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How serious are Navmesh conflicts?


retrok

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Hey everyone,

 

I did (and I'm still doing) lots of compatibility patches with TES5Edit for my setup, but I always wondered: How problematic are Navmesh conflicts? 

Especially with Interesting NPCs I get many Navmesh conflicts with some small city mods, player houses and some other mods. Is it enough to load the mod I want to win later in my load order?

How can I fix Navmesh conflicts (and how do I find out if I have to)?

 

If anyone could give me some insight into the seriousness of Navmesh conflicts, I would really appreciate it ;)

 

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These videos are good, and I found one on the Nexus as well, but none of them really start from the beginning when it comes to fixing an existing mod. What I mean is how to identify the problem and/or what navmeshes are missing and how to fix them step by step, by going in between TES5Edit and the CK. Do I load up a mod in TES5Edit and look under Navigation Meshes? Also, are there some cases where a navmesh is supposed to be removed?

Right now I only have 3 out of 196 esp's with warnings about navemeshs that TES5Edit can't fix on its own. They are Monster Wars.esp with 4, TheDomain.esp with 1, and Bluecreek Estate.esp with a whopping 18.

 

I found out about BlueCreek Estate when looking at Helgen Reborn (recommended by The Explorer's Guide) it looks pretty cool. Helgen Reborn offers a patched version for it's mod.

 

Basically, with my limited knowledge of the CK, even after watching the videos, I still don't know exactly where to begin when fixing existing mods. Those vids are more aimed at creating your own mod. I definitely thank you for posting them though.

Edited by Vulgar1
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I don't really have the patience necessary to make tutorials any longer, however I'll try to give an example or two to make it easier:

 

I- In case the incompatibility is just due to a mod adding a single door to an area that is changed by another mod:

Dawn of Riften is an overhaul to the city that changes all of its navmesh. Cutting Room Floor just makes the south door useable (which requires modifying the navmesh of that cell)

Posted Image
This screenshot shows the navmesh overlap that happens because of that between Cutting Room Floor 1.6 and Dawn of Riften 1.0.

You can see that loading CRF early will cause the highlighted door triangle not to be forwarded, which will make all NPCs unable to use the southern Riften door added by CRF. You might think that loading CRF later than Dawn of Riften will fix the issue, but then you'll encounter other overlapping issues in other cells, which will make the NPCs unable to move around correctly since Dawn of Riften adds new walkways to the area.

Note 1: You need to load both mods as masters in the Creation Kit. (Use Wrye bash to false flag them as masters, it is very important that they be flagged as masters, otherwise when saving the file, it'll just be filled with unresolved references, and will probably just end up crashing your game.)

Note 2: Another important point about the CK here is that it doesn't give a damn about your load order, and will load the masters based on their date of last modification, so you might have to change that date (via Wrye Bash for instance) in order to get them to load in the order you want (In this example CRF first, then Dawn of Riften).

 

How to fix it:

Posted Image

1/- Load both mods as masters in the CK.

 

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2/- Open the worldspace (1.) and the cell (2.) where the conflict is.

3/- Bring up the navmesh tool (CTRL+E) and hit the "Finalize current cell's navmesh" button (3.)

 

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4/- If done correctly, one of the navmesh triangles next to the door will turn blue.

5/- Save the file and remove the false esm flags from the two mods.

 

II- In case the incompatibility stems from 2 mods affecting the same area with more changes than a simple door:

Once again I'm going to use Dawn of Riften, but this time with Interesting NPCs, which adds an entire walkway connecting to a new door in the lower part of the city.

Now in this case, you have to make a choice concerning which mod to load last, because both mods add walkways so you're going to have to redo a part of the navmesh either way. I decided to load Dawn of Riften last because it makes more changes to the area's navmesh than Interesting NPCs (3 walkways vs a single one for 3DNPC)

 

Posted Image

1/- Load both mods as masters.

2/- Get to the conflicting cell(s). In this case RiftenOrigin.

 

Posted Image

3/- As you can see, the 2 walkways circled in red (which are added by dawn of riften) are properly navmeshed, since they Dawn of Riften is loaded last. However the one circled in blue (added by 3DNPC) isn't, which means NPCs won't be able to cross it.

 

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4/- Zoom in on the blue walkway, and start navmeshing it (following the CK tutorial by bethesda)

 

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5/- This is what it should look like. You basically have to connect the 2 navmeshes together. In this case, the walkway spans over 2 cells, so you just have to make it go all the way to the end of the edge, then hit Finalize current cell to ensure both cells are connected (green line)

 

6/- Save the file and remove the false esm flags.

 

Hope this helps.

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Glad to know it's clear, I was worried about that, since it's not intended as a guide. ::P:

 

Note however that I didn't include an example for what to do when 2 mods (or more) affect the same area exactly, because that would be too complicated to explain and would vary depending of what the mods do.

 

Also, if anything is not clear, feel free to post your question here (but not via PM, cause then no one else would benefit from it D: )

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If there are conflicts between navmeshes that involve deleted navmeshes, as Kuldebar explained, you'll just get CTD after CTD.

Otherwise, it's just that the NPCs will start being confused and may end up teleporting a bit around the place. However if there are doors (or any teleporters) connected to the conflicting navmeshes, that's when **** hits the fan (and the reason why patches are needed), since the NPCs won't be able to use any new door except for the one linked to the last navmesh loaded. Meaning they can't enter the building which will affect their packages and quests.

 

An example of that would be that if you use a mod that affects Morthal in addition to the quest mod ORS Morthal Pain, a dremora will be stuck in the pond in morthal, unable to get to oblivion when you first load the game. (Needless to say the rest of the quest goes bonkers as well after that.)

Hmm, so would "a mod that affects Morthal in addition to the quest mod ORS Morthal Pain" include ETaC for example? I ask because when I went through Morthal about a week and a half ago, I saw that very dremora stuck in the pond.

 

I haven't been back since then, so I'm curious if that's something you (or somebody else) fixed in the newest ETaC - ORS patch?

 

I don't really have the patience necessary to make tutorials any longer, however I'll try to give an example or two to make it easier:

 

<snip>

 

Hope this helps.

 

No patience to make tutorials??? You've just made one here - and I think it's a great primer!

 

Thanks for this, and some of the important tips to make it all work correctly!

 

I think I'm inspired to start looking at some navmesh areas needing help.

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Hmm, so would "a mod that affects Morthal in addition to the quest mod ORS Morthal Pain" include ETaC for example? I ask because when I went through Morthal about a week and a half ago, I saw that very dremora stuck in the pond. I haven't been back since then, so I'm curious if that's something you (or somebody else) fixed in the newest ETaC - ORS patch?

Yeah, ETaC would be a great example, I just didn't want to advertise it. :PThe issue you have encountered might have been due to using both 3DNPC and ORS patches, with the ORS being loaded first, but it has been fixed in ETaC v11.1 anyway since the changes to the Morthal navmesh in the Interesting NPCs patch have been removed.

No patience to make tutorials??? You've just made one here - and I think it's a great primer!

Heh, well I think it's not detailed enough to qualify as an actual tutorial. D:
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