Caliper Conundrum : IV

» Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:09 am

Hi,

I'm playing through Oblivion again using Frans and a minimal number of other mods. I'm using a bash patch for my levelled lists but I'm still getting the calliper problem. I did a reset as directed in Frans FAQ using the FranMenu script. After this things settled down for a couple of hours but I noticed they started creeping back into loot. However I noticed something very weird the callipers would change into the intended items if you left them in their containers and reopened the containers, sometimes only a few at a time. This is making me think that the calliper issue is a memory related one.

Would like to know if anyone in the know thinks this could be the case?

I've tried setting iPreloadSizeLimit=536870912 just on a hunch and haven't seen any suspicious morphing callipers since. However I have been having crashes since I raise the limit when exiting buildings where there'd be an autosave. Not sure if it is related. What is the maximum I should set iPreloadSizeLimit on a 4Gb machine?

Is this flag having the effect I think it is or is it just coincidence that the callipers have departed?

(edit) Just to inform that when I was getting the calliper issue iPreloadSizeLimit=262144000 .

» Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:17 pm

Nope. The Calliper Gemino Curse is back!

And I've observed more of its odd behaviour. So a couple of Conjurers have just appeared with callipers in tow, so I decided to have a play after my discovery that callipers in boxes magically morph into real items when you close and reopen the box. So I tried the same trick with the bodies, unfortunately no change, tried saving and reloading and examining the bodies, no change. So I tried taking a calliper putting it into a nearby container, opened it, still callipers, closed and reopened it, and as by magic they're items again!

So even despite my save and reload in the middle I was able to transform Francesco bugged callipers into items again by placing them into a container and opening, closing and reopening it.

So what does this say about the callipers bug, and what can I do to shift it for good?

(edit) Some info on my setup:

Active Mod Files:

Spoiler

00 Oblivion.esm
01 Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm [Version 4.5b]
02 Francesco's Optional New Items Add-On.esm [Version 4.5b]
03 Francesco's Optional New Creatures Add-On.esm [Version 4.5b]
04 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp [Version 3.2.0]
05 Enhanced Water v2.0 ND.esp
06 sr_super_hotkeys.esp [Version 0.54]
07 DLCSpellTomes.esp
++ DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp [Version 1.0.1]
++ Darkgreen Glass Armour.esp
08 SBsaddlebags.esp
09 Francesco's Optional Files.esp
0A DS Storage Sacks.esp [Version 1.21]
0B SupremeMagicka.esp [Version 0.90b]
++ SM_DLCSpellTome.esp [Version 0.90]
0C SM_EnchantStaff.esp [Version 0.90]
++ SM_Scrolls.esp [Version 0.90]
++ SM_SigilStone.esp [Version 0.90]
++ Francesco's Slower skills x1.5.esp
0D RealisticLeveling.esp
0E Francesco's 10 days respawn time - 1-20 day lenght rescale.esp
0F Bashed Patch, 0.esp

Bashed Patch, 0.esp Config:

Spoiler

== Patch Mode ** Python== Alias Mod Names== Merge Patches ** DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp ** Darkgreen Glass Armour.esp ** SM_DLCSpellTome.esp    SM_OOO.esp    SM_MMM.esp    SM_COBL.esp    SM_VanillaSpells.esp    SM_NoSpellLights.esp ** SM_Scrolls.esp ** SM_SigilStone.esp ** Francesco's Slower skills x1.5.esp    bgMagicEV_Conjuration_for_Supreme_Magicka.esp    SM_DeadlyReflex.esp== Import Actors ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCFrostcrag - Unofficial Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import Actors: AIPackages ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import Actors: Death Items ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp== Import Cells ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp ** Enhanced Water v2.0 ND.esp    Enhanced Water v2.0 HD.esp    DLCHorseArmor - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch - SSSB.esp    DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp    DLCFrostcrag - Unofficial Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import Factions ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import Graphics    DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp ** Darkgreen Glass Armour.esp ** SupremeMagicka.esp== Import Inventory ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import NPC Faces ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm== Import Names ** Oblivion.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp ** SupremeMagicka.esp ** Guard_Names.csv    OOO_Potion_Names.csv    Random_NPC_Alternate_Names.csv    Random_NPC_Names.csv    Rational_Names.csv== Import Relations ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Import Scripts ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp== Import Stats ** Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm ** Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp== Tweak Names    Body Part Codes [ARGHTCCPBS]    Armor [BL Leather Boots]    Clothes [P Grey Trousers]    Lore Friendly Names: Dwarven -> Dwemer ** Notes and Scrolls [.(D) Fire Ball] ** Potions [(XD) Illness] ** Spells [(D2) Fire Ball] ** Weapons [(B08) Iron Bow]== Leveled Lists    Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm [ADR]    Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp [ADR]    DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp [ADR]    DLCSpellTomes.esp [AR]    DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp [ADR]    Francesco's Optional Files.esp [ADR]    Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp [AR]

» Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:43 am

Q: OMG!!! All my bandits are Nekkid. And I'm finding only Calipers in the loot. What gives? Why are the bandits running around in the buff and where is their treasure?

A: nvde or topless NPCs (this can happen with any of them, actually) and loot chests filled to bursting with Calipers are a sign that the loot tables need to be reset. Lucky for you this can and should be done in game. First try this method: Go to a location with no NPCs (a player owned house is perfect). Open the console (its that handy '~' key again) and type in startquest fransmenu. Under Manage Settings select "reset to defaults". Then wait for the cells to reset for the number of days you have selected as your respawn time (If you haven't selected any then the game's default is 3 days) plus one day. This process should reset the cells with the bandits (Or other NPCs) and loot. If this doesn't work then you can roll back to an older save and try the reset again. Usually though this solves the issue.

» Fri Jul 22, 2011 7:00 am

Hi,

I'm playing through Oblivion again using Frans and a minimal number of other mods. I'm using a bash patch for my levelled lists but I'm still getting the calliper problem. I did a reset as directed in Frans FAQ using the FranMenu script. After this things settled down for a couple of hours but I noticed they started creeping back into loot. However I noticed something very weird the callipers would change into the intended items if you left them in their containers and reopened the containers, sometimes only a few at a time. This is making me think that the calliper issue is a memory related one.

Q: OMG!!! All my bandits are Nekkid. And I'm finding only Calipers in the loot. What gives? Why are the bandits running around in the buff and where is their treasure?

A: nvde or topless NPCs (this can happen with any of them, actually) and loot chests filled to bursting with Calipers are a sign that the loot tables need to be reset. Lucky for you this can and should be done in game. First try this method: Go to a location with no NPCs (a player owned house is perfect). Open the console (its that handy '~' key again) and type in startquest fransmenu. Under Manage Settings select "reset to defaults". Then wait for the cells to reset for the number of days you have selected as your respawn time (If you haven't selected any then the game's default is 3 days) plus one day. This process should reset the cells with the bandits (Or other NPCs) and loot. If this doesn't work then you can roll back to an older save and try the reset again. Usually though this solves the issue.

He already tried that.

» Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:24 am

Argh... whoops.

In that case, the only other possible solution I see is to clean-save Frans mod, but that means you're going to lose everything added by the mod.

» Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:41 pm

Hi, thanks for the replies. Yes. I had already tried what you suggested Thomas Kaira but after a couple of days the callipers started creeping back. I've just started doing a clean save but I'm not sure whether to trust it or not as it went a bit mental when I reinstalled fran.

Here's the steps I took:

Spoiler

(1) Removed all Fran mods and rebuilt Bash Patch
(2) Reloaded save game and used COC TestingHall
(3) Saved again then exited game
(4) Took the save in Wrye Bash and ran:
(*) Repair factions
(*) Repair Bloat
(*) Update NPC levels
(5) Loaded save game waited 11 days (fran's respawn time + 1) saved and exited
(6) Added back Fran's mods and rebuilt bash patch
(7) Reloaded save used setquest FranMenu to reset to defaults
(8) Waited 11 days (still in TestingHall), saved and exited
(9) Reloaded and typed COC SardavarLeed (where I was at the start)

What happened afterwad:

Back where I had been when I first encountered a Calliper again I killed one of the freshly respawned offending Conjurer and there clasped in his cold dead hands was a Calliper. So I picked it up. This time instead of sitting uselessly in my inventory the my player was immediately equipped with an iron tanto (or something) like I'd hit a hotkey for equipping a weapon, even though I didn't have one in my inventory before picking up the Callipers. Then it started saying player picked up flaming sabre... jolting katana ... extremely rapidly listing hundreds of weapons and occasionally player equipped iron dagger although nothing was appearing in my inventory and no daggers were equipped. I played on while this lasted for about 20 mins and then eventually it stopped.

Since then I've played on for a couple more hours and I've not seen a Calliper, but the bad guys are being equipped with Fran's extra weapons. I'd not realised it before but I hadn't actually seen a non-vanilla weapon for quite a long time as could be seen from the fact that cleaning my save only lost me one item from my large inventory.

So the weird behaviour has me worried, and one thing I'm noticing is that the world seems a bit empty at the moment. I'm not sure if that's my imagination or not. Possibly the result of going up to level 18 and the increased bad guy level being combined with fewer packs? I'm seeing quite a lot of various atronachs and greater wearwolves but ony single bandits and not so many wolf packs.