Bloated Save FIles

[Rabbit1251]

Aliera Cane - that is the first time I have seen any practical way to debloat saves - saving your post as a text file in case I need to use the technique at a later date.Thank you.

 

As did I. Never know when you might need this. Thank you.

 

 

Rabbit

[Aliera Caine]

@ OakRain and Rabbit 51: I will pass your words on to phillipWireland. It's his brainstorm solution. He said I could share it with whoever might need it.

[Burnout122812]

I've done the SAVE save file and uninstalled and reinstalled and it did the trick every time it bloated. No problems.

[dailewis]

Does it make a difference if I alt-tab out of the game, whilst waiting in the pause menu? Because if I leave the game up it still crashes out :\

[dailewis]

Okay, there are no traces of mods or their files, only the DLC remains in the Skyrim folders. I Found a cave, mad a fresh save, punched PCB into the console and paused the game. If i waited in game, the game crashed out after a minute or so. So I alt-tabbed out and it didn't crash. However, when I went back to the game, I made a new fresh save and exited the game. I went into the saves folder and now my saves are no longer at 75MB, but a whopping 102MB! What am I doing wrong?

[Aliera Caine]

@dailewis: I get your frustration. :( As I mentioned earlier, this might not work in your case.

 

So you cleaned out the skyrim date folder-- check. Hopefully you verified your game cache through Steam. And you got a clean save in a quiet room -- check. When you pressed escape key and left the save menu up for a while, you probably need to leave it there and not Alt-Tab out. If it is still crashing while in the save menu, you can always test this process in your game with (1) an earlier save or (2) do a complete restart just in case your save games were corrupted. Your latest save game may depend heavily on mods that you removed and simply cannot continue in this state. I wish I could be of more help. Play around with the process. You may be able to teach us all a thing or two when you are done.

 

Below is more of phillips explanation so you can determine whether your issue fits into this category:

"In Skyrim, when the player un-installs a mod, drops down to a previous version, or upgrades from a version with files to a newer version with a .BSA;

Something in the engine can trigger a glitch that keeps an active copy of every animation/ interaction the character encounters.

(so each kill move animation, each sitting/ standing anim, each NPC having conversations or other inter actions in the character's cell, etc ALL get kept track of.

This produces an "artificial" memory leak. Artificial because it is not a true memory leak. The game knows what the information is and is keeping track of it.

So when the player saves, it all gets written to the save file. This does not clear it out, neither does reboot, or anything else at this stage.

So this continues on and the save file continues to grow until it interferes with the system/ application's ability to read the LAA function.

At that point when the memory to run the application and the memory being used to keep track of the bloated info approach approx 2GB, the game CTD.

The progression will continue even if the player is not doing anything with the character (IE just standing there)"

[dailewis]

Hmmm, well, after I wrote my previous update, I deleted the DLC files from the Skyrim folder and then followed your instructions in-game. There was a drop in file size (it dropped from 102MB to about 97MB) this isn't exactly substantial as it took about 2 hours to do this. However, I did notice that the gameplay was far less laggy, but it still cut out after a few minutes. After reading your last post, I verified my game cache, and Steam came up with an error saying 8 files didn't comply (or something like that), It is now currently downloading a 4GB item called Skyrim. And I know Skyrim's about 10GB. My next question is, what is steam downloading?

[dailewis]

I just discovered it re downloaded heartfires and dawnguard. *censored*.

Well, I eventually got back into the game, and the issue is still here. And now Dawnguard and Heartfires are back in my game folders, the file started to increase in size again. That was about another 2 hours of my time wasted. It's starting to look like starting again is my only option really. And that I definitely don't want to do. I think what's worst is the fact that I've put this much amount of time into a game and for it just to go wrong at the end really agitates me.

Edited October 14, 2012 by dailewis

[rpsgc]

I just discovered it re downloaded heartfires and dawnguard. *censored*.

Well, I eventually got back into the game, and the issue is still here. And now Dawnguard and Heartfires are back in my game folders, the file started to increase in size again. That was about another 2 hours of my time wasted. It's starting to look like starting again is my only option really. And that I definitely don't want to do. I think what's worst is the fact that I've put this much amount of time into a game and for it just to go wrong at the end really agitates me.

 

This is why people should really do frequent (separate) saves. Especially before installing some script heavy or 'big changes' mod.

 

 

I made sure to create a new save, and backup the older ones, before installing my very first mod. So even though my current save has some bloat, I have a clean one. Too bad no amount of "cleanliness" can save me from Dawnguard's and Hearthfire's own bloat. Ugh, Bethesda :rolleyes:

Edited October 14, 2012 by rpsgc

[dailewis]

Well, After experimenting with the wait in the pause menu method. I don't think it's working anymore :/ I removed the DLCs again so i have no Data files and tried again, i tried it on low settings, windowed mode and tried the character menu instead of the pause menu. However, apart from my efforts, my file size has gone back 101MB and continues to increase with this method. Not a happy bunny.