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less technical and more emotional support: making a stable game


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Read underlined stuff to avoid 'rant like nonsense' and get to the point.

 

 

How do you properly test without going to every single cell each time you add a mod?

 

Apparently from prisoner to hero of Kvatch has failed me. I thought surely that most mods would rear their ugly sides by 45 minutes in,  or I'd interact/go near whatever was added... that still wasn't good enough for my game.

 

How often does an error occur when saving an esp and can i find and  reverse it without just making a new esp all together?

 

My current bout of horror occurred when adding a race to a mod, causing me to crash in a cell that had nothing to do with it, hell, even after deactivating the mod (and blockhead), I still crashed, but ... differently (black screen instead of some message about blockhead failing) I was able to go there just days ago, with little changing in way of mods

 

How do you all (particularly mod makers) keep sane trying to make a stable game?

 

Is mine a fool's errand?

 

If you read the non-underlined stuff, yes, i did start a new game each test, and yes, when deactivating stuff i made sure to deactivate slaves/dependents of those mods as well.

 

 

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Asking all the wrong questions.

  • Is my sort order properly setup?
  • Are the mods beta?
  • Are these mods able to corrupt my save?
  • Is this mod actually fun enough to warrant the headache?

 

Playtesting is a thing.

 

 

The type of questions you ask puts you on a fools errand, you want to do some errands for me? I'll make you feel important. :P

 

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How do you properly test without going to every single cell each time you add a mod?

You must know your installed Mods. You open the new Mod with TES4Edit and check all cells (indoor and World )

In many esp you can delete a lot of unnecessary. ( More than the automatic cleaning delete)

 

 

How often does an error occur when saving an esp and can i find and  reverse it without just making a new esp all together?

I never counted but many of my Mods I have saved more than 100 times during the Mod creation or when I modify Mods.

And you can create backups before you add new things.

You can fix every esp. Only once I had a esp that crashed the CS , but TES4Edit can always open it and I delete the error.

 

How do you all (particularly mod makers) keep sane trying to make a stable game?

Load order, load order, lo....

And see above, check the Mods. Too many Mods that use the same cell can cause problems ( I once had many armor clothing Mods which all add chests in the Arena district, and my game said: "That are too many eps I must check during cell loading, I quit the job"   )  Merge mods, especially armor clothing mods all in one or a few esp ( and not every armor in a own chest)

Merge mods = less esp = game more stable

 

And if a Mod still crash the game check the meshes, also Meshes can crash the game. 

And sometimes not immediately. i once had a mesh ( a stone arch ) , I was able to go near the mesh but when my character turns to left or right the game crashed. I delete the mesh and all fine in the world cell. I replaced it with a similar stone arch from another Mod. ( I tried to to fix the original mesh with NifSkope but without success )

 

And missing textures can crash the game. No texture = purple in Game. But only a missing Normal Map = crash .

 

Edit: and don't use Nexus Modmanger !!!!

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Umm above post seems quite technical. (But good advice). But in the remit of the clearly defined question, (which is subjectively weird).

 

How do you properly test without going to every single cell each time you add a mod?

 

Follow a load out which has been published which you know that the person who published it knows what they are talking about.

 

How often does an error occur when saving an esp and can i find and  reverse it without just making a new esp all together?

 

No idea. CK in all it's forms for the games it's used for is weird. (Probably intentionally so if you look at all the complaints over the years which haven't been fixed in subsequent versions).

 

How do you all (particularly mod makers) keep sane trying to make a stable game?

 

Not applicable to me in terms of mega mod making, (i.e. doing actual sexy stuff). I can handle script changes, (because that's just code), however doing stuff in a really bad integrated development environment doesn't really do anything for me. (Can get paid for that in real life).

 

Is mine a fool's errand?

 

It's your question. How would you feel about it if asked?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You all have given me a lot to mull over and plenty of tangents to follow, especially fejeena.

 

*snip* Load order, load order, lo.... *snip*

...Too many Mods that use the same cell can cause problems

 

*snip* And if a Mod still crash the game check the meshes, also Meshes can crash the game. 

 

 

See you suckers later when I have the most stable game ever!... or if you never see me again, assume failure, followed by a padded cell.

 

Thank you all.
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

It seems to me that Oblivion doesn't like the slightest change in load order. I'm using a well tested set of mods, and recently the only modification was removing a specialanim.esp no more necessary because of Blockhead. It goes without saying, the game started crashing every few minutes... I've also experienced a new type of crash (never seen before): when bringing up the game menu to save the game (I was in the realm of Peryte when this happened). Had to save using the console command:

save SaveName

 

Progressing in the game usually is the only way to walk around this "crash storm".

Looks like things sorted out on their own now. Some sort of savegame corruption that now is solved, I suspect.

I think I've found a possible culprit though, and I will open a new thread about it soon enough.

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Four word answer; More mods, mo' problems.

 

You can't have the world, ok maybe you could, but I hope you love playtesting, staring at things in CSE, browsing and ripping every new mod apart in TES4Edit and still experiencing the occasional weird crash and so on.

 

Meshes can cause weird as hell crashes, so can textures, bad scripting, weird scripting clashes, pathgrid problems, bad animation. One simple mod that claims to add a piece of clothing can be a playground of errors, and one complex mod that fundamentally changes the game can be stable as a rock. AI in general handled poorly and eats a ton of resources.

 

Then you have external factors like your hardware, electrical issues, cat walking across your keyboard and headbutting your computer tower and such.

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Four word answer; More mods, mo' problems.

 

...

Meshes can cause weird as hell crashes, so can textures, bad scripting, weird scripting clashes, pathgrid problems, bad animation. One simple mod that claims to add a piece of clothing can be a playground of errors, and one complex mod that fundamentally changes the game can be stable as a rock. AI in general handled poorly and eats a ton of resources.

...

 

This is exactly the reason why I'm so afraid to release mods. I'm all too aware of my limits, and learning is always a slow and painful process. Besides, trying and making mistakes is the only way to improve one's skills. And yes, there are also other calamities. What I fear the most are hard drive failures and loss of data...

 

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