[LE] Quick Questions, Quick Answers

[dalsio]

 

My question is what the big deal about Script Bloating, is it a Myth? I know that user save is the last Quote "esp" loaded overwriting the load order. I know the Game Engine save "Stuff" to your save for Performance Reasons, so it easy to find. So do people generally just have no idea, misunderstand, then if they don't understand it it bad?

PS if you uninstalled, reap what you sow.

So What Say You.

I'm not sure what you mean. I have over 400 mods installed, and my save files always have a size of 30mb or less. More mods means more scripts stored in your save, and also more objects in the world, so yeah, the size increases, but not much. However, once I had a mod that was throwing errors constantly, and it made my save files go over 100MB, but uninstalling it fixed the problem. It was Throwing Weapons Redux.

 

Short answer: It used to be a thing but recent versions of SKSE have made this essentially a myth.

 

Longer answer:

Peter is probably referring to a problem with save bloating that would happen when someone activated a mod with scripts, ran the game so that the scripts ran in the background, and then deactivated the mod or otherwise removed the scripts from the game. What would happen is that the script would be stuck in a state of limbo, not quite working as intended but still running in the background because it was so heavily tied to the save file. After repeating this process one's game could become bogged down (start running slowly) not because the save file itself was big but because the game was running a bunch of "orphaned" or "rogue" scripts that it didn't use and it unnecessarily taxed the CPU thread.

 

Fortunately with relatively recent versions of SKSE, script cleanup is integrated so that any running scripts that become "orphaned" or essentially lose the mod they were tied to are automatically shut down and removed from the save game. So, if you experience save "bloating" (which is rare due to how many scripting mods require SKSE anymore) then go ahead and install the most recent SKSE and play the game for a while. Your save games should lose most of that weight in about 30 minutes or so and any future saves you make should never see that problem again.

Edited August 27, 2016 by dalsio

[lofgren]

There are other possible sources of script bloat, though. For example magic effects applied to actors with a script effect and a duration of 0 are never removed. Put one of those in a cloak effect and apply it to the PC and you'll have script bloat in no time.

[palingard]

Quick question:

 

Is it possible have a ReferenceAlias assigned to more than one actor at a time?

 

I am checking before I shoot myself in the foot and I cannot find anything that clearly states that you cannot do it, though it seems to be heavily implied.

 

Thanks,

Palingard

[MaxShadow09]

 

 

My question is what the big deal about Script Bloating, is it a Myth? I know that user save is the last Quote "esp" loaded overwriting the load order. I know the Game Engine save "Stuff" to your save for Performance Reasons, so it easy to find. So do people generally just have no idea, misunderstand, then if they don't understand it it bad?

PS if you uninstalled, reap what you sow.

So What Say You.

I'm not sure what you mean. I have over 400 mods installed, and my save files always have a size of 30mb or less. More mods means more scripts stored in your save, and also more objects in the world, so yeah, the size increases, but not much. However, once I had a mod that was throwing errors constantly, and it made my save files go over 100MB, but uninstalling it fixed the problem. It was Throwing Weapons Redux.

 

Short answer: It used to be a thing but recent versions of SKSE have made this essentially a myth.

 

Longer answer:

Peter is probably referring to a problem with save bloating that would happen when someone activated a mod with scripts, ran the game so that the scripts ran in the background, and then deactivated the mod or otherwise removed the scripts from the game. What would happen is that the script would be stuck in a state of limbo, not quite working as intended but still running in the background because it was so heavily tied to the save file. After repeating this process one's game could become bogged down (start running slowly) not because the save file itself was big but because the game was running a bunch of "orphaned" or "rogue" scripts that it didn't use and it unnecessarily taxed the CPU thread.

 

Fortunately with relatively recent versions of SKSE, script cleanup is integrated so that any running scripts that become "orphaned" or essentially lose the mod they were tied to are automatically shut down and removed from the save game. So, if you experience save "bloating" (which is rare due to how many scripting mods require SKSE anymore) then go ahead and install the most recent SKSE and play the game for a while. Your save games should lose most of that weight in about 30 minutes or so and any future saves you make should never see that problem again.

 

 

In my experience, the SKSE "ClearInvalidRegistrations" doesn't do anything, or it does it really slow. I always clean my saves with another tool (Skyrim Script Save cleaner or something like that, aka "Save Tool"), and after uninstalling mods there are always orphaned scripts, even with the latest SKSE. I heard you have to wait in-game for a long time until SKSE finish cleaning up, but I'm not sure how it works.

[lofgren]

Quick question:

 

Is it possible have a ReferenceAlias assigned to more than one actor at a time?

 

I am checking before I shoot myself in the foot and I cannot find anything that clearly states that you cannot do it, though it seems to be heavily implied.

 

Thanks,

Palingard

 

No.

[palingard]

Much appreciated.

[dalsio]

@MaxShadow09 Yes, SKSE takes a little bit for it to catch orphaned scripts because it has to tell if a script is orphaned from in-game and also makes doubly sure that the script isn't being used by anything. That necessitates waiting for the script to do certain things and fail, or otherwise present evidence that it's orphaned which means that orphaned scripts that have a lot of idle time or only activate at specific moments can sometimes hang around for a while. For really bloated save games it might take a few hours of playing since it's really designed to keep a game from being bloated rather than clean it (in such a case it might be worth it to run a save cleaner). Orphaned scripts only have a noticeable effect on your game if they pile up in large numbers which shouldn't happen during normal (SKSE) use unless you try to load a save game with completely different mod loadouts (ie. saving your game, switching to a vanilla profile, and then trying to play that save game again). You should normally never need to clean a save while running SKSE because it should catch the few orphaned scripts that might occur over the save's lifespan (the time when it's being used and not overwritten/obsolete by a more recent save). As a note remember that only save games are bloated, not the game. No matter how much you change your loadout, if you start a new game or load a game that already had that loadout running you should never experience orphaned scripts aside from a few fringe cases such as what Lofgren mentioned.

Edited August 28, 2016 by dalsio

[csbx]

Any way to force the reading of a particular note upon receipt ? Ie., dialogue with npc, 'see this note' - end conversation, player given note, player enters into viewing note mode.

[IsharaMeradin]

Any way to force the reading of a particular note upon receipt ? Ie., dialogue with npc, 'see this note' - end conversation, player given note, player enters into viewing note mode.

In the end fragment for the dialogue after you use AddItem to add the note, you can try the following (change where needed for your variables).

TheNote.Activate(PlayerRef)

I don't know if it works for items within the player inventory, but its worth a shot.

[csbx]

@IsharaMeradin

 

"Activate is not a function or does not exist" (Papyrus error)