CTD at startup

[Roarc]

36 minutes ago, traison said:

 

Bad idea. They contain a lot of information. Far, far more than what you might expect.

 

 

Form ids go from 0x00 to 0xFF. Skyrim.esm hogs 0x00, references like to live in 0xFF and light plugins are in 0xFE. Meaning the total number of addressable (non-light) plugins is 253 like you said. I believe the reason why the plugin limit seems to vary depending on who you ask is twofold: because light mods were added recently, and because of the stdio limit imposed by the C framework upon which the game is built. By default that limit is 512, but Engine Fixes SSE quadruples it.

 

The stdio limit is basically how many file handles a process can hold at any given moment. It seems the game is keeping a handle to all plugins and bsa files at least (not checked). In addition to this all lose files will be causing their own traffic as well, all those textures and meshes need to be opened to be loaded. In the sense of "where you're at in regards to the stdio limit" is practically impossible to tell from a plugin or mod list. The closest you might get to estimating that is with "handles" from Sysinternals (Microsoft); and this you'd have to run at various points in the game and average out the values you're getting.

Makes sense, and I appreciate the clearer explanation. If I'm reclling correctly, it wouldn't matter if you had the plugins active or not, as they would still count towards the MaxStdio limit. Of course, having over 2048 plugins total certainly requires a LOT of mod searching. As well as 4096 maximum ESLs.

I don't know if indeed the same mod packed into  a BSA vs loose files would count the same towards those file handle limits though.

Edited June 15, 2024 by Roarc

[traison]

26 minutes ago, Roarc said:

it wouldn't matter if you had the plugins active or not

 

If the plugin is not active, I don't see why Skyrim would open (and keep open) a handle to it.

 

26 minutes ago, Roarc said:

I don't know if indeed the same mod packed into  a BSA vs loose files would count the same towards those file handle limits though.

 

BSA files count as 1, unless Skyrim is doing something weird.

 

29 minutes ago, Roarc said:

Of course, having over 2048 plugins total certainly requires a LOT of mod searching.

 

You're still limited to the form address space. Engine Fixes or not, you'll never get to 2048 plugins. Form ids and file handles are totally different things.