Mod makes changes I have not created

[tetradite]

Hi,

 

I have recently made THIS MOD, and am having some issues with the mod seeming to make changes to the game which I have not asked it to - including in cells that do not show up as having been edited in the CK (even through the Details screen where you can ignore changes etc).

 

For example (I have had reports or seen similar happen in other areas including Whiterun and Bleakfalls Barrow), but this is the one I have specifically tested):

 

In Riverwood there is a COC Marker (on the way North out of town), which when my mod is not active appears (or rather doesn't appear) normally. With my mod active the COC Marker also is fine - i.e you can't see it. However, when you initiate the golden claw quest at the riverwood trader, at the location of the COC Marker Skyrim places a set of what appear to be iron rings in the floor (console says they are ID 0801b391 but I don't know how to look this up in the CK or console).

 

The CK shows no record of me having edited this cell, and looking at the cell in the CK, there is nothing visibly wrong either, and no objects are listed as edited within the cell, nor does the original object "COC Marker" show any signs of edit. The mod is making changes to cells that it does not have any records of changes to. How is this possible?

 

Does anyone have any idea at all what may be causing this?

 

 

 

In addition to this, looking at the file details, it also lists several cells as having been edited, where no edit has actually been made, at all, and even setting these "changes" to ignore in file details and resaving will not remove them from file details. As far as I know these are not actually causing any issues, but they worry me. The cells listed as having changes include BlackwindBasinExterior01 (and surrounding cells), Breezehome, RiftenMausoleum, and several Blackreach cells.

 

Neither of these issues affect other mods I have made on the same system, with the same SK and CK installation.

 

Any ideas on either would be very greatly appreciated.

[tetradite]

Slight correction and update to the above. Each of the "edited" Blackreach cells appears to have a single dwepipe2way piece altered - it looks like they are supposed to be there but they are in the wrong position. I have literally never even opened these cells in the CK (or in game actually) until today.

 

If I set the changes in Blackreach to "ignore" then I get a LOT of warning messages when I reopen the file about replacing objects: from dwepipeboiler02 to dwepipe2way01, usually from cell 'NONE' to one of my mod's cells, but also from cell 'NONE' to Alftand02 (another cell which shows as edited which I have not edited).

[David Brasher]

The CK is a really buggy dirty program. It automatically creates mod dirt so you don't have to. (Talk about convenience!)

 

So you always need to modclean your mods very carefully. Read the list of every single edit your mod makes and modclean out the ones you do not need in your mod. (Be careful of the persistent references. Many of them are things you DO need and were not actually things you edited but were linked to things you edited.) Make a backup before modcleaning. Then be ruthless and ignore error messages. When you reload the mod after modcleaning and saving and exiting and reloading, many of them will go away. But play-test and inspect to make sure you didn't break anything when modcleaning.

[tetradite]

The CK is a really buggy dirty program. It automatically creates mod dirt so you don't have to. (Talk about convenience!)

 

So you always need to modclean your mods very carefully. Read the list of every single edit your mod makes and modclean out the ones you do not need in your mod. (Be careful of the persistent references. Many of them are things you DO need and were not actually things you edited but were linked to things you edited.) Make a backup before modcleaning. Then be ruthless and ignore error messages. When you reload the mod after modcleaning and saving and exiting and reloading, many of them will go away. But play-test and inspect to make sure you didn't break anything when modcleaning.

 

No need to warn on the backup - I make at least 2 a day when I'm working on something. You don't get burnt twice with not backing up ;)

 

Any tips on cleaning, beyond the "ignore" feature in file details?

 

I'm trying various combinations of what to ignore, and ignoring a lot of things seems to resolve the first issue I had (the appearing rings), but utterly borks my mod. :(

 

Have an awful feeling I'm going to end up having to rebuild this.

[tetradite]

I have tested this further and found out some more.

 

- The bug is repeatable, every single time. And is NOT caused by a mod conflict.

 

- It only seems to affect COC Markers in external cells

 

- When it strikes it places 2 signs (the same 2 that are outside the inn in my mod) where a COC Marker is located. The COC Marker is still useable afterwards. So, I don't think it is replacing the COC - just creating objects at it.

 

- The trigger for making the bug happen is using the COC Marker (definitely through console command, but also I think through NPC AI - I assume that the Golden Claw quest causes it because Camilla uses the COC as a waypoint) when the external cell in question is not loaded already. (Similar to the wider navmesh bug, the cell still counts as loaded until you've moved away from it twice)

 

Any thoughts appreciated.

Edited May 8, 2012 by tetradite

[tetradite]

Further to the above: the bug does not permanently place the signs at the COC Marker, it seems to leave them at the last used COC Marker. I.E:

 

- COC Riverwood in the console and the signs are created - visibly - at the marker point.

- COC EastEmpireTradingCompanyDocks - same, the signs are created there

 

From here if I COC to the RiverwoodTrader and walk outside to where the COC Riverwood point is then the signs are gone.

 

So, at least it's not making permanent changes, but it is massively annoying.

[steve40]

I've had some weird problems of a similar kind with my mod. If the last item (sorted by address) in the "file details" list is an audio file then when I run Skyrim with the mod enabled it plays that audio sound when the game starts. It also plays the same audio file when I pick any alchemy ingredients (in addition to the usual "pick up" sound). It sometimes also plays the audio when tabbing through the spells/items/map menu and whenever my script displays a "debug.notification' message I hear that audio file play as well. It is a real PITA. The only workaround that I know of is to edit a silent audio track and then save and reload my mod to coax the silent audio file to be the last one in the file details list. This doesn't fix the bug, it just hides it.

 

I suspect that bugs in the CK are, under some circumstances, causing records to point the the wrong data addresses!

 

One thing I know for sure is that "ignoring/deleting" records in the file details dialog is a very very dangerous thing to do and it can have peculiar side effects. I wonder if there are any good tutorials out there on how to "clean" bad records in mods?

 

As tetradite has mentioned, I've also found that the CK seems to mark some cells as edited even though I haven't touched them. I suspect that when editing cells and references, that if you browse through some of the options tabs in forms (even without changing any values, and possibly even if you click the cancel button) that the CK sometimes thinks that you have changed something.

[tetradite]

This is REALLY doing my head in. Getting seriously close to a from-scratch rebuild, which will literally make me cry like a little girl.

 

I've had some weird problems of a similar kind with my mod. If the last item (sorted by address) in the "file details" list is an audio file then when I run Skyrim with the mod enabled it plays that audio sound when the game starts. It also plays the same audio file when I pick any alchemy ingredients (in addition to the usual "pick up" sound). It sometimes also plays the audio when tabbing through the spells/items/map menu and whenever my script displays a "debug.notification' message I hear that audio file play as well. It is a real PITA. The only workaround that I know of is to edit a silent audio track and then save and reload my mod to coax the silent audio file to be the last one in the file details list. This doesn't fix the bug, it just hides it.

 

Which field are you sorting by? I don't have 'address'. If I sort by 'offset' then the first thing on my list is the texture set for my custom sign, which is one of the things I have appearing. (In addition to the 2 signs that TXST is applied to).

 

I'm going to try completely removing these two objects and the texture set and see what happens. If I can at least get to the same point as you where I can manipulate what objects it's messing with then I can change it to something unobtrusive like a charcoal stick. Bug does not affect gameplay so a workaroud is FAR preferable to a rebuild.

 

A fix would be better of course! :D

[tetradite]

Incredibly simple bug fix. Deleted the two signs from their original, correct location, and then put them back in again. Same objects, in the same place. Bug gone. I hope.

[tetradite]

I realise I'm mostly talking to myself at this point, but I'm ging to stick this down here anyway in case anyone is searching with similar issues, and because writing this out logically helps to stick it in my brain.

 

It very much appears that the cells which I was sure I had not altered, I had in fact altered. But I was right that I had never opened them.

 

I should have worked this out from the error/warning messages when I tried to use file details to ignore the changes to these cells. But here's what I've done wrong to create the problem and how I'm now fixing it:

 

At some point I've done a search and replace while laying down the dwemer pipework in mod, and somehow I've managed to untick one of the "this cell only" or "selection only" options - the CK has replaced EVERY dwepipeboiler02 piece with a dwepipe2way01 piece. I was not careful enough in looking through the object lists for these cells - they do all have a dwepipe2way01 piece *'d as edited. Some of these cells have hundreds of dwepipepieces so I can see how I missed it, but lesson learned - be more thorough.

 

I have confirmed that this is the case by looking up dwepipeboiler02 in the Object Window - with my mod it has Count 0. Also, every place where there is a dwepipe2way01 piece *'d as edited replacing this with a dwepipeboiler02 piece is clearly visually what was supposed to be there.

 

So how to fix it? A 'global' search and replace the other way around would make the problem worse - it would correct these errors but it would create a new error by changing every other dwepipe2way01 piece into a boiler. Also, this is all unecessary info for my mod. The best option for file size and compatability is to get the CK to ignore the changes.

 

The only way to do this is to go into each cell that shows as edited which should not be edited, get all of the form IDs for the edited pieces. Then into file details, sort by form ID and ignore these individual objects AT THE SAME TIME as ignoring the wider cell.

 

If I just ignore the cell, I get warning messages and my mod goes 100% borked. If I just ignore the object, then it doesn't actually remove the change.

 

Both problems solved. (Subject to testing in game)