dafydd99 Posted June 30, 2020 Author Share Posted June 30, 2020 Well - after a few hours of back and forth, unfortunately it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. And now some that were working are broken again. I can only think it's something to do with the size or set up of the cell. Navmesh passes all checks and I get no papyrus errors in the logs. I have a mine in the same mod, so I c+p'd the ambush to that. I put 15 in a row and they all worked fine. Think I've run out of ideas - short of duplicating the cell and trying again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dafydd99 Posted June 30, 2020 Author Share Posted June 30, 2020 Hi Cumbrianlad - thanks for the response. Yes I'm coc'ing to an exterior cell, and then entering the interior cell through a load door. I learned my lesson there on a home mod when I added a few mannequins and loaded a save in the same cell - as it hadn't done an onCellLoad the AI package had not be run on them (which resets default behaviour for an actor, I think)... and they creepily looked at me as I walked around! Yes - definitely the onCellLoad is necessary in this case and is being run - or else none of the ambushes wouldn've been set up. It feels like something is making only some of them work properly. I may try removing all the ambushes and starting again. I have around 15 in total, which doesn't seem too many, but you never know. Yes, I am testing their positions have been reset by doing exactly that - tcl'ing through and seeing them resting just in the right spot. Interestingly I'm also using alot of dlc2dwe* statics, as I've gone for the more marbley versions of the rooms and halls. I wonder if they were somehow never quite set up for ambushes? The behaviour you saw on your ambush sphere seems to be just what I'm seeing. Come to think of it - I'm also scaling a lot of the hallways and rooms, mostly making them smaller - I wonder if the collision stuff requires them to be at full size to work reliably? What I really want is to be able to step through what the AI package is trying to do, and understand why it's bailing out on some occasions and not others. really is maddening! Thanks again for your help - dafydd99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cumbrianlad Posted July 1, 2020 Share Posted July 1, 2020 No worries. Just to let you rule out DLC02 statics, I have a mixture of original dwemer, DLC02 Dwemer and my own Dwemer statics that are a blend of the 2 textures. All work perfectly with the ambush actors. if they are actually in their ambush positions, are you certain that you have the linked refs, triggers and scripts right? Is there any pattern to which ones work and which don't? I mean, are ones triggered by pressure plates working, but ones triggered by 'DefaultActivateSelfTriggers' not working, or vice-versa? i don't think you need to delve into the packages. they really just work (90-odd percent of the time). Something more basic is wrong, it seems to me. Edit: sorry for the delays... I'm hopping between my mod expansion and forums! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dafydd99 Posted July 1, 2020 Author Share Posted July 1, 2020 Hi Cumbrianlad - yeah, I'm busy doing ten things too! so - the problem I'm having is about the re-positioning of the sphere (and spider too in my case) for ambush. This would be just behind the port if it's worked right, or just around the point the actor is placed in creation kit if not. Of the three items (port furniture, encounter actor and trigger box) you only actually need the ambush encounter actor and port furniture - with a linked ref (no keyword) from the actor to the furniture. It either 'gets it' and hides it in ambush - or doesn't. The triggerbox always seems fine to add afterwards - even using one for several simultaneous ambushes, and the script on the actor doesn't need any property changes from default either. I spent a lot of last night trying to track down why one should work and another won't. Unfortunately I have no clear conclusion, and suspect it may be a number of factors. I deleted and rebuilt several times over etc. One thing that seemed to make the most difference was if I either fiddled with or entirely replaced the local navmesh around or near the port. As if the finalised navmesh was sometimes 'okay' and other times just not good enough for it to work. One thing that did seem consistent was that once I'd got it working - it would continue to work as long as I changed nothing locally. I've probably spent around 8 hours poking at this now trying to get a conclusion, but not sure I've got much alternative except to keep on trying to replace and re-test navmesh and actors/ports/statics until I get it working. Hopefully I'll get a better feel as to what's up soon - or else I'll give up and just do the ambushes another way - perhaps triggers that enable a disabled actor or something. Cheers - dafydd99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxarturo Posted July 1, 2020 Share Posted July 1, 2020 "I have a mine in the same mod, so I c+p'd the ambush to that. I put 15 in a row and they all worked fine. Think I've run out of ideas - short of duplicating the cell and trying again." " I have around 15 in total, which doesn't seem too many, but you never know." In one of my many experiments : * I'll be as short as possible. First part of the experiment was done in a 'Core Duo' Quad Core 2.66 Mhz. - I set up and place 18 'Furniture Ambushes' in a 'PreFabCell', an actually empty cell with just floor and walls. They all fire every time. - Then i set up and place 18 'Furniture Ambushes' of the same kind in one of my massive heavy cells, and some of them started having issues like the ambush not initializing or if they did initalaize the actor after spawning would be 'Unconscious', the "StartCombat()" wouldn't fire on some of them. Second part of the experiment was done on a 6000 euros i7. - The "PreFabsCell" ambushes worked fine. - The "Furniture Ambushes" placed on the massive heavy cell 95% of the time would work without showing any issues. 5% of the time a few of them would present the same issue as with the first part of the experiment. Third part of the experiment, I made a 'Master Controller Ambush Script' > remove from all actors their scripts and the whole function was handle by the 'Master Controller' for all actors. They would all fire every time in all circumstances, all cells and PCs. Conclusion This behavior is directly attached to the CPU power / and / or the CPU's usage at the time of the scripts execution. The CPU is asked to initialize 18 "OnCellAttach()" commands (plus all the other scipt's functions) while loading the 'Whole Cell' in a short time and simultaneously. The game engine will a lot of time skip / jump / bypass functions when the CPU is way too busy, this is a well known issue of SLE - SSE - Papyrus. By having everything handle by just one "Master Controller" means that it will only fire ONE "OnCellAttach()" and everything will be executed in the order that the "Master Controller" dictates to and not in the chaos that all 18 scripts causes. * The "Master Controller" logic is the base scripting logic i follow in the mod a resently publish, in all my heavy cells - scripted scenes - ambushes... etc. It is the most reliable way to handle such situations and after, if not hundreds, sure tens of testings, those cells - scripts - scenes... etc they always fire with no issues whatsoever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dafydd99 Posted July 1, 2020 Author Share Posted July 1, 2020 (edited) Ah, that's very interesting, maxarturo! Thanks very much for sharing. I might give it a go myself and see if I can duplicate some of what you're seeing. If it's getting overloaded I really wish bethesda could've been a bit more thorough and given us some indication of that in the logs! I don't suppose something like room bounds would help this situation would they? Or are they purely for rendering, not scripting stuff? Cheers - dafydd99 Edited July 1, 2020 by dafydd99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxarturo Posted July 1, 2020 Share Posted July 1, 2020 (edited) Everything comes down to cutting down CPU + GPU process, but when it comes to 'Furniture Ambushes' it's all about how many scripts needs to initialize when the cell is getting loaded. Have a happy modding. Edited July 1, 2020 by maxarturo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dafydd99 Posted July 1, 2020 Author Share Posted July 1, 2020 (edited) Right - I'm pretty sure I've tracked down at least much of the problem I've been having. It's navmeshes. The area where I'd placed four ambushes were in a very large connected navmesh. When I cut the room out from the navmesh it worked fine every time. I reconnected rooms one by one, and eventually found problems - I'm not sure whether it's due to a single large navmesh, or something in the navmesh (overlapping meshes etc) that it disagreed with. At least finally I seem to have a dungeon with working ambushes! Now all I need to do is make sure a follower can navigate it successfully! Thanks again for your help guys! Edited July 1, 2020 by dafydd99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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