There doesn't happen to be an autosaver for morrowind, is there? I always forget to periodically save and it's irritating to find out that my last autosave won't load. Is quicksave itself screwed up or could be just a little tool that will hit it every 10 mins or so but delete the last one when its going to save again.

Quicksave is bad. It tends to be corrupted quite a bit more than a regular save.

If you turn Auto Save When Rest on, it will auto save when you sleep.


Also: I had no idea quicksaves corrupted more, I just never used them because it was hard to remember to load a quicksave rather than a normal save.

Is it a bad way to save just once or just the fact that it constantly gets overwritten that it gets corrupted?

I know about autosave when rest, it's just irritating when it won't load.

ask fligg next time he is on to make one. he probably could with all his scripting knowledge.

Some reasons, taken from many scattered posts by many different authors:



Etc....

I think quicksave has a tendency to break running scripts, which is really bad with companion mods. That and it can become corrupted very easily by being overwritten.

Thanks for filling me in on the mid-script saving issues. I usually start saving periodically but then I get lazy or forget.

Jac, you lose

I didn't know this was a competition.

How odd. I don't think I've ever had a problem with a corrupted save, whether normal, quicksave or (sleep/wait) autosave.

Corrupted saves are like getting a woman pregnant, you may not know until months later, and by then you can't do anything about it.

Indeed

Well, since I don't have a sig this will now be it.

I always use quicksaves. I had never had any problem with it, except when I make a mistake (in-game).

This would be extremely easy to do with something like MGE.

MGE may even have a function to do this somewhere

Create a timer, and set it to tap f5 once every 5 mins or so.

I did actually write something to do this, before MGE existed. You can still grab it from here.

OMG!!!!!! Its Timeslip!!!!!!!!!!

You recognized that masked avatar, did you?

sieboldii

Not F5, the evil quicksave key.

Yacoby, could you go about doing this extremely easy thing in MGE?

haha thats going in my sig!!! only fair sine you have me in yours

Unfortunately, that really easy thing was setting up a timer to hit f5, unless Yacoby knows something about mge that I don't.

You can also set it up to delete the old quicksave file before making a new one, but that doesn't really help the saving mid script problem.

Apart from MGE becoming self aware, no.


I am confused about this saving mid script thing, as to my mind it doesn't make any sense. Why, when the scripting engine runs in the same thread as the main game engine would the developers even write in the ability to stop processing a script, unless of course they were so eager to save they couldn't wait 1/60th of a second...

No I saw the name.

Damn. I've been running a Skynet node?
Empirical evidence seems to suggest they were, but hey...

I guess they never thought that mods would be quite as extensive as they are now. I seem to remember hearing that the idea of someone running as many as :gasp: 10 mods was not considered either...

congrats harlequin, you have successfully been quoted by 3 other board members.

i did a bit of research.
and i think that normal saving is no different that quicksaving.
both methods of saving use the same functions in Morrowind.
that means that quicksaving shouldn't produce more faulty savegames than normal saving would.
that also means, that i can call the save routine myself.

OMG i reeally fell off my chair

Which also means, I assume, you can work out if the game has been saved, and what name

This would be useful for saving data in MWSE...

in theory, yes
but that would mean i have to hook the function, and isn't as easy as it sounds.
so that would be for later.

but saving a game from script IS a good possebility

Maybe and MAYBE you can make a simple programm (.exe) to tap Autosave key after well say each 10 minutes...

EDIT: Sorry somehow and accidently made Doublepost

thats what thy have been talking about. that is what timeslip recomended and what was Yacobys easy thing.

WOW i thought their'e talking bout mod :D:D thanks for pointing me right way o.O

Your welcome.

Bear in mind with this reply that I understand the subject matter only about as well as I understand particle physics, so I say this as a layman who thinks he's being reasonable, but may in fact just be ignorant.

But, isn't the difference between a quicksave and a normal save simply the fact that you have to open the menu first? Presuming the game waits for scripts to end before opening the game option menu, this could be the only saving grace of a standard save game, and thus scripted saving that doesn't open the menu may be doomed to the same problems as a quicksave?

The only other thing that would seem to make sense is that 'normal' saves are saving all scripted variables and the point where each running script stopped processing, which seems unlikely.

Actually I don't think the issues is with saves, it's with loads.
Note that Cyrano has a reproducible case (with journal) that shows that 'load' contaminates at least some data from a previously running game.

It explains loads and fits with my personal observations. No currupt saves since January and this is with over 200 mods.

Hence the advice 'always quit to desktop to reload'.

Symon69:

So you're saying the primary cause of corrupt savegames is reloading (in the same gaming session) followed by saving? I had to think about this for a moment since, obviously, loading a save won't alter that same save directly. Therefore you believe corrupt savegames are a function of first getting corrupt data in your running game (by reloading), and any new saves from that point become bad?

I'm trying to get a handle on what the different theories are about savegame corruption, just for the sake of knowing.

Assuming input isn't run on a seperate thread, everything is processed in a linear fashion. (Apart from backgound loading).

This means, for example, that every frame, first scripts are processed, then collision, then input etc, you can't process scripts and input at the same time from the same thread.
Even if input is processed in another thread, you would just set a flag to save the game at the next appropriate point in the main thread. Saving the game from another thread would have to freeze execution of the main thread, which would be totally stupid, as you don't know if it is doing something where data shouldn't be written to the disk. It would lead to bugs everywhere

example:


Even if it the script state is paused mid script, scripters would notice, trust me. Hell, the guys who developed the game would notice. You would get random bugs everywhere.
For example, this script:


If the execution of the script stopped after the doOnce is set to 1, all the stuff would fail to happen. Very noticeable




Of course, I may be totally wrong

Someone clever like Timeslip, Tp21 ect could probably explain it better, as they know the MW game engine better than me. That is just my experience from writing games.


Yeah, I know, when I hacked arround with d2, I just stole other peoples code for hooking functions I really should learn asm.


It would be useful, even more useful would be to know what save is loaded, I never managed to find if its name was stored anywhere. If needed I could probably find if a game is saved using the Win32 directory watcher or whatever it is called. It has some callback thing for that IIRC

Okay, I understood the basic concept of what you're saying there Yacoby - or I think I did. I at least know enough about scripting to understand your example scripts.

But as I read it, that's an argument against savegame corruption due to 'bad timing' of saves. What you said boils down to, 'The game would be much buggier if it actually interrupted scripts to quicksave instead of processing in a linear fashion'.

And what Tp21 said above about quicksaves indicates that a quicksave is, in fact, saving everything that a non-quicksave does.

So, to the point, what is the consensus of the coders concerning quicksaves? Safe? Not safe? Is the anti-quicksave advice I've seen on multiple Morrowind messageboards an uninformed reflection of what Symon69 said above, that it's consistent reloading and saving in the same gaming session that creates corrupt saves?

Umm...you have scripted for Morrowind, right? You've seen those random things that suddenly don't work...? lol

I've put a lot of effort into corrupting save games. I've spent a lot of time saving identical loaded games under slightly different circumstances and then comparing the save files line by line. Granted, I don't understand half of what I'm looking at when I do that, but I am able to pick out certain patterns that seem to constitute a corrupted save.

This is my list of behaviors that in my experience are more than likely to cause corruption:

Loading more than once in the same game session.
Lets say I have a save file called Adventure1. I am battling a massive Orc, and get killed. Since Adventure1 was my most recent save, I load it immediately. There is a pretty good chance that the game will then CTD while loading, either at Initializing Data or Loading Area. If this happens, Adventure1 will most likely be corrupted and not ever be able to load. If it does successfully load after death, there is a high likelihood that any subsequent save in that same session will be corrupted, and probably CTD or hard freeze at Loading Area.

Using Quicksave or Autosave.
I completely agree with what has said before (I believe it was first suggested by Wrye) about MenuMode checks being the main difference between Quicksave and normal saves. The biggest argument for this is that unmodded games don't suffer from corruption as much as those that are modded with many script heavy mods. Since most capable modders make constant use of MenuMode checks to hold of execution of the script while the player is in a menu, it makes sense that at the time of saving there is less load on the CPU...if that makes any difference. TP21 said that both save methods use the same routines. And I know from my own experience that if I use Quicksave, it WILL get corrupted. So it only stands to reason that if MenuMode is the biggest difference between the two, it is most likely to be the culprit.

Using the incorrect teleportation function, ie using COC rather than COE to go to an exterior cell.
I found that if I use COC to go to a specific cell, say Caldera, there is a good chance that I will get a CTD when Loading Area in that cell any time afterwards. I have found that loading the save in Enchanted Editor and saving it again seems to fix this.

Now most of my tests involved heavily modded games, as that seems to be when corruption happens.

flig you are not a modder you are a scientist.

ok, here goes...
yes i checked again (just to be sure) there is only one function that creates saves.
so we can logically asume that all saving methods should be the same.
the only difference i can think of is menumode.

about hooks. it's not that i can't create them. it's that i want to keep the number of hooks to a minimum, less interference with morrowind, means less crashing

EDIT: hmm, it appears that you can change the names for quicksave and autosaves apparantly.
the keys just aren't used in the INI.

[SaveNames]
restore=Restore ;when generating warnings apparently
quicksave=Quicksave ;quicksave (obviously)
autosave=autosave ;autosave (when sleeping)

are the extra keys that i have found

A save fix that often works:

Sometimes the save file gets corrupted during the save and leaves the temporary file name in your Saved Games folder instead - happens more often with Quiksave and Autosave but can also happen with a new or reused save. This will occur the previous time you saved prior to getting the error and the error doesn't show up until the next time you try to save (looking to delete the old file with the .ess name and can't find it). Look at the filenames for your autosave, quiksave and last regular saved files - they should be autosave.ess and quiksave.ess and [something resembling your savename].ess. If instead of those filenames you see autosave.tes or quiksave.tes or any .tes file you may be able to fix these files by changing the file extension from "tes" to "ess" and then reloading Morrowind and doing a Save again.

- Rougetet

It wouldn't surprise me if recall isn't as innocent as it looks either...