When my save files reached about 18 meg each, I could no longer exit the companions guild (system lock up.)

A bit after that, I could no longer enter Helgen keep again without a lock up, as well as some forts.

Now I can't enter:

The palace in Markarth.

The palace in Solitude.

The dark brotherhood sanctuary, either entrance, by Dawnstar.


I could at least do repeat "dark mother" quests before, now I can't even do that.


So now I really have nothing to do until they fix the large save file locking up bug.

All of these locations produce the same kind of lockup for me, where I just barely start
to see the grayed out bar (not fully illuminated yet) saying I'm level 72. Then that is all I see, with
the system not responding anymore.

I've tried turning off save on travel, but it makes no difference.

I don't have that many save game files, maybe 15; They just are all a minimum of 20 meg now
at this late point in the game.

About the only things I can do now, with any certainity, is run around and kill/loot any respawned giant
or foresworn camps.

I'm afraid that soon I won't even be able to enter Markarth, or my house in Markarth.


I'm not understanding how they "playtested" this game and did not discover things like this. No one
ran through the main quest, then played for more levels until they were having system lock ups? Not a
single tester did that? How could they NOT know? Were they just assuming they'd have that fixed, in a patch, by
the time we got that far?

Due to all of the bugs, there were already things I could not do (such as the blades dragon hunts, since he
gave me bonestrewn crest and one never spawns again there (even after a bajillion days, though the chest refreshes)
Now I have even fewer things.

With so much trouble, do we even WANT DLC content? I can't imagine it being bug free, or
not having similar bugs because of course you'd be playing even longer then.

Well Ive played the game with 5 characters for over 400 hours since launch and I have never run in to save bloating or major consistant crashes like this. So expecting playtesters to find issues that you have when many others dont have them is frankly ludicrous. No playtester can play every single piece of content in the game the same way as millions of others will in the same amount of time. Am I doing anything out of the ordinary with regards to how I play and use the game? Nope, and I have always have had autosave active and its never given me a problem either.

So in short; Yes bugs and crashes are a pain in the anus, but blaming the gametesters for not finding rare issues or issues that wont show up in normal play is uncalled for.

look at the main page. it's titled does the xbox not have enough ram? lot of commentates on this. it should be right above this topic.

this is not a rare issue, and having five characters add up to 20 mb is not the same as having one character that does.

I'd agree to say its not rare to those who come to the bug forums, but thats about as far as im willing to say. There are many people with 200+ hours game play on a single character who do not have bloated save files, just not in the forums. on a hind note, the only way one could have 5 characters add up to 20mb is if they are saved at the point before helgen shoots off to where the player can move. After that, average minimal save file size is 7mb, I haven't actually been able to get it lower with selling everything on the character and entering the smallest area possible (house at whiterun).

I have 7 characters I've kept, all of them above 40th level, and including my current character below, none of the save files are over 13mb, including my packrat character that keeps EVERYTHING they can pick up and carry off (including loading the henchman down as heavy as possible down to the 0.1lb). Sense I first got my save file up to 16 mb with my first character and figuring out how to keep the size down low, I've done this with all of them.

• Dont drop loot on the ground, always place it in a dead body or a barrel i know recycles. If you want to keep it stick it in a chest or cabnet/nightstand that doesn't recycle rather then dropping it on the ground to come back to get it later.
  
• Dont leave weapons laying around on the ground - if your attack 'launches' the person backwards as they die, they drop their weapon / shield, and they do not get cleaned up with the bodies.
  
• Pick nimroot I come across to avoid glow stacking, this does seem to save to your savegame, as the stacked glow will still be present if you exit completely out (to dashboard) and reload a save.

Thats pretty much it, when I had a 16mb character (in the begining) I went back and cleaned up some caves and ruins, and found that that helped drop the file sizes. The reason I pick all the nimroot i run across is to avoid the glow stacking which increases save size and could eventually lead to game crashes. Disposal of goods via bodies and recycling barrels prevents them from staying in the world, and after awhile, dropping lots of loot around can really increase your save game sizes being stuff dropped on the ground doesn't get cleaned up. If its not something thats going to go away, they have to keep all that data in the save file.

That might not help you much, hopefully it might help a little.

Everything ^^THIS GUY^^ said. Seriously, my save file was huge before I started cleaning up my mess (as I had a habit of dropping flowers or gifts at well known graves and monuments as a roleplay way of showing respect.) Once I cleaned up my game, the save file dropped dramatically. Now I simply eat the flowers and just pretend they were placed at the various sites. Or if the sign of respect was a non-consumable gift, I'd save it until I came across a dead body and place it in the inventory, once again pretending that it was placed at the site. If on the console, I'd also recommend that you continue to clear both caches as often as you boot up the game for playing. The PS3 and XBox have only so much RAM.

Despite what GStaff has claimed, save file bloating issues and memory fracturing HAS NOT been fixed. Not entirely at least.

I've been doing that, the cleaning up, since I did notice the large size of the save game files.

However, it seems that the items have not had time to disappear yet, in the supposedly outdoor temporary places I've put them?

It does seem to have something to do with playtesting, though. Someone should have noticed that you had to play "trashman"
to keep things running smoothly? I mean, I've not been going around roleplaying that I'm putting flowers on graves; I've just
been playing the game "normally."

I have cleared the cache for the game itself, but I can't clear up the entire system cache. Another person uses this xbox for other games, ones
which evidently don't store save data except in that system cache.

----------

Also, I've never HAD these problems until my ONE character was probably around level 60 (playing normally, now level 72.)
As an above player mentions, it doesn't matter if you have 76 characters you play, for over 4000 hours; The problems pop
up when you have ONE character that adventures in the world enough to get the save files to 18 meg or above.

The game should clean itself up. Its a design flaw/bug issue.

---------------------------------------

I haven't had time to see if cleaning up makes much of a dent, since stuff seems to hang around forever in the
supposedly temporary barrels I put it in. Does it help to just dump it all by selling it to a vendor? Do they
keep it forever then? It kind of worries me, because I sold one of the eyes of falmer to a vendor; I found
her again with it 30 levels later (and oodles of in game days, after forgetting which one I sold the eye to.)

the ingame cleanup script runs every 29 ingame days, day 30 the items should be gone, so it takes abit, I have noticed however with some areas, the cleanup seems dependant on 'when' the item was placed rather then a 'global' cleanup time. Dont know if that'll help any there. I think nimroots are a major part of the problem, with the stacking glow, after awhile the glow can really cause a area to lag bad until its picked and the area left. When you can see nimroot majorily far off in the distance from a blinding white glow, it kinda notes the glow is getting stacked way to much. One of the eyes of falmer you can sell, i forget which, i think its the right one but dont qoute me on that... the other you turn in to get it put on the shelf...odd you can't turn in both there... after its been put on the shelf you can retrieve it and sell it if you wish.

Placing items int the inventories of recently slain foes clean up faster than barrels or chests in my experience, and you're absolutely right, this is a definite design flaw. Glow stacking shouldn't occur to begin with, and dropped items should clean up on their own after a given amount of time (but not being a game coder my self, there might have been a ligitimate reason for the devs initially choosing this route... not sure.)

In any case, yes, dropped items (I believe) should clean up as often as ash piles or corpse clean up.

Guys ..i was bug free until yesterday.......man!!!! im frustrated now my game in riften is laggin like really bad....to the point that sometimes the complete image freezes for a couple of seconds (i know a lot of folks have been reporting issues near riften) after reading through the post i may conclude that it may be due to the amount of weapons, items, ashes and other things dropped around the world i play as a mage and whenever you hit an enemy with magic to final kill the weapon indeed flyes away and goes separate ...so that may be a factor (the part of the town where im experienced really bad performance is right in the middle of the market, riften market) another factor may be the stuped nimroots since this area particularly the lake by the golden state is full of them ...i dont really know what to think yesterday i cleaned the cache and things were better but still chopy.....i wont boot up skyrim until 1.4 is out thats for sure i dont want to push it...and my save file is only 14 mgb which is not that long so im waiting for 1.4 now more than ever.....peace out..

that thing about the five characters 20 mb was an exaggeration, but even if you have five characters that each have 14mb is still different then having one that has 20, it seems to be around 18-20 where it messes up.

Right and in my particular case i have not encounter freezes....my game does not lock up....but it lags like crazy,,,i dont even know what wouldbe better since the lag is very annoying and its insude the market weird ..im just hoping that the "general memory optimization" claimed to be addressed in the patch do something for my problem..

I've got 4 manual saves and 3 autosaves, each 15mb. I only have 1 character (Lv.62, 300 hrs). Other than a long-ish initial load time, I haven't had any major lag, and the only freeze/crash I ever had was 30levels ago with 10 mb save files, and 2 fewer of them. I don't clean up, but I also don't drop items in the world- I keep, sell or don't pick them up.

I do get a 1/2 second lag when running outdoors, and I get pop-in of distant objects, where when I stop it takes a few seconds for everything in the distance to appear. Could be tied to the size of the saves, but nothing as severe as some are noting, so I wonder if there isn't more to the equation.

My main problem is with the lag on Riften ...ill try couple of things today( like eat all the nimroots in the rift )and report back after the results .....

If you went to the nimroot farm in the rift, thats the worst spot for stacking glow, looks like a star fell in their back yard after awhile, which reminds me, i need to stop by there again...

I threw together a play test character on the pc version, gave them 1 of every item the player can get in the game, and converted their save file to a xbox save, once in xbox, the save file was bumped up to 16mb from 4mb, so if the file size problem is 'item' related it would take alot of items to get them up and over the 18mb range. I'm guessing that alot of the space in the save is world related.

looked at all my current characters ranging from 29 minutes play time to 200+ hours, largest save files are ranging from 7-13mb, unit is a first gen slim purchased with hard drive, not sure if that would have anything to do with various differences in file sizes. smallest save, which i dont count, is done right before character creation and its 4mb. My current character (below) is at 10mb save size, which recently went up 1mb in file size after 14 hours of play, but I have collected alot of loot in my riften house and did the full main quest line in that time.

looking at the stats for my current character:

• locations discovered: 164
  
• days passed: 309
  
• hours waiting: 3824
  
• Quests completed: 65
  
• Misc Objectives: 97
  
• Main Quests: 18
  
• Side Quests: 9
  
• Companion Quests: 2
  
• Winterhold Quests: 10
  
• Thieves Guild Quests: 10
  
• Dark Brotherhood Quests: 6
  
• Civil War Quests: 0
  
• Daedric: 8
  
• Words of Power Learned: 13
  
• Magic Items Made: 291
  
• Weapons Made: 778
  
• potions mixed: 740
  
• Murders: 7

I know most of these things can have a profound effect on your save file, as well as game play, as completing different quest lines cause different events to happen through the game, people die being one of the biggest, which in turn effects other aspects. Completing certain quest lines will also have a effect on the game as well, causing various area's to change completely to what they hold inside, if anything after the quest has been completed. Leaning of Power words changes areas as well to what will spawn there, as well as when did you learn them, before or after starting the main quest line (whiterun).

OMG

I went to explore the nirnroot thing.

Every one of those is like a huge spotlight now; On most of them, my game will lock just as I approach them. So yeah, that is kind of bad.
I managed to pick a couple, then run off far enough away and save. Then, after i lock up, i fast travel fast. However, I read that
when you pick them you are only getting rid of the most recent glow (so at this point its rather moot?)

This is after 600 in game days passed or something, with 118 dragon souls collected, 344 locations discoverd and most revisted upteen times.

I've been checking the locations, at least the ones I can enter without the xbox locking up, and indeed am finding piles of weapons in some of them.
I guess I really never noticed that the foresworn love throwing their bows/axes and swords all over the place when they die (then they stay there.)

I can't tell if stuffing them in bodies is doing much, since my save files are still 20 meg each. I'm wondering if this is a waste of time, since I suppose
patch 1.4 will come along and fix it before I've made much of a dent (or those bodies disappear. )

true if you continue to play the game, only the most recent one is removed, however if you move to a new area after getting rid of the nimroot, and save the game, exit to the dash and come back in, the extra glows should be gone. You can test this, IF you can get to the farm at the Rift that grows them just by picking them, entering the house, and saving there. if you go completely out to the dash and reload the glow at the farm should be gone.

... you know... im gonna jump into the pc version and see if one of these below things solved the problem with the nimroot:

• General optimizations for memory and performance
  
• Memory optimizations related to scripting

i'll check and post back on if they still are stacking on the pc version.

[edit in] well... with the pc version, the nimroot glow stacking is still there, so apparently they didn't fix it in 1.4

I really hope they look into this... I had issues around the swamp north of Morthal because of the glow stacking + mist/fog stacking... I almost didn't make it out of there... Same thing for the area around Dark Water Crossing, the volcanic area lagged me to hell...

All these suggestions are good and well but we shouldnt HAVE to clean up after every battle and go round picking nirnroot. We should just be able to play the game that the majority of us worked our asses off for. I love bethesda but my respect for them has dropped quite a bit. They should have tested this game for MUCH longer than they did before release. Ive done my fair share of sticking up for bethesda but its just not acceptable to sell a product that is this broken. I havent played the game for almost 2 months because of a stupid freezing problem that shouldnt be there anyway. Ive NEVER had that in any other game before. Im ranting, but i deserve a rant. My favourite game of all time is just sitting on my shelf broken and bethesda gladly spend my hard earned money.

Its nothing to do with the size of your save fiie. Inside the sgame somewhere is a huge bug of locking out an area that initially froze, but for ever.

ie: You can have a freeze anywhere because the coding these guys use goes all the way back to oblivion and all subsequent games which have always had frezze issues on all consoles.~
this bug seems to be quite different, I can pretty much guess that you cannot go back to any area that has suffered a previous freeze? right?

No matter what you do whether it's fast travel, walk, horse etc you will never load that area again.

The guy with no problems, well good for him, but his comment about playtestiing is frankly stupid.

I cannot beloieve while playtesting at least some of the beta testers did not experience a freeze.
why they did not try and revisit that area is weird.
These forums only have a few hundred issues of freezing but unofficial forums where members tend to use more colourfuil language are inundated with this.
Its frankly a disgrace.

Behseda if it does not sort out this game shoudl recall it as under the trading standards it is not fit for purpose..
and if its the xbox and pS3 not being good enoguht to handle this it should not have been released.

i am NOT a programmer but i do own a succesful software publishing company )PC only) albiet in a very nichemarket and i know my developers would never release a product until they are 100% satisfied that tt is ready despite commercial pressures to hit the xmas market deadlines They would tell me to go swing. Probably why our forum with 20,000+ topics only 40 or so of them are on on troubleshooting, the rest are idea inputs and ackowledgements.
and no this isnt a plug which is why i have not mentioned the name.

PS: Update 1.4 will not fix this issue.
they are concentating on freezes due to ram blockage . These Lockouts and unaccesible areas you , me and hundreds of others are facing are due to data corruption when the save file is written.
this is because as you try and load the area and it goes into the loading screen it is actually writing the data area to the cache. It then writes it back to the harddrive as a new autosave point.
as it locks out it cannot calrify the area and it basically becomes non existent,
your only solution is to wait and see if 1.4 stops NEW freezes , and if does, wipe it and start again.

Bleah, after going around and clearning up lots of areas I've been to:

Things are still not improving.

Instead, I can't get into my house in markarth now either (system freeze when entering there... LOL.) That is where the bulk of my stuff is.

I can go back to areas that suffered previous random freezes. I just can't go back to an area where the freeze seems to happen right away upon zoning.
Whatever reason it froze upon zoning, happens again everytime once it starts.

While all of this is true....cleaning up after yourself is not why people play a video game at least not normally. Sims....lol.

So what is the trick to keeping save filles below 20 megs? I've gotten to where I sell off stuff I don't use regularly, especially enchanged weapons and armor.

Great tips... I have a couple questions though on keeping stuff and it's impact on save file size.

I'm assuming that putting an item in a chest is much better than dropping it on the ground? I say this because if it's on the ground, the game has to remember it's exact position in 3D space, as opposed to just being "in" the chest? Seems like the game could remember many, many items being stored in a chest for every one item on the groudn that it has to remember "steel mace, coordinates = 99082, 81712, 83514," for example.

Does having multiple copies of an item in a chest increase the save file much (if at all?) For example, if I put an iron ingot in a barrel, the game has to basically remember "Iron Ingot, 2nd Barrel, Proudspire Basemant, Count = 001"... but if I put 499 more, it's just changing the number it uses to keep track of how many, right? A "count = 500" doesn't take any more space to store than a "count = 001", right? I guess the question I'm asking is, am I hurting myself by storing tons of each alchemical ingredient, or is it all the same once I've got one of each... each additional item of the same type doesn't add any size?

Building on the second question, though, it would seem that for items you wish to keep, it would be better to keep all identical items in a single container? Is this correct?

For lower-level enemies, are bound bows the way to go to avoid arrow cluttering throughout the landscape? Or does the game remember those arrows for quite awhile too (you can definitely see them laying on the ground after a fight). Do arrows ever clean up?

Does the 30-day "clean up" only count days that you don't visit an area? For example, if I want to cleanup Whiterun, should I avoid visiting it for at least 30 days... I don't want the timer to "reset" every time I go back.


Thanks!

Yes, for the reasons you mention. Additionally, when you are in range of objects that are thrown on the ground, the game also has to load the geometry and textures associated with that object, and also perform processing on that object because it is active within the 'world' and not just a set of numbers in a container (which is what happens when it is stored in a chest, which is only processed when you look inside it). The loading of geometry/textures of active objects will increase the amount of RAM used at any one time. Also, memory fragmentation also increases because of the increased frequency of stuff being loaded in and out. You will also notice that when the game starts running out of memory (because there is too much stuff around), it lowers the detail on objects to free up space.

Edit: Note that the size of your savefile is not the only consideration. It is also down to how much stuff is in the local area that the game has to render. For example, if you are in an empty room and your savefile is 20Mb, then there will be a lot of RAM available to load the savegame in, and so no problems will arise. However, if you now drop lots of stuff so the game has to load all the geometry/textures for all the dropped objects, then there is less RAM available and so a 20Mb savefile could start to cause problems because all the free RAM is taken up with all the extra stuff the game has to render. This is why some people with large save files have no problems, while other players do. It is down to the amount of free RAM at that point in time.

Edit: You be aware of this one, but I will add it for clarity. The game stores lists of 'differences' that you make with the world. For example, if you have a table full of cutlery and food, and you don't interact with it, then when you leave the area, no extra data will be stored. However, if you jump on the table and kick all the cutlery and food everywhere, all those objects will now be in a different place, all of which has to be stored (thus, savegame bloat).

Theoretically it shouldn't, assuming the game is written in such a way that opimizations like this are considered. The game is likely to store the object type, and have a counter for the number of copies of that object that exist. Thus, increasing the number of a particular object is only going to increase the counter number. No extra data is likely to be stored.

It may help fractionally, but you will end up doing a lot of work for very little gain. The amount of memory that objects take up (when in a container) is likely to be very small. As long as they are stuffed in a container, you will get the most benefit from doing that. The largest memory footprint will be from the geometry and the textures for that object, which wont be loaded up as long as they are in a container somewhere.

Not to my knowledge. I fired a bound arrow into the floor just outside my home in Whiterun ages ago, and it is still there. I assume these are never cleaned up. However, patch 1.4 does mention a fix for ...

• Fixed issue with dangling scripts not properly clearing from memory

Not sure what this relates to. Maybe it is for arrows?

Not sure about that one. I would hope it doesn't reset because it could cause a lot of problems, one of them being what you just mentioned.

Another thing that will reduce the size of your savefile, is to reduce the number of active quests that you have. Each new quest activated will increase the size of your savefile, so completing them will help keep the savefile size down.