[LE] What are my NPC's doing?

[sammidraco]

Let's say I run Skyrim with my mod, load a saved file, and start playing. Everything seems to be working fine. In this mod, there are 5 separate cells so far. At any point, it doesn't matter how far I've gotten in the mod, I decide to go and load a saved file again. Could be the same file I originally used or it could be a different one. As long as I load a file where I'm not currently in cell 3. But now, only in cell 3 about 60% of my NPCs are either nowhere to be found, or occasionally some are randomly dead. Doesn't matter if my character in that saved file has previously been to cell 3 or not. BUT, if I quit the game, then go to run Skyrim again and open with the saved file (again it could be the same file or a different one) my NPC's are back where they're supposed to be. I'm not having this issue anywhere else in my mod. When I restart Skyrim, I can go in and out of cell 3 all day long and everything is fine. It's when I reload a file while I'm currently in game that it happens.

 

I've tried running a file with a character who's never entered the mod thus far. I've tried starting the game over and creating a new character.

 

The navmesh is fine. I've even tried redoing the navmesh which made no difference. None of my NPCs are duplicates from pre-existing vanilla NPCs. All are made from scratch. The AI packages are fine. They're all set to respawn, though I've tried unchecking that and the result was still the same.

 

This is something I could live with, since all I have to do is just restart the game and it works fine. But it gets pretty annoying at times and I don't understand it at all. If anybody has any insight to what the heck is happening that would be great. Thanks.

[NexBeth]

If you have your cells connected to other cells, including the exterior, then the NPCs can leave the cells. About being dead. Not sure. That is pretty weird. If you're testing your mod, it is better not to count on game saves as events will remain baked in the save.

[sammidraco]

If you have your cells connected to other cells, including the exterior, then the NPCs can leave the cells. About being dead. Not sure. That is pretty weird. If you're testing your mod, it is better not to count on game saves as events will remain baked in the save.

Thanks for the response. Makes sense about the saved games interfering with the mod. Usually when I'm testing in game I start a new character. Sometimes though even in a new game, if say my character dies and it reloads the most recent auto-load from within the mod, occasionally even that will cause some NPCs to disappear. If I go straight through without dying or reloading (even in a new game) there are no issues. So the NPCs still might leave the cell regardless of the AI packages they have that are set to run non-stop?

[NexBeth]

You don't need to start a new game to test your mod. That would be pretty tedious to do. In case you didn't know, simply bring up the console using the ~ symbol, then type in coc, followed by a space, then the name of the cell you want to enter. When done then close the console by hitting Enter. coc XXXXXX You can't realistically test accurately using saves.

 

If your cells are linked to other cells, including the exterior worldspace, then yeah they can leave unless you have an AI package that tells them to stay in that cell, or to only do things in that cell.

Edited July 3, 2019 by NexBeth

[maxarturo]

Contributing to NexBeth post above.

 

Just a reminder in case you don't know, in order to "coc" you need to have placed in your cell a "coc Marker".

[sammidraco]

You don't need to start a new game to test your mod. That would be pretty tedious to do.  In case you didn't know, simply bring up the console using the ~ symbol, then type in coc, followed by a space, then the name of the cell you want to enter. When done then close the console by hitting Enter. coc XXXXXX  You can't realistically test accurately using saves.

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If your cells are linked to other cells, including the exterior worldspace, then yeah they can leave unless you have an AI package that tells them to stay in that cell, or to only do things in that cell.

I do know about coc. I don't actually start a game, play through the tutorial, and spend a couple hours traveling to the mods location. I put myself in God mode and TCL through Helgen, then COC to my mods location once I'm out. Takes 5 minutes. I didn't start off using a new game in the beginning either, I'd just use a saved game that never interacted with the mod previously. But I kept having problems with the NPCs and just started trying a new game so there was nothing that could interfere with it.

 

The thing that's got me real confused is that I DO have AI packages that keep them in one place, scheduled to run non stop. So I can't figure out why they would disappear, say if my character dies while playing through the mod and the last autosave loaded. They'd disappear after the reload. I'd have to quite the game, open Skyrim again, and load the exact same autosave (or quicksave or whatever), and only then will the NPCs stay in place. This all happens with the AI packages. And it only happens with the NPCs in one particular cell. The AI packages are no different than any other NPCs throughout the mod, so I'm not sure why they'd ignore their AI packages and leave the cell.

[NexBeth]

AL can be tricky. You have to set up your packages so that all their time is accurately ordered. Say for instance, you have an AI Package Sit that places your npc in a chair from 20x2, but you have another Sandbox AI Package above the Sit Package that allows your NPC to Sandbox from 18-4, then you have a conflict between the two packages and the one that is higher up in the AI Package List gets priority and overrides the other.

[agerweb]

Try making them persistent in the locations they start in. ie assign a Location to the cell, then double click on the NPC in the render window and set that Location in the persistence tab.

 

Also just to be clear - a clean save is a save where the your mod was not loaded, not just not interacted with.

[NexBeth]

Better not to use any save for testing and do as I suggested coc into the cell from the start menu of the game. You can test how your mod plays with game and even other mods that may be relevant to your mod once you are closer to being done with it.

Edited July 5, 2019 by NexBeth

[Tasheni]

I can't say what's causing this, but I would clean the mod with TESVEdit and make a seq - I experienced that some packages are not running properly without a new seq despite they were not integrated in start enabled quests.

I know that waiting for several hours ingame or sleeping too long breaks the timetable of the AI (I'm not sure, but I guess more than six or eight hours), so npcs will mostly not be at the right place in time.

The only situation I can imagine for your dead npcs is that they fall from great height when spawning. It happened with my sheep, when they sometimes suddenly popped in, they crashed on the ground and died instantly. It happened mostly when I was nearly out of VRAM.

 

This could be the cause for the absence of the npcs also. If you go in the cell, npcs are not spawning because VRAM is too low? If you load the game again, VRAM is not out and they spawn correctly. These are just my thoughts, could be terrible wrong ;)