chipstick Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 Link: www.loverslab.com/topic/56588-corruptedsaves/page-4 See post 74. Thank you to vyper00 and everyone else who contributed to that thread. I can't explain it well as I don't understand the programming or technical architecture behind this, so read the thread - from post 74 onwards. Basically, skyrim save games can only accumulate approx 65500 papyrus strings - scripted mods all add to this count, and playing the game itself does as well. Once you hit the limit, the save corrupts and is unreadable even in savetool or script cleaner. If you ever consistently find your save games becoming unplayable a number of hours in, youre starting with a load order that puts you dangerously close to the 65k+ limit, and the hours of play just then push it over the edge. Registering sexlab animations also cost strings, hence why some people found that registering large SLAL packs resulted in their saves becoming unplayable. It isn't ever an issue in a lightly modded skyrim; I checked the script count in a 100 hour mostly vanilla game I had lying around in a backup folder (only had the DLCs, unofficial patches, SKYUI and some armour mods - nothing else), and it was at 29000 strings or so, nowhere close to the 65k limit. In sexlab modded skyrim, where mod scripts abound - its a different story. Markdf (post 88) found that the sexlab framework alone added 450 strings (not many) - but initialising it added another 1400 strings, and the base creature animations would then add yet another 550 strings. Registering animations would take about 12 strings per animation. He also checked a bunch of other mods - found that interestingnpcs for example would add about 3400 strings due to the huge number of scripts involved. It adds up easily. Checked out my own save, with the load order including Sexlab, ZAZ animation pack, Devious Devices, Deviously Cursed Loot, pet collar, MNC, aroused creatures, estruschaurus, immersive creatures + baddogs patch, devious cidhna, Enhanced towns and villages, Erkeil's populated series as the biggest mods (+ some much smaller mods with less scripting) - 41199 strings. Installed SD+ as I had been intending to (along with the required SL dialogues and Death Alternative) - that added another 1600 strings. Vyper00 was starting games at about 55k strings and hitting the 65k limit in about 100 hours, though he was adding some mods along the way (post 76). Monoman suggests that the string growth is dependent on the load order (more scripts, more rapid string accumulation)? On my current sexlab save, clearing a dungeon seemed to add about 30-50 strings, but thats just one dungeon, hardly rigorous testing. Just something to think about. I used to consider and test my load order ONLY with regards to papyrus load and stability - if it seemed to work fine in the first few hours, I considered it a safe addition. Now I'm considering how it add to the papyrus strings as well - even if the game seems stable and manageable - if it takes you close to the limit it could be a problem if youre hoping for a long playthrough. (If you only intend to play a short game with that character then I guess its less of a worry). Tesvesse can be used to check your string count (Search nexus, too lazy to link it at this point). Expand global data table 3, click on papyrus, look at "strings". Credit to Monoman, post 100. Just posting this, because its something I would have loved to know, had I not stumbled across the above thread in the sexlab technical support forum. May also hopefully help some people realise the cause of their save corruption, rather than just blaming the latest mod they added. And I guess its something for modders to consider when they start adding scripts.
street2 Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 Very intresting, but I somehow still cant believe its true for "clean" load orders. I got 40823 Strings on a Save File with around 10 hours of playtime. Same Character, other Save File, 40874 Strings with around 16 hours - finished Winterhold Questline, Forbidden Legend and Lost to the Ages Quest. There happened quite a lot between these two saves and String Count only increased by 50? At this rate i could play for 6000 hours before hitting the 65k limit. I do use Sexlab, zaz, RadiantProstitution, Deafeat, SLAL, DVA, MilkMod, Mias Lair and a Ton of Armor Mods. I still believe its just a problem of "too heavily modded" Games. My current Game is moderately modded, if I would add in more heavy Stuff like DeviousDevices or MNC then sure, String Count could go crazy after a few hours, however these heavily modded Games normally cant be played for more than 2 hours without getting a CTD and after encountering one I know I gotta make a change in my Modlist. The "occasional normal Skyrim CTD" doesnt happen to me. It does only happen when I install some heavy Mods. Anyways basically what Im trying to say: It all comes down to the Modlist. Many heavy Mods in your Game at once = CTD, and probably high StringCount very fast. Light/Moderate modded = no CTD and probably being able to play for thousands of hours before StringCount hits the limit. So it still is all about which Mods you use at the same time as other Mods. For example I would never run SD+, MNC, DeviousCursedLoot and MilkMod at the same time. Its bound for failure with all Options in all Mods activated, probably couldnt even play a Game like that for more than 5 hours.
chipstick Posted March 10, 2016 Author Posted March 10, 2016 Very intresting, but I somehow still cant believe its true for "clean" load orders. I got 40823 Strings on a Save File with around 10 hours of playtime. Same Character, other Save File, 40874 Strings with around 16 hours - finished Winterhold Questline, Forbidden Legend and Lost to the Ages Quest. There happened quite a lot between these two saves and String Count only increased by 50? At this rate i could play for 6000 hours before hitting the 65k limit. I do use Sexlab, zaz, RadiantProstitution, Deafeat, SLAL, DVA, MilkMod, Mias Lair and a Ton of Armor Mods. I still believe its just a problem of "too heavily modded" Games. My current Game is moderately modded, if I would add in more heavy Stuff like DeviousDevices or MNC then sure, String Count could go crazy after a few hours, however these heavily modded Games normally cant be played for more than 2 hours without getting a CTD and after encountering one I know I gotta make a change in my Modlist. The "occasional normal Skyrim CTD" doesnt happen to me. It does only happen when I install some heavy Mods. Anyways basically what Im trying to say: It all comes down to the Modlist. Many heavy Mods in your Game at once = CTD, and probably high StringCount very fast. Light/Moderate modded = no CTD and probably being able to play for thousands of hours before StringCount hits the limit. So it still is all about which Mods you use at the same time as other Mods. For example I would never run SD+, MNC, DeviousCursedLoot and MilkMod at the same time. Its bound for failure with all Options in all Mods activated, probably couldnt even play a Game like that for more than 5 hours. Yep, thats more or less what seems to be the case. As I highlighted, for my own very lightly modded vanilla game, I had only 29k strings after 100 hours, and probably started the game at mid20k. I couldve played hundreds (thousands really) more hours without coming near the limit. I'm not even sure there's enough vanilla content to realistically hit the limit. Its more a concern with sexlab games, and many players here (like me) have heavily modded games. The string count would balloon then, from the installation of the mods, but also possibly (probably?) more rapid string accumulation due to the ongoing scripts. I particularly wonder about mods that track variables for not just the PC, but for multiple NPCs as well (That's just conjecture on my part, as I don't have the knowledge base to really say without direct testing). So its not a case of "true" or not - its about managing your papyrus string count. CTDs on heavily modded games is a different matter as I understand it. That's probably from stressing the game engine or papyrus itself. (Once you start getting stack dumps from overloading papyrus, I think your games start acting funny from then on. I personally have put more mods in my order than papyrus can reliably manage simultaenously, but turning different mods on and off at a time - e.g. DCUR, aroused creatures, pet collar, deviously enslaved, slaverun's enforcer engine - all can be mostly deactivated to minimise their impact on papyrus. My save game has been stable for over 50 hours (no stack dumps in any logs as I can tell), with occasional crash on loads. However, the papyrus string limit means that I really need to be accounting for papyrus string accumulation or risk total save corruption)
Clockwinding Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 I gave it a shot and opened a save game with tesvess editor, opened the global data 3, then papyrus, and i'm a 51k strings. But i'm still unable to load it! I did not install/uninstall mods during the gameplay either, and i do run heavy mods. But this game only has around 15 hours of gameplay, and with the same mods config, i already played multiple saves at 40+ hours. so it may not be like this, and i'm pretty puzzled.
chipstick Posted March 10, 2016 Author Posted March 10, 2016 I gave it a shot and opened a save game with tesvess editor, opened the global data 3, then papyrus, and i'm a 51k strings. But i'm still unable to load it! I did not install/uninstall mods during the gameplay either, and i do run heavy mods. But this game only has around 15 hours of gameplay, and with the same mods config, i already played multiple saves at 40+ hours. so it may not be like this, and i'm pretty puzzled. I'm not sure. Like I said before, I'm the wrong person to be making technical suggestions. Are you able to open the affected save with save cleaner? Saves that are corrupted by the problem highlighted in the support thread can't even be opened by save cleaner. Thats all I can think of.
Veladarius Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 From what it looks like (from reading the other thread) the strings are things like scripts, script properties, script variables, quest aliases or anything else the game has to track that may change. My guess on the reason for it changing while playing is the addition of items that it has to track. I run a fairly heavily modded game, currently at 245 esp/esm's with about 65 being armor mods. I run a number of SexLab and DD mods (35+) alongside developing Captured Dreams (currently at about 1600 scripts). Here are some of the string stats from a few of my save games: - New game from a month ago (first save after generating character in LAL) - 53,357 - Character last save just before starting the new game above (level 11 and had done mainly side quests) - 54,048 - Latest save during testing CD v4 - 54,185 This has had more content added since the new game above - New game (just made) with all mods that needed started in the MCM menu started, SexLab animations registered and latest version of CD - 52,800 - New game (just made) just as the one above except without CD enabled and all SexLab animations registered - 52,877 Currently I don't run mods like SD+ or other slavery mods or more than 1-2 companion mods (nothing complex or custom voiced). I am running Better Vampires, Moonlight Tales, Inconsequestial npc's and better quest objectives. As of yet I have not had any corrupted saves.
Clockwinding Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 I gave it a shot and opened a save game with tesvess editor, opened the global data 3, then papyrus, and i'm a 51k strings. But i'm still unable to load it! I did not install/uninstall mods during the gameplay either, and i do run heavy mods. But this game only has around 15 hours of gameplay, and with the same mods config, i already played multiple saves at 40+ hours. so it may not be like this, and i'm pretty puzzled. I'm not sure. Like I said before, I'm the wrong person to be making technical suggestions. Are you able to open the affected save with save cleaner? Saves that are corrupted by the problem highlighted in the support thread can't even be opened by save cleaner. Thats all I can think of. Yes, i'm able to open it in save cleaner. I tried enabling the game logs, and the game load crashes without saying when, no "VM is thawing" line after the "game load" one. In the end i'm disabling more and more mods, to try and get to the "cap" that'll let me play again...if i manage to load the game just once, i'll be able to clean it a bit and go on. Or maybe i'll just start a new game, i wasn't that far anyway.
spoonsinger Posted March 10, 2016 Posted March 10, 2016 Interesting. What might be useful would be more information/stats on what the increase of the string list is over many hours of a standard game and a notional heavily modded game, (where people haven't been randomly adding/taking away mods during their game play). I mean,if for instance a persons start game was in the 50K due to mods but ,overtime during game play to a significant extent, it actually only increased by 5k it's not going to be a problem. However if there is a definite ramp up of that figure it might also be useful information.
chipstick Posted March 11, 2016 Author Posted March 11, 2016 From what it looks like (from reading the other thread) the strings are things like scripts, script properties, script variables, quest aliases or anything else the game has to track that may change. My guess on the reason for it changing while playing is the addition of items that it has to track. I run a fairly heavily modded game, currently at 245 esp/esm's with about 65 being armor mods. I run a number of SexLab and DD mods (35+) alongside developing Captured Dreams (currently at about 1600 scripts). Here are some of the string stats from a few of my save games: - New game from a month ago (first save after generating character in LAL) - 53,357 - Character last save just before starting the new game above (level 11 and had done mainly side quests) - 54,048 - Latest save during testing CD v4 - 54,185 This has had more content added since the new game above - New game (just made) with all mods that needed started in the MCM menu started, SexLab animations registered and latest version of CD - 52,800 - New game (just made) just as the one above except without CD enabled and all SexLab animations registered - 52,877 Currently I don't run mods like SD+ or other slavery mods or more than 1-2 companion mods (nothing complex or custom voiced). I am running Better Vampires, Moonlight Tales, Inconsequestial npc's and better quest objectives. As of yet I have not had any corrupted saves. Thanks for sharing your thread count Veladrius! That script variables contribute to thread count makes me careful about certain mods that track variables for lots of npcs. I gave it a shot and opened a save game with tesvess editor, opened the global data 3, then papyrus, and i'm a 51k strings. But i'm still unable to load it! I did not install/uninstall mods during the gameplay either, and i do run heavy mods. But this game only has around 15 hours of gameplay, and with the same mods config, i already played multiple saves at 40+ hours. so it may not be like this, and i'm pretty puzzled. I'm not sure. Like I said before, I'm the wrong person to be making technical suggestions. Are you able to open the affected save with save cleaner? Saves that are corrupted by the problem highlighted in the support thread can't even be opened by save cleaner. Thats all I can think of. Yes, i'm able to open it in save cleaner. I tried enabling the game logs, and the game load crashes without saying when, no "VM is thawing" line after the "game load" one. In the end i'm disabling more and more mods, to try and get to the "cap" that'll let me play again...if i manage to load the game just once, i'll be able to clean it a bit and go on. Or maybe i'll just start a new game, i wasn't that far anyway. Unfortunately it seems something else is happening with your save game, but its not header corruption due to excess papyrus threads. I hope you get it sorted >_< Interesting. What might be useful would be more information/stats on what the increase of the string list is over many hours of a standard game and a notional heavily modded game, (where people haven't been randomly adding/taking away mods during their game play). I mean,if for instance a persons start game was in the 50K due to mods but ,overtime during game play to a significant extent, it actually only increased by 5k it's not going to be a problem. However if there is a definite ramp up of that figure it might also be useful information. Agreed. From what I can tell, even in a heavily modded game like mine, far as I can tell, it takes quite a few dozen hours of gameplay to accumulate 1000 threads over gameplay. But until now I haven't had any mods that track npc variables (just for the pc). I've just added Slaverun and we'll see how that goes - I don't know if it tracks every female npc to determine if theyre a slave or free. I'll monitor the thread count.
Veladarius Posted March 11, 2016 Posted March 11, 2016 From what it looks like (from reading the other thread) the strings are things like scripts, script properties, script variables, quest aliases or anything else the game has to track that may change. My guess on the reason for it changing while playing is the addition of items that it has to track. I run a fairly heavily modded game, currently at 245 esp/esm's with about 65 being armor mods. I run a number of SexLab and DD mods (35+) alongside developing Captured Dreams (currently at about 1600 scripts). Here are some of the string stats from a few of my save games: - New game from a month ago (first save after generating character in LAL) - 53,357 - Character last save just before starting the new game above (level 11 and had done mainly side quests) - 54,048 - Latest save during testing CD v4 - 54,185 This has had more content added since the new game above - New game (just made) with all mods that needed started in the MCM menu started, SexLab animations registered and latest version of CD - 52,800 - New game (just made) just as the one above except without CD enabled and all SexLab animations registered - 52,877 Currently I don't run mods like SD+ or other slavery mods or more than 1-2 companion mods (nothing complex or custom voiced). I am running Better Vampires, Moonlight Tales, Inconsequestial npc's and better quest objectives. As of yet I have not had any corrupted saves. Thanks for sharing your thread count Veladrius! That script variables contribute to thread count makes me careful about certain mods that track variables for lots of npcs. I wonder how things like form lists and other types of lists relate to string count, does each item in the list count as a string? I know that factions are a type of list so they may not have much of an impact on the string count so they may be utilized more if they don't.
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