Looking for an experienced modder to save my project

[DocMoebius]

Hi guys,

 

I've been working on a new worldspace project for the last five month. I've made some decent progress with the world building so far(check my profile for screenshots), but I finally ran into a brick wall that I can't overcome. To avoid the looming object reference limit, I recently started to work with the version control system of the CK. I turned my .esp(which has dependencies for the Fallout4.esm and its 3 main DLCs) into an .esm with this system. Luckily, I was supported with this by a lot of different helpful people here on the forum and on several discords who gave me great advice and explained certain things in detail.

 

Unfortunately, I'm still not 100% sure if I got a clean .esm, because I got some weird errors that I don't really understand. The CK told me to check the warnings log, which I did, but I still only have a slight clue what I'm actually looking at. For instance things like this:

"MASTERFILE: File index 3 is invalid. Clamping to 02. Does a master file depend on more than two masters?"

or

"DEFAULT: TakeFileOwnership failed to set owner on \\PC-Name\Merging\Data\DLCCoast.fud to domain\user: PC-Name\Usename".

 

 

Those are just a few examples of things from the error log, so I can't even identify or imagine what went wrong. I can't really proceed working on my project in this uncertain situation, because I don't want to risk putting hundreds or thousands of hours into the CK and losing all of it eventually because I'm working with a broken esm. Another problem is that there are certain warnings present in my esp and I don't know for sure if I accidentally touched any commonwealth cells and broke precombines - which I actually tried to avoid all the time. Sadly, I'm a total noob at xEdit and I don't even know where to begin and I also want to avoid any dirty edits or again risk losing all my work.

 

So my question is, is there any experienced modder out there who could maybe help me with this? Maybe even turn my esp. into an esm for me? I really want create an awesome experience for the community and the players out there but I'm pretty much stuck at the moment. If needed, I can provide my .esp or .esm so that someone who is interested can take a look at it and maybe give some advice.

 

Any help or hints are much appreciated.

Edited May 14, 2020 by DocMoebius

[VIitS]

"File index 3 is invalid. Clamping to 02" generally means you had a master file get ripped out. If you load a mod in the CK and it has a .esp master (without the flag), the CK will rip it out*, often destroying your plugin in the background, and loading a backup is your best bet to fix it. If you check and see that all the mods that should have been listed as masters still are, then something really weird happened to give a record an internal ID higher than it should have.

 

For a bit more explanation: The FormID you see in the CK or in xEdit for a record aren't stored in the file with those formIDs, as the ID can be different depending on the plugins loaded. It instead has an internal File index, that it compares to the Master list in the file header (viewable in xEdit, also is the list of masters when loading the plugin in the CK)). So as an example, if you have a mod with a master list that looks like this:
Fallout.esm
DLCRobot.esm
DLCCoast.esm

 

Any records (or references to records), the records originating from DLCCoast.esm will be listed internally with a file index of 02 (e.g. 0200153A), the records from DLCRobot.esm will have a file index of 01, and the records from Fallout.esm will have a file index of 00. That error you got meant a file was stored internally as 03xxxxxx, but you only had three master files (Fallout.esm and two others), while an index of 03 points to your fourth master.

 

*The easiest way to make a mod with a .esp master (i.e. you want to include another mod you didn't make as a master that isn't flagged as ESM), you can use xEdit to add the flag while working in the CK. If doing so messes with load order you would want to then remove the flag from said .esp master before testing in game.

 

 

The other error sounds like it is related to Version Control, but I have never used version control so don't know how to fix it.

[DieFeM]

"MASTERFILE: File index 3 is invalid. Clamping to 02. Does a master file depend on more than two masters?"

In my experience this happens when your master depends on more than 2 masters. The only solution is to get rid of the DLC dependencies by converting all used DLC records to new records in your master.

I do have some experience doing it, so if you send me the the esp or the esm I could try to get rid of the DLC esm dependencies.

 

 

"DEFAULT: TakeFileOwnership failed to set owner on \\PC-Name\Merging\Data\DLCCoast.fud to domain\user: PC-Name\Usename".

 

That looks like a bad ownership in the Merging folder that you are using for Version Control. You need to grant Read & Write permission for the user you set in [WhoCanMerge] in CreationKitPrefs.ini.

Edited May 15, 2020 by DieFeM

[DocMoebius]

"File index 3 is invalid. Clamping to 02" generally means you had a master file get ripped out. If you load a mod in the CK and it has a .esp master (without the flag), the CK will rip it out*, often destroying your plugin in the background, and loading a backup is your best bet to fix it. If you check and see that all the mods that should have been listed as masters still are, then something really weird happened to give a record an internal ID higher than it should have.

 

For a bit more explanation: The FormID you see in the CK or in xEdit for a record aren't stored in the file with those formIDs, as the ID can be different depending on the plugins loaded. It instead has an internal File index, that it compares to the Master list in the file header (viewable in xEdit, also is the list of masters when loading the plugin in the CK)). So as an example, if you have a mod with a master list that looks like this:

Fallout.esm

DLCRobot.esm

DLCCoast.esm

 

Any records (or references to records), the records originating from DLCCoast.esm will be listed internally with a file index of 02 (e.g. 0200153A), the records from DLCRobot.esm will have a file index of 01, and the records from Fallout.esm will have a file index of 00. That error you got meant a file was stored internally as 03xxxxxx, but you only had three master files (Fallout.esm and two others), while an index of 03 points to your fourth master.

 

*The easiest way to make a mod with a .esp master (i.e. you want to include another mod you didn't make as a master that isn't flagged as ESM), you can use xEdit to add the flag while working in the CK. If doing so messes with load order you would want to then remove the flag from said .esp master before testing in game.

 

 

The other error sounds like it is related to Version Control, but I have never used version control so don't know how to fix it.

Thanks again for making things clearer for me, VlitS. I'm slowly beginning to piece everything together. The problem is just that there are so many different things in the log that it becomes overwhelming and I don't even know where to start.

 

 

"MASTERFILE: File index 3 is invalid. Clamping to 02. Does a master file depend on more than two masters?"

In my experience this happens when your master depends on more than 2 masters. The only solution is to get rid of the DLC dependencies by converting all used DLC records to new records in your master.

I do have some experience doing it, so if you send me the the esp or the esm I could try to get rid of the DLC esm dependencies.

 

 

"DEFAULT: TakeFileOwnership failed to set owner on \\PC-Name\Merging\Data\DLCCoast.fud to domain\user: PC-Name\Usename".

 

That looks like a bad ownership in the Merging folder that you are using for Version Control. You need to grant Read & Write permission for the user you set in [WhoCanMerge] in CreationKitPrefs.ini.

 

Thanks a lot. I'll check real quick if I can upload my .esp somewhere so I that you can take a look at it. Regarding the bad ownership: I actually shared the specifed folders and granted permission to read/write through the advanced sharing option because the normal "share button" above that was just greyed out for me. I also added the "[WhoCanMerge] USERNAME=1" line(with my username ofc) to the CreationKitPrefs.ini.

Edited May 15, 2020 by DocMoebius

[DieFeM]

This fud file,and 2 more, are generated for each master to which you create the 'Bit Array Files'. I use to remove those files after each merge and generate them again each time before merging any data, it makes the CK load much faster than keeping them in the Merging\Data folder.