle you can just delete that part of the navmesh and redo it. If you can't figure out which triangle is screwed up, your best bet is to delete the entire navmesh and start over. There are a lot of errors in the GECK that you can ignore, but navmesh inverted normal errors aren't ones that you can ignore. Your navmesh is going to be screwy until you fix it properly.

 

I use the GECK power-up. I don't know if the GECK displays the flipped normal message if you aren't using power-up.

 

One thing that I have seen is that NPCs will end up all over the place inside a cell. If your cell is divided by a fence and there is a valid navmesh on both sides of the fence, your NPCs can end up on either side of the fence even if there's no way for them to travel from one side of the fence to the other inside the cell. That just seems to be a bug in the game itself and how it processes NPCs when you aren't in the same cell as they are. When I have needed NPCs to stay put, like the typical damsel-in-distress in a jail cell, I have used a furniture marker and a travel package with a destination of that marker and a radius of 0. Other types of packages may not work reliably, but a travel package will usually get them to stay where you want them. You can use a furniture marker or an xmarker or an xmarker heading. This works for NPCs leaning on counters (like bartenders and shop vendors) and other types of furniture markers like hanging someone on a crucifix as well. The only weird problem I've seen is that if an NPC is placed too close to a furniture marker, they might consider themselves to be close enough to the destination, and won't move properly into position, so you end up with a shopkeeper standing next to the counter or a crucified victim standing next to the crucifix.

 

Another thing I have noticed is that navmeshes aren't super-critical. NPCs will wander a bit outside of the bounds of a navmesh. This is good when you are making navmeshes because it means you can go quickly and be a bit sloppy and simple with your navmeshes and they'll still work fine. It also means that you need to set your navmeshes back a bit from areas where you don't want your NPCs to go. If you don't want an NPC to end up someplace, keep your navmesh a good distance away from that part of the cell.