Weirdest FO4 problem to date

[niston]

I've hit a very bizarre problem with my game, for which I cannot find any resolution.

 

About 4 days ago, very much out of the blue, my game started making saves that can't be loaded back. The save will start loading for an extremely brief moment, then disk activity goes to 0% and the game hangs forever, with CPU usage around 35 to 40% and loading screen animations still running. When closing the game window, The Fallout4 process hangs in the background, using over 40% CPU now and must be killed with Taskmanager to get rid of it.

 

I figured it must be a mod, so I started removing half the mods, adding them back in small groups etc. Turns out, when only Snappy Housekit was removed, I could load back my "broken" saves - But still not create new ones. So I tried removing more mods and adding them back. When I removed Sim Settlements (v1), I could load back my saves and make new ones and they'd work (even tho I readded Snappy Housekit).

 

For 3 new saves exactly.

Meaning I could load any of my "broken" saves and create 3 new saves from them that would work. Any saves made after (ie the 4th one and on) could not be loaded back.

 

So I done more diagnostics, removing and readding mods, and it turns out that when I also removed Workshop Framework -Lo and behold- I could load my "broken" saves back and create new ones that would work.

 

For one new save exactly.

Meaning I could load any of my "broken" saves and create one new save from them that would work. Any saves made after that one could not be loaded back.

 

If I load any of my working saves, even very old ones, I can create one new save that will load back. Any save created after will not load back. If I then load that one, working save, I can't make any new, working ones from it either.

 

Oh yes, I've also disabled all the F4SE Plugins to see if it was one of them causing this perhaps. But nope.

 

 

Has anyone ever came across something like this?

I'm over 530 days into the game. It almost feels like I've hit a "this is the maximum number of saves possible on a single character" thing.

[SKKmods]

Unlikely to be Papyrus script loops or storage, but persistent or total Obejct Reference count (limit variously cited as 1 or 2 million) ?

[niston]

Yap, I checked with Fallrim Tools for possible running scripts wreaking havoc, but nope there's no such thing.

The only odd thing I noticed was that there were over 60k (sixty thousand) instances of simsettlements:soundemitter. Extremely odd, considering I only had a single town built up with SS1. But after removing SS1, they expectedly were gone.

 

Thought of the objectref count. But it makes no real sense (and neither does the "max number of saves possible" theory really), because older saves are affected as well.

[LarannKiar]

Did you try this?

 

How big is that save file? And 530 real time days? I'm surprised it lasted this long.. :)

 

I mean.. Fallout 4 save files die eventually. It seems like you reached this point.

[niston]

Yeah, I use Buffout 4, but gave Baka Scrapheap a try for the sake of it.

 

The save is 60MB in size. 530 days in game, at a timescale setting of 3.0. It lasted quite a while, yes. I started it back in 2019.

 

I've begun a new game. Very clean load order and I get to avoid some mistakes I made in the early days.

Gonna try and export some of my old settlements from the old game with TS, and turn them into ESPs with DieFem's xEdit script.

So I can then properly navmesh everything in CK and load it in the new game. Maybe even have LOD for them.