Suddenly many CTD's and dropping FPS??

[Yegrof67]

I've played over 640 hours in this game since 1-1-11.

 

I''ve played Ultra settings from the git go.

 

I've made NO game changes for the last 250 hours and the game played great.

 

All of a sudden for the last week I've experienced at least 5 CTD's a day, and I repeat

the exact scenario with everything being good and no CTD.

 

Anyone have an Idea whats changed??

 

BTW I'm Also suddenly re experiencing the ol' floating mouse accompanied with FPS

dropping down to below 6. This happens in an area that was just fine 30 seconds

ago and where everything will be back to normal within a minute.

[xlcr]

hi Yegrof67, fyi, on my first playthrough about 100+ hours into the game at high-very high graphics settings using Skyrim patches v1.1, 1.2 and v1.3,

after my savegame size reached approx 13-14MB the game engine started to CTD often (no BSOD only CTD's).

 

Backing down my graphics to high-medium and antialiasing from 8x to 4x helped for awhile; but, CTD's returned when savegame's reached 15-16MB.

At that time I tried removing all mods/textures, keeping the Skyrim world clean, deadbody timer/remover mods, backing down graphics settings further and turning off autosave.

I had to give up.

Since there were also unfixable broken quests in that first playthru to me it was pointless and decided to start with a fresh character on patch versions 1.3-v1.4.

 

Have not found any tool to edit/reduce/optimize the size of the savegame; nor have i discovered a method/option to set what is actually saved in the savegame database.

(if this is even possible).

Personally, I do not want the game to record the exact coordinates or content/status of every chest/rock/twig/body moved or plundered; and,

I do not want the game to keep a sequential time log or record of every single little event/object in the Skyrim world.

If this is what the game engine is doing and some of the reasons for 'savegame bloat' over time, i have not discovered a fix.

 

If necessary, maybe the game could mark a cave/dungeon/keep as 'cleared', flush status data from the regular savegame and save it to an alternate database.

If the player still wishes to enter a cleared location; then, the game would popup a yes/no 'load from archive' notice and load the data from the alternate database save archive. Maybe this could keep the primary active savegame size small/stable and still allow a reset of cleared locations over time using a secondary archive.

 

On my 2nd playthru with a fresh character, lots of mods; and, hoping to get thru remaining unfinished quests at a relaxed pace before the savegame gets too big.

Skyrim v1.4 has been completely stable so far and i am loving it, i'll finish then put it away until maybe new patches, DLC's, and some quests are fixed.

 

Anyway, just wanted to share my experience with what i suspect is a savegame bloat and somekind of fundamental gamebryo engine issue.

Edited February 27, 2012 by xlcr

[Yegrof67]

@xlcr

 

Hey I thank you for the response. I knew "beth" had a "save bloat" problem with the PS3 but I hadn't heard it also affected the

PC.

 

I'll give your suggestions a try!!

 

Again, Thanks!

[xlcr]

@Yegrof67, of course, there are many people out there that are not having any CTD issues with large savegame sizes and 100's of hours of gameplay; so,

take the things i said with a pinch of void salts..

Beth fixed a lot of stability and some savegame issues with PC patch version 1.3 longterm gameplay; and, i believe they will continue to resolve/improve things.

i just want to finish all the quests this time lol..

[rabidNode]

yes it is save game bloat and then the interaction of new mods and location alterations.

 

the game does indeed keep a record of a huge amount fo data and still after 3 titles has yet to implement a clear data method that removes the data or stores it safely in a simple location with on off switch.

the optimization of this code is horribad but it is also a very old engine. I hope they actually make a new engine for the next tes game. this one as it is is going to be doing some face planting when many location mods and alterations are added in. especially with the updated textures and the lack of optimal clearing of both video and computer memory. visually they got this one right but they really failed on the code end.

[xlcr]

if beth is going to stay with their customized gamebryo engine which seems likely, it could use some fine tuning for PC users (no idea about console).

seems relatively obvious to me that there is somekind of timing issue in the engine code that results in a CTD when waiting for the

file system to load something and/or cpu/gpu processors to generate an event/cell.

large savegame bloat and longterm gameplay is triggering this behavior.

 

module timings could possibly be recoded to allow stable hold/freeze states/handshaking and not simply corrupt the kernal during gameplay.

would be preferable to have somekind of interim patch w/acceptable occasional lag to an unplayable savegame/CTD's,

until they hopefully find an optimal resolution. oh well, still happy they released it 11-11-11 warts and all lol.