SSE Newbie fixing navmesh issues

[HomerSlated]

Hi.

 

As a learning exercise, and also in an attempt to fix an annoying bug, I've been analysing Eli's Breezehome in CK.

 

Unfortunately I only have a vague idea of what I'm looking at. Could someone with more experience please look at this 1m video, and tell me if they can see any reason why NPCs would have a problem navigating the stairs?

 

To me it looks like there's something weird going on right at the foot of the stairs, but it could just be a CK render glitch.

 

Thanks.

[TypicalJhon]

To me it looks like just a render glitch BUT maybe re-navmesh that stairs? see if it continues to do that.

[HomerSlated]

To me it looks like just a render glitch BUT maybe re-navmesh that stairs? see if it continues to do that.

 

I just find it suspicious that this is the only spot where the navmesh glitches.

 

It's just a hunch, as I have very limited experience, but maybe this happens when the vertex points are slightly below the surface of the object?

 

Although from the various tutorials I've watched, I've been led to believe this doesn't actually matter.

 

Anyway, when I have the time, I'll go back and try to redo those navmeshes, and see if it makes any difference.

 

I have to say though, that CK is easily the worst UI I've ever used for 3D modelling. I'm not looking forward to the exercise. I feel the pain Eli must've gone through making this.

[cumbrianlad]

Looks like that navmesh is fine. I'd have made it clip more through the stairs, but that's my only comment.

 

Those stairs are a bit problematical anyway and it's nothing to do with the navmesh. Generally, the player and NPCs can get stuck at the point where the top of the stair meets the upper floor. You don't describe where the NPCs are having a problem. Are they getting stuck on part of it and then 'teleporting' past the bit they can't manage? If so, whereabouts? That'll tell you what bits to focus on.

 

If you re-do the navmesh, make it clip more through the stairs and add an extra pair of triangles at the bottom. navmesh is always better if it's slightly under a surface than raised above it. I may be tempted to push the navmesh alongside the stairs a little further away from them to avoid NPCs getting stuck on the stringer (the angled part of the stair at the side of the treads) at the foot of the stairs. So long as you do path testing and check that NPCs still have wide enough navmesh to navigate, it'll be fine. Pushing navmesh too close to statics can cause them to get stuck. As it is, they can approach the stringer too close and get jammed underneath the stairs.

[HomerSlated]

Looks like that navmesh is fine. I'd have made it clip more through the stairs, but that's my only comment.

 

Those stairs are a bit problematical anyway and it's nothing to do with the navmesh. Generally, the player and NPCs can get stuck at the point where the top of the stair meets the upper floor. You don't describe where the NPCs are having a problem. Are they getting stuck on part of it and then 'teleporting' past the bit they can't manage? If so, whereabouts? That'll tell you what bits to focus on.

 

If you re-do the navmesh, make it clip more through the stairs and add an extra pair of triangles at the bottom. navmesh is always better if it's slightly under a surface than raised above it. I may be tempted to push the navmesh alongside the stairs a little further away from them to avoid NPCs getting stuck on the stringer (the angled part of the stair at the side of the treads) at the foot of the stairs. So long as you do path testing and check that NPCs still have wide enough navmesh to navigate, it'll be fine. Pushing navmesh too close to statics can cause them to get stuck. As it is, they can approach the stringer too close and get jammed underneath the stairs.

 

That's great info, thanks.

 

Here's the exact behaviour I've witnessed.

 

Upon entering the cell, NPCs will walk around freely until they reach the stairs, then will walk past the stairs and begin idling in the kitchen and children's bedroom area. At that point they are unable to make it back to the front of the house, and remain permanently stuck in the kitchen / bedroom.

 

As I use Nether's Followers Framework, I can command an NPC to "get behind me". So by standing just in front of the stairs, looking at an NPC stuck in the kitchen, and commanding them, I can unstick them and teleport them to the front of the house. Unfortunately they just walk straight back into the "prison" I liberated them from.

 

I also use a now deleted mod called "Double Beds are for Two People" by OldMansBeard, where I can command NPCs to "come to bed". Whenever I do that, the NPCs get stuck in a loop, where they desperately try to get to the front of the stairs, but end up going into the cellar instead, coming back out, going back in, over and over.

 

If I repeatedly exit the house, taking my NPCs with me, and go back in, sometimes I get lucky and an NPC will follow me all the way to the foot of the stairs. I go up to the top, look back down, and see the NPC being slowly "pushed" to their right (my left) away from the stairs, like a kind of sideways moonwalk. They then pause, walk on the spot for a bit, then give up and proceed into the kitchen.

 

Once an NPC actually made it onto the stairs, but it was really weird because they didn't walk straight up the middle, they were (again) "pushed" all the way to their right, and had to tip-toe along the extreme right edge (nearest the kitchen) in order to make it.

 

The behaviour is such that, when I loaded this into CK, I seriously expected to find a navmesh hanging in mid-air to the right of the stairs. But no, that's not it at all.

 

Then what you said, and what I've heard in various tutorials about statics, made me think about all that stuff going on next to the wall at the foot of the stairs. There's a table with a shrine, and a whole lot of markers of some kind, but I'm just not experienced enough to understand what they are. They're not navmeshes, and I can't select them, but it's the only thing I can think of that might be pushing everyone away from the stairs.

[cumbrianlad]

This doesn't sound at all like an issue with Elianora's navmesh, which should have worked except tfor the occasional glitch where NPCs got stuck underneath the stringer on the stairs.

 

This sounds, from your description, much more like an issue with your existing mods, especially if you've removed some but there could be left-over scripts hanging around in your save file.

 

There is a chance that the shrine collision mesh could push them to one side, but from the images I've seen, they can't be pushing them away from the stairs. Collision mesh doesn't work like a magnet! Also, if it was an issue with collision mesh on the shrine, they'd be way more likely to just get stuck on the way past the shrine to the kitchen. I've used shrines that are vanilla shrines shrunk and altered to suit my player home and they don't do this. Eli wouldn't have done anything different to me, trust me on this. Also, in all honesty, Elianora is a very experienced modder and if this behaviour had been reported to her, she'd have fixed it. Guarranteed! If it's not been reported, other players haven't seen it...

 

... that comes back to mod conflicts. With my mod 'Shades Of The Rift' I had a player reporting all sorts of problems that 300 others hadn't seen... turned out to be mod conflicts and a bad load order. I pretty much knew from the description that it was a mod conflict. I just had to steer the player to look for it, since I didn't know their load order and didn't have 80% of the 200-odd mods that they had!

 

The AI behaviour that you describe is wrong, full-stop. If they're followers, housecarl's etc, they should be annoyingly following you around like an eager puppy, not wandering to the kitchen! Any mod that you have that tries to make NPCs 'more interesting' by making them seek out special furniture such as cookpots, alchemy workbenches etc could be responsible for this kind of thing. Eli will not have put this kind of 'Special Furniture' upstairs.

 

Without having Eli's Breezehome, I can't check this. I use 'Breezehome by Lupus'. It's cool and I've never had an issue with it.

 

I'd forget about the navmesh for now. I'm convinced that isn't your problem. You can adjust it along the lines I mentioned before and it won't do any harm, but I'd focus on the 'kitchen' area.

 

I'd bet that Elianora has just added vanilla cook-pots, 'BYOHovenMarkers' etc. I'd also bet that she didn't add any scripts to them. I wouldn't have done. No point in re-inventing the wheel. Open up every single furniture or activator object in the kitchen and check them. If they look vanilla or have scripts that don't explain the behaviour you're seeing, rule them out. You need to take care over this, because they could have keywords added to them that may alter NPC behaviour of NPCs. Again, my guess is that they don't!

 

Once you've eliminated everything in the kitchen, you're left with a mod conflict, maybe even a script hanging over from a mod you removed. With my mod, I made every item I'd made or altered begin with 4 letters to make them unique. I also added everything in 2 BSA files. This way, if the player uses a mod organizer, removing the mod simply removes the BSA. This includes the items, textures, nifs and scripts. They get a 'Clean-ish uninstal'. Some modders don't do this and upload their mods as 'loose files'. I personally don't agree with this practice, but that could be just me.

 

I say 'Clean-ish' because some things such as script properties are 'baked into' the game save files. The player can remove my mod, but those things are left in their save file. This is why you should never remove any scripted mod part way through a play... it can lead to unexplained errors, such as this one that you are reporting.

 

If you can't find the error by the method I've described, use 'Live another life' and start a new game. Get Breezehome and try it without any of the mods that affect NPC behaviour loaded. If it works fine (as I suspect it will) you now know that it's one of your other mods that are the real problem.

 

You really need to be testing on a 'clean-ish' save. I don't say a 'Clean save' for a reason. It is not necessary to test on a save with no mods installed, as some purists demand. In fact, I say that this idea is wrong. It is necessary to test on a save that has no mods that could interfere with the mod you're testing, at least at first. That takes a bit of experience to judge, so testing with no mods is 'safest'. Having said that, I want to know if my mod conflicts with the unofficial SSE patch. I also want to know if it conflicts with SMIM. I always play with these mods on. I therefore test with them on. You can also test with other mods on. That way you'll know if a player hits a conflict you know about. You can test with other mods that you think may be a problem later, once you know your mod works fine with things like the unofficial patch loaded. You can't do this for every mod, though. You'd never get a mod published! Use a bit of common sense with your testing.

 

You can also load up all of your loaded mods in SSEedit. (It'll only handle 256, I think). This could take some time, depending on your machine specs. Highlight Eli's Breezehome and apply 'Filter to show conflicts'. This will then highlight in red any form that screws up Eli's Breezehome mod. Look for ones that affect the kitchen area specifically. This way you may find the offending mod!

 

That's a huge word-wall, but I'm trying to explain everything that I can think of!

 

Hope it helps and doesn't confuse you further!

[cumbrianlad]

P.S.

 

adding this so as not to make a 'word castle wall' any bigger!

 

From your vid, you haven't set up CK to read from Eli's BSA files. That's why you're getting the red exclamation marks all over the place. You also won't be able to read any of her scripts on items you're checking. I include the 'source' scripts with my BSA, so that people can read them if they set CK to read from my BSA files. Eli may have done this or just included the machine code .pex files.

 

if she doesn't include the .psc (source) scripts, you'll need to use a free program called 'Champollion'. You'll also need a program like BAE (Bethesda Archive Extractor). Use your archive extractor tool to open the BSA file of Eli's that holds the scripts. Extract them to a new directory. Use 'Champollion and drag all of the .pex files into the directory where Champollion is located. Run Champollion.exe. It will then 'translate' all the .pex files and turn them into .psc files that you can read. Add these into your 'Source\scripts' in your data folder. Now when you open CK, you can read Eli's scripts without the 'Source code not detected' error.

 

You can set your CK ini file to read from Eli's BSA(s) temporarilly. Just add the filepath(s) to her BSA(s) into your CK ini file under SResourceArchives2. Then you'll get rid of the exclamation marks and see the models Eli has added herself. After you're finished, just delete the added line from the ini file.

 

Doing this will make it easier for you to track down your error. I'd still bet that it isn't down to Eli's Breezehome, but we'll see!

[HomerSlated]

This sounds, from your description, much more like an issue with your existing mods, especially if you've removed some but there could be left-over scripts hanging around in your save file.

 

I'm currently rebuilding my load order, as this is a new (second-hand) PC, so I haven't actually started a playthough yet, I've just been testing, and so every game is a new game and I don't have any save bloat.

 

I hadn't considered the possibility that AI scripts could be so meddlesome that they'd physically block NPCs from following commands, even after they start responding to those commands. That's actually quite depressing. I really wish there was a tool that could lay out the AI packages in some logical visual representation, like a flow chart, that I could follow to determine the outcome, and then delete or modify branches to fix AI conflicts (I have a background in software engineering, but I know nothing at all about Radiant AI).

 

But I have to agree that looks to be the most likely explanation. I've used Eli's Breezehome before, on both Oldrim and SE, where it "just worked", so I know the mod itself is not responsible. I had hoped it was one of the many city overhaul mods that had placed an object or navmesh somewhere it shouldn't have, and I could just remove it, but that now looks unlikely.

 

I naively assumed that CK would load a "load order correct" representation of a cell, so I could visually inspect and delete conflicting meshes, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I can do this with xEdit, but of course without the benefit if any visual feedback.

 

And anyway, that doesn't seem to be the cause.

 

Until a few days ago, I was using the infamously meddlesome Immersive Citizens, but I finally gave up on it because it's just too much work to maintain in a load order, and of course all third party patches are prohibited. IME it requires more than just a Bashed or Smashed patch, it needs fine-grained conflict resolution with xEdit, and hours of work every time you change your load order.

 

The AI stuff I currently have in my load order is:

• AI Overhaul
• Double Beds are for Two People
• Improved Adoptions
• Interesting NPCs
• Nether's Followers Framework

Although I suspect there's more, because I'm constantly surprised to find AI packages in mods that, on the face of it, shouldn't really have anything to do with AI.

 

I know from experience that the above combo has worked in previous load orders, but like I said there could be something else in the current load order that sneaks in some unexpected AI changes.

 

Here's the (current) load order. Unfortunately Vortex still doesn't support exporting the full modlist, so that's just the plugins.

 

I'll keep looking at AI conflicts and see what I come up with.

 

Thanks again.

[HomerSlated]

P.S.

...

You can set your CK ini file to read from Eli's BSA(s) temporarilly. Just add the filepath(s) to her BSA(s) into your CK ini file under SResourceArchives2.

 

Thanks, I had no idea. I did figure out how to load multiple masters (I got the "CK Fixes" mod), but I didn't realise it wouldn't just automatically load the BSAs and other dependencies.

[cumbrianlad]

I've just played using Elianora's Breezehome for SSE and I did see a bit of slightly odd behaviour from Lydia around those stairs but only if she was following me. She doesn't follow the player upstairs. I really couldn't make my mind up if this was just that the player doesn't get far enough away from her for her AI to make her move. They only move towards you once you get far enough away. I think this is just based on the x and y directions.

 

Dismissing her as a follower, she behaves perfectly around the house for me. She uses the furniture both on the ground floor and in the cellar when sandboxing. Ie, I've seen her using both seats by the fire, the cooking pot, a seat in the sauna and the blacksmith armourer's bench. At the right time, she went up to bed no problem and slept. She got up at the right time and came downstairs to sit by the fire and eat breakfast, before sandboxing again.

 

This was played on a save that had never seen the mod and I hadn't bought Breezehome. I also followed Elianora's instruction to buy it, enter it and return to Aventus to purchase the kids' room only.

 

To be honest, it's that long since I played with vanilla Breezehome or actually used Breezehome by Lupus as anything more than a home for Lydia when she's not following me, I can't recall if her behaviour is any different to this. The player follower package sets their distance from the player between 256 and 348. if the player stands at the top of the stairs Lydia is not really going to move from the foot of the stairs because that's within this range.