Rediculously cumulative loading times with progressing saves.

[Vildryn]

Fallout 3 is believed to be quite a good game when it comes to loading times. But I'm having a bizarre problem that I can't see anything else written about.

 

The problem is, as my saved games progress, they take longer and longer to load, until eventually, it just gets unbearable. It can take up to 5 minutes until it finally loads the save. I've spoken to some other players of Fo3, and they're not experiencing this problem, and one of them probably has as many mods as I do.

 

Could it be mod-related, or is there something else that could be causing it?

 

And are there any known fixes to this problem?

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

[funkidud3]

this always happens with this game as you develop further, although it has never taken me that long, try lowering the difficulty of the game and lowering the graphics, take a look at the guide

tweak guide

hope It helps you

[funkidud3]

try going into contol panel and opening Sounds and Audio Devices and then click the audio tab, then under the sound playback click advanced, thn under the speakers tab select speaker setup as none, don't worry you will still have sound

 

i tried this for someone elses problem and discovered it dramatically improves loading time from about 40 seconds to 10-15

[Vildryn]

Thanks anyways, but um, I've already seen the tweak guide, and I don't think there's a none option for speakers in Win7, which I am currently running on. Sounds > Speakers > Configure goes to speaker setup, and the first page I get the option of stereo, and nothing else, and I can't unselect it, and the second page is a pair of tick boxes, one for front left and right, and the greyed out one for the surround sound I am lacking.

I tried turning off that tick box, and that didn't make a difference.

 

If I can't get this sorted soon, I guess I will have to resort to lowering my graphics a bit, although the recently altered graphics on my game, lowered to try to get the framerate high enough for me to record using Xfire video without substantial stuttering, didn't make a difference. I think the only other option I can think of is to deactivate a mod or two.

[roquefort]

Are you saving while having a pipboy radio switched on? For me this causes delayed loading of the saved file for some reason. Now I usually turn off the radio before saving.

[pkleiss]

There is also the save game bloat issue that is derived from poor modding habits. If a mod uses the "PlaceAtMe" command to spawn a creature, then fails to clean that creature up upon its death, your save game will bloat from all the extra data that's being stored for every spawned creature you have ever killed. MMM does not do this, but I can't vouch for all the other mods out there.

 

There is no way that I know of to fix this issue once it occurs other than removing the suspect mod(s) and starting a new game.

[Vildryn]

@ roquefort: Nopes, I don't really use the radio. Thanks anyways.

 

@ pkleiss: Interesting. That might well be a likely possibility. I'll have a look at a couple of the mods I have active, because if this is the case, I have a couple of likely subjects. Unfortunately, they are mods that at this point, I couldn't bare parting with... well one of them is, anyways. Thanks for the help. :thumbsup:

 

 

:thanks:

[bleedybleed]

Got the exact same problem. Loading usually is instant. Then as I got more and more playtime into the game, it took longer and longer to load whenever I'd die. Once I quit the game and restarts, loading is back to normal.

 

Here's a somewhat describtion:

 

load

die

load within 5 secs

die

load within 15 secs

die

load within 30 secs

then it feels like min's for a savegame to load

 

load up an old savegame and its back to instant.

 

also, loadtimes increases even if I dont kill anything but just stand and die

[Fonger]

When I had this problem it went away when I archived a couple thousand saves.

 

Meaning they were no longer in my game save directory.

[Vildryn]

Ok, I've recently started a new game, not using some mods, and the other that I was suspecting, I checked and found there was no PlaceAtMe problem. I only have 9 saves in my directory totalling at 41mb, but it's not the total save data, because the loading time is fine if I say create a new game, until the game progresses. My current game, after about 2 and a half hours of gameplay now takes almost 2 mins to load, and I've started to actually crash on loading screens. :wallbash:

 

That could just be new mods I added, but those were fine for a while. I feel I may have to start a new game again just to make it playable. But before I do, I'm really hoping someone can find some sort of holy relic of ultimate save game repair.

 

I know someone else with similar problems, and I've found that we both heavily rely on the SCC mod for our followers. However, I don't think I've found anything anywhere stating that that mod causes such problems.

 

I do, however, rely quite a lot on quicksaving, and I've heard that that can be a problem at times.

 

Interestingly, though, this time around, the save slowing happened much more steeply that usual.

 

I do have some potential explanations:

 

1 - SCC doing something

 

2 - Too much altering the game world with console (additem, enable/disable, modav etc)

 

3 - Adding multiple mods and removing multiple mods whilst still using an existing game

 

Point 3 is probably the most likely, because the effects were pretty bad after I installed about 4 mods and removed one mod, as well as temporarily installing a further 2, but after further thought removing them again. :wacko: