Saints Row IV Character Cutscene Calamity

[shitface]

Hey there.

I've been running into weird issues with my NPC Behaviour and Spawn Mod related to adding new entries to character.xtbl. It seems that moving any of the saints_ or temp_ entries from their original lines in the table causes some severe problems, such as character meshes not showing up during cutscenes, or crashing the game.

I've been able to fix this by lazily cutting and pasting them back to their original positions, but I'm still experiencing problems with certain characters causing crashes (Maero, Cyrus, Veteran Child) when summoned via the phone. The cutscenes from the Saints Save Christmas missions cause a crash, as well as the Christmas homies.

What's the deal with this? I suspect that this mod is pushing the game over its memory or table limits. Is that what's happening, and is there a way around it? (Until mod packfile support is released)

 

[Haganu]

I already thought it was weird that I could add ETD characters to the gang customization but not the christmas characters.
I can't add a single character to the character table, or the game would crash if it came to using HTSSC characters. What a pity.

 

[[V] Knobby]

This sounds like limits to me and even worse, limits that are not checked causing memory smashing.

I would suggest replacing characters if possible for now. You're welcome to package up the mod and let me poke at it to see if that is really what is happening, but I'm pretty sure it is.

 

[shitface]

Have a look: I'm pretty sure limits are causing these problems as well, but it would be nice to know 100%. Thanks for checking!

 

[[V] Knobby]

Ok so in spawn_info_groups.xtbl you have the format wrong. In spawn_CivSaintsFan you have vehicles, but they need name attributes. Maybe your vehicle attribute inside should be name?

car_4dr_nite could not be found
car_2dr_exoticsports09 could not be found
suv_4dr_07 could not be found
truck_hillbilly_dlc could not be found

You have passed the maximum rank weapon loadouts(12) in spawn_info_ranks for civilian.
Required attribute Bleed_Out_Hit_Points is missing from rank Other and then things go way south.

saints_Cyrus_temple, saints_female_kenziesr3, saints_female_lin, saints_female_shaundidptest, saints_female_shaundinude, saints_female_tanya, saints_male_deadgat, saints_male_djveteranchild, saints_male_julius, saints_male_maero, saints_male_sr1player, saints_male_sr2player, saints_male_vptheylive, saints_male_williamsharp, and skinballs will not fit in the character preset limits (552 total, but 52 reserved for DLC)

Notoriety level police act 1 lvl 4 has too many morphs, max 3.
Notoriety level police act 2 lvl 1 has a wave id that isn't named properly(called lvl 2 and should be 1).
Notoriety level police act 2 lvl 4 has too many morphs.
Notoriety level string pool limit exceeded with level named NW03 TK mayhem cops(try shorter names?)

Reference group ConstructionZone has more than one and the wrong npcs in it, the code has a comment saying: // all reference groups need to have only the dummy npc as their members

The city takeover system is sad that it can't find the takeover weather stage, luckily that seems to be handled.

On city load we try to load lots of action node animations(life_*) and the animation system gets grouchy because it is loaded(preloaded by you I assume). This wastes memory and looks like it will unload them on city exit. If you restart the level, do the action node animations work?

At this point I was in the city, but Havok is mad about an expired key, so I can't see anything more until I find the new one.

 

[shitface]

Thanks for checking out this big mess I made!

car_4dr_nite could not be found
car_2dr_exoticsports09 could not be found
suv_4dr_07 could not be found
truck_hillbilly_dlc could not be found

What's up with those errors? All of these vehicles load just fine in-game. However, the rest of those mistakes regarding spawn ranks, groups and notoriety spawns have been fixed, thanks for pointing 'em out.

Notoriety level string pool limit exceeded with level named NW03 TK mayhem cops(try shorter names?)

This level is actually from the vanilla game, I didn't touch it. Should I shorten the name or will that lead to trouble elsewhere?

On city load we try to load lots of action node animations(life_*) and the animation system gets grouchy because it is loaded(preloaded by you I assume). This wastes memory and looks like it will unload them on city exit. If you restart the level, do the action node animations work?

Luckily, yes!

saints_Cyrus_temple, saints_female_kenziesr3, saints_female_lin, saints_female_shaundidptest, saints_female_shaundinude, saints_female_tanya, saints_male_deadgat, saints_male_djveteranchild, saints_male_julius, saints_male_maero, saints_male_sr1player, saints_male_sr2player, saints_male_vptheylive, saints_male_williamsharp, and skinballs will not fit in the character preset limits (552 total, but 52 reserved for DLC)

So the only way to really fix this DLC cutscene/homie spawning issue would be to remove all the new character entries? That's a shame. If that's the case I'll probably just wait for official mod support so I can add them all to a new packfile. Removing them all now would be a ton of work and make the mod much less fun to use.

 

[[V] Knobby]

What's up with those errors? All of these vehicles load just fine in-game. However, the rest of those mistakes regarding spawn ranks, groups and notoriety spawns have been fixed, thanks for pointing 'em out.

Some of the complaints were about the top level variant not being found, but a few were claiming missing. It was looking for them for the spawning groups. Maybe simple typos or something?

This level is actually from the vanilla game, I didn't touch it. Should I shorten the name or will that lead to trouble elsewhere?

This is actually just the unfortunate one that failed to allocate. Things before it ate up too much memory in the pool so nothing was left when we wanted to allocate that one. I would reduce the number of characters in the new ones so they take less memory in the pool.

So the only way to really fix this DLC cutscene/homie spawning issue would be to remove all the new character entries? That's a shame. If that's the case I'll probably just wait for official mod support so I can add them all to a new packfile. Removing them all now would be a ton of work and make the mod much less fun to use.

You have to get the total number of entries < 500. I'm not sure how many you added, but it was the number that didn't fit then yes, it doesnt' seem good. It's possible that we didn't use 52 entries for DLC and you could flag them as DLC, but it seems a very specific number.

 

[Haganu]

car_4dr_nite doesn't even exist, probably a typo for car_4dr_nyte01, I don't see the problem with the other vehicles though.

But I don't get one thing: You stated that the game preserves 52 slots for DLC characters:

(552 total, but 52 reserved for DLC)

While in total there's space for 552 characters, so you can go up to 500 characters, but the game crashes even when I have 6 more characters left to make. Or did I just make the sum wrong and is it actually that the limit lies at 500 and that you can actually have 448 characters without the game crashing when loading DLC missions? I don't think it's this because the standard vanilla character.xtbl file overrides the 448 with around 50 characters, but add more than 5 characters and your game ends spacing out.

Also, you stated this:

saints_Cyrus_temple, saints_female_kenziesr3, saints_female_lin, saints_female_shaundidptest, saints_female_shaundinude, saints_female_tanya, saints_male_deadgat, saints_male_djveteranchild, saints_male_julius, saints_male_maero, saints_male_sr1player, saints_male_sr2player, saints_male_vptheylive, saints_male_williamsharp, and skinballs will not fit in the character preset limits.

But these characters are all in the vanilla files. So, I assume it's safe to erase all of those entries without my game spacing out?
If so, maybe I can work the idea I had in mind out after all. I mean, what's the point of leaving those entries in if they can't get loaded anyways?

 

[shitface]

car_4dr_nite doesn't even exist, probably a typo for car_4dr_nyte01, I don't see the problem with the other vehicles though.

That's because it's actually car_4dr_nyte01. Everyone fucked up. Definitely not just me.

But these characters are all in the vanilla files. So, I assume it's safe to erase all of those entries without my game spacing out?
If so, maybe I can work the idea I had in mind out after all. I mean, what's the point of leaving those entries in if they can't get loaded anyways?

Knobby was referring to those entries not being loaded in my mod due to the large amount of new entries before them. I would avoid removing any vanilla character entries.

You have to get the total number of entries < 500. I'm not sure how many you added, but it was the number that didn't fit then yes, it doesnt' seem good. It's possible that we didn't use 52 entries for DLC and you could flag them as DLC, but it seems a very specific number.

My mod adds about 36 new character entries. Maybe I'll put together a new gimped version with the maximum allowed number of new entries, just to maximize compatibility.

One last question....did you think the mod made SR4 more fun?

 

[[V] Knobby]

car_4dr_nite doesn't even exist, probably a typo for car_4dr_nyte01, I don't see the problem with the other vehicles though.

But I don't get one thing: You stated that the game preserves 52 slots for DLC characters:


While in total there's space for 552 characters, so you can go up to 500 characters, but the game crashes even when I have 6 more characters left to make. Or did I just make the sum wrong and is it actually that the limit lies at 500 and that you can actually have 448 characters without the game crashing when loading DLC missions? I don't think it's this because the standard vanilla character.xtbl file overrides the 448 with around 50 characters, but add more than 5 characters and your game ends spacing out.

There are 552 spots, so 500 for the main game, 52 for DLC.

But these characters are all in the vanilla files. So, I assume it's safe to erase all of those entries without my game spacing out?
If so, maybe I can work the idea I had in mind out after all. I mean, what's the point of leaving those entries in if they can't get loaded anyways?

These were the entries bumped out of the game because they were at the end of the file. The game loads entries until it runs out of room and anything leftover is just ignored.