Shivering Isles bug breaks game

By Robert Purchese Published 10 April, 2007

Unplayable after 50 to 120 hours.

A serious bug has been uncovered in Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles, which renders the game unplayable after as little as 50 hours.

The problem is being caused by scripts for a handful of new NPC characters, which are using up several ID numbers (allocated to new objects) every frame. This means that internal space for these numbers will be exhausted much sooner than intended, making freshly created objects eventually disappear from the game world.

So, depending on your frame per second count, you will have a drastically reduced possible play time before everything goes awry. The Xbox 360 version of the game runs at around 30 FPS, giving you 80-150 hours before things to awry, but PC users running at a faster rate will encounter problems sooner. Apparently the original game would run out of ID space after 1000 hours of play time. But strangely no one could confirm this.

The bug becomes effective as soon as Shivering Isles is installed, regardless of whether you're exploring the new content or not. Developer Bethesda says it is aware of these problems and is working around the clock to fix them.

"Regarding the issue in which Form IDs are being used at a high rate in the Shivering Isles content; we are aware of the issue and we are currently looking into a solution," a developer contributed on the official forum."We appreciate your patience, especially from those of you affected by this issue, as we carefully work out a fix that will correct this problem without adding any new issues."

So, until then, Bethesda suggests you do one of a few things. X360 gamers will want to make a copy of your saved game for safe keeping, and either lay off playing Shivering Isles for a few days until the problems are confirmed and addressed, or start a new character to explore the content, as others won't be affected by this.

PC users should head over to the game's wiki and select one of a selection of places to download the patch from - immediately! There is also a repair tool that will attempt to alter your saved game using some sort of techno-wizardry, but it's currently unsupported and could lead to broken characters and a few fantasy tears.

Shivering Isles is the first proper expansion pack for Oblivion, which introduces the wacky realm of Deadra Prince Sheogorath. This crazy fellow will soon be asking for you help to repel invaders to his plane of Oblivion, which sees you undertake progressively more bizarre tasks.

We recently got our hands on it and were somewhat underwhelmed. It was great to be back in the lands of Oblivion, but the addition seemed to lack the spark of the original. You can read our Shivering Isles review elsewhere on Eurogamer.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Inspirius #1 5 years ago

    That's a pretty serious bug to have gotten through the QA department, what where they doing?

  • Der_tolle_Emil #2 5 years ago

    Not only that but the programmers themselves were probably aware of that ever since they started. They were probably hoping that the content designers were a lazy bunch.

  • Eraser #3 5 years ago

    Am I correct when I assume this pops up after 50 hours of non-stop play and not simply a total accumulated 50 hours of gameplay? Who would play 50 hours non-stop?

  • JediMasterMalik #4 5 years ago

    So they finally found a situation where a low framerate is a good thing?

    Bravo!

  • numptyboymatt #5 5 years ago

    I re-bought Oblivion so I could play this.... luckily Ive not tried to use it yet, best steer clear until its all fixed then!

  • kangarootoo #6 5 years ago

    @bigo

    Which quadrant was left green when you got the RoD?

    I'm really not sure software (Oblivion or anything else) can cause that sort of problem (The RoD signifies a hardware fault).

    It actually sounds like the content failed to load because of a drive issue, rather than it being the cause of the problem itself.

  • Aretak #7 5 years ago

    "Am I correct when I assume this pops up after 50 hours of non-stop play and not simply a total accumulated 50 hours of gameplay?"

    No.

  • Eraser #8 5 years ago

    lol that's bad then

  • Flabio #9 5 years ago

    If it takes you 50 hours from the point you install it to finishing it, you're not much of a gamer though :)

  • GamesConnoisseur #10 5 years ago

    bigo

    Me too! Got ring of death (upper right quadrant still green) just after I downloaded Shiv Isle. Expect to get X360 back end of this week or week after. Glad that this bug occured so should have bug fixed by the time I get my console back.

    Glad to be playing Okami which was still in its wrapper, and only got released from the pugatory when X360 entered oblivion.

  • SeesThroughAll #11 5 years ago

    Bethesda Softworks releases buggy game shocker.

  • Dizzy #12 5 years ago

    >SI is pretty much the same as Oblivion really, but with some new graphics.

    And new items, spells, quests and monsters.

    What did you expect? A platform game? An Oblivion dance mat?

  • RumpyStumpy #13 5 years ago

    Not again! I had to restart the whole game because of the Mages Guild bug and now they go and do this. If I have to restart with another character I will go postal.

    For their own saftey they had better fix this quick!!!

  • Tonka #14 5 years ago

    I'm glad that I'm not one of the guys working on this.

  • repairmanjack #15 5 years ago

    Queue for a refund starts here.

  • Redeye #16 5 years ago

    kangarootoo: "I'm really not sure software (Oblivion or anything else) can cause that sort of problem (The RoD signifies a hardware fault). "

    Saint's Row did exactly the same to a friend's 360, right in front of my somewhat-incredulous eyes.

  • kangarootoo #17 5 years ago

    @Redeye

    Interesting stuff. I don't know a whole lot about the RoD except what I just garnered from a scoot round the web, so I was making some assumptions about what could and couldn't be the cause.

    I might suggest though, that if a drive fails whilst a game is running it might appear that the game was responsible. When in fact it might simply have been that drive activity was high at the time (perhaps when sucking up downloaded content into memory just after boot), prompting a failure that was waiting in the wings...?

    I would be interested to know in any event.

  • GamesConnoisseur #18 5 years ago

    I would not attribute my ring of death purely down to Oblivion, as I had watched several HD DVD film back to back the night before (had just got it that day) and then download Shiv Isle all night, played Jet Pac Refulled before trying to play Shiv Isle. By that time X360 was on for good 14 hours and obviously quite overworked, then RoD occur.

    Mine is likewise out of warranty and getting a free repair. But never had problem before then, but I also never put my X360 to the pressures it underwent in 14 hours!

    Make sure you ration your X360!

  • smelly #19 5 years ago

    The Xbox 360 version of the game runs at around 30 FPS


    *cough* *cough* splutter..

    Not the version i played didnt.. more like 10fps.

  • smelly #20 5 years ago

    >Bethesda Softworks releases buggy game shocker.
    >Oh dear, Bethesda forgetting to play their games before releasing them. Again.


    Oh come off it!

    There's a HUGE difference between a game like this and a game which other companies pump out.

    Something like this is so hugely big, that im surprised more bugs arent found.

    Can you imagine the poor QA dept having to play test this entire beast every day? Do you realise how much QA goes into even a small simple game? The amount of testing reqd to make sure something this big has no major bugs would be astronomical.

    Edited by 1 at 10/04/07 @ 17:23

  • Darren #21 5 years ago

    It is a bit worrying for me as Oblivion is a game that I have spent 100s of hours playing so I would think nothing of spending another 50 playing the Shivering Isles. I am disappointed that Bethesda did not address this BEFORE they released the new game, particularly as they knew about it and must know that this not a game you only play for 20 hours!!!

  • Red-Moose #22 5 years ago

    This is a bloody bag bug. I got bored of Oblivion after around 15 hrs as it felt a bit too basic and repetitive compared to previous Elder Scrolls games. Such a shame that they seem to be cocking up console games these days. With SC:DA being crap on PS3 and Oblivion: SI blatantly being feckered......what does the future have in store for console gaming I wonder.
    /goes back to playing solo OFFLINE Virtua Tennis 3

    @bigo: bizarrely, I am also typing this on my PS3! Using the Vaio wirelss keyboard with integrated touchpad. Very nice, feels like Back to the Future II!
    Edited by 1 at 10/04/07 @ 22:39

  • NegativeZero #23 5 years ago

    30 frames per second and it runs out after 150 hours... the capacity of a 32-bit unsigned integer is 4,294,967,295. That means they're generating just over 265 new ids every frame. That can't be right. What the fuck are these NPCs doing and how the christ did this get through QA?

    EDIT: If they're using 16-bit integers and running out then the answer to the problem is pretty simple...
    Edited by 1 at 11/04/07 @ 01:52

  • Fatallyflawed #24 5 years ago

    "And new items, spells, quests and monsters.

    What did you expect? A platform game? An Oblivion dance mat?"


    Cool I want an oblivion dance mat game now, C'mon Bethesda Oblivion Dance now

  • Nikanoru #25 5 years ago

    Oblivion poorly programmed? You don't say!



    Unplayable after 50 to 120 hours.

    I found the game to be unplayable after about 2!

    ...I didn't bring my coat.