How big should your saves get before you clean them?

[darkdill]

I've been getting some slowdown in my current game and I suspect it's due to bad leftover scripts and tons of objects cluttering up the world. My saves are sitting at around 13 megs apiece right now.

 

Is this a good time to clean them?

[Dhegonus]

if it is slowing your game down, it's time to clean!

[AlexanderJVelicky]

*Sigh* This again.

 

You cannot clean your save. You can try, but since we don't know enough about the save format right now, everything you do will inevitably cause some kind of issue later on. Keep that in mind, back up your saves before potentially destroying them.

 

As for when action is necessary, a 70 or so hour savegame will be 10-15mb. So if you save shoots up to like 50mb, you have a problem.

[darkdill]

*Sigh* This again.

 

You cannot clean your save. You can try, but since we don't know enough about the save format right now, everything you do will inevitably cause some kind of issue later on. Keep that in mind, back up your saves before potentially destroying them.

 

As for when action is necessary, a 70 or so hour savegame will be 10-15mb. So if you save shoots up to like 50mb, you have a problem.

So I presume that these two bits are not good ideas?

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/31675

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/31724

 

I'll be making backup saves before trying them; hopefully they won't cause any permanent damage.

[AlexanderJVelicky]

They will cause permanent damage. The question is how severe will it be, and when will it strike? Imagine you have a car, and the engine has broken parts in it. You can't just remove the broken parts. That wont fix the car. Sure, the car wont have any broken parts in it, but it will still be missing parts, and wont work and will have issues.

The same can be said for a save. Simply errantly cutting out 'bad' data is in NO way a solution. The save expects that data to be there, so when it's missing it will cause issues. The fact that the first mod you linked says "Completely safe method in development!" is bull. We do not understand the save format. We cannot develop a completely safe way to clean saves, and we may never be able to at all.

 

Back up your saves, because it will cause problems, the question is, is it worth it? You may get 5 hours of smooth gameplay, you may get 10, but you will run into issues at some point. That's the only thing that's 100% guaranteed about those programs.

[darkdill]

They will cause permanent damage. The question is how severe will it be, and when will it strike? Imagine you have a car, and the engine has broken parts in it. You can't just remove the broken parts. That wont fix the car. Sure, the car wont have any broken parts in it, but it will still be missing parts, and wont work and will have issues.

 

The same can be said for a save. Simply errantly cutting out 'bad' data is in NO way a solution. The save expects that data to be there, so when it's missing it will cause issues. The fact that the first mod you linked says "Completely safe method in development!" is bull. We do not understand the save format. We cannot develop a completely safe way to clean saves, and we may never be able to at all.

 

Back up your saves, because it will cause problems, the question is, is it worth it? You may get 5 hours of smooth gameplay, you may get 10, but you will run into issues at some point. That's the only thing that's 100% guaranteed about those programs.

And the second mod? That one cleans up Form IDs, and doesn't remove embedded scripts. Is that any safer?

[AlexanderJVelicky]

It's all in the same bucket of "They found something that appears to have worked so they slapped it up for others to use." They ALL have risks, and they will ALL cause problems at some point. None of them are 'safe' and how safe each one is depends on your specific save and how lucky you are. I recommend just being careful not to mess up your save in the first place, since all these programs do is maybe buy you a bit of extra time. As of now we cannot just blatantly repair saves. Someday we might be able to, but we cannot today.

 

They will cause permanent damage. The question is how severe will it be, and when will it strike? Imagine you have a car, and the engine has broken parts in it. You can't just remove the broken parts. That wont fix the car. Sure, the car wont have any broken parts in it, but it will still be missing parts, and wont work and will have issues.

The same can be said for a save. Simply errantly cutting out 'bad' data is in NO way a solution. The save expects that data to be there, so when it's missing it will cause issues. The fact that the first mod you linked says "Completely safe method in development!" is bull. We do not understand the save format. We cannot develop a completely safe way to clean saves, and we may never be able to at all.

 

Back up your saves, because it will cause problems, the question is, is it worth it? You may get 5 hours of smooth gameplay, you may get 10, but you will run into issues at some point. That's the only thing that's 100% guaranteed about those programs.

And the second mod? That one cleans up Form IDs, and doesn't remove embedded scripts. Is that any safer?