ACCEPTED Run For Your Lives (by Arthmoor)

[oqhansoloqo]

Disabling Deadly Dragons didn't seem to help the issue, though it's possible something was left behind since I used the same save game.  I really don't know.  Is there a way to start a new game and trigger a dragon attack over Whiterun just to see if Run For Your Lives works without Deadly Dragons?  I'm guessing something else is to blame though, just because other people seem to only blame DD Assault settings for Run For Your Lives not working, not other parts of DD. 

 

EDIT: I put SO much time into trying to get a nice working mod list and now that I'm happy with content, I'm having a horrible time running into NPC behavioral bugs and I just want to gut myself and let my bowels spill out over my keyboard.

Edited April 20, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[MadWizard25]

What do you mean by NPC behavioral bugs, any examples?

 

I only ran into NPC problems when adding too many NPC/ spawn mods, and i have pretty decent hardware. Using ugrids 7 just caused NPC behavior to bug out. Solved it by cutting out some NPC and spawn mods. It was that or drop ugrids.

Edited April 20, 2014 by MadWizard25

[thommaal]

You can spawn a dragon by using the console:

 

player.placeatme [id] [quantity]Regular dragon: EAFB4; Blood Dragon: F77F8player.placeatme EAFB4 1

However, I don't know if this qualifies as a regular dragon attack that triggers the mod.

[oqhansoloqo]

NPC behavioral bug: possibly a vanilla issue - I went through White River Watch to the overlook as I entered the exterior, Hajvarr Iron-Hand was standing there.  Nothing I did would provoke any aggression.  He was completely passive to my presence.  Loading my save game to when I was inside the cave didn't fix it.  I solved it by loading a prior saved game when I was still in Whiterun (not the one I made while inside White River Watch cave).  I ran back to the cave and Hajvarr was mean like he should be.  Don't know what that was about when he wasn't...  I did nothing to my mod list between the 2 saves.

 

Immersive NPC in the Dark - continually have NPCs, like the guards along the roads outside Whiterun, in the dark and not using torches.  I've messed with reinstalling the mod to see what it would do and sometimes it fixes the guards so they do pull out torches/lanterns and sometimes it doesn't.  Seemingly pretty unstable.  Sometimes it will allow NPCs in one part of the exterior to use torches but then I run maybe 1 cell away and NPCs in the next cell are not using torches.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this is happening like this.  And a while back NPCs inside Whiterun would not use light sources except 1 guard with a torch.  At least I know how to uninstall the mod, clean my save with Papyrus Data Transfer tool, and then reinstall the mod in order to give it a kick in the ass to get it somewhat working again when I see NPCs that don't do what they are supposed to do.

 

When Vampires Attack - kind of worked, maybe kind of didn't?  If I entered Whiterun from a building to trigger a vampire attack, I would notice that some NPCs would run and some would fight... but it didn't seem to match the mod description.  Adrienne always fought (don't know if she was supposed to or not, but it sort of made some sense according to her history - told by her husband), Belethor usually ran into his house, but sometimes cowered without being attacked or sometimes attacked.  Brill would always fight - but that made sense because he was in the Companions faction.  Carlotta sometimes fought - didn't make sense.  Children would walk around jerkily (walk forward some steps, then warp back a little, walk forward some steps...) until they got close to vampires/minions then run aimlessly and almost always get killed if I didn't step in.  People still inside at moment of attack stayed inside - that part, I guess, worked right.

 

Run for Your Lives - didn't work at all.  Everyone stands around in combat stance waiting to get a piece of the dragon, running away if hurt, only to run back in when somewhat recovered, usually ending up becoming BBQ as a result.  I have Convenient Horses installed as well with horses set to Cowardly, yet every time I load my save game (15 minutes or so before the dragon attack) at some point during the attack I usually see a horse run in to kick the dragon.  I just want most people/things to RUN RUN RUN! :(

Edited April 21, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[oqhansoloqo]

Thommaal - I tried that command on a new game.  It's difficult to say for me since I'm not sure I've ever seen what Run For Your Lives is supposed to do.  Despite that, on a new game people did appear to be mostly running away from the dragon spawned with that command (instead of attacking), but they definitely didn't go inside any buildings.

 

I don't know if I already mentioned this, but I also tried disabling ALL non-STEP mods in MO and loaded my existing saved game.  There must be remnant scripts or whatever still running though because everyone still seems to want to kill the [normally spawned] dragon (not created by console command).

 

EDIT:  I also ran the existing save through Papyrus Data Transfer tool to clean some of the remnant script data from the non-STEP mods to see if I could get Run for Your Lives to work and cleaning the save seemed to do nothing to restore any of the Run for Your Lives NPC flee behavior.

 

Skyrim modding has me at wits end...

Edited April 21, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[oqhansoloqo]

OK, this time I continued on with my brand new game with every non-STEP mod in my mod list disabled.  So I grabbed the dragonstone, killed the first dragon, waited for at least 10 days for my first dragon vanilla non-mission spawn (without using an NPC spawn console command).  A dragon spawned normally outside of whiterun over the farms.  Everyone tried to kill the dragon - no one ran.  What is going on?  This mod does not work correctly for me no matter what I do.  Why does this mod work for some/most people but not me?

 

Should I take the esp for this mod (and When Vampires Attack) and put it at the very end of my plugin list - will that get it working?

Edited April 21, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[EssArrBee]

Do you have the BSA ticked in the BSA tab? remember that Arthmoor uses BSAs for his mods.

[oqhansoloqo]

I let MO extract the bsa upon installation through MO.  I assume that's ok to do.

[EssArrBee]

Yeah as long as nothing overwrites it.

Check out the conflicts tab for the mod.

[oqhansoloqo]

It overwrites the USKP and nothing overwrites it, according to the conflicts tab in MO for Run for Your Lives.

[EssArrBee]

Then I don't know what to tell you. Maybe reinstall the mod and keep the BSA, and tick it as well.

[Kuldebar]

It's very hard to troubleshoot script issues because conflicts with scripts, unlike say a texture or mesh, aren't so simply visualized or represented.

 

You most certainly have a conflict but it is script-based, no mod manager can really inform you of such things only give basic ordering information for some mods.

 

Example: fubar123.pex used in Mod X causes a certain type of NPC to do something when something happens. Meanwhile there's hosedupURgame123.pex from Mod Z that causes certain of the same NPC's to do something when nothing happens...the possibilities are nearly limitless and full of branching outcomes.

 

Well, guess what? You now have an asymmetrical conflict (not consistent or necessarily repeatable in the same way due to variable's) and you won't ever really know why unless you wrote the scripts yourself and understand what they are doing in the game.

 

I love scripts but some modders play a little too much like gawd in their creations without fully realizing or at least acknowledging what they are unleashing into other people's game.

 

Arthmoor said it best:

 

QuoteQuoteQuote

I'm sure you can appreciate the situation I find myself in here.

On the one side, folks like yourself reporting that once the NPCs run, they never come out again.

On the other, folks like kwestarz and those who replied to him claiming it doesn't work at all, NPCs rush to kill the vampire, and then end up dead.

These situations cannot both be true of the same mod. Either it works, or it doesn't.

Compound that with the problem that when I go to check on things as they are reported, I can never reproduce EITHER scenario. Vamps come to town, folks run to hide. I kill the vamps. They come back out.

The only conclusion I can draw then is that there's some kind of mod conflict, and the only suspects I can think of would be this mod running a second attack that hadn't been resolved, a dragon attack that caused Run For Your Lives to send them into hiding, or the Wet & Cold mod triggering the "get out of the rain" behavior. For it to NOT work, then something is editing the Dawnguard quests that have been set to trigger these things to happen.

Regardless, I cannot "fix it" when there is nothing manifesting itself as broken for me. I would be spinning my wheels endlessly only to end up right back here, with two posts next to each other, each reporting the same impossible opposite.

 

Edited April 22, 2014 by Kuldebar

[thommaal]

There are more possible sources for your persistent and various script problems that are not related to interactions among mods.1. Your Skyrim installation is corruptIf you made a backup of a pristine Skyrim shortly after setup, replace your running one with it. If you don't have a backup, check your data-files on Steam (do it anyway):Verify Game Cache Files (GCF)Picture Guide 

 

If corrupted data files are found, they will be replaced by the latest ones on the Steam servers [addendum: If you stored TES5Edit-cleaned esms in your data folder, they will likely be replaced with the original ones; either back up the cleaned files or re-clean them afterward]. Not every file installed by the Skyrim-setup is checked, so this isn't a sure-fire way to verify the integrity of your files.Still, run the process and if files are replaced, there might be a problem with data storage on your hard drive.Which leads me to point 1b:1b. Your HDD/SSD is failing and corrupting files.Check the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive. If you don't have a program to do that, I recommend CrystalDiskInfo (Adware included in the setup - use the PORTABLE version), HDDScan and HD Tune Pro.If you find problems, check the health of your hard drive with the appropriate tool of the manufacturer (Seagate seatools; Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic etc.).You might want to do that anyway once a year. S.M.A.R.T. isn't perfectly reliable.

 

 

2. Check your RAM

 

A faulty RAM might go unnoticed for quite a while. Check it with MemTest86+ or its successor, which is - unfortunately - not open source anymore but supports the latest hardware.3. You run a process on your machine that interferes with a running Skyrima) Look for malware. Install additionally to your antivirus program the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.b) If nothing was found, deactivate prior to playing Skyrim:

 

- Windows Aero- your internet connection- antivirus

- personal firewall (if it repeatedly checks running processes)- databanks or other software that add memory-intense processes.Now, play the game and see if it makes any difference.Generally speaking, I can't recommend enough a backup of files with secure copying tools. Secure means: the tool verifies that the copy is identical to its source.

 

I also use hash values to verify in general the integrity of files on my hard drive.The generated hash values are stored in a checksum file that can be quickly accessed if - at some later point - the integrity of the hashed files needs to be checked against their earlier status. The files I have hashed are mostly ones that are prominent targets of malware. But you can also use the process to make sure that backups are identical to their sources if you copied them with Windows.

 

Added:

 

Do you get "out of memory" warnings during gameplay or when you run other programs?

 

In that case, you could increase the Virtual Memory Swap File Size. There are other methods to deal with the .. not optimal allocation of memory in Windows but most of them change the registry, so any mistake likely has serious consequences. It's better to decrease memory usage, which means: shut down all unnecessary processes.

Edited April 22, 2014 by thommaal

[oqhansoloqo]

Thank you for the ideas.  This is what I am going to try next:

 

1.  Re-download and install "Run for Your Lives" in MO.

 

if that doesn't change anything:

 

2.  Re-install "Run for Your Lives" in MO and not unpack the BSA.

 

if it doesn't work:

 

3.  Move "Run for Your Lives" to bottom of load order.

 

if that doesn't work:

 

4.  Disable all STEP mods except "Run for Your Lives", start new game, progress game to first dragon attack and lure dragon over to Whiterun farms, if possible, to see how citizens respond.  If not I'll trigger the first unnamed dragon over Whiterun through time progression.

 

if that doesn't fix the problem then I'll assume that it is, in fact, an issue with Skyrim files outside of MO and I'll have to look into re-installing or using Steam's game installation fixer.

Edited April 22, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[Kuldebar]

Just for comparative info purposes:

 

I use RYL in a non-STEP mod build (185 ESP's) and at level 39 haven't had any issues when Dragons attacked cities/towns. I did have an Elder Dragon attack Winterhold College courtyard just as I was being given the final part of the "tour"...I had to reload the save because it disrupted the quest. After the dragon was killed, she went inside the hall to eat a sandwich and told me she'd talk to me more after completing the "tour"...

 

/reload from save...dragon still attacked again but I managed to just finish the tour before it showed up...by 3 seconds.

 

Only dragon related mods I use are BellyAches New Dragon Species.