Bug and curious fix for Expanded Towns and Cities

[1Mac]

I submitted a bug report here:

For individual ETaC plugins (i.e. not the aio), dialogue doesn't work for new NPCs with new voices. A solution is to unpack the BSA and disable the resources plugin. But I don't like this solution because it shouldn't work! The resources plugin is a master to all the individual ETaC plugins, so there should be a ctd on menu. But everything seems to work fine, the game loads, I'm not obviously missing any objects or anything like that, and NPC dialogue works as intended.

So my questions are: Why does this solution work? And is there a better fix someone can propose or effect?

[Arthmoor]

The solution "worked" because you exited the game to do what you did. The simple act of exiting and reloading is what got the dialogue working. You don't need to do anything to the files at all.

It's the result of this issue:

Bethesda has been told about it but they have yet to address it in a patch. So in the meantime, either exiting and reloading the game will resolve it, or the mod author will need to implement one of the alternative methods.

[1Mac]

Thanks, that’s interesting! However, I’m in testing mode right now and constantly starting new games (or to be accurate, using coc in the main menu*), so there is no exiting and reloading to speak of. If I start a new game with the resources plugin disabled, I get functional dialogue from the NPCs in question. If I start a new game with it enabled, I don’t. It’s a totally consistent result. The central mystery remains as to why this solution works, and why it doesn’t lead to ctd when it involves disabling a master file.

*I suppose I could test with a proper new game, cart ride and all, but I don’t think it will matter since the aio Etac plugin doesn’t have this issue.

[Arthmoor]

COC from main menu isn't a reliable means of testing things for the game. It skips over too many of the initialization steps that get processed during the ride into Helgen. If you're looking for a quick jump into the game you could install my alternate start mod and use it to rapidly reach several points in the game.

[1Mac]

Maybe I'll do that, thanks.

Does anyone have any idea why ETaC would work at all (let alone better in the case of the bug being discussed) without its resources plugin enabled, even though it's a master file?