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Post by Sniffles on Jul 19, 2015 8:45:42 GMT
Glad everything works fine, but as I understand, you are exiting the game after each saving, isn't it? if so, you only need to exit the game before loadding a save, not after saving. This is because the game didn't reset every variable unless you exit it and so, loadding a game without exiting, can put some variables the way they were before loadding, instead of the way they are supposed to be in the loadded saved game. Just what I was doing. Dumbs in order. 1. I'd save a minute or 2 after an autosave. That manual save would then have some of the fooked up junk of the autosave. 2. Then I'd periodically save and autosave, the manual save usually going on the old manual save. So I was combining numerous autosaves with my manual save. 3. I'd been doing this for months. Undoubtedly some crap from the vast assortment of autosaves filtered into every save I'd recently used. 4. I rarely exited and reloaded manual saves. So the end result became CTD from an autosave about every 5 minutes. CTD from a manual save within a half hour.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 19, 2015 9:32:42 GMT
Isn't overwriting saves also a no-no? That's one thing I don't do - old habit from some other game.
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Post by wotan on Jul 19, 2015 10:56:57 GMT
Isn't overwriting saves also a no-no? That's one thing I don't do - old habit from some other game. For Bethesda games that is something to avoid. Other games are usually not that sensitive about overwriting and corrupting saves that way.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 19, 2015 21:34:24 GMT
The "some other game" must have been Morrowind then.. heh.
This concept of loading and saving to a USB is intriguing.. is it USB 3.0 or are your HD's (c:\ specifically) full, Sniffles? Otherwise I don't understand how that can speed things up.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 19, 2015 22:38:01 GMT
Isn't overwriting saves also a no-no? That's one thing I don't do - old habit from some other game. Techy: "The actual save itself is usually a new file on a new place on the disk. However, the game appears to be using a template to expedite the save. So you have a good chance of waking up to a new rat of a different color in bed with you but with the same bedside manner"
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Post by amgepo on Jul 20, 2015 9:22:10 GMT
I think Wotan means non-Bethesda games when he says other games are usually not that sensitive. Morrowind is indeed an example of a game where you shouldn't overwrite saves. Probably the worst case. About the rat example, my guess is it's the same rat, grossly painted (which probably will make said rat pretty mad at you, as if sleeping with a rat wasn't dangerous enough )
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 20, 2015 21:52:23 GMT
I think Wotan means non-Bethesda games when he says other games are usually not that sensitive. Morrowind is indeed an example of a game where you shouldn't overwrite saves. Probably the worst case. About the rat example, my guess is it's the same rat, grossly painted (which probably will make said rat pretty mad at you, as if sleeping with a rat wasn't dangerous enough ) Techy: "I'd say that was a fair assessment. I had one of my employees do some checking of Skyrim yesterday. It is along the same lines of the Windows operating system. Morrowind would be analogous of Win 98, Skyrim; Win XP. Fat bloated pigs waiting to explode. Almost impossible to shrink in size and given the opportunity it will easily and inevitably expand itself as it founders towards a slow death requiring a complete reinstall. I had him try to shrink the DB of Skyrim by discarding everything collected. 9MB bloated to 14MB then stripped it couldn't get shrunk below 13MB. Add a few mods here and there and play for a couple hundred hours and critical mass will inevitably be staring you in the face.
It makes me wonder why so much of the computer world, like the modern lifestyle, is so firmly based and mired in planned obsolescence. We can revert an entire DB on a real operating system that generates 10GB of data a day to run as we had set it up a year or two ago but they can't get control of a single game without major data loss."
I will add to that. I turned off all the autosaves. I still had periodic crashes. I finally discovered an autosave I hadn't turned off. Leaving the journal open for more than a few minutes. I turned that one off and ran both save cleaners and it ran wonderfully for a half hour before another crash. So we were both staring at the screen and wondering when fluffy pointed out she didn't hear the fan! This piece of poop video card fan tries to cook itself and we have to manually set the fan to scream when playing Skyrim. But it isn't reliable. Have to set it to automatic then back to manual. Sure enough, after doing that Skyrim ran for over an hour crash free. Well, almost crash free, as Tindra would tell you if she had a mouth. I hate this video card.
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Post by amgepo on Jul 21, 2015 9:09:33 GMT
It's fortunate someone heard the fan not running.
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Post by vortik on Jul 29, 2015 12:58:55 GMT
I see my thread has taken off to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations...
I still haven't found a solution to my problem, other than giving up on 18 hours of gameplay and load a savegame where I can still open Vilja's storage :-( Unfortunately the save cleaner doesn't change a thing. Slowly I'm progressing through the stages of grief, finally reaching acceptance... ;-)
I have learned a lot though about Skyrim's mechanics concerning savegames and script count. Summarizing what I've read throughout this thread: - A sudden increase in savegame size indicates script bloat. This means, that there are a lot of scripts running, restarting, launching copies of themselvers without finishing properly. A save cleaner can help reducing script count, but it doesnt't seem to always work. - When a certain number of scripts is running, Skyrim starts bypassing scripts in order to recover from the load, which can ruin quests and scripted actions (like my problem with Vilja or the Stone of Berenziah). - Hoarding stuff increases savegame sizes. - Savegame size increases no matter what, because Skyrim creates records for every place you've been to and only cleans up cells (respawn) when you return to them. - The loading-time difference in loading a savegame from a fresh start of the game and loading while in-game is caused by the game having to sort out changed records since the last load (always wondered about that). It is recommended to exit the game before loading, because otherwise variables might not be loaded propberly. - Autosaves can be messed up because they usually happen when something else going on (like fighting, talking etc.). This usually isn't the case when saving manually. - Overwriting savegames is to be avoided. - The cell buffer, which stores information about cells recently visited in order to decrease load time upon return, can get full very quickly. Since Skyrim can only use more or less 3GB Ram the game crashes when more RAM is needed. The cell buffer can be purged manually by console command "PCB". - Saving to a USB Stick seems to decrease loading time significantly.
So far, very interesting. Thanks a lot! If there are any other ideas for me, I'd be glad to read them.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 29, 2015 18:33:46 GMT
- A sudden increase in savegame size indicates script bloat. This means, that there are a lot of scripts running, restarting, launching copies of themselvers without finishing properly. A save cleaner can help reducing script count, but it doesnt't seem to always work. The SaveTool will work if there's something script related for it to clean. The first thing it will check for is orphaned scripts. If none, and no # or other for it to clean, you can go into the advanced options and see if those help. Although, with a mere 18 hours lost (wink, nudge) you've probably already made it back to the point you were. I've had SaveTool clean remnants (orphaned scripts) from two deleted mods now, including one that supposedly had an uninstall. Initially, however, I had to go into those advanced options before it would do anything. There is another tool called scriptScalpel if you really want to make your head spin. www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53045/?edit: I would actually check that tool out if you have additional problems or if you still want to try and recover your old save. If you start getting ctd's, it can help by showing you what is probably causing them. It's showing me what script/s are generating a lot of instances in my game.. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that info. Well, except that the high instances of mineore and mineorefurniture (among other rubbish) means I won't activate Hearthfire DLC on my next playthru. on the cell reset - the game will do this automatically and not all cells are supposed to reset - check the wiki for reset times. btw, you are using BOSS or LOOT for determining load order, right?
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 29, 2015 22:21:41 GMT
I see my thread has taken off to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations... I still haven't found a solution to my problem, other than giving up on 18 hours of gameplay and load a savegame where I can still open Vilja's storage :-( Unfortunately the save cleaner doesn't change a thing. Slowly I'm progressing through the stages of grief, finally reaching acceptance... ;-) I have learned a lot though about Skyrim's mechanics concerning savegames and script count. Summarizing what I've read throughout this thread: - A sudden increase in savegame size indicates script bloat. This means, that there are a lot of scripts running, restarting, launching copies of themselvers without finishing properly. A save cleaner can help reducing script count, but it doesnt't seem to always work. - When a certain number of scripts is running, Skyrim starts bypassing scripts in order to recover from the load, which can ruin quests and scripted actions (like my problem with Vilja or the Stone of Berenziah). - Hoarding stuff increases savegame sizes. - Savegame size increases no matter what, because Skyrim creates records for every place you've been to and only cleans up cells (respawn) when you return to them. - The loading-time difference in loading a savegame from a fresh start of the game and loading while in-game is caused by the game having to sort out changed records since the last load (always wondered about that). It is recommended to exit the game before loading, because otherwise variables might not be loaded propberly. - Autosaves can be messed up because they usually happen when something else going on (like fighting, talking etc.). This usually isn't the case when saving manually. - Overwriting savegames is to be avoided. - The cell buffer, which stores information about cells recently visited in order to decrease load time upon return, can get full very quickly. Since Skyrim can only use more or less 3GB Ram the game crashes when more RAM is needed. The cell buffer can be purged manually by console command "PCB". - Saving to a USB Stick seems to decrease loading time significantly. So far, very interesting. Thanks a lot! If there are any other ideas for me, I'd be glad to read them. That is a well done synopsis. The game is constantly trying to commit suicide. I would add as an addendum, the ultimate worst thing you can do. Have a house full of collected junk lying around in containers and just out in the open. In among that junk are corrupt items in your inventory that got flagged essential and non drop-able and the stolen flag communicable disease (everything in the stack gets flagged stolen), making for corrupted lists. Add as a bonus Breezehome with the Dawngaurd DLC corrupted childs bedroom. Then walk out the door with the autosave on into a high LOD dynamic - people walking about - environment. The Breezehome scenario can get so bad I have ended up with a 1 in 3 or 4 chance of getting out into Whiterun without the game crashing. What is extremely aggravating is having Breezehome-itus then completely emptying Breezehome and all it's containers and kissing off the childs bedroom. That won't help the DB bloat or the crashing in the least or just a tiny bit, if your save game has an autosave with Breezehome in it's ancestry. In order to get rid of the corruption you have to leave the emptied Breezehome to a low LOD static location and: 1 Save manually 2 Exit game and load that save. 3 Make the clean up save. 4 Run the save game cleaner. 5 Restart the newly saved game 6 Run the other save game cleaner 7 Wait 31 in game days for some cells to get marked for reset 8 Save, exit and reload with fingers crossed. Even after all that you save game bloat won't have shrunk more than about 5% to 10% The thing is, an autosave way way back when that all your subsequent manually saved game have as an ancestor, can leave all saves corrupt. I recently had a lot of game crashing and always had autosaves on. I shut them all off and we have played another 10 or so hours, making about 15 manual new saves. The crashes slowly diminished. The best was yesterday evening where I went for 45 minutes without a single crash. Techy explained that on the fly saves with Windows will always act like this and to this day they use the old Unix system protocol of freezing the entire computer, splitting the DB, what he calls forking, and then making a save. The only entirely corruption free way to save data. Bleah.
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Post by vortik on Jul 30, 2015 18:47:39 GMT
Reading about your ultimate worst scenario, Sniffles, reminds me that I installed this mod recently... www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/66279/?It creates an area on the streets of all the major cities where you can store your stuff. The containers are shared so that you can pick up in Whiterun what you stored in Riften. It's pretty convenient and eager as I was to try it out I moved all of my stuff into these containers. Could this be responsible for the increase in savegame size?
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 30, 2015 23:36:06 GMT
Reading about your ultimate worst scenario, Sniffles, reminds me that I installed this mod recently... www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/66279/?It creates an area on the streets of all the major cities where you can store your stuff. The containers are shared so that you can pick up in Whiterun what you stored in Riften. It's pretty convenient and eager as I was to try it out I moved all of my stuff into these containers. Could this be responsible for the increase in savegame size? This sounds very convenient. It could also be a train wreck waiting to happen. I'd going to hope Amgepo or Wolf or the other developers of Vilja weigh in here. I'm suspecting you could end up with a corrupted list or lists in every city the containers are in. Access the container and the entire cell gets the big fut. I've been avoiding using the container in the tent Vilja erects in case I corrupt that.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 31, 2015 2:40:24 GMT
If your save file increased dramatically not long after the installation of that mod, vortik, then yes, it's that mod. Looking at the Nexus postings, however, no one is reporting problems.
Download that scriptScalpel tool and run it on your save. Take a look at the results and it will tell you what scripts are causing high instance counts.
note: My current game is over 900 hours, has 5000+ scripts and 10k+ scriptInstances in it, so that's not the only factor that will crash a game.
Read the author's notes - he's pretty thorough - it's just a lot to digest.
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Post by amgepo on Jul 31, 2015 6:51:30 GMT
I don't think that mod could suppose any problem corruption wise. My guess is the containers are either activators attached to a script activating player character with the real container, thus allowing it to be done from different places, or, instead of scripts, ash like activators could have used, for a more direct approach.
It will increase CPU/GPU strain when loadding those cells, as it add items there, but from a save size point of view, the only effect I can foresee is less items stored in obscure locations you then forget about, thus few bytes less in the save size.
Of course, the author could have done something really clumsy at some point, but that can be applied to any mod. I can't see any problem attached to the described features, size or corruption wise.
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