[LE] Autosaves, quicksaves, normal saves under the hood

[ashpcatup]

Intuitively it would seem they differ in name only, but there must coded differences as well, or people wouldn't have the mysterious problem of being able to load one but not the other. The usual advice is some combination of clean your saves, install the SKSE memory patch etc. but I haven't been able to find a definitive explanation for why this happens. I'm wondering if there's potential for a utility to convert an autosave to appear to the game to be a normal save, or vice versa.

[maxarturo]

- The primary reason of a save been corrupt is the amount of ORPHAN SCRIPTS that have accumulated in the file.

- Converting an auto save to normal save is something you don't want.

- As a newbie (you say you are) is hard to explain you with simple words the procces of Skyrim game engine. You need to start researching or your questions to be simpler (according always to your level of knowhow).

* Here you will find people willing to help you, just explain in detail and simplified things.

[cdcooley]

Your intuition is correct. The SKSE team looked into the saving process and all of the various forms run the exact same bits of code. There's no practical difference at the technical level. But...

 

There's no support in the game itself for uninstalling mods. So the real problem with saves is that some people insist on uninstalling mods and then keep playing the same character. That almost always causes corruption of some form and over time the corruption gets worse. There are savegame cleaners which can clean up orphan scripts (and as maxarturo said those represent the majority of the corruption) but the other forms of corruption are permanent.

 

People also corrupt their games by loading one save after having been playing the game already. When you do that the game doesn't completely reset memory and things that were in memory from before the load remain and get merged into the game you are loading. If that loaded save was the most recent autosave then there's usually not enough different to be a problem but some people actually which characters that way. (I once did that while playing Oblivion and suddenly found that Vilja was following my new character even though that new character hadn't even met her yet. The game had kept Vilja in memory following the player and even it was an entirely different character the game didn't realize that.)

 

People who push their game to the absolute limits and have corruption in their savegame files eventually are playing a game that's so corrupt that what's getting saved isn't really valid data. Then some of them resort to all sorts of tricks to force that corrupted save to load. (A favorite seems to be to COC QASMOKE then go to the menu and load a save. Others have a "minimal save" they start then load their corrupted save over top of it. Those tricks basically work because they start from a working game and layer corruption on top and never notice the things that aren't getting loaded properly from that corrupted save.) And of course the more they play those tricks the worse the corruption gets.

 

There's also a myth that autosaves cause crashes. The reality is that the developers knew when the game was most likely to crash and programmed the autosaves to happen right before those times so that if a crash happens you and just reload the autosave and continue playing.

 

Basically to have a long-term stable game the rules are pretty simple.

1. Save early, save often.

2a. Ideally, never load any savegame file except from the initial start menu.

2b. Realistically, don't go back and load old save games after you've already been playing except for the auto-reload on death or a very recently saved game for that same character.

3a. Ideally, don't uninstall any mods until you're ready to start a new character.

3b. Realistically, avoid uninstalling mods but when you need to be sure to clean out any orphan scripts using a savegame cleaner immediately after the uninstall. (Don't give corruption a chance to multiply.)

[Evangela]

I believe the Auto-save crash fear was a carry over from Oblivion, and admittedly I was one of the ones spreading that misinformation(as it had become for Skyrim). Actually I think that game's(Oblivion) save system overall was broken, and you needed to make sure to always save as much as possible, because of how likely they can corrupt.

 

I've had only one save corrupt on me for Skyrim out of about 4,000 saves.

Edited February 16, 2019 by Rasikko

[maxarturo]

cdcooley is correct about :

"There's no support in the game itself for uninstalling mods. So the real problem with saves is that some people insist on uninstalling mods and then keep playing the same character. That almost always causes corruption of some form and over time the corruption gets worse."

 

The best practice and the one i been using for years is from the moment you start a new game :

A) Before installing a new mod is to keep a save made in a vanilla unmoded interior cell, as your fail safe save - clean save.

B) When you install the new mod & run the game, make a new save and DO NOT OVERWRITTE the fail save file.

C) Here is the most important thing :

- If you deside to keep the mod you installed, you keep playing from your existent save file.

- If you deside not to keep the mod, you uninstall it and revert you playthrough to that FAIL SAFE SAVE made before insatlling it, delete all saves and auto saves made after the creation of your fail save and continue your playthrough from there and repeat this process every time you install a mod. This way you will avoid complety to accumulate orphan scripts in you save file.

Edited February 16, 2019 by maxarturo