they said memory issues... crashes are caused by this in many cases.

Crossing my fingers, hopeing this fixes my CTD issues.. I really want to play Skyrim again!

It all looks good though, even just the CK would be enough at this point.

Thanks for your hard work though Bethesda, Despite my issues with Skyrim. I still have a special place in my heart for the Elder Scrolls & your company. Just bring back spell creation next time! That was a step in the wrong direction removeing it!!!

Leaves me with two questions:
- How about them radioactive Nirnroots? (and duplicated roots, from what I hear?)
- Compatibility with existing saves? (Will new bloat be reduced, any existing bloat cleared?)

"Finding Pantea's Flute before speaking with Pantea no longer prevents her quest from updating"

Every quest item of the entire game prevents the associated quest from updating when found before....
Mage guild student's staff, Riften farmer's bow etc...

Improved compiler optimization settings (PC)

Does this mean that changes from mods like TESVAL and SkyBoost will now be incorporated?

Before we all get too excited, what does "Skyrim launcher support for Steam Workshop (PC)" imply? I hope it doesn't mean we are going to be forced to use the darned thing.

Pretty sure it will just add an option to the launcher that will give you access to the Steam Workshop.

Long-term play optimization was only mentioned for PS3, if I read the list correctly. I am afraid that at least CTD due to large saves could fall under that category, although I hope not.


If nothing else is said, it could possibly mean, that the Creation Kit is only available as a "cloud" application, and it cannot be used in offline mode. I hope not, though.

^^ If that's going to have the same impact as that "unofficial speed patch", but to a degree where as it's actually been compiled that way it sorts out *EVERY* slow call, then this alone is going to make a massive performance boost. The upcoming changelog looks really good - much better than I had been expecting, I didn't expect to see any quest fixes for another couple of patches, or any engine improvements.

It means they plan to con modders into uploading their hard work to Steam so that they can appropriate it as their own itellectual property and then charge us for it.

I think that more refers to how choppy the framerate gets in the game over time on the PS3.

Yes.

I am very glad to see the line about the compiler optimizations and looking forward to what it and the many others will provide to the Skyrim gaming experience. Also that part about being able to flip patch versions? That is a sign of genuinely listening to our complaints, I like that feature. I like it a lot.

What I think is very nice (and a 1st time for Steam/Valve allowing something like this, afaik) is that the patch will be "beta" at first.

Finally we are not forced to update if we don't want or if there are problems with it, without putting Steam into offline mode.
I really hope that this will set an example with Steam.

It seems they will let modders take care of the CTD issues.

Ash piles fixed?? This is good news, but what about nirnroot glows, roots, and ice piles and wisp corpses ect?

Chill.
the game has only been out for 2.5 months.. they said they improved optimizing and memory issues... crashes during saving and loading.. this seams very true to be CTD related stuff.

This is most likely an engine limitation and not something that can be addressed through game updates. Even if it were possible to dynamically rewrite the engine to adjust how shadows are rendered, it would be a more involved process. Quest and gameplay fixes will always have higher priority for the first few updates.

Re: the shadows. It would be nice to just have a display setting to disable them completely in the interim. That would be a simple workaround until they are fixed (if ever.) Not that they bother me that much, but others...


It should fail?


Typo in there.


Wasn't that in the 1.3 patch changelog?

So now it will fail more consistently?

All joking aside, this sounds great... particularly like the compiler optimizations and the beta patch release.

Sure, it would have been better for them to identify and fix these before launch, but I'm actually pretty amazed to see that Bethesda is paying attention, AND finally tuning the core executable. Wow.

Hats off to you, Bethesda. I'm astonished and at the same time happy that the problems concerning the generated game code are being looked into and also addressed!


It could be done by using link-time code generation (/GL /LTCG) because the game consists of multiple libraries linked together: Usually, by the time the linker is invoked, the code will already have been generated and nothing more than dead references can be eliminated because the knowledge about how a libraries' functions work interally with the data passed to them is no longer available. By generating it at link time, the compiler essentially gains an overview of how each part of the program is related to another, enabling optimizations like automated inlining of functions in loops and where the speed/size tradeoff is favorable, partial unrolling to lessen the strain on the CPU's branch predictor for loops with small bodies, determining and elimination of code paths, function arguments and return values as well as global variables that normally would've been exported and thus linked into the final binary, enhanced awareness of alignment needs for data so other code won't be slowed down by attempting to do loads and stores on misaligned addresses, folding of multiple function calls for constant and pure functions (i.e. functions which don't have any side-effects) and many more.

Even if this wasn't used, these same optimizations are still applied at a library-local level and it'll also improve much of the obsolete code like using the much slower FSTSW -> TEST -> JNP chains instead of the equivalent floating point comparison instructions available on all processors since the Intel Pentium II. It'll probably will make a noticeable difference due to how many critical paths currently look like this or worse.

• General optimizations for memory and performance
  
• Improved compiler optimisation settings (pc)

This makes me happy and sad. Sad that Bethesda have made the works of the modders redundant (Skyboost/TESVAL), but happy that their work didn't go to waste as Bethesda are adding it as standard.

ED: Can't forget TESVAL, it started it all

Yup, starting to see some very welcome changes. Community betas and updates of patch progress are much appreciated.

I'd prefer they fixed everything from crashes and busted questlines down to the typos and floating flora, as otherwise 70% of everyone (the console players) don't get to benefit.

Sure, it may put me out of work, but it's the right thing to do.