varulv Posted March 20, 2016 Posted March 20, 2016 Hello! So seeing how I'm relatively new to modding Skyrim, I wanted to educate myself a little bit, and what better place to ask than the awesome community that is LoversLab. Hopefully there are some creators that see this and know a thing or two about scripts and modding in general. So, bloating, what causes it? Rather, is it mainly bad scripts that don't clean after themselves properly, or those that run constantly in the background? I assume the only way to properly identify culprits and solve things is by using one of those saving game cleaner, like scalpel. Recently for example I installed all the Immersive Wenches mods, and I noticed that it uses a bunch of scripts to summon the NPC's you fight, but of course there's no way to tell if something is volatile just by looking at it, at least not without some knowledge. I have to say, no matter how many heavy scripts I DON'T use, the file size keeps getting bigger and bigger, but seems to stabilize a bit at certain points, so I guess file size increase can't be helped, and any save eventually becomes a big mess. I wonder when problems start happening with a heavily modded Skyrim, some say when the save file reaches 20mb+, others mention the .ess file and that this one plays a bigger role. Any kind of info regarding this is more than welcome.
Xpyke Posted March 20, 2016 Posted March 20, 2016 Well, I'm no expert but I had some experiences before, my saves usually stop working when there are bad scripts, never had problems with sizes, but never got over 30mb, I guess the best thing to do is check in the support topic of the mod, see if there are any mods that conflict, and don't beta test on an important save, keep in mind that the grand majority of modders is no professional, and could have messed up someplace. And just a tip, try to use mod organizer if you can, it's cleaner and keeps your game less prone to crashing, not that nmm is bad, just MO is better.
varulv Posted March 22, 2016 Author Posted March 22, 2016 Well, I'm no expert but I had some experiences before, my saves usually stop working when there are bad scripts, never had problems with sizes, but never got over 30mb, I guess the best thing to do is check in the support topic of the mod, see if there are any mods that conflict, and don't beta test on an important save, keep in mind that the grand majority of modders is no professional, and could have messed up someplace. And just a tip, try to use mod organizer if you can, it's cleaner and keeps your game less prone to crashing, not that nmm is bad, just MO is better. Yeah, file size isn't always a bad thing, I think the alarm should hit when.. for example.. your save size goes from 5mb to 50 in a day or something. That's when you know that some script(s) is running rampart. You've given good advice all in all, thanks.
Xpyke Posted March 22, 2016 Posted March 22, 2016 Well, I'm no expert but I had some experiences before, my saves usually stop working when there are bad scripts, never had problems with sizes, but never got over 30mb, I guess the best thing to do is check in the support topic of the mod, see if there are any mods that conflict, and don't beta test on an important save, keep in mind that the grand majority of modders is no professional, and could have messed up someplace. And just a tip, try to use mod organizer if you can, it's cleaner and keeps your game less prone to crashing, not that nmm is bad, just MO is better. Yeah, file size isn't always a bad thing, I think the alarm should hit when.. for example.. your save size goes from 5mb to 50 in a day or something. That's when you know that some script(s) is running rampart. You've given good advice all in all, thanks. No problem! And if something goes wrong, "save cleaner" for skyrim and "papyrus data transfer" can save your soul, they are kind of complex but no big deal, if you need help with any of them just send a PM.
Veladarius Posted March 23, 2016 Posted March 23, 2016 My saves typically run around 8-9 mb each. If you have mods that spawn items or npc or other things they will have to be tracked and end up in your save. Likely some mods don't always clean up things as well as they should when they are done with something and it just stays there.
Guest Posted March 23, 2016 Posted March 23, 2016 As others have said, your save file size is going to correlate with how much modded stuff you throw at your game - NPC mods, adding to the level lists etc. If it's a steady increase over the life of a play through that's the norm. If you see big sudden spikes though, that's going to be script(s) galloping away with themselves, and it ought to be reflected in your logs. Another issue a lot of people have been experiencing lately is with skse co-save bloat, that's another thing to look at. I have a suspicion that's been kicking the arse out of some of my recent play throughs. Not much I can do about that, I'm not giving up NetImmerse Override stuff, it's too much fun.
Groovtama Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 There is no co-save bloat mods anymore XPMSE is already fixed long ago and the long save times is a bug in skse that happens when it overwrites a already existing save file.
Guest Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 There is no co-save bloat mods anymore XPMSE is already fixed long ago and the long save times is a bug in skse that happens when it overwrites a already existing save file. Thanks for clarifying Groov. In a new game my co-save quadrupled in size to 500kb between level 1 and 10 while the ess file increased by 1 mb. Looking at recent abandoned save profile the skse had got to 1mb while the ess file was at around 11mb and didn't increase at the same rapid rate as skse. I could see that NiOverride was taking up the lion's share of the co-save but I guess that's logical seeing as it's handling a lot of stuff in my game. I try not to do save over-writes but once in a blue moon I forget. I guess doing it just once and then continuing to use that save introduces the bug permanently? I've noticed that it's definitely something that continues to degrade quite a bit, to the point that in the recent past I've completely lost confidence in a save file being reliable and couldn't face falling back 10 levels, just started over. And then the cycle begins over anyway. Regardless, I'm happy to know it's nothing to do with my lovely XPMSE.
Groovtama Posted March 24, 2016 Posted March 24, 2016 There is no co-save bloat mods anymore XPMSE is already fixed long ago and the long save times is a bug in skse that happens when it overwrites a already existing save file.Thanks for clarifying Groov. In a new game my co-save quadrupled in size to 500kb between level 1 and 10 while the ess file increased by 1 mb. Looking at recent abandoned save profile the skse had got to 1mb while the ess file was at around 11mb and didn't increase at the same rapid rate as skse. I could see that NiOverride was taking up the lion's share of the co-save but I guess that's logical seeing as it's handling a lot of stuff in my game. I try not to do save over-writes but once in a blue moon I forget. I guess doing it just once and then continuing to use that save introduces the bug permanently? I've noticed that it's definitely something that continues to degrade quite a bit, to the point that in the recent past I've completely lost confidence in a save file being reliable and couldn't face falling back 10 levels, just started over. And then the cycle begins over anyway. Regardless, I'm happy to know it's nothing to do with my lovely XPMSE. Disable vanilla auto saves Install Auto save manager http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34842/? Set it to Manual Save Mode Your co-save can grow as much as it wants to even when quick or auto-saving
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.