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Bethesda fell to this themselves in the original scripts for Tribunal's Museum. The script for Elidon's Ward_x was goofed. One of the patches fixed it, though.

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Thanks! I think that's the first time I've heard anybody mention this bug in any scripts done by Bethesda.


Hmm....

Wonder if they have the bug in any more of their scripts. If there are any in the original version of the game, that might explain why X-Boxers (with no mods or patches) sometimes report encumbrance errors.

And before anybody asks, I have NO idea how to fix encumbrance problems on the X-Box. Sorry!

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How to avoid the most common problem encountered by new modders: "Dirty Saves: Causes and Cures"

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I was kinda surprised when I saw your post because I thought everybody knew about the bug and that MWSD 5 was wrong on that count. Any time you RemoveItem ANYTHING (not just weapons or armour), whether the PC has one (or ten) or not, the encumberance is subtracted. That's why it's always imperative to use a GetItemCount before RemoveItem; unless it's a situation where you're completely sure they have the number you're going to Remove.
As for being overencumbered, I've never heard of that nor experienced it; but I don't switch mods around all that much.

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What I know about the modding community's knowledge of the RemoveItem bug:

1. Back in mid-March, I first identified this bug while using a mod that added several pieces of race-specific clothing and armor to the game. I noticed that my character's encumbrance was around 60 or so too low, and I tracked it down to the RemoveItem function in a script used to remove extra clothing items that didn't match my character's race.

I communicated with the modder about it, and it turned out he had no idea the bug existed until I told him about it.

After that, I didn't follow up on it. I wasn't doing any modding then, wasn't following Construction Set forums, etc., and didn't realize this bug wasn't general knowledge. I thought it was just a case of one modder who didn't know about it.


2. I got back to the subject in April, and wound up starting this thread to let people know about the bug.

In April:

I downloaded a new mod that added several pieces of race-specific clothing to the game. In the readme, the modder mentioned (in the credits) that he had based his scripts on ones written by the modder who had created the mod I had previously identified the bug in.

I looked at the scripts in the new mod and tried the mod in the game, and discovered that this new mod also had the RemoveItem bug.

I contacted the second modder, and discovered he didn't know anything about the bug: he wasn't a scripting expert, and had just adapted the scripts developed by the first modder without realizing they were were affected by a bug.


I also checked GhanBuriGhan's "Morrowind Scripting for Dummies", and discovered the statement that "Removing items that are not present in the inventory seems to be safe...".

I emailed GhanBuriGhan about the bug I'd found, and discovered that he didn't know about it either. He suggested that I post about the bug here, and he also said he would include the information in MSFD the next time he did an update.

(No idea what his plans for an update are.)


I also did some searches of the forums while investigating this, and don't remember any indications that this bug was generally known before I started this thread. I did find Joshua's posts about using RemoveItem from the console to fix problems with excessive encumbrance, but nothing about a generally known bug.


Right now, I bump this thread every now and then, for the benefit of any new modders who aren't aware of the bug. The last bump was a couple of months ago, so I figured it was time for another one.


As far as the displayed encumbrance value being too high: I'm surprised you've never heard of this. Posts asking for help with incorrect too-high encumbrance are fairly common in the forums (probably more in the General forum than in the Construction Set forums).

One common cause of incorrect too-high encumbrance is uninstalling a mod while items from the mod are in the character's inventory: the item disappears, but the encumbrance doesn't get updated.

I've seen other causes mentioned, but I can't remember them offhand.

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What would be nice would be for one of the experienced scripters to write up a package of bug-free scripts for handling race-specific clothing that non-scripters could 'copy and paste' onto their items. Mods with race-specific clothing and armor items are pretty popular, and a set of good, well-tested scripts would be a nice resource to help the artistic types out.

As I've said before, I'm not (by any means!) a scripter. I can fumble through somebody's else's script and usually get an idea of what's going on, but I don't have the skills to create any kind of complex scripts on my own.

I'm more of a troubleshooter, not a creator or designer.

--------------------
How to avoid the most common problem encountered by new modders: "Dirty Saves: Causes and Cures"

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This bug is activated by another of BethSoft scripts. Specifically the Fields of Kummu triolith. That checks to see if you have more than 0 muck, then does this line if you say yes to donate.

Player->RemoveItem Ingred_Muck_01 10

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You inspired me to do a text search for uses of 'RemoveItem', but it's in so many dialogue result boxes and scripts that I gave up on looking for more bugs that way. Maybe sometime when I'm ready to spend an evening or two digging through scripts and dialogue.

It's quite possible that Bethesda got careless other places, so that might explain why people on the X-Box sometimes report that their encumbrance is too low.


This bug wouldn't be a problem if the game ever recalculated encumbrance from scratch, but it doesn't seem to: apparently it always assumes the current value is always correct, and just adds or subtracts from that as the player's inventory changes. End result is that any mistakes just accumulate, without ever being corrected.

--------------------
How to avoid the most common problem encountered by new modders: "Dirty Saves: Causes and Cures"

http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=tesconstsethelp&Number=1909624&fpart=1&PHPSESSID=

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The only other one I've found in MW or Tribunal and uses Player->RemoveItem without Player->GetItemCount.

magasScript
Player->AddItem "daedric_crescent_unique" 1
Player->RemoveItem "Daedric_special" 1

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I found one in script called 'Droth Chest' (or something like that), but then I realized I'd have to check for any other scripts, dialogue, etc. that might be involved: something else might check for the item before the script is called to remove it.

For example, the script that removes the item might be run from a dialogue results box that's only used if the player actually has the item.

It was when I realized how much extra checking would be needed every time I found a 'RemoveItem' in a script without a 'GetItemCount' that I decided to leave it for some time when I had lots of time to kill.

--------------------
How to avoid the most common problem encountered by new modders: "Dirty Saves: Causes and Cures"

http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=tesconstsethelp&Number=1909624&fpart=1&PHPSESSID=

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Most people are aware of this now, but there are quite a few mods out there that were created before anyone knew about it. In particular, there are quite a few mods that correctly check for the presence of an item (usually arrows or ingredients) but then the RemoveItem script removes more instances of the item than what the player is actually carrying. There are also some mods that use RemoveItem after the player has already dropped the item.

The best way to remove the right number of an item is to use a local variable:

IF Player->GetItemCount, "Item X" > 0
Set Num_of_Items to Player->GetItemCount, "Item X"
Player->RemoveItem, "Item X", Num_of_Items
ENDIF

This is one instance where you can use a variable as a function argument.

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I still see occasional 'blank looks' in the Mods forum when somebody mentions this issue, which is why I've been bumping this thread periodically.

Even if most of the experienced modders know about this by now, there are still a lot of new people just starting to mod. And bumping this is really the only way for them to find out about this until the new edition of SFD comes out.



Also, I was under the impression that variables could only be used with Add/RemoveItem in dialogue results boxes, not in regular scripts. And it apparently only works with global variables, and the global variable can't be set in the same results box.

All this is discussed in the SFD Errata thread, linked from the pinned 'links' post at the top of this forum. If that information is wrong, please add the corrected information to that thread very soon, so it has a chance of being included in the upcoming new edition of SFD.

--------------------
How to avoid the most common problem encountered by new modders: "Dirty Saves: Causes and Cures"

http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=tesconstsethelp&Number=1909624&fpart=1&PHPSESSID=

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