Solved Update to my archived CTD thread

[Xeteco]

Hey, Loving all the update to SS!

This is an update to a thread Kinggath was helping me with some time back to which I just got so frustrated with the crashing I quit playing just to see if some time would solve the issue.
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/i-love-sim-settlements-however-ctd-ctd-ctd.5825/

Well I started playing again a few days ago after updating a couple mods including the new SS3in1.
What do you know, just as red rocket and sanctuary start getting busy, boom CTD on approach.
But this time I have a save just before approach of RR and it usually CTD just as I come up to the tire w/the red toolbox across the street.
I use vortex and had just tried disabling plugins in groups when I finally got it down to where I could approach and I thought it was manufacturing extended so I re-enabled all but that. I was able to approach two times (loading that save) no problem. So for prudence I re-enabled ME and I was able to approach once, and the 2nd time CTD.
So I am currently loading and loading that save with everything on just to see if I can get in with everything on or if it always crashes. If it always does then I will try turning off ME again and re-test.
My most recent crash was not TD but a freeze with game at 10% cpu 25% gpu. Had to task mgr kill it.

I'll be back if any of this testing results in anything

Just a side note: this is a wholly new PC (in case that was the cause) and last time round (same mod set) I was CTD with a 1060 GPU 3gig and this rig is running 960 4gig. I run 1600x900 most games and that nets me 50-60fps here.

So if anyone has an ah-ha

 

[Xeteco]

After several re-loads of that save, sometimes I can get into red rocket ok, but so far i turn up the road to sanctuary and it has always CTD just before I am across the bridge - like apx. 10 feet from across into Sanctuary.
So now I am back to flicking off a few plugins at a time and seeing if I can get it to consistently not CTD.

 

[RayBo]

Hey, Loving all the update to SS!

This is an update to a thread Kinggath was helping me with some time back to which I just got so frustrated with the crashing I quit playing just to see if some time would solve the issue.
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/i-love-sim-settlements-however-ctd-ctd-ctd.5825/

Well I started playing again a few days ago after updating a couple mods including the new SS3in1.
What do you know, just as red rocket and sanctuary start getting busy, boom CTD on approach.
But this time I have a save just before approach of RR and it usually CTD just as I come up to the tire w/the red toolbox across the street.
I use vortex and had just tried disabling plugins in groups when I finally got it down to where I could approach and I thought it was manufacturing extended so I re-enabled all but that. I was able to approach two times (loading that save) no problem. So for prudence I re-enabled ME and I was able to approach once, and the 2nd time CTD.
So I am currently loading and loading that save with everything on just to see if I can get in with everything on or if it always crashes. If it always does then I will try turning off ME again and re-test.
My most recent crash was not TD but a freeze with game at 10% cpu 25% gpu. Had to task mgr kill it.

I'll be back if any of this testing results in anything

Just a side note: this is a wholly new PC (in case that was the cause) and last time round (same mod set) I was CTD with a 1060 GPU 3gig and this rig is running 960 4gig. I run 1600x900 most games and that nets me 50-60fps here.

So if anyone has an ah-ha

@Xeteco, is what you are saying that: you are using a year old save file on a new pc or have you started a new game?

Or, are you starting completely fresh and having a crash when approaching RR in a new game?

Time and / or a new pc likely will not fix the "settlement approach bug"

this might help?

https://www.simsettlements.com/site...-recovering-a-problem-settlement-part-1.7125/

New pc? I recommend a new game.

 

[Xeteco]

Edit: Just read a reply post. It is a completely new installation of everything on a new PC. The crash point appears identical to my old thread. As far as the time thing goes, code changes, either from F4 or modders, ergo I was slightly hoping someone worked this out.
I will look at that thread, thanks. New games I have; however, I really like the concept of Sim Settlements and have yet been able to complete a F4 with it, nor have I completed F4 at all and I'd really like to do it with SS in the mix.

Ok, a few hours of testing later...
I have disabled every plugin except for:
console.esp
SimSettlements_MegaPack_YearOne.esp
SimSettlements.esm
and fairly consistently it CTDs just before I jump the railing to the road in front of the Red Rocket.

So I am pausing playing Fallout 4 for now until I get some feedback here on how to proceed.
Since I have the save that fairly consistently causes a CTD then I would hope it would be possible to do some debugging/logging to find out what this is.
Just let me know
Thanks!

Edit2: I looked at that mentioned thread and neither settlement is using a city plan. Both have SS structures and not much else. I have tried the nuclear option in my old game but the crashes then happened at other settlements as well. This time round I have the benefit of just the 3 plugin modules and a consistent pre-CTD save so am hoping to find out what this is. I earned my living as a coder (behind Sirius/XM satellite radio) and others and it is my hope to be able to contribute to isolating and exterminating this issue.

 

[RayBo]

https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/baking-a-game-save-bags.9447/#post-66784

Not just a shameless plug.

The above is my best attempt to help.

Early game. Then it is likely a conflict, an install issue / corrupted file.

Try a manual install of the 3 in 1 and install but do not enable the mega pack. Yet.
Reinstall the mega pack though. manually.

Important. Once you are set with the few mods you are starting / testing with then start a new game, and play through vault 111. Don't bother trying to rescue a save file at this point. I would say "it isn't worth it" not worth saving?

 

[Xeteco]

Sorry if this is bad form adding another post vs. editing. (shameless plug me?? hehe, I have no other way to say I can usually code)
Just for a diagnostic I turned off the two SS esp modules and reload a couple times without CTD.
So, I tried with the megapack off and CTD after a couple minutes in sanctuary. Rats.
That last link is a heck of thing! Superb - I will read and give it a go.
Thank you!
(oh and after all that in that thread there... how could you even suggest I leave F4?!? the sheer idea.. I have 4k hours in this game (according to steam))

Ok, I read that - wow hehe
What I think I will try is just running the console with SS+megapack as per what you said there and start a new game. once exited i'll pump up my stats and just get hauling on making settlements with SS and see if I get any CTDS. If not then I'll have to say yeah there's a conflict on mods and go from there. If that works then phew. ungh. my load order has 176 items.

I'm still down with trying to de-bug that save that crashes.

 

[Xeteco]

So, I was thinking about this problem and my method of removing mods until I was down to just SimSettlements when it occurred to me that if the save was already broken from a mod conflict there would be no result from removing mods. So back to square one but then I thought - RayBo on his help guides said he had a ton of mods WITH a working game so if I could get that load order I could then cross reference that against mine and isolate what to test.

The other thing I was thinking on was that in almost all cases a CTD is caused by a memory protection error, caused by things like null pointers, unset pointers, and stepping out of an array. So the conflict would more than likely be something that is messing with arrays or indexes used by SS. That would cross off a bunch of my mods right there.

Thanks for the help.

 

[RayBo]

So, Thanks for the help.

Ok, I would still recommend

BiRaitBec: Guide for set-up. His load order is a bit restrictive for me. I play to play or do a goal objective or something now after 4000+ hours, not really to follow the main story or finish the game.

Also, Recommend folks use/refer to either Kinggaths Lets Play loadorder or Gambit77's loadorder for a real world loadorder, "one closer to what most users" might do / use.

Will look at that hahahaha! My load order is to big to post. hahaha over 10k characters

Now that is funny!

hahaha, see attached

Mine, Kinggaths and Gambit77 are all in the excel file in the zip attached

 

[Xeteco]

Ok, I would still recommend

BiRaitBec: Guide for set-up. His load order is a bit restrictive for me. I play to play or do a goal objective or something now after 4000+ hours, not really to follow the main story or finish the game.

Also, Recommend folks use/refer to either Kinggaths Lets Play loadorder or Gambit77's loadorder for a real world loadorder, "one closer to what most users" might do / use.

Will look at that hahahaha! My load order is to big to post. hahaha over 10k characters

Now that is funny!

hahaha, see attached

Mine, Kinggaths and Gambit77 are all in the excel file in the zip attached

Sweet - exactly what I was hoping for! Thank you! The bigger the LO, the more I can hopefully exclude from my search

 

[Xeteco]

*ahem* yeah - my son no longer thinks "I" have too many mods.....
You know I have always been to busy just having fun to ever go an win the game I guess. That's part of what intrigues me with SS - just you after disaster living.
Who knows, we may get to see that in RL soon! - LOL
I am looking forward to figuring my issue out and then adding some more mods in - there are some mods in the list that I had on my old machine that I forgot to add to this one. Good old hard drive up in smoke (literally as the motor controller chip smoked with a tiny flame hole in it)
Edit 1) RoyBo, amazingly we only have 22 overlaps, and no real discrepancy in LO.
Edit 2) And Gambit77 had another 18 beyond that, Kinggath 1, for a vetted 41 - take out all the purchasable dlc and that leaves me 71 to look at. I will start by paring out the weapons and probably clothing sets.
The big one I see is that Gambit77 has the Unlimited Companion Framework very last and mine is about mid load - above some mods that may interfere (companion/robot accuracy?)
I also noted that I have settlement corpse cleaner and scrap dead things - redundant.

 

[Xeteco]

Ok. A complete sort overhaul, removed a couple mods, did some soul searching, followed RayBo's guide - (almost all of my plugins are disabled for the start-up pre-vault sequence) - going to try and "cook my saves" like the guide suggests, which is interesting because a lot of stuff was happening on first load standing at the mirror - and then removed after ready to exit vault, so... here goes!
Edit: Well that was interesting - I saw a lot of startup messages and inventory adds I have not seen before, so I have to wonder if my games have simply been broken from bad startup. Will test later - sleep now.

 

[Xeteco]

Reporting in... In my settlement build menu the creation club arcade menu has always been corrupt; however, it looks good now. I just loaded sanctuary hills with the city plan, went Red Rocket, spawned in 15 settlers and sent them to SH. So far everything is looking fine. Will do same for RR as those 2 settlement are the ones with the most frequent crashes. But I'm hoping my LO was the culprit and that there wont be any crashes. If 380 something mods play together nicely.....then....:}

 

[MrCJohn]

Reporting in... In my settlement build menu the creation club arcade menu has always been corrupt; however, it looks good now. I just loaded sanctuary hills with the city plan, went Red Rocket, spawned in 15 settlers and sent them to SH. So far everything is looking fine. Will do same for RR as those 2 settlement are the ones with the most frequent crashes. But I'm hoping my LO was the culprit and that there wont be any crashes. If 380 something mods play together nicely.....then....:}

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/38520

and for spawning settlers use in console "cqf kgpbp settlers x" where x is the number you want versus another method of spawning.

Also, be careful of building with RR/Sanctuary/Abernathy... you do not want to build in all three. Pick one for an ROTC city/plan … free build in the other 2... I personally can do all 3 but I play survival so I do not fast travel … and if you build in these three, fast travel puts you into a cell that the game engine cannot reliably do - CTD.

John

 

[Xeteco]

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/38520

and for spawning settlers use in console "cqf kgpbp settlers x" where x is the number you want versus another method of spawning.

Also, be careful of building with RR/Sanctuary/Abernathy... you do not want to build in all three. Pick one for an ROTC city/plan … free build in the other 2... I personally can do all 3 but I play survival so I do not fast travel … and if you build in these three, fast travel puts you into a cell that the game engine cannot reliably do - CTD.

John

I only play survival and so far (i've had work keep me away *sigh*) my game has only crashed once and that was outside of city limits and probably just due to good ol Bugthesda code. I currently have RR/Sactuary with at 22/15 settlers each and Sanc. is starting some level 2 upgrades. Thanks for the spawning code there. I have more fires to go put out before I can get back at it but I'll post an update when I see a good deal more lvl 2 plots pop. I have starlight going to now and just realized that there is a designers choice for plots so turned that on and flushed the city plan and re-applied it.
Thanks again for all the help!

 

[Xeteco]

So level 50 and mainly focused with a SS at county crossing - I've only done a little of my own development there and just above the ruined house. It's setup with the default city plan and they've just been adding commercial places. Again - crashing so sad. I had a save just before the crash so was able to load and teleport elsewhere and all went along fine. But I just returned after 3 or 4 days doing other things and it splatted as I approached. I will try coming in slower and see if that helps; otherwise, I guess I can try remote destruction. Abernathy, Sanctuary, and Starlight are all running fine so far.

 

[MrCJohn]

So level 50 and mainly focused with a SS at county crossing - I've only done a little of my own development there and just above the ruined house. It's setup with the default city plan and they've just been adding commercial places. Again - crashing so sad. I had a save just before the crash so was able to load and teleport elsewhere and all went along fine. But I just returned after 3 or 4 days doing other things and it splatted as I approached. I will try coming in slower and see if that helps; otherwise, I guess I can try remote destruction. Abernathy, Sanctuary, and Starlight are all running fine so far.

Have you updated to 4.09?

 

[Xeteco]

4.09, no. However, I turned off all of the "performance" options in the holotape, left area, did stuff, came back - still crashing.
So, and this is important I think, approaching the settlement from the robots ship towards county crossing, on the very corner of that settlement (default city plan, designers choice) is a pair of defense plots (small) and both were the check point design. I kept trying to self destruct the city, but I was too far out, I approached a few more feet, repeat, until it took. As it turns out the only two plots that detonated were the two defense ones - everything else is still there AND I was able to go right in no problem.
SO that indicates to me that the crash could very well be coming from the checkpoint plot at it's level 2. (I reloaded a save before the detonation triggering and verified - these 2 are level 2, the third defense farther in is level 3)
Something to look into?

 

[Xeteco]

Have you updated to 4.09?

I see in the patch notes " Squashed several CTD bugs!"
Soooooo - I still have that save right before crash - soooo - I think I will update and then see if the update fixes that particular crash point.
Go Kinggath!

EDIT: Well now, life just got better! I installed 4-9 and loaded up the pre-crash game and happily walked into the settlement. No problems now. Just re-enabled all of the performance options so will see if that causes any glitches but - here's hoping!
Thanks again for all the hard work!

 

[Xeteco]

Just woke up and had an epiphany on coding (I get a lot of deep problem ah-ha this way lol)
So typically CTD is a memory violation, accessing a null pointer or stepping out of an array bounds right?
From what logging I did back when I seem to remember this was my case and I replied to a post here yesterday where it sure looked to be the case there as well.
So I postulate this solution to finding and killing those little buggers:
This method generates a little code bloat; however, that bloat can be #defined out for release builds.
So put traps in something like #ifnotdefine DEBUG
This trapping method should be deployed from the point that GPFs and then up the call chain as GPF points are identified until the origin is found.
1) Test every assignment for a NULL or NONE value
2) On finding an unexpected one, throw or call a pop up box function with a message of where you are in code so:
if (Value-I-Just-Assigned == NULL) then {
GpfHandlerNotifier("Function-Nam-e-IAm-In","Value-Assigned-That-Was-Null")
DoExitThisFunctionCleanly()
}
so:
GpfHandlerNotifier(string ErroredFunctionName, string ErroredValueName)
Would generate a message box with an OK button "Function: XYZ found null at value: ABC"
3) Cleanly stop processing that function and return
In C/C++ I would do a throwexception and a catch statement that would log but in this language the mechanism is unknown to me. (I don't know what language this is written in)
Like I said before I would be happy to help find these since I get crashes but I would need to be able to run un-compiled code here. I would even be glad to help write in the traps. Multi-threading and trapping expertise is what landed my the lead job back when and I do have a lot of time on my hands.
And just to be clear I am not looking for dollar bills yo - I just want to help a friend because I love what he's done so much. Sim Settlements brings my Fallout 4 to life for me and lets me immerse myself in an alternate reality where my body isn't failed. *ok enough sharing, I don't want to have to break out the snot rags <G>*
So I am going to go pull down 4-9 now and see if that caught it.

 

[Xeteco]

Just a final note on this thread as I have had dozens of play hours now on 4.0.10 with ZERO issues.
So I wanted to just say a last thank you to everyone that has helped here. Very much appreciated!

I wanted to mark this as solved but I am not seeing the how to do that...possibly to much tired....