Orphaned Instance

[Slorm]

I had something odd happen in my game over the weekend. I regularly check my saves with PDT (aka Script Scalpel) and last night I suddenly had one orphaned script instance suddenly appear. I also checked with Save Game Cleaner and that also confirmed the same

 

This is a fairly old game (around 150 hours) but there have been no mod changes whatsoever between the check on Saturday night, and the one on Sunday that has the error (the last change was on the 6th when I updated DDE). I did notice an oddity in Honeyside that after sleeping I could not access the menus and they were turned off in ZAP but I don't know if that's just coincidental.

 

The only console use was to clear a College Business quest as it was in Solstheim (I'm not keen on that place) so I added the book and advanced it to 20 (MGR20B) and gave it to Urag to complete the mission but I don't think that would account for it.

 

I could just clean it and carry on but to be on the safe side I'll revert back to the previous known good save (luckily PDT keeps a backup or I'd have to pull an older one from the backup image). My question though is, without any script or mod changes what would cause this to happen as I don't recall seeing it happen before?

 

It's not worth spending a lot of time on it but I am curious to know any possible causes

 

[SlapMeSilly]

An orphaned instance can happen for a few reasons. The ones I see most common is if a mod is removed, or updated and the update has an object removed, which had a script attached to it. Then the script is now orphaned as its parent is gone. Usually this happens if the script was running and in some sort of wait. If it was a script on a quest it will always get orphaned. If it was on an object it normally only happens if the object was in the loaded area, is persistent, or the script was actively executing like in a wait loop.

 

Another case could be if the script is in such a wait state and something deletes the owning object. Like let's say you have some book that has a script attached. It's in some loop. You place the book in a barrel and leave. Some time later you come back and the cell resets causing the barrel to flush and be empty again. Book is now gone but script could be running. Now it's orphaned. There's a lot of other ways an object may be deleted. And depending what script got orphaned it could just be bad programming on the author of that script/mod.

 

I would say your roll back choice is admirable and the suggested way to handle that. Though I would be concerned about the original cause. You might revert your game back and run into the problem again if the underlying cause isn't remedied. But then just terminating the instance and cleaning it out may be the only option.

[Slorm]

On 15/01/2018 at 10:54 PM, SlapMeSilly said:

I would say your roll back choice is admirable and the suggested way to handle that. Though I would be concerned about the original cause. You might revert your game back and run into the problem again if the underlying cause isn't remedied. But then just terminating the instance and cleaning it out may be the only option.

Thanks for that it was an interesting read and yes I'm a little concerned it will happen again.

 

I can't do much until the weekend now, but luckily I can remember all the stages I've lost so I'm planning to repeat them and check each step of the way, though I may slightly alter the journey order to save some time (I use Touring Carriages I never fast travel).

 

Start in Breezehome -> Riften No

Forgot this one sell Falmer Eyes to Delvin and Tonilia Nein

Complete Angarvunde Neh

Complete The Raid (Riften Skooma Dealer) Nem

Complete Supply and Demand (Cragslane Cavern) Nee

Riften -> Breezehome grab cash -> Winterhold Nowt

College Business additem cleansing of the fane setstage mgr20b 20 (potential problem here maybe) then complete Nem

Buy Frost Atronach spell Net

Winterhold -> Windhelm -> Riften Non

Buy Honeyside and decorate and get Thaneship from Jarl Nem

Riften -> Whiterun (sell loot) Nope

Whiterun -> Captured Dreams - Run delivery mission and return N/A as not reproducible

 

I'll test each point but there are four likely possibilities:

 

1/ Using console to get the book and using setstage Ne

2/ I'd done all the help people quests in Riften before the Skooma Dealer so never got a call to the Jarl (unlikely I think) Nie

3/ Something glitched on the CD mission so wouldn't be reproducible N/A as not reproducible

4/ I removed and replaced a toilet bucket in Riften (PAF) nearly forgot that one which is why I thought I'd better write this list Nem

 

Of course it may just have been a glitch but if I do find what it is I'll report the result here

 

EDIT - Nothing so far and I'm running out of ways to say No

 

I had forgotten but I had a DCL event but nothing was equipped, so I'm suspecting either a glitch in CD or DCL as there's not much left in Skyrim itself, but we'll see

[Slorm]

Last report on this one in case anyone is interested.

 

I've been through all the vanilla quests and not had the problem, all the saves at every step are clean. Basically my OCD is having me chase a phantom by the looks of it.

 

In conclusion I suspect that either a DCL event misfired so starting a script but not equipping the device, or something glitched during the CD delivery mission when ZAP behaved oddly, but this is surmise, or it could just have been Skyrim being Skyrim throwing a papyrus tantrum.

 

In any case I see no purpose in pursuing it further except for checking saves a bit more frequently. Case closed as they say

[yatol]

32 minutes ago, Slorm said:

In conclusion I suspect that either a DCL event misfired so starting a script but not equipping the device, or something glitched during the CD delivery mission when ZAP behaved oddly, but this is surmise, or it could just have been Skyrim being Skyrim throwing a papyrus tantrum.

mod x add some random encounter quests

one of those quests doesn't work

alias y is edited by mod xx, script used by the quest is edited by mod yy, whatever

you won't see there's a problem, until that quest is load (if you can see there's a problem)

like you won't see there's problems in whiterun, until you enter whiterun, or problems in sosltheim until you enter soltheim