Save Bloat and Constant Freezing

Post » Mon Dec 07, 2015 7:29 am

PC version were not immune to the bloat and freezing issues. We PC players just have ways to prevent them, unlike on consoles.

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XPidgex Jefferson
 
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Post » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:26 pm

This takes me back to Morrowind. Remembering to close every door I opened and not bothering objects in the world unless they were worth it.
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Justin Bywater
 
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Post » Mon Dec 07, 2015 9:49 am

One thing that DID cause serious issues with Skyrim was the scripting method that could cause data to be inserted into save game files (even AFTER the mod was removed). Pretty sure I read in an interview that this "feature" was removed from Fallout 4 scripting, so that seems to be one less thing to worry about.

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leigh stewart
 
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Post » Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:08 pm

Better be removed. With mods now coming to X1 more people will start experimentinig with them. If the "feature" is still there, a lot of people will have nuked saves due to not realizing that removing a mod will damage the save.

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TRIsha FEnnesse
 
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Post » Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:04 pm

It didn't actually damage the save, but it did leave unnecessary date behind in it and depending on the scripting the mod used, it could be significant data. The real issue was that modders were not initially aware that their scripting could bloat save files (because scripting had never had any interaction with save files prior to Skyrim). It was even so bad that updates to the same mods (that altered scripting variables...a common thing) would bloat the save files with every mod update. It only came to light after players that tried tons of mods realized they were taking forever to load games and at some point the games would lockup loading. Some modders found the issue early on and warned about it but it wasn't until saves started being unable to load that ti was widely accepted as something modders had to deal with (Bethesda could not go back and change the scripting method). Several utilities were developed to allow players to "clean" their saves as a stop-gap, but the potential problem exists to this day.

Awarness of the issue can allow modders to avoid the problem as much as possible, but if you use scripts in your mods, you can't avoid it completely (it even effects SKSE scripting).

As mention above, it was reported that Bethesda have removed scripting instances from save game files in FO4, so it shouldn't be an issue.

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Bethany Watkin
 
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