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Does anyone know why multiple hair mods can crash the game during character creation?


asianboy345

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It's been bugging me for a while now. I'm trying to use Apachii hair along with Cazy and the hair pack here on LL. Put those three will result in insta crash at the creation menu when I switch gender to female.

 

I believe the crash is from the hair pack here at LL and not Apachii or Cazy (although people have reported of crashing for those two as well).

 

What I want to know is... why? Why does the game crash exactly? Skyrim engine should be able to handle all the hair mods. Heck, Oblivion's character's creation menu was very stable in the hair department, so why is Skyrim's such a mess?

 

If any of you know of a way to fix this or why Skyrim crash when hair mods are involved, please help. Thanks in advance

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Unlike Oblivion, Skyrim requires more memory yet it is quite limited in the amount it can actually use. Hair mods quickly add to the VRAM and probably cause an overload in the Skyrim engine.

 

The way I have fixed the gender transition is by using this mod:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17071

 

A second problem I am experiencing is that my original showracemenu -the one at the start of a new game- often crashes when selecting certain hairs for my character. If you are also experiencing this then my advice is to simply create a character (of the race you like) without editing it and then use this mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/20092. That way you can safely edit the character to your liking afterwards without experiencing crashes.

 

These mods always work for me.;)

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As said before, it's textures getting loaded for hair mods. I spent several weeks working on this, and the thing that convinced me that it really was the hair mods was that I upgraded to a card with 4 gig of vram. At that point, I could go into showracemenu and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Of course, then then race mod authors got the brilliant effing idea to start adding hairs to their mods as well, so now the problem is back. Not sure when a card with 8 gig of vram will be released, but I'll probably buy it when it. Or I'll start editing racemods to strip out the hairs that I already have. Which is just about all of them, I'm pretty sure.

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CTDs and/or lockups during character creation can be due to a mod conflict, a buggy mod, too much going on in the area where you are accessing the race menu (that is, if you are using "showracemenu" somewhere other than Helgen), low memory or video drivers.

 

If you suspect a conflict, check the comments in the comments section or thread for the mod and you may find your solution there. If you don't find anything, you can try uninstalling the hairs and reinstalling them in a different order. This works, for instance, with CTDs that occur when using Hair Packs of Fallout 3 mod and ApachiiSky Hairs together. If you install ApachiiSky last in this scenario, you're golden. In my own case, I was able to install Cazy and Demoness hairs after the Fallout Hairs and Apachii's hairs and everything worked fine.

 

If you have a buggy or twitchy mod, like Hair Packs of TES IV Oblivion (this was my own experience with this mod, anyway) then, again, read the comments section for fixes or fiddle with it a bit. In this case, last I heard, installing part 1 of the hair packs is stable but adding part 2 causes problems for a lot of people. Sometimes, you just have to walk away ;)

 

If you are using "showracemenu" in an area with a lot of NPCs or have one or more companions with you, this can cause you problems. While I suspect there may be some kind of issue with scripts running, I am pretty sure this is a mostly, if not entirely, memory-related issue, but it's just an obvious thing to avoid if you're having trouble.

 

Another thing to avoid if you are encountering memory problems is choosing a cluttered area for character creation. All the extra stuff in the area that has to get rendered will eat up your memory; so, if you're getting close to the limit of what your system can handle, moving to a less cluttered area may help you (the sparser the better). For example, I know one person who uses COC to access Breezehome before it's purchased as a nice, clear area for character creation.

 

Aside from this, the best suggestion I can make for helping out with memory issues (outside of upgrading your hardware) is to remove any hi-res texture packs you have or (better still) use Optimizer Textures to reduce the load on your memory. Optimizer Textures is a great program. Even after upgrading my video card, I found using it on a new install sped up my game by a few FPS. I couldn't tell any difference in the quality of the textures in my game after using it (at 1080x920); so, again, I highly recommend trying it out--and definitely before giving up the hi-res texture packs.

 

Another memory issue to consider is using ENB. ENB will tax your memory more; so, if you are using it, disable it while using character creation and re-enable it afterwards.

 

Lastly, make sure you are using the best driver for your video card. A newer patch doesn't always mean it's going to work better, so do some googling and see what other users are reporting. In my own case, the latest nVidia beta drivers 301.24 tanked me while attempting to play Dawnguard, but reverting to the 293 (dot whatever) drivers fixed me right up. Even though this is most likely not going to be an issue for you with this particular problem, I thought I'd mention it anyway. BTW, the 301.24 drivers are supposed to give Skyrim a significant boost--and worked fine for me prior to installing Dawnguard.

 

Sorry for the wall of text. Hope some of it will be helpful to you.

 

Good luck :D

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