Take a look at my BGEE mod load order

[Guest Brogan]

OK, just tested again after uninstalling "Make Party Members Less Likely to Die Irreversibly" component from Tweaks Anthology, and no change.  Still crashed about 4-5 seconds after character dies (I wonder if it's portrait related...?  Though it's happened with most of the other ports I'm using as well.  All custom characters, btw.  IWD style.)

The recompile also seemed to bork a few mods.  Forgotten Armament's "Update Existing weapons" and "NWN2 style weps" failed to install due to errors.

So I have to rebuild my install.  Which is fine, since I clearly need to shift a couple things around.  But first I need to figure out what's causing this crash.

[Brogan]

Testing.  Just got validation email.

edit:  Yes! 

OK, so I just re-did my install with some of your suggestions.  Moved a few things around, eliminated a couple minor components that didn't affect things, but nothing that would prevent me using the old saves.  Ran the scenario again with Shoal, and it still crashed.

Not the end of the world though.  Obviously using the same save has something to do with it.  The characters have all the same attributes, with all the same mods/components installed the same way.  What I guess I'll do now is test the dynamic (non-protag character death causes crash after ~ 1 round) with each individual mod in place.  Just got to whittle it down.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Brogan

[Greenhorn]

2 hours ago, Brogan said:

  What I guess I'll do now is test the dynamic (non-protag character death causes crash after ~ 1 round) with each individual mod in place.  Just got to whittle it down.

One of the most common problems which happen if you un/reinstall mods from the middle of big installations is that some mods after this become borked, install with errors or not at all. Safest ( and most time consuming ) way is to uninstall and reinstall mods one by one. For testing, best you make save after Imoen join you in the new game and after that you can uninstall mods until you find the culprit. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Greenhorn

[Brogan]

7 hours ago, Greenhorn said:

One of the most common problems which happen if you un/reinstall mods from the middle of big installations is that some mods after this become borked, install with errors or not at all. Safest ( and most time consuming ) way is to uninstall and reinstall mods one by one. For testing, best you make save after Imoen join you in the new game and after that you can uninstall mods until you find the culprit. 

Yea, I found that out.  LOL

It's funny because I did it once for the component you mentioned, and after the long recompile it looked like Skills & Abilities was the only mod that failed to (re-) install.  Then after testing I went back in and changed one more thing, and when the recompile finished, like EVERY MOD either outright failed or installed with warnings.  It was honestly impressive to look at, like 40 lines of FAILED or WITH WARNINGS!  Heh!

I'm confident I'll be able to figure it out though.  Now that I know specifically what to test.  Just hoping it's not a mod I really wanted to use.

[Greenhorn]

11 minutes ago, Brogan said:

Yea, I found that out.  LOL

It's funny because I did it once for the component you mentioned, and after the long recompile it looked like Skills & Abilities was the only mod that failed to (re-) install.  Then after testing I went back in and changed one more thing, and when the recompile finished, like EVERY MOD either outright failed or installed with warnings.  It was honestly impressive to look at, like 40 lines of FAILED or WITH WARNINGS!  Heh!

I'm confident I'll be able to figure it out though.  Now that I know specifically what to test.  Just hoping it's not a mod I really wanted to use.

I can well imagine that it is not fun or easy debugging and testing whole heap of mods but if it is any consolation, everybody done that at one point or another with installations 3 or 4 times bigger than your current one, myself included on more than one occasion. I'm really curios what causes this unusual crash as I'm using many of the mods you included in your install. Good luck! 

[Brogan]

OK, found it.

The mod causing a crash whenever a non-protag character gets killed (grey portrait) and ~ 1 round passes is Artemius' House Tweaks.

The only components installed from it were:

~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2 // House Tweaks: Expanded Racial Bonuses: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #7 // House Tweaks: Increased Constitution Bonuses -> Constitution Bonuses for All Classes + Regeneration Changes: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #10 // House Tweaks: INT/WIS/CHA-based Bonus Spell Slots: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #12 // House Tweaks: Improved Dialogues (BG:EE )1.91

Each one installed by itself also caused the same crash (edit actually both Increased Constitution and Improved Dialogues do NOT result in a crash, either separately installed or installed together).

However, I am only about half-way through this process.  I got the crashes with this and a couple other mods installed ahead of it, namely 3 kits from the same author (Artisan's Kitpack),  Dan_P 's Blood Minister kit, Avenger's Wizard Slayer kit, Tweaks Anthology, Tome & Blood, JMerry's Tweaks, 3 of the Made In Heaven mods (all save for Tweaks), AC's Miscellaneous, and some of 'Reddbane's 3.5 Edition/Pathfinder style Tweaks.  Obviously not every component of every mod was installed but NONE of those mods resulted in a crash before House Rules was added.

Right now I'm going to reinstall with ONLY the House Tweaks to isolate the behavior.  Will post more shortly.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Brogan

[Brogan]

All right.  So I just confirmed that both Expanded Racial Bonuses and INT/WIS/CHA-based Bonus Spell Slots are the 2 components (that I originally used) from this mod (Artemius' House Rule Tweaks) that cause this specific crash.

On a BGEE+SoD installation with only DLCMerger v1.3 installed, the above components installed individually, or together, will cause a crash whenever any non-protag character dies. 

To reproduce, start a game and create 2 generic characters, pick a fight with the Candlekeep Guard patrolling the Inn and allow the non-protagonist character to die.  Usually within 1-4 seconds the game crashes.

The question I have for those more technically inclined: Do I need to further test this crash with this mod in combination with the handful of mods I listed above that were installed when I first identified the issue with House Tweaks?  Or does the fact that it happens on a vanilla installation more than likely rule that issue out?

Edited March 14, 2023 by Brogan

[subtledoctor]

I don’t understand the question?

If you are getting a crash with Mod A plus a bunch of other mods, and then you also get a crash with just Mod A by itself, then… what else is there to test? 

It’s a really weird crash. I can only assume the mod operates via script, something on baldur.bcs? And there is a problem when trying to apply something to a dead NPC. 

[Brogan]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

I don’t understand the question?

If you are getting a crash with Mod A plus a bunch of other mods, and then you also get a crash with just Mod A by itself, then… what else is there to test? 

It’s a really weird crash. I can only assume the mod operates via script, something on baldur.bcs? And there is a problem when trying to apply something to a dead NPC. 

Agreed, it is odd.  What I'm trying to figure out is how there's nothing out there regarding this crash w this mod.  Nobody else had this happen?  Which makes me skeptical of my testing environment, but like I said I tried it with a variety of factors.  Or perhaps it's just my Google skills that are bad, lol.

As to your question, honestly I just wanted to make sure.  Thank you, sir.

[jastey]

9 hours ago, Brogan said:

The mod causing a crash whenever a non-protag character gets killed (grey portrait) and ~ 1 round passes is Artemius' House Tweaks.

The only components installed from it were:

~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2 // House Tweaks: Expanded Racial Bonuses: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #7 // House Tweaks: Increased Constitution Bonuses -> Constitution Bonuses for All Classes + Regeneration Changes: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #10 // House Tweaks: INT/WIS/CHA-based Bonus Spell Slots: 1.91
~HOUSETWEAKS/HOUSETWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #12 // House Tweaks: Improved Dialogues (BG:EE )1.91

Tagging @The Artisan

[polytope]

9 hours ago, Brogan said:

All right.  So I just confirmed that both Expanded Racial Bonuses and INT/WIS/CHA-based Bonus Spell Slots are the 2 components (that I originally used) from this mod (Artemius' House Rule Tweaks) that cause this specific crash.

...

The question I have for those more technically inclined: Do I need to further test this crash with this mod in combination with the handful of mods I listed above that were installed when I first identified the issue with House Tweaks?  Or does the fact that it happens on a vanilla installation more than likely rule that issue out?

That mod does seem to touch the background baldur.bcs script (or bdbaldur/baldur25 for the expansions), but the relevant block should only cycle once in game, so it wouldn't seem to be a script related crash contrary to what I said earlier (in my experience bad scripts do take a noticeable interval, a few seconds, to CTD usually, engine level bugs on the other hand crash in the blink of an eye).

I've noticed that the subspell - C0SPELS2.spl - does call opcode #272 on everyone in the area with a permanent timing mode, I do seem to remember problems with #148 and #272 on dead actors crashing the game (note that things like #272 supposedly only check unpaused game time), then again, timing mode 1 rather than 9 usually means it shouldn't matter for dead actors. We'll wait till the author gets here and has a look, I guess.

So, another question, does this crash still happen if the game is paused immediately on one of your character's death? Does time actually have to advance in game before it triggers?

[subtledoctor]

5 hours ago, Brogan said:

What I'm trying to figure out is how there's nothing out there regarding this crash w this mod.  Nobody else had this happen?

Well, there are two possibilities: 

1) The mod is fine, only your game instance is borked after too many install/uninstalls, and the mod is interacting with that. 

2) That component of the mod is new - I have House Rules installed and my version doesn’t even have a spell slots component - and therefore has not been thoroughly tested yet. 

My guess would be #2, but nothing is certain with this kind of thing. 

EDIT - “can you delay the crash by pausing the game” is a very good question. Good thinking. 

Edited March 14, 2023 by subtledoctor

[jmerry]

Checking the timestamps at github ... looks like the two troublesome components entered with the mod's 2.1 update, around the middle of last year. New, by the standards of the mod.

The "expanded racial bonuses" also has a 272 targeting everyone, set to trigger once per second. It's attached to player 1, so it seems it's the target of the effects being dead rather than the originator that's causing trouble. The spell that 272 casts is an opcode 326 filtering on "everyone" - seems it would be pretty trivial to change that to a "living" filter, which might make a difference.

Party members are global creatures, so they stick around when they die instead of being cleaned up by the game. Actually, what happens if you kill a global creature that isn't a party member - say, head out and murder Xzar without letting him join first?

[jastey]

1 hour ago, jmerry said:

Actually, what happens if you kill a global creature that isn't a party member - say, head out and murder Xzar without letting him join first?

NPCs that are in the GAM file are already global wihtout having joined or being made by MakeGlobal(). At least that's how it was in the classic engine...

[Brogan]

4 hours ago, polytope said:

So, another question, does this crash still happen if the game is paused immediately on one of your character's death? Does time actually have to advance in game before it triggers?

Indeed, as I said on the first page whilst still wearing my Guest hat, I was still able to pause the game immediately on character death in time to hit quickload and avoid the crash.  But it would not crash while paused.  And it did vary in terms of when the real time crash would occur, anywhere from 1 second to about 5-6 seconds after the portrait went grey.