SSE need help porting/fixing a massive city overhaul mod into SE properly

[TuralyonProductions]

So I recently came across an excellent and highly underrated Solitude city overhaul called [post=https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/70540/]Solitude Combined[/post]. It's easily the absolute biggest city overhaul made for Skyrim that i'm aware of, combining half a dozen other Solitude mods into a single, massive and cohesive package. Since the Mod Author never ported it to SE, I decided to do it myself, but I've run into a few problems that I haven't figured out how I'll need to fix.

 

Firstly, for some reason a lot of NPCs (both modded and vanilla) can be found just standing in-place for hours on end as if their AI just doesn't work. Most of them seem to be found right outside the city gates in the new exterior area. While most of these seem to be new NPCs added by the mod, [post=https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Aquillius_Aeresius]Aquilius Aeresius [/post] can be found right outside the gates just standing in place for hours on end so there is something either screwing with these NPCs ai packages or the Actor Limit could be all f*#@ed up (considering most of these tend to be in the exterior Tamriel worldspace)

 

Secondly, a lot of the new buildings added for the mods NPCs are completely unlocked and enter-able during most of the day. While I'm not even certain the mods new NPCs will even go back to these places at night, I do want to have them locked most of the time so I'd like to learn how I can go about doing that in the CK

 

Thirdly, a lot of NPCs inside solitude itself have alot of weird ai problems. Walking into pillars/walls that weren't there in the vanilla game, ignoring basic parts of their schedule, or even just standing in place like as if they've crossed the games actor limit. i'm not familiar with editing AI packages so if y'all could dig up any resources and tutorials on that i'd really appreciate it.

 

Finally, despite consistently getting 60fps both in and outside the city gates, my game tends to crash after spending enough time in solitude. While I've managed to decrease the time it takes for these crashes to occur, i'm confused as to why it's crashing despite my high framerate so anyone familiar with these things should let me know what's going on.

 

So my main question here is are there any resources and guides out there that'll help me fix all these problems and any other ones that might pop up? how do I increase the actor limit so where NPCs won't just stand around all day if that's what's causing it? and how can I use xEdit or some other program to clean the plugin or find and fix any blatant bugs/errors with the mod?

[TyburnKetch]

Apologies if this has already been done, you didnât mention it, so I feel I should ... but is it all navmeshed properly? Are all the doors set? Most of the time I have Npcs standing around is because they can not see a path to whatever is next in their AI packages.

 

Could very well be a package problem, at least some of it, but in my humble experience it is navmesh, specifically doors not properly set on the navmesh, that causes npcs to stand around like zombies.

 

Personally, I would pick an npc at a time, look at their AI packages and try and work out what the hold up is based on what they SHOULD be doing at any given time. It might be a reference in their package has moved, does not exist anymore.

Edited August 15, 2020 by TyburnKetch

[TuralyonProductions]

hm

 

Apologies if this has already been done, you didnât mention it, so I feel I should ... but is it all navmeshed properly? Are all the doors set? Most of the time I have Npcs standing around is because they can not see a path to whatever is next in their AI packages.

Could very well be a package problem, at least some of it, but in my humble experience it is navmesh, specifically doors not properly set on the navmesh, that causes npcs to stand around like zombies.

Personally, I would pick an npc at a time, look at their AI packages and try and work out what the hold up is based on what they SHOULD be doing at any given time. It might be a reference in their package has moved, does not exist anymore.hmm

hmm so I'm aware that Navmeshing is very important to creating pretty much any mod that makes changes to cells/adds them, but how exactly do I go about doing it? I haven't found many tutorials on it online, and while i'm familiar with the more streamlined method used by engines like Unity, i'm not sure how to do it in the Creation Kit despite hearing rumors that it kinda needs to be done by hand somehow.

 

Also, how do I check what AI package an NPC has at any given time? I think there was a mod for Oblivion that did just that but I'm not aware of any similar plugin for Skyrim.

[cumbrianlad]

I'd second that about navmesh.

 

The NPCs 'standing around' and 'colliding with things that aren't in the vanilla game'' sounds like navmesh issues. It can happen if the author has deleted vanilla navmeshes. I know that shouldn't happen, but it does. I know of one very respected mod author who did this in their earlier mods. It resulted in just this kind of behaviour. It can be fixed, though!

 

I'd suggest, once your masters are clean, open up the esp in s5edit, set 'Apply filter for cleaning' and look for these things. Don't trust that the original mod is safe! Believe me, I've looked at mods that were available to download on Nexus, in order to help the authors and some of their mods were riddled with disastrous errors! I looked at a mod for someone (won't say who, for obvious resons) that totally screwed up the 'Man Who Cried Wolf' quest. Others I've looked at, mess with all sorts of things like dragon landing points, quests, vanilla items. Just because a mod is on Nexus doesn't mean it's safe to use!

 

The other things I'd ask are: did you clean your masters before doing this? and what saves are you using for testing? If your masters aren't cleaned, do that first and start again.

 

For the save files, they must never have seen your esp, unless you know what you're doing. In your case, you need saves that have never seen the mod.

 

When testing, never COC to an area if you're testing NPC behaviour. It totally screws it up. I only COC when testing to check physical objects that I've put in. I never COC to test NPC AI. I don't know if you have, but I'm just warning you that COC will not work properly to test AI.

[TyburnKetch]

Whoa, hang on a sec.

 

Sorry to derail the OP but I did not know COC is not advisable for testing npc AI behaviour!! I mean ... that could explain a lot for me! But really? Even simple work packages? How does it screw it up?

 

Are you saying every time I want to test Npc AI I need to start a new save and hunk my butt to the middle of nowhere (my house mod)? Can I start a new save and THEN COC?

 

Sorry OP.

[TyburnKetch]

Following on from cumbrianlad ..

 

You check AI packages in the actor tab. Find the npc in the CK you want to look at and they have a whole tab dedicated to AI packages.

 

Navmesh tutorials are out there. Darkfox (as with most things) has a good starting off tutorial, among others.

[TuralyonProductions]

hm

 

Apologies if this has already been done, you didnât mention it, so I feel I should ... but is it all navmeshed properly? Are all the doors set? Most of the time I have Npcs standing around is because they can not see a path to whatever is next in their AI packages.

 

Could very well be a package problem, at least some of it, but in my humble experience it is navmesh, specifically doors not properly set on the navmesh, that causes npcs to stand around like zombies.

 

Personally, I would pick an npc at a time, look at their AI packages and try and work out what the hold up is based on what they SHOULD be doing at any given time. It might be a reference in their package has moved, does not exist anymore.hmm

hmm so I'm aware that Navmeshing is very important to creating pretty much any mod that makes changes to cells/adds them, but how exactly do I go about doing it? I haven't found many tutorials on it online, and while i'm familiar with the more streamlined method used by engines like Unity, i'm not sure how to do it in the Creation Kit despite hearing rumors that it kinda needs to be done by hand somehow.

 

Also, how do I check what AI package an NPC has at any given time? I think there was a mod for Oblivion that did just that but I'm not aware of any similar plugin for Skyrim.

so i've heard that deleting vanilla navmeshes can really screw with the game and cause all sorts of bugs on top of being a generally frowned upon modding practice. Is there any specific way I should go about fixing/re-adding them so these issues with it will be patched properly? cuz I don't wanna just add new ones in only to find that I used the wrong process for it and will have to do it all over again.

[cumbrianlad]

Tyburnketch, I don't want to derail the OP's post either, but yes, using COC can screw up AI behaviour when you enter a cell.

 

In my mod, when testing on a clean save, if I used COC into a cell with an NPC who is part of the quest, he would start using the "You have to leave" dialogue, even though he didn't own the cell or anything in it. If I used the proper load doors, he would behave correctly.

 

I never test a cell for quests or NPCs unless I enter by a load door.

[TyburnKetch]

Interesting. That makes sense.

 

The only NPC I have is a house ... servant. His quests are all package based and pretty autonomous. Have not seen any seriously weird behaviour, other than standing around like a banana. (Navmesh) Probably because his packages are so simple.

 

Will bare in mind though for the future. Thanks for the info.

 

OP:

 

Yes. Deleting Navmesh is a bad idea. If the Navmesh is vanilla a good practice, I believe, is to lower it way into the ground, then build a new mesh on the surface, if needed.

[TuralyonProductions]

alright, so I have a few updates to share. I've managed to get the mod loaded properly in SE, and I'm currently in the process of creating a patch for Legacy of the Dragonborn. This has been rather difficult unfortunately, as for some reason very little of the Solitude Museum and the mods various changes to the area are actually showing up in the CK render window. Much of it is just a bunch of red explanation marks instead of the models mesh, while a lot of it is just completely invisible is missing inside the render window, leaving these large empty gaps and holes in the terrain/scenary where in game it shows up just fine. The entire model for the museum itself is missing for gods sake!

 

here are a few screenshots to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with here:

 

 

 

any idea what could be causing this? it seems like only stuff from the LOTD master file is missing, so could this be an issue of the CK not loading the .esm correctly? any idea how I can fix this?

 

also, in the likely case that there are deleted vanilla navmeshes in my mod how should I go about fixing them? can I just readd them directly or is there some more complicated process involved?