» Sun Feb 06, 2011 7:34 pm Earthling and Augi don't frequent here very much anymore, so I guess I'll pick up the slack - Tig
A workaround has been found for pc users involving hex editing savegames. People using the 360 and the PS3 and everyone looking for a official and permanent fix will have to wait for more word from Bethesda...and it's already been a VERY long wait meaning it's likely not going to happen. They are fully aware of the bug now thanks to a couple very determined community members (Polygon Pirate, ashakanar)...see bottom of this post for recent updates. See the "Temporary workarounds" section of this post for description and links if you're using a PC and be damn thankful to zBobG, RenderFred, and Wrye among other members no longer here that helped provide a fix.
Welcome to the 8th thread regarding this issue. ANY further insight is appreciated.
Here are the previous threads:
Update....Part I - VI are now long gone
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=688265&hl=
These 7 threads have ~61,114 (cumulative) views! Who knows how many have looked but merely lurked.
I have sent this post, in full, to gamesas technical support. http://support.gamesas.com/asp/email.asp?sid=033434060506024178102033&pid=1462&pnm=Oblivion&seid=3932&pos=Windows+XP
The problem involves freezing/stuttering of secondary animations such as: fire, spell effects (on self and target), doors/gates/lids, corpse smashers, extentable bridges, traps of all kinds, fog, sparks from weapon impacts, butterflies, fireflies. The climix of the main quest is, by its very nature, affected as well.
Affected animations are sometimes completely frozen or PAINFULLY slow. In the case of doors, lifts, and bridges this can prevent further progress.
Overall framerate does NOT freeze/stutter and all other gameplay elements function normally ie character/npc/creature,tree, water, sky animations/movement, menu navigation, melee and magic combat (the effect of spells {damage health 10 for 2 sec} occur normally but the visual effects do not) all work fine. A high overall framerate is actually associated with a worsening of the problem.
Certain animations that one would predict to be affected are not. These include: the on target effect of the Detect Life spell and the fire animation of an equiped (on yourself or npc) torch. This needs further investigation.
Strange behaviour observed by many/all: the greater the angle between the centre of your point of view (centre of the screen) and the animation in question, the less the freezing/stuttering occurs. Also, the closer you are to the animation the worse the freezing/stuttering is.
All conceivable hardware/OS configurations/combinations, including the 360 and PS3, have been affected, from obsolete to cutting edge.
Possible causes that seem to be NOT universal:
1. Savegame filesize.
2. # of items stored in containers and/or out of containers.
3. Glitch began during xxx particular quest.
4. Number of or type of locations explored. For me it started after exploring Alyeid ruins but others have encountered it without entering any ruins.
5. Use of fast-travel.
6. Constant effects on your character.
7. Savegame corruption. Some have experienced corruption when saving while the glitch is currently active, others have had virtually no obviously corrupt saves in any circumstance.
8. Usage of mods.
If this is indeed a savegame corruption issue then the savegame system in Oblivion is in need of fixing.
Possible causes that seem to be universal:
1. # of hours played. While symptoms have been observed early on by some, virtually all people begin to notice or be hindered by the problem after many (100+ and usually 200+) hours of play with a single character.
2. High overall framerate, as a cause of or symptom of the problem. Without a doubt, the problem is at it's worse when framerate is high. This is likely the most solid lead and is in need of further investigation.
3. Physics bugs. Items jiggling or "resetting" when you enter an indoor location and items falling through the floor. This is less consistent than 1 and 2 but many have reported it.
Oblivion (and Morrowind) was made using the "Gamebryo" middleware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo Could this problem be rooted in Gamebryo?
Temporary workarounds:
Hex editing a savegame (Disclaimer: there is no full official understanding, yet, of what the byte in question does, other than that it causes and cures the problem depending on its value).
Quote of The other Felix: "The saved game files contain a four byte sequence that appears to be be continuously incremented during play, triggering the problem when it reaches a certain value (possibly when changing from FFFFFF48 to 00000049), and with values beyond that increasing its severity. The editing consisted of decreasing the value of the last byte in that sequence by using a hex editor on an affected save. I suspect that the problem will reappear once the 'magic' value is reached again, but that can probably be delayed indefinitely by further editing."
Here are 3 programs that will change the value (listed in order of most used fix) :
1. zBobG's program can be used to examine, as well as fix, the byte http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5127
2. RenderFred's program will modify all saves at once if you so choose http://renderfred.free.fr/oblivion/OBSAF.zip
3. For advanced users, Wrye's program, http://wrye.ufrealms.net/, has, among its many features, a function for resetting the byte.
zBobG's fix and quick explanation of the Float number transition where the the animation bug occurs:
The 48 to 49 transition is just the quick-and-dirty test for the animation bug. That byte is the first of 4 bytes (that you can see in OAF) and all 4 bytes are the binary representation of a Float (a decimal) number. Testing has found that when that Float number exceeds a certain value then the animation sticks. The 49 is just an indicator that the value has been exceeded. The fix, replacing 49 with 40, is just a quick-and-dirty method of easily reducing the value of that Float number.
Don't worry about messing up your game, only that one byte is changed and nothing else in the game is affected, except the animation being fixed of course. You can also fix your game any number of times with no bad effect.
Kivan's discovery with Shivering Isles:
Just so it goes into the pile, the A-Bomb can be a complete gamebreaker for an unexpected reason. So far have seen two instances where if it's hit it causes a crash to desktop when the player goes to Sheogorath's palace grounds and nowhere else. So for someone on console trying to complete the SI main quest, it's game over.
I do have at least one sent save, possibly two kicking around in pre-fix state. CTD going to Palace, Bash or OAF them and it's fine after that.
I do have at least one sent save, possibly two kicking around in pre-fix state. CTD going to Palace, Bash or OAF them and it's fine after that.
Other Suggestions:
Hot Key switching of weapons and equipment or changing from 1st to 3rd person view, may help temporarily speed up doors opening or aid in slow animation sequences completing.
Casting a spell may help temporarily speed up slow/frozen doors, platforms, etc.
The .ini setting fAnimationMult=1.1 (or higher-default is 1.0) seems to fix it, but causes other issues.
Use tcl (noclip) in the console to fly through/to where you want to go.
Look away from the affected animation.
Reloading a save made before the issue began invariably results in it's re-appearance, usually around the same game/real time point at which it first started.
Here's a (abbreviated) list of questions one of our fellow sufferers put together that may help find a commonality/solution:
1. Do you recall experiencing any other very unusual graphical glitches, physics bugs, etc?
2. What CPU/memory/video card do you have?
3. What resolution/options do you usually use (especially around the time the glitch started)?
4. Any mods that you have installed that might affect this?
5. Anything unusual about your hardware/software/os/configuration/playstyle that most people probably do not/do have?
6. Under what circumstances does the problem seem to be at its worse and least?
7. Please feel free to suggest any other questions you think might be good to ask to help ferret out a common cause for this glitch.
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Some updates regarding getting devs to recognize the problem...read on
Sent to Gstaff (dev):
This is the message i sent including heading;
Animation Bug Issue, Update please
I know you were kind enough to reply to me last time about this and I hope you can reply again.
There are a lot of people, myself included, that need to know if you are going to fix the Animation issue. This has been a very long running problem (about a year?) for a lot of people.
People that have paid money for your game, paid money on various expansions. Put a lot of time (200-500hrs before the bug hits depending on platform) into playing your game and crafting/training their character of choice. Then your animation bug hits and all that time of crafting and training our character of choice goes out the window, and what are we left with? We have to start again? Unacceptable!
I would like to know, as would others in the same situation, what you (Bethesda Softworks) intend to do about this Animation issue. Is it fixable? And if it isn't, why not? In the end that is all we really want to know from you, so that I (and I?€?m just speaking for myself now) can put this game back in my cupboard and never look at it again...
I understand that the PC community had a number of unofficial third-party solutions to fix this animation issue (well until it happened again after another 200 or so hours) but being on the Xbox360 I have no such luxury.
I would like to ask you/invite you to visit the thread called Slow/Frozen Doors, Fire, Spell etc. animations, Part 7 of Jittering Doors/Effects/Objects-pos FIX found in your official forums ( Bethesda Game Studios Forums > Oblivion > Hardware and Software Issues )
Thankyou, for reading this.
This is the message i sent including heading;
Animation Bug Issue, Update please
I know you were kind enough to reply to me last time about this and I hope you can reply again.
There are a lot of people, myself included, that need to know if you are going to fix the Animation issue. This has been a very long running problem (about a year?) for a lot of people.
People that have paid money for your game, paid money on various expansions. Put a lot of time (200-500hrs before the bug hits depending on platform) into playing your game and crafting/training their character of choice. Then your animation bug hits and all that time of crafting and training our character of choice goes out the window, and what are we left with? We have to start again? Unacceptable!
I would like to know, as would others in the same situation, what you (Bethesda Softworks) intend to do about this Animation issue. Is it fixable? And if it isn't, why not? In the end that is all we really want to know from you, so that I (and I?€?m just speaking for myself now) can put this game back in my cupboard and never look at it again...
I understand that the PC community had a number of unofficial third-party solutions to fix this animation issue (well until it happened again after another 200 or so hours) but being on the Xbox360 I have no such luxury.
I would like to ask you/invite you to visit the thread called Slow/Frozen Doors, Fire, Spell etc. animations, Part 7 of Jittering Doors/Effects/Objects-pos FIX found in your official forums ( Bethesda Game Studios Forums > Oblivion > Hardware and Software Issues )
Thankyou, for reading this.
I'm investigating the matter. (^^^dev^^^)
Just got the PM back from Gstaff guys, and this is it in its entirety. Ready;
So here's the deal
Our team is well aware of this issue, but it is one we have not been able to resolve because of the nature of the problem and any fixes related to it. We are continuing to look into it and will let folks know if/when we are able to address it in the future.
Not really what I was hoping for either but I guess it's the best we are going to get from these guys for now... And the waiting continues anew...
So here's the deal
Our team is well aware of this issue, but it is one we have not been able to resolve because of the nature of the problem and any fixes related to it. We are continuing to look into it and will let folks know if/when we are able to address it in the future.
Not really what I was hoping for either but I guess it's the best we are going to get from these guys for now... And the waiting continues anew...
This kind of confirms my suspicion that the source of the error is a third party piece of software that the developers don't fully understand or are limited by license to fixing it. Purely speculation however.
I can suggest a solution. Since it has been established that the 'Animation Fixer' solution is safe and effective a quick-and-dirty solution might be appropriate, even if temporarily. A monitor of the animation bug value could be run (alongside the scripts) that simply adjusts the value (downward) from time to time.
I understand that this would be considered 'dirty' code by any programmer and therefore might not be considered as a viable solution. The developers may be reluctant to implement such a 'dirty' fix as it would tend to set a precedent, but I would think this is not the first time there was some 'dirty' code in Oblivion. But it would be useful as a temporary fix, especially for the XBox platform which today has no other option.
A way to 'save face' would be to produce a beta patch, then the developers could disclaim any responsibility.
I can suggest a solution. Since it has been established that the 'Animation Fixer' solution is safe and effective a quick-and-dirty solution might be appropriate, even if temporarily. A monitor of the animation bug value could be run (alongside the scripts) that simply adjusts the value (downward) from time to time.
I understand that this would be considered 'dirty' code by any programmer and therefore might not be considered as a viable solution. The developers may be reluctant to implement such a 'dirty' fix as it would tend to set a precedent, but I would think this is not the first time there was some 'dirty' code in Oblivion. But it would be useful as a temporary fix, especially for the XBox platform which today has no other option.
A way to 'save face' would be to produce a beta patch, then the developers could disclaim any responsibility.
from what i understand, every piece of xbox software has to go through micro$oft's QA service and i don't think they'll allow beta software to be uploaded to live... it's just another roadblock bethesda can't really bypass
anyway, i still have hope that they'll find a fix for this problem in the next patch
we would deserve that much
anyway, i still have hope that they'll find a fix for this problem in the next patch
we would deserve that much
I joined the club about three months ago. Xbox 360 user - about 500+ hours into the game. Bethesda sent me a link to this thread.
:nope: It's looking like the bug is here to stay...not even Bethesda knows what to do about it now. PS3 owners are not exempt either apparently:
PS3 owner here, and sadly the code isn't fixed for this platform either. The game died after it registered about 375 "days" which is how this version counts time. Same exact problems as these threads.
Thanks to the people who have fixed it for the PC users to be able to skirt what is seems Beth won't.
Isn't it straight fraud to sell something when you know it isn't functional to fully use? The 360 and PS3 players have no way to fix their save games, so we are up the proverbial creek.
Why can't Beth at least tell us what they know about the hex numbers that are accumulating in the area of the saves fixable on the PC version? Then we might extend the game if playing it is a certain way would avoid that accumualtion to slap us down.
There are approxiamately 6-7 million Macs sold a year, and if the game were fixed, they would certainly sell plenty, I mean how many PS3s are there?
Beth stated I believe that they are worried about what a "fix" attempt might mess up otherwise in the code. Well if their beta testers can't work on it, I would bet there are enough in this thread to test it well, and see where it goes, and they represent all the platforms. Seems very slack of them not to at least make some sort of attempt? With so much software running the way it does these days, I am beginning to wonder where the programmers are coming from?
Now as to the real travesty! This is one of the most well conceived games ever, and I have played them since the late 70s on Apple II. Beta tested for years with Mac games. It seems to be a terrible misjustice to have such a high quality concept and complete game with these sorts of deadly bugs left in by the programming team for that area of the code.
Started on a new character a few weeks ago, hoping that some miracle might let me play this one completely.
Thanks to the people who have fixed it for the PC users to be able to skirt what is seems Beth won't.
Isn't it straight fraud to sell something when you know it isn't functional to fully use? The 360 and PS3 players have no way to fix their save games, so we are up the proverbial creek.
Why can't Beth at least tell us what they know about the hex numbers that are accumulating in the area of the saves fixable on the PC version? Then we might extend the game if playing it is a certain way would avoid that accumualtion to slap us down.
There are approxiamately 6-7 million Macs sold a year, and if the game were fixed, they would certainly sell plenty, I mean how many PS3s are there?
Beth stated I believe that they are worried about what a "fix" attempt might mess up otherwise in the code. Well if their beta testers can't work on it, I would bet there are enough in this thread to test it well, and see where it goes, and they represent all the platforms. Seems very slack of them not to at least make some sort of attempt? With so much software running the way it does these days, I am beginning to wonder where the programmers are coming from?
Now as to the real travesty! This is one of the most well conceived games ever, and I have played them since the late 70s on Apple II. Beta tested for years with Mac games. It seems to be a terrible misjustice to have such a high quality concept and complete game with these sorts of deadly bugs left in by the programming team for that area of the code.
Started on a new character a few weeks ago, hoping that some miracle might let me play this one completely.
And just when you thought it was over...
Just so it goes into the pile, the A-Bomb can be a complete gamebreaker for an unexpected reason. So far have seen two instances where if it's hit it causes a crash to desktop when the player goes to Sheogorath's palace grounds and nowhere else. So for someone on console trying to complete the SI main quest, it's game over.
I do have at least one sent save, possibly two kicking around in pre-fix state. CTD going to Palace, Bash or OAF them and it's fine after that.
I do have at least one sent save, possibly two kicking around in pre-fix state. CTD going to Palace, Bash or OAF them and it's fine after that.
