CTD in Ostim search selection menu (solved - increased max animations to 65534 in OpenAnimationReplacer.ini)

[plutocene]

I've run into a quite persistent and frequent CTD in Ostim after updating my Skyrim profile. The crash occurs when manually searching for an animation in Ostim and selecting it. Crash log doesnt mention a specific animation though. 

 

Testing on a fresh save, I'm slowly removing changes I have made, as Ostim was quite stable before, rare crashes when often switching animations but not to that extent. 

I had a similar issue with Lovemaking addon 1.22 (recent update) 1.21 is fine, which would crash on starting Ostim, confirmed by another user, so my best guess is, some other Ostim-addon I've updated, or added animations is causing this. 

 

Would love some second opinion though @traison pretty please: 

 

https://pastebin.com/mjEWz171

 

Edit: Hm, seems to be a more fundamental issue, crashing twice in a row hitting new game. Switched Faster SMP to 2.2.5 reported as more stable, to no avail. Got to be a .DLL?

https://pastebin.com/FNFdy0Z0

 

Edit2: I think the issue is SZTKutil, some users report the .dll as incompatible with AE 1.6.1170.0, while the author suggests there is a compatible one. 

 

"Does anyone have the the right DLL file for Version 1.6.1170.0? the one listed is not Compatible"

 

After removing this utility, the crashes seem to be gone although will need lots of further testing.

Edited January 23 by plutocene
The suspect has a waterproof alibi.

[traison]

mjEWz171

 

Was indirectly caused by OpenAnimationReplacer.dll. While not the same issue, it's very close to the one discussed here. In your case it is not a chair animation but most likely Ostim and OAR fighting. The animation graph belongs to reference id 0xFF002252, form id 0x33007BE4 "Traveler" from "ImprovedRoads.esp" in form id 0x00009712 "Riverwood02". Project name "DefaultMale", file name "0_Master.hkb".

 

What's in the "SkyrimAE\mods\Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - USSEP\BashTags\" directory? Why is it relevant to Ostim, OAR and/or behaviour files?

 

FNFdy0Z0

 

Crashed because it tried to dereference RDI which at the time of the crash was 0x1f. This is not a null pointer, but rather corrupted data or bad arithmetic. It's having issues with form id 0x0003C9FE "Roughspun Tunic" worn by  Reference id 0x7, form id 0x14 "Prisoner". It looks like something called the Papyrus function Actor.UnequipAll. EngineFixes.dll and PapyrusTweaks.dll were both involved to some degree. The error "Error: GetVariable failed: can't resolve the path "%s" was likely (going to be) printed somewhere.

[plutocene]

9 minutes ago, traison said:

What's in the "SkyrimAE\mods\Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - USSEP\BashTags\" directory? Why is it relevant to Ostim, OAR and/or behaviour files?

 

There's only a .txt generated by wyrebash? Containing:

 

# Generated by Wrye Bash 308.202012142034
Actors.ACBS, Actors.AIData, Actors.AIPackages, Actors.CombatStyle, Actors.DeathItem, Actors.Perks.Add, Actors.Perks.Remove, Actors.RecordFlags, Actors.Spells, Actors.Stats, Actors.Voice, C.Acoustic, C.Climate, C.Encounter, C.ImageSpace, C.Light, C.Location, C.LockList, C.Music, C.Name, C.Owner, C.Regions, C.Water, Delev, EffectStats, Enchantments, EnchantmentStats, Factions, Graphics, Invent.Add, Invent.Change, Invent.Remove, Keywords, NPC.AttackRace, NPC.Class, NPC.CrimeFaction, NPC.DefaultOutfit, NPC.Race, Names, ObjectBounds, Outfits.Add, Outfits.Remove, R.Description, Relations.Add, Relations.Change, Relev, Sound, SpellStats, Stats, Text

 

The file has a creation date in 2022? I don't know what it is or where it came from.

 

The "test" actor involved was indeed from improved roads. Hm... That mod is old and a bit sus,but as you said, I was initially suspecting some sort of mix up, like states of undress or something interfering with ostim.

 

[traison]

3 hours ago, plutocene said:

I think the issue is SZTKutil...

 

This was not present in the crash logs, at least not in a visible way, other than that it was loaded (by SKSE presumably). It is however entirely possible for any dll to modify the bytecode of any other image (i.e. dll or the game itself) in a way that is entirely invisible in a crash log. To put that another way, when you install a mod containing a dll, regardless of how benign the mod it belongs to is (ie. a shoe mod), all bets are off when it comes to which byte has potentially been modified.

[plutocene]

1 hour ago, traison said:

 

This was not present in the crash logs [...]

 

Yep, was just lucky to work even switched animations a few dozen times and now crashed again at start twice at new game.

https://pastebin.com/C9i197HD

I heard the equip sound and gone. I deactivated my bashed patch too. I guess I have to go back and disable more stuff until I find the critter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[traison]

C9i197HD

 

This is the same issue as FNFdy0Z0, except that RDI is now a massive number, ending in 0xf1. Something is not clearing memory properly. It is not known if 0x1f is related to this issue, or if it was used by something else in the past.

 

29 minutes ago, plutocene said:

I guess I have to go back and disable more stuff until I find the critter.

 

If I were you I'd search through all pex files in all mods, including in BSA archives for UnequipAll. Notepad++ can do some of it, but it won't search in packed BSAs. I've made a tool that can do it. It's available upon request.

[plutocene]

On 1/13/2026 at 11:11 PM, traison said:

If I were you I'd search through all pex files in all mods, including in BSA archives for UnequipAll. Notepad++ can do some of it, but it won't search in packed BSAs. I've made a tool that can do it. It's available upon request.

 

Thanks for the offer, and thanks again for checking the logs, however I think, I finally have it narrowed down to "number of animations" being "too high" as the trigger for the CTD when running Ostim.

 

I did a lot of testing, when I run with 55.971 animations (as reported by Pandora), I CTD in Ostim search when I select animations at random, usually within 2-5 selections. When I lower the animation count  (currently sitting around 54K) by removing a package, run Pandora again, start a new game (always), it works. It is not a specific, new animation plugin I added. I tested this by loading the new ones and disabling old ones to balance the total number. Open animation replacer does not complain at game start "too many animations". I've seen that last year when I installed all the animations you possibly could.

 

However, what Pandora reports is not the full number, several animation packages are running and working, that are not listed. So the actual number should be higher, but still below the maximum threshold of 65K, otherwise OAR should report too many animations? 

 

I removed the animation limit crash fix patch, and let SSE enginefixes handle it, (just read it could be a problem) But thats all the ideas I have.

I also run with FNIS installed as you suggested to keep the papyrus log a bit happier maybe.

 

TLDR, its probably an edge case and the practical solution is to run with a few less animations in total.

 

As for the CTD at game start, its currently gone, maybe it was related Idk. 

[traison]

34 minutes ago, plutocene said:

...but still below the maximum threshold of 65K...

 

This limitation was removed long ago.

 

34 minutes ago, plutocene said:

...otherwise OAR should report too many animations?

 

OAR has no such limitations.

[plutocene]

Are you sure about that? Experimental features include:

• Increased animation limit up to 65534 per project.

[traison]

49 minutes ago, plutocene said:

Are you sure about that? Experimental features include:

• Increased animation limit up to 65534 per project.

 

Oh that must be some internal OAR thing. There's no reason to limit anything to a specific number anymore in C++, we got vectors to handle that. The Skyrim engine limitation as far as I know was practically fixed. My understanding was that RAM was the limit now more or less.

 

Guess not. 🤔

[plutocene]

I haven't changed the default settings in OAR though.

I've now changed the limit from the default 32767 to 65k in OpenAnimationReplacer.ini.

 

[General]
uAnimationLimit = 65534 

 

I'll test it over the coming days. Maybe it does makes a difference.