Hmm... Which cells?

The sub-heading(s) under it would list various problems of that type. In this case, there's only one sub-heading, "Random Vanishing Landscape in Tamriel", which discusses 20,-17 and 20,-18.

I'd like to get some help verifying what's possible and not possible using workarounds for TESCS crashing when you have other ESPs loaded besides the active one.

The question was posed recently in the OOO thread by onelifecrisis. It went something like this:



We know TESCS does not like it when you load with other ESPs than the active one. There are several ways around this detailed in the De-Isolation Tutorial, but it appears there may be another undocumented solution reported by display name is already in use:



This sounded very interesting to me, so I asked for more details on how reliable it is:



I think this sounds well worth some further investigation. Any takers?

Just did this without any problem.
Changed an object from YYYY.esp and saver as TestA.esp
Then loaded TestA.esp, renamed the same object creating a new one and saved as TESTB
Then loaded TestB.esp, renamed the same object again, created a new cell and saved as TESTC
Then loaded all 3 tests and duplicated the cell from TestC and saved as TestD.

Every time not setting any esp as active, of course.

I have had CS crashes when saving a mod for the first time. But this is rare. Don't really remember what I did the second time around.
And every once in a while I do load a library esp of mine with some mod I am working on, so I can copy/paste from the library to the mod.
Never tried to mod any esm besides Oblivion.esm, thou.

OS = XP64 - CS = 1.2.404

Thanks! This is a great start! :tops:

I assume you used interior cells?

The worst problems happen when YYYY.esp changes worldspace cells and you want to alter something it did.

For example, try moving part of the castle exterior from Battlehorn DLC, etc.

Also, in this test:

Then loaded TestA.esp, renamed the same object creating a new one and saved as TESTB

What happens if the object is say a sword that carries an enchantment that is only defined in TestA.esp?

Fine again:

Made a YYYY.esp that moves static/activators from position A to position B in XXXX.esm worldspace cell 0,0 (not Battlehorn Castle. I don't have it)
Loaded XXXX.esm and YYYY.esp (not active)
Moved the static/activators from position B to position C
Saved as ZZZZ.esp (no crash)
In game, the static/activators will be in position B or C depending on the load order.



Sorry, I know nothing about enchantments.
If you instruct me how to enchant a sword, I will test it.

I would just like to share my mistake:

I have placed some initially disabled NPCs outside Anvil, on west side of docks. They had packages that forced them to go to the docks and in front of the warehouse.

But, when they were enabled they were gone. What happened?

The whole area of Anvil's harbour is in subspace. My NPCs were also in this subspace, but their closest path node was outside of that subspace, so instead going few steps to the right and stepping on docks, they went all around Anvil in wide circle, then through the town to the docks, which took lot of time (I discovered that by making them quest targets) and some more problems.

Adding new path node directly under them and connecting it to Anvil docks path grid has solved the problem.

Ok, that sounds feasible, but to make that a relevant test, YYYY.esp must place a new static or other object into the world, not just move a vanilla placement -- i.e., so the REFR has a local FormID rather than a vanilla Oblivion.esm FormID (00).

Then ZZZZ.esp must try to move that object.

You see what I'm getting at here?



Rename an enchant, such as EnWeapFireDamage10Flame, creating a new one, then make a new sword (rename and create new) and assign your new enchant to the sword (on the weapon dialog).

Thanks!

I made a YYYY.esp that:
1; Created a new container and placed it in the world (renamed a barrel)
2; Placed a vanilla chest in the world
Loaded XXXX.esm and YYYY.esp (not active)
Moved the 2 objects mentioned above
Saved as ZZZZ.esp (no crash)
In game:
a. The barrel (1) remained where YYYY placed it. ZZZZ movement was ignored (makes sense)
b. The vanilla chest (2) was duplicated: one where originally placed by YYYY. Another where ZZZZ moved it to (funny, but kind of makes-sense-after-the-fact)

Same results with similar actions in Oblivion.esm


Created an enchanted longsword ELS1, as you said, in YYYY.esp and placed one in the world
Loaded YYYY.esp, created a new longsword by renaming ELS1 to ELS2, placed one in the world and saved the ESP as WWWW
In game, both were there, but ELS2 didn't have the enchanted symbol in the inventory.

Ok, so it's not crashing for you but the references to the original are lost because the original is not a master (and not an Esmified plugin).

Thanks, man! :tops:

Quick question: speaking of loading esps with your active esp, do I need to (should I) load the shivering isle's esp if I want to use resources from it? Or is that a bad idea? It hasn't crashed on me yet.

The Shivering Isles.esp is completely blank and should not do anything at all.

Personally, I wouldn't just to be safe.

By the way, the CSwiki folks (Qazaaq, Haama, and I) have been looking into creating archives for threads for the Wiki. A test of doing that using this thread can be found http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/User%3a%44ragoonWraith/ThreadArchiveTest; in order for it to work, you must have a Wiki account and follow the directions on the top of the page. Hopefully in the future that will be unnecessary, but in the meantime, if anyone would like to comment on it, that'd be cool.

Holy cow, man! That's so damn cool!

You guys rock! :mohawk:

There's a cell which will cause the local map to mess up if edited. It's somewhere around 4,4. I can check exactly which cell when I get home from work. I only know of one mod which edits this cell, but removing the entire cell entry from the ESP fixes the local map in-game.

I think it's 3,3 IIRC.

Yep, it is. From http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php?title=Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch#Known_Oblivion_Bugs:



EDIT: added it http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Common_Bugs#Markers_Missing_from_Local_Map.

Thanks, man!

No I meant 4,4 It has the same effect as 3,3 as described by UOP.

It is now possible to use TES4Edit to set records to disabled. FO3Edit was recently released on FO3Nexus, and if you rename the EXE to TES4Edit.exe, you get the latest version of TES4Edit for Oblivion.

Yikes! Ok, I added that one, too.



Sweet! :tops:

I don't know if that's already mentioned anywhere, I fear it is, because I think it's a pretty basic gotcha. Nevertheless I was *quite* surprised as it happened to me.

What am I talking about? Imagine placing an NPC into the world, he's got "No low level processing" checked, and persistent reference is unchecked because he's only supposed to be in one cell.

Later, for whatever reason you'll edit the NPC, give him new AI shedules spanning over more than one cell, therefore unchecking "No low level processing". Here's the gotcha: The Ref properties of the placed actor does not update automatically, causing a lot of CTDs in game (due to it not being a persistent ref).

Eek!

Ouch!

Does the problem only manifest on an existing savegame? (i.e., where the NPC data is already stored in the savegame). If so, you might be able to flush the problem out by making a clean save before testing.

Thanks, man!

Actually I didn't test this. I have no savegame with the NPC as non persistent ref, due to him being part of a new quest I worked on. What I can say though is that after toggling that NPC Ref to persistent the crashes were gone. (Maybe worth mentioning: The crash always happened when accessing the world map. In game it could take up to 20 minutes.)

Verified as described. And further confirmed that it doesn't matter what is edited so long as the Tamriel worldspace is in the ESP you want saved.

Hi. I'm new.

Up until six month ago, I'd never modded, meshed, programmed, or any such thing unless you count the Sims in buy mode (yes, it is appropriate to laugh now). I learned about modding solely from the CS Wiki, these forums, and the TESNexus forums. Most of the Gotchas you list, I read before I had the chance to create them in my own mods, and I understood them... if not the actual mechanics, at least the point to do or not do them. So kudos for that, you have prevented at least 1 person from further contaminating the mod pool (at least to my best efforts). I have a few suggestions to add to your list, however:

1. When modifying a vanilla interior, always give moved/new objects a parent that is a new object. The number of children for a parent, plus the positions of existing items, gets cached in saved games. I spent hours trying to fix this before someone suggested this to me, and I've seen lots of other people ask about the same issue - you modgods might think this is elementary stuff but there's nothing in the "learning process" that teaches you to look out for this, someone has to tell you.

2. Do not press the "f" key to lower an item in an interior cell unless you are really sure there is something there to catch it (laugh some more, I don't mind).

3. If you modify any infos via "edit cell" (interior lighting, fast travel enabled, ownership, etc.) ALL those settings get saved in the .esp, not just what you changed. I'm reasonably sure - a fast travel mod did this, and I was able to reproduce it.

4. You have noted already to name objects & cells uniquely, but really anything you name should be as unique as possible - especially when borrowing scripts and what not from other resources.

That's all I can think of for now.

Most of the time when you talk about scripting, it's totally over my head. I've managed to loosely grasp the syntax, because it has a pattern, but it still takes me hours to do what those currently engaged in this discussion can probably do in minutes. So maybe if you're looking to make the Wiki troubleshooting section accessible to us noobs you'll keep in mind that we likely have no idea what a "variable" really is, or what a "short" does, or how to implement such a thing as a "float", in case we knew what it was to want it in a script (I personally do my best to avoid floating objects, one last laugh at my expense).

A bit of clarification needed here now. Arthmoor questioned my vast and expansive knowledge (some of which I make up on the spot to sound clever)(that's a joke!) and it turns out that 4,4 ONLY causes this if Oblivion.ini has been edited for entry uGridsToLoad. I had accidentally changed mine from 5 to 7. Resetting it to 5 fixed the local map problem caused by editing 4,4. I don't know whether this is unique to an entry of 7, or whether any setting other than 5 will cause this.




Woohoo! Yay me!!! Except that Bluepie first told me how to avoid the crash on save, so if you hand out credit for these things, it goes to him.

IIRC this is something the UOP addresses. As it's installing it asks if you want to set this back to 5, because anything higher can cause problems.