Fallout 4

Since mod authors face CTD reports from users frequently i decided to place some notes about possible reasons and fixes for game CTDs. Although the list below is by no means complete, it covers most common scenarios:

1. Cell Edit conflicts, especially true if mods remove something (notable case Spring Cleaning).
2. Saves corrupted by some other Cell editing mods (including settlement mods).
3. Navmesh/AI path finding problems of the game engine. 
4. System overtaxing/fallout 4 engine memory leak. 
5. Unofficial Fallout 4 patch has been confirmed to cause crashes and is incompatible with this mod!

I don't know if people are aware but currently where are problems with compatibility between all mods that edit Cells and those can not be addressed by any form of merged patch or anything like that, only Bethesda can fix that. Main reason is simple - you can not place anything into the worldspace without attaching copy of parent cell to the ESP file. Since master load orders from which Cells are copied are different from one author to another, game ends up with many different versions of the same cell, if several mods edit any particular game cell. Normally it's just a simple case of winning override which mod's record will be used, that is not the case with Cell editing, since game used special flags/timestamps to determine one that should be loaded. Any present Cell edit conflict ensures gamma of consequences you are surely familiar with, namely: screw up of precomputed visibility (previs), precombined meshes, Cell resets, container resets, spring bug and ultimately - CTDs in some cases. This general problem is well known and was extensively discussed at the beth.net forums (for example, here https://community.bethesda.net/thread/13241?)

The only real way to resolve such kind of conflict is to use FO4Edit to resolve all those by hand, and as you may guess that may be impossible to do if many cells are conflicting (entire game region for example). Another possibility is to take a close look at your load order and try to eliminate some other mods that edit cells, those include lighting and fog mods, new interior mods, settlement mods etc. Remove them one by one until you find the sucker that cause problems. Sometimes moving WOTC in the load order to near to start or near the end of list helps, but that is not the general case.

Some mods edit Cells in particuarly bad way, one particularly notable example is Spring Cleaning mod. In attempt to mitigate cell reset bug SC author made some nasty edits, what cause the rain of compatibility and CTD trouble. To make matters worse, it had been found that SC edited data still persists within the save even after the master mod removal, so deinstall will not help. In case of such corrupted save only solution is to load save that was made before Spring Cleaning (or stuff like it) was ever installed, or to remove it for good and start the new game.

Another possible reason for crashes are AI path finding problems, those were a scourge of Bethesda games for a long time, Fallout3 suffered greatly from this issue. In some cases game seems to be unable to resolve pathing problem and on certain conditions (probably some internal pathing stack overflow) game just CTD immediately. Since my mod forces NPCs to do a lot of pathing, that problem becomes amplified, and it causes CTD sometimes, when no notable conflicts or any other reasons are present. Where are some Vertical spawns (spawns on the rooftops) and Highway spawns my co-author Coreyhooe placed, that can cause such kind of trouble, since lazy Beth had not paid attention to place any navmesh on most roofs and highways. That can be source of CTD rain, so i recommend to set the area density for Vertical (and optionally Highway spawns as well) to zero using mod config menu, that will effectively disable them possibly leading to the fixing of the CTD trouble.

At the end of the list we have a general stability problem, that means that game will CTD a lot regardless of anything else if you are overtaxing your system with number of mods or with resource heavy mods. I evidently seen many of such CTDs, for example one can easily replicate it by using Loose cannon preset of my mod and ride by vertibird to the BOS airship during BOS or Rairoad quests. Disabling spawns prior ride temporarily solves that problem, but fundamentally nothing can be done with that on modder side. In case i mentioned, too many spawns/pathing activations caused by this fast traveling in resource heavy areas caused engine to be overwhelmed and crash. For the obvious reasons that kind of CTD problems are commonly localized to the city areas since game performance is awful at those from the time of the first game release.

I hope that my tips will help those who get frequent CTD issue, so you can join our ranks and fully enjoy the scope of the mod.

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Engager

6 comments

  1. Malkuthproxy
    Malkuthproxy
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    I think I did a bit of research on the release date of Fallout 4 and I think it might have been not long after skyrim and ESO when it was released meaning it was likely the last game or so centered on the old engine which Morrowind and Oblivion were made on so CTDs are to be expected and most of what we can do is optimize performance to be less resource gluttonous as it was in oblivion and skyrim, also explains the long load times transitioning between areas.
    1. CoreyCarcano
      CoreyCarcano
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      It uses a modified version of the creation engine, the same engine as Skyrim. The biggest problem is the way this engine loads game cells. A lot of modders also don't realize that if anything is placed into a cell, weapon, or other static object, that entire vanilla cell gets overwritten. If something is placed in the same cell as a settlement, it breaks the workshop scripts and wreaks all sorts of havoc. A lot of popular mods cause cell conflicts. Skibs weapon pack for example. His REDUX places a single weapon in a cell which causes a lot of issues with a workshop script there and can cause CTDs. Our mod isn't the sole proprietor of people's crashes. Most often, it's mod and cell conflicts causing it. Possibly even bad navmeshing.
  2. Invictum25
    Invictum25
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    i am getting a ctd when i give my female gender Makeup in the but it happends only if i use console command: "SLM 14"
  3. julesw
    julesw
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    Appreciate the tips. Any Beth game player using mods gets used to random crashes, especially from high powerered mods like yours. Most of us do appreciate mod authors looking into these crashes, even if they find nothing wrong with their mods. Every little bit helps. I personally appreciate your suggestions here, and i've found that, indeed, setting vertical spawns to 0 definitely helps in my case. Thanks again.
  4. blade424242
    blade424242
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    I think this is a great idea. Unfortunately the mod strains the game engine so much that it crashes often, and I ended up unloadable saved games, so I had to disable it.
    Yes, I am using dozens of other mods, and some of them also have an impact on performance... I really hate to chose which one to keep, but in this case dozens of useful features outweigh one great one.
  5. AlgaeEater
    AlgaeEater
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    Thanks for all your hard work into bringing something into the game I feel it desperately needed. As an aside; I really feel survival mode should have been what your mod brings into the game - a constant feeling of danger around every corner.

    That being said, unless you guys somehow get an official sponsorship from Bethesda one day, I don't think the CTD's will ever truly be nailed down to any single problem. Although I love my cosmetic mods (and who doesn't), I even tried playing with your mod by itself and nothing more which would still inevitably cause random CTD's at the most random of times. The way the engine loads a cell before you walk into it is the main culprit in my own observations, and as you had noted is really a fault of the engine more-so than anything the mod is really doing. I can only speculate that Bethesda knows this as well and thus limited enemy encounters on purpose to not crash their own engine. A similar mod for Fallout 3 that increased spawns would have enemies load into the cell falling from the sky to their doom, or enemies fall through the floor only to shoot up into the sky like a rocket.

    In any case, thanks for the lengthy post for trying to explain and assist those who appreciate what you do. I know it's tough to make something with passion only to have a lot of people come by and make it seem not worthwhile.