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Orange patches in sawmills


Malacath

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An engine bug, which I though we'd explained rather well already :P

 

Well no, all I got was there is an engine bug apparently that the game is rendering actors as if it was in the construction kit when mods are loaded. That doesn't really tell me why it's doing that.  :wallbash:

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You asked what's causing it not why it's doing it...

No. You are thinking of the wrong what. That was already explained. Sorry for the confusion and lack of clarity. I was more interested in what engine code is doing this that they must have changed on port but I guess I wouldn't mind knowing the how and why that code breaks it.

You are correct though Arthmoor. That is a question for those paid by Bethesda but likely an answer I will never get.

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I found this in the USSEP changelog:

 

UDGP v1.1.4 - (2013-01-11)

 

Mesh and Texture Fixes

 

Several door models lacked correct collision materials and would make no sound and produce no impact decals when struck [dlc01\dungeons\castle\lghalls\casexfreelgdoor01.nif, dlc01\dungeons\castle\lghalls\casexfreelgdoorload01.nif, dlc01\dungeons\castle\lghalls\casexfreesmdoor01.nif, dlc01\dungeons\castle\lghalls\casexfreesmdoor02.nif, dlc01\dungeons\castle\lghalls\casexfreesmdoorload01.nif] (Bug #9096).

 

casexfreelgdoor01.nif is what is used by the doors in Castle Volkihar that are showing the editor markers. The issue doesn't exist on PC, but maybe editing nif collision materials on objects that have editor markers could cause the problem on Xbox One. However, I am not an expert on editing nif files, so I'm not sure exactly why this is happening.

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So far, there have been no complaints about the game world being plastered with red crosses, have there ?

 

Obviously, any editor marker only nifs work as intended and the issue appears to be restricted to files that have editor markers in addition to visible stuff. As we know, whether or not an editor marker will  show up in the game or not does not only depend on the flags but also on the node name. In classic Skyrim, we only had  to make sure that the node name was "EditorMarker" (without the quotes) to prevent it from being rendered.

 

The required node name appears to be still the same in the special edition. However, the procedure that checks this at engine level may have changed.

 

Simply speaking, the classic Skyrim engine appears to have checked all node names in a nif to deicde whether a single mesh needed to be rendered or not, but doing so requires extra time. What if the new engine has been modified to only check the nodes that are directly under the root node ? It would speed tihings up, and it would also explain why all editor marker only nifs behave as expected (they only have one node) while others don't.

 

I know that this is just a wild guess, but it might be worth a try.

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If you need more evidence of orangeness, here's a new one I haven't read mention of. I've already let Bethesda.net know. It does not appear to have received any BethesdaWorkerBee acknowledgement. (Not surprised.)

 

I've been experiencing the orange doors and sawmill squares for throughout the game. I had to laugh (it beats moaning) when I found orange editor markers in Fort Sungard, in the Fort Sungard Muster, at the back of the bed room where you find The Last Scabbard book for Ghorza. There are two racks on the left and right when you enter the room. The wooden poles render as expected; all the pieces related to holding what was (maybe) meant to be weapons are orange. Then, on the back wall are four bright red circles that look like corner points of a parallelogram. Huh.

 

I've visited the room three times. I saw these markers each time. The link is to an image captured on my XBox ... I really can't do much better than this, I think. No PC.

 

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/WildingName82/screenshot/5220528

 

I do need to go back to the non-DLC locations to see if things have changed any since today's patch. Castle Volkihar's door-open positions are definitely still orange. (I know this is down to Bethesda.)

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Now, this is what I call bizarre !

 

What we see here is not the marker. The actual marker (the weapon rack activator) is a rectangular box, and it is still invisible. What we are really seeing here is the mesh inside of the marker painted with the color of the marker !

 

I'd wager the guess that this is the same with the sawmill and the Volkihar doors (this should be checked !).

 

Do the vertex colors on the marker [NB: markers have no texture] have an emittance set ?

 

What if the shaders misinterpret the alpha channel of the vertex colors ?

 

EDIT:

I wonder what happens if the normals are flipped.

 

Yes, I know that there shouldn't be any normals (i.e. vertex normals) on a marker mesh. What I'm thinking at are the face normals though: they always are there, even if they are not separately stored in the nif; they are just hardcoded in the mesh and you still can flip them. That's what the 'flip normals' command did in the old NIfskope (this hasn't changed, has it ?): it flipped the face normals, simply by rearranging the order in which the vertices that make up the triangles are stored (because for vectors, a x b = - b x a).

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The little red dot ones belong to uskp\clutter\weaponrack\wrplaqueshield01_invis.nif and the orange ones belong to uskp\clutter\weaponrack\wrsingle01_invis.nif

 

They're editor markers. So there should be no reason for them to be rendering, just like most of the other ones the game uses don't.

 

Some vanilla markers have vertex colors. Others don't. There's no pattern to it.

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It probably doesn't help to point out additional anomalous evidence, but even more surprising to me is that the brackets to hold the weapons are facing wrong-ways ...  toward the wall. Plus, I can't recall that any bracketed weapon mounts appear on teepee, fish-drying-type poles. Aren't they usually on square frames? It's almost like these don't belong here, in this orientation or on these poles, at all.

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https://afktrack.afkmods.com/index.php?a=issues&i=18953

It may not be directly relevant to what is being discussed here but I thought I'd bring up that fact that the weapon and shield racks in Fort Sungard are kind of a special situation, because they required the use of "invisible" meshes to get the placed items to stay on them properly. Prior to the fix done in the patch (see the linked bug ticket above), weapons and shields would fall off due to havok.

Although it does seem pretty odd that the developers chose to use fish racks, it also was likely done intentionally. Bethesda made quite the mess of these and like many other things in civil war forts it appears that they didn't quite finish working on them. Maybe they just decided to abandon development altogether on the forts when a lot of the civil war content was cut from the game. The number of placement and other types of fixes that needed to be done to these forts has been very substantial if you search through the change log.

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Ah, I see.

 

Haven't actually played Skyrim in a very long time and that one escaped me. Makes the issue much less bizarre (what a pity!) and saves me from explaining what I had in mind with those normals (let's keep those lenghty posts restricted to FO4 related issues for now).

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  • 1 month later...

A fix was most probably found, even if I'm actually lacking feedback. I posted it here and a tutorial on how to fix it will soon come here.

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Hey, if this is referring to the "work in progress" mod I found today...

Awesome! Fixed all major issues of orange mesh squares where they ought not to be: sawmills, display cabinet weapon holders and Valkihar Keep door frames.

Doesn't fix the weapon holders at the end of Fort Sungard Muster, but does fix the other orange squares at the same location (changing them into hide shields).

[tested on my XB1]

Big thank you!! :)

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Yes, I'm the author of this fix hack (my pseudo is Nico2137 at Bethesda.net). This mod will receive a final update for Fort Sungard, but this will most probably make the racks there totally unusable. USSEP is not the cause of this issue, it's just the unvoluntary catalyst that makes it bright (for a totally unknown reason).

 

I did this by compassion because I heard the console players complaints, and it works... not so bad (let's just say this without elaborating). But it's up to the lazy Bethesda devs to know how the console hardware works and how to fix this properly. If their answer is 'Just use Nico's mod, it fixes it !' then it would be totally unacceptable from them. And it would be totally unacceptable for USSEP to include it. I'm also a USSEP team member and I'm 200% on Arthmoor's side : if we include it then it would mean we aknowledge it, and encourage wealthy developpers to make shitty products without proper support. Such a strong company relying on free 'good souls'  :innocent:  is totally unacceptable.

 

This mod will remain available but it is (and will remain forever) a stand-alone mod aimed to put shame on intentionally deaf developers.

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Thanks again. I will test if the rack functions, but it will not be any big loss if it doesn't. I’m surprised I’ve not seen the same faulty rack elsewhere in the game.

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The CK shows that it's the only place in the whole entire game where fish racks were (unsuccessfully) used as weapon racks.

 

05.jpg

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That whole mesh is a fail. The pieces that actually hold the weapon are invisible (untextured?). However, orange gone, waste no more time on it unless you're bored.

I have found another orange door - the entry blocked by fallen rocks as you face west standing on the Castle Volkihar Balcony.

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I think theres a way to take a screen shot on XB1, but I’m a total nube and no idea. I could take a pic of the tv using my mobile phone, upload it somehow? Onto Facebook? Don’t like that idea :(

Anyway, there's a 2nd "rock blocked" with orange markers seen by facing west from the moon dial found in the Valkihar courtyard.

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Any 'not so bad' quality picture is welcome. You can upload it in the gallery, right here at AFK mods.

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