Started to have CTD on particles like crossbow (modded gun) impacts.

[roldoi1911]

I haven't changed anything on modlist and i do remember shooting slaughter fish with the same gun mod earlier in play though. My current PC is in Riften and making my way to the ratways. Now it crashes whenever me or a companion shoots a gun or bow. I tried a new save and it seemed to work. 

crash-2026-05-19-11-37-01.log

[traison]

The crash occured because it tried to dereference RCX, when RCX was 0x3F5AA2DB3F46CEC7. This is not a valid memory address. It's having issues with a BSMasterParticleSystem node. A debugger would be required to find out more. Unless you were looking to patch this bug in SkyrimSE.exe, it would be much easier to approach this with xEdit. Since you already know when exactly this crash occurs, it shouldn't take too long to identify which mesh (effect) this node is in. Once you have the mesh file name you can decide what to do with it: remove or otherwise change the particle emitter node, or replace the mesh itself.

 

Edit: Maybe some clarification is needed:

• "A debugger is needed." Meaning to potentially find the nif file name or some other identifying feature. Also to find where the value of RCX came from. If I'm not mistaken __stdcall uses RCX for the "this" self reference which would mean pointer arithmetic went horribly wrong somewhere.
• "BSMasterParticleSystem" This is a node in a nif file.

 

Edit again: Maybe more clarification, this time in English:

• "which would mean pointer arithmetic went horribly wrong somewhere" Perhaps it tried to spawn a particle, when the particile limit had been reached or it otherwise failed.

Edited May 19 by traison

[roldoi1911]

49 minutes ago, traison said:

The crash occured because it tried to dereference RCX, when RCX was 0x3F5AA2DB3F46CEC7. This is not a valid memory address. It's having issues with a BSMasterParticleSystem node. A debugger would be required to find out more. Unless you were looking to patch this bug in SkyrimSE.exe, it would be much easier to approach this with xEdit. Since you already know when exactly this crash occurs, it shouldn't take too long to identify which mesh (effect) this node is in. Once you have the mesh file name you can decide what to do with it: remove or otherwise change the particle emitter node, or replace the mesh itself.

 

Edit: Maybe some clarification is needed:

• "A debugger is needed." Meaning to potentially find the nif file name or some other identifying feature. Also to find where the value of RCX came from. If I'm not mistaken __stdcall uses RCX for the "this" self reference which would mean pointer arithmetic went horribly wrong somewhere.
• "BSMasterParticleSystem" This is a node in a nif file.

 

Edit again: Maybe more clarification, this time in English:

• "which would mean pointer arithmetic went horribly wrong somewhere" Perhaps it tried to spawn a particle, when the particile limit had been reached or it otherwise failed.

Its seems the nif is on all bows and crossbow projectiles. Taking a vanilla bow from my companion and firing ctd as well. So which ever nif is likely arrow trails or fx of somekind.

Edited May 19 by roldoi1911

[traison]

Do you have any particle mods installed? Anything that claims to fix or enhance something. Any ENB/CS or Reshades?

 

Edit: These are rhetorical questions.

Edited May 19 by traison

[roldoi1911]

Mostly for weather and environment. As far as i know, no mods should be touching projectile effects. Aside from adding guns( reskin crossbows), bows and crossbows are vanilla. i haven’t made modlist changes.

 

and i used them earlier without issue.

 

having loaded back a hundred saves (600 currently, loaded 400) those saves have the same issue now.

Edited May 19 by roldoi1911

[traison]

Still saying xEdit is going to be the way to approach this.

[roldoi1911]

11 minutes ago, traison said:

Still saying xEdit is going to be the way to approach this.

Which record category affects the fx of arrows and bolts?

[traison]

1 hour ago, roldoi1911 said:

Which record category affects the fx of arrows and bolts?

 

meshes\effects\impacteffects\*.nif but I have not found where these are referenced from yet. Seems unlikely to me that these would be hardcoded Havok effects but right now it kinda looks that way. I expected them to be mentioned in xEdit somewhere.

 

Edit: Doing a search through all files in Skyrim right now. It'll be found. It has to be somewhere afterall.

 

Edit again: Turns out "impactarrowdust" is not mentioned anywhere in Skyrim. Either I happened to pick the one effect that is unused, or it's hiding in parts, obfuscated, compressed or encrypted. Quite curious.

Edited May 19 by traison

[traison]

Impact effect mesh file names are visible in Skyrim's memory when it's running, so I'm going to guess that these are hardcoded into the packed portion of the exe itself. Makes your life easier perhaps:

 

If you have a mod that replaces one of the following, remove that file from the mod to instead use the vanila effect:

Spoiler

bloodsprayalduinarrowimpact.nif
bloodsprayalduinimpact.nif     
bloodsprayalduinmist.nif       
bloodsprayarrowimpact01.nif    
bloodspraydustyimpact01.nif    
bloodsprayhammerimpact01.nif   
bloodsprayimpact01.nif         
bloodsprayinsectarrowimpact.nif
bloodsprayinsectimpact.nif     
bloodsprayinsectmist.nif       
bloodspraylargearrow01.nif     
bloodspraylargeimpact01.nif    
bloodspraylargemist01.nif      
bloodspraysmallimpact01.nif    
bloodsprayunarmedimpact01.nif  
bloodspraywerewolfeat01.nif    
bloodspraywerewolfimpact01.nif 
dartdustimpact.nif             
dragonfrostshoutimpact.nif     
fireballimpact01.nif           
fxdragonfireimpact.nif         
fxdragonfireimpactactor.nif    
fxdragonfireimpactsteam.nif    
fxdragonfireimpactwater.nif    
fxdragonhit01.nif              
fxdragonlandingimpact.nif      
fxdragonlandingimpactdirt.nif  
fxdragonlandingimpactsnow.nif  
fxdragonleak.nif               
fxdragontailstompdust.nif      
fxdragontailstompdustgrass.nif 
fxdragontailstompsnow.nif      
fxdragontakeoffdust.nif        
fxdragontakeoffdustgrass.nif   
fxdragontakeoffsnow.nif        
fxghostimpact.nif              
fxghostimpactblue.nif          
fxmetalsparkimpact01.nif       
fxmetalsparkimpactblunt.nif    
fxmetalsparkimpactslice.nif    
fxwebsliceimpact.nif           
fxwpniceimpactsm.nif           
impactarrowdirt01.nif          
impactarrowdust01.nif          
impactarrowwood.nif            
impactfrost01.nif              
impactfrostsmall01.nif         
impactwatersplashfire.nif      
magpoisonsprayimpact.nif       
magspiderspitimpact.nif        
watersplashphys.nif            

 

Edited May 19 by traison

[roldoi1911]

hmm, it might not be the impact itself. i tried to shoot an arrow into the sky, and it ctd the moment the arrow leaves the bow.

[traison]

1 hour ago, roldoi1911 said:

hmm, it might not be the impact itself. i tried to shoot an arrow into the sky, and it ctd the moment the arrow leaves the bow.

 

That probably just reduces the number of things it could be: the crossbow, and the flying bolt mesh. Might make fixing it much more difficult though; probably wont get away with deleting files now.

[roldoi1911]

4 hours ago, traison said:

 

That probably just reduces the number of things it could be: the crossbow, and the flying bolt mesh. Might make fixing it much more difficult though; probably wont get away with deleting files now.

Yeah i tested a falmer arrow, ctd. I for sure do not have anything affecting falmer arrows, SSEdIt verifies this. So its something else.

 

it also affects new characters and retroactively.  Ctd with a brand new character and a test one made months ago.

 

what ever is wrong only triggers on the release of the projectile. I can equip and reload arrows and bolts. And ctd triggers on npc use, as well.

Edited May 20 by roldoi1911

[roldoi1911]

I think i figured something out. I was midst modify an npc in a personal mod a few days ago. When i walked away to get a drink, during the saving the plugin in creation kit, a rain storm momentary shut down power. I think the plugin became corrupted. Using a back up version. It seems to work fine now. Maybe i shouldn’t step away from creation kit to get some water until the whole process is done.

[traison]

45 minutes ago, roldoi1911 said:

I think i figured something out. I was midst modify an npc in a personal mod a few days ago. When i walked away to get a drink, during the saving the plugin in creation kit, a rain storm momentary shut down power. I think the plugin became corrupted. Using a back up version. It seems to work fine now. Maybe i shouldn’t step away from creation kit to get some water until the whole process is done.

 

I would have assumed xEdit would have picked up on that. There's no checksum in plugins, but xEdit basically parses everything so the corrupted value must have looked sane enough to still pass. Technically possible, but still quite interesting if managed to corrupt it in such a way that only crossbows are broken.