Hey, I just thought I'd ask a quick question.

I keep seeing references to something called savegame bloating, and various ways to avoid it. I also read about plenty things that causes savegame bloating. However, even when searching for it I've been unable to find out what this "savegame bloating" actually is. So I'd appreciate if someone could tell me.

In short: What is savegame bloating?

-Forral-

Here is an example of something that causes save game bloating :


And each of those 4.2 billion items has to be saved in the save game !! which causes the save game to become much larger and if it continues above that will eventually corrupt the save game.

I think some mods more than others cause save game bloating. Mods like the harvest mods that make everything open are thought to cause this I think

Your savegame contains info about changes to the gameworld.
The more changes that occur, the more info that needs to be saved, thus the bigger your savegame file becomes.

One big culprit is the placeAtMe function.
New objects that are created in the world using placeAtMe never disappear.
This is particularly a problem with mods that use invisible activators to cast spells at the player or enemies - you end up with lots of invisible activators which are no longer used but persist in the savegame indefinitely.

Items stored in inventories are another common culprit, especially with the negative item count bug mentioned above.

What effect does resetting the respawn timer to a large number have on save game bloating?

Setting the respawn timer to a larger number simply means the game has to remember which cells have been edited in any way for a longer time which also gives you more time to run around and change more cells.

Z

Does that constitute save game bloating?

Don't quote me on this But I don't think so because the game will still reset it after that amount of time, it just can cause a slow down at times.

Z

It will increase the size of your savegame, so yeah.
But most of that info, while it persists longer, is being culled from the savegame regularly.
The bigger problem is with stuff that never gets cleaned out, because it just piles up indefinitely until your game takes forever to load or your savegame becomes corrupt.

I wish there was a safe save game cleaner of some kind available.

would it be possible to have a list of mods that do this cause i use pj spell compendium and harvest flora and also harvest containers i really like those mods but if the activators stay around forever i might have to get rid of them.

i also use a couple of companion mods like cm partners and talkie toaster says share but i think that those were safe ones if i remember correctly.

Thanks guys. There's nothing as frustrating as constantly seeing this phenomenon mentioned, and not actually understanding what it is.

Basically it's a bunch of redundant information that's stored in the save, that when reaching a certain point, goes corrupt. Gotcha.

-Forral-

I've got about 200hours in on one savegame thats been though ATLEAST 700 different mods here and there in passing (only 242 at the moment)
It wakes me FOREVER to load or level these days....any fix? (i still have yet to start the MQ so i dont just wanna start over...level 37)

For the reference:

If using a mod that causes bloating, like a spell effect mod, just make a new save with that mod disabled.

THAT IS a safe way to clean the save file. Then just re-enable the mod.



This is only a real problem with mods that can´t be temporarily disabled, meaning harvest-like mods, cause this "clean saving" also loses all those objects that are MEANT to be stored (and made by that mod).


But overall, if the mod isn´t supposed to give you quests or objects, clean save is you friend.

Harvest [Flora] makes extensive use of the PlaceAtMe function.
( I should know I wrote Harvest [Flora] )

Technical details are probably not relevant, but indeed Harvest [Flora] will create some bloat to SaveGames.
Harvest [Containers] on the otherhand does NOT use the PlaceAtMe function...
It will not add any bloat to your SaveGames.

The concept of Harvest [Containers] uses animation to alter the "look" of containers.
This particular technique was unavailable during the development of Harvest [Flora]...
During development of Harvest [Containers] another MOD author Quarn ( of the UOP ),
Has developed a different MOD, that can replace Harvest [Flora] without the bloat.
That MOD is Realistic Flora downloadable from any number of sites.
If SaveGame bloat is a serious issue for you, I strongly recommend it.

-Dejunai

Unfortunately, one of the biggest culprits in this problem is Reznod's EasyCompanionShare. Mod's that use that version (like Ruined Tail versions prior to 1.0) can cause permanent bloating of your savegame.

This sort of bloating is not cleared by a clean save.

I know because it happened to me. My main character file went from roughly 10Mb to more than 26Mb in just a short while.

You can easily spot the problem using Wrye Bash's Statistics function on your savegame. It will show dramatically high counts of created weapons and books (in my case there are something like 50,000 "created" weapons and 90,000 books).

Does Frans items and Book Jackets Oblivion cause save game bloating?

/me slaps Bonk

Hey, I heard it was fun. And it is!

In case anyone thought he was serious, no, they do not cause bloat.

Thats good news! Those are great mods but still......

I've seen lots of "opinions" on what increasing the respawn rate will do to your save files, but those players never actually tested what would happen to prove their assumptions.

I have cell resets completely disabled for 250 hours of play, harvested thousands of plants and opened hundreds of containers using DEJ's harvest mods. My save file went slowly from 2MB to 12MB, and the load/save times haven't noticably increased (takes about six seconds regardless of save file size).

When I run around Tamriel, I can see all the harvested plants, all the opened containers, all the dead bodies, knocked over clutter, etc. (or should I write "ect." like everyone else?) since I first set foot in those cells. Since I never hired a clean-up crew to follow me everywhere I go, it's refreshing to know the world won't miraculously reset to the beginning of the game every 3 days as if I had never been anywhere.

Good point. However, chances are that autosave stopped working for you quite some time ago (if you ever had it enabled). Lots of people who've used extended respawn timers have reported that autosave starts crashing their game when they go through a load-door once your savegame gets fairly large (~10Mb).

It's possible that most of these complaints about crashing due to to extended respawn times had more to do with companion share bloating than with the respawn timer, but this would be fairly difficult to prove one way or the other.

My autosaves are still working fine. I've never had any problems at all yet. I did recently enable two companion mods (Shadow Ranger/Horse/Wolf/Panther and Neeshka), and my save is slowly starting to rise again (13MB now).

I've tried over 200 mods in this game, and still have over 100 enabled, and resetting cells just hasn't been necessary. After playing this long without resets, I don't think I can ever go back. It's plain silly to me to play where cells reset every 3 days. That means practically every cell you ever enter is refreshed to how it was the first time you visted, and you've made no changes all the times you have been there. Might as well just start a brand new character every 3 days to make sure it doesn't get corrupted by playing it too long. (OK, now I'm getting way too sarcastic.)

I understand the problems that save file bloating can cause, but disabling cell resets doesn't seem to cause any problems, and most reports of problems come from other sources.

Of course that's equally unrealistic, since nature does clean things up. Bodies get dragged off by carrion eaters, weather erodes hills and covers trash, in cities, people pick up after themselves and others to maintain quality of life...and organics biodegrade, plants grow back

but hey, to each his own...I'll take accelerated cleanup over no cleanup, personally

Would PureCellBuffers(mod) help this?

Sigh, I wish I had read this thread about a week ago.

I'm currently using the longer respawn esp from Frans, Harvest Flora and Skycaptain's rather excellent Deadly Reflexs combat mod. Like he mentioned earlier in this thread, Skycaptain suggests making a clean save without his mod about once a week. However I can only go about 3 to 4 hours with his mod enabled before I start to crash while saving, I was tempted to make a whiny post in that mod's thread, but I guess the longer respawns and Harvest Flora are greatly accelerating the process.

I suppose the longer I play the worse it will get, even without Deadly Reflexes enabled. Oh well at least I only invested about 50 hours with my current charactor

Edit: Ok its not all doom and gloom. Just had a look at Realistic Flora seems its possible to transition from Harvest flora to Realistic Flora....

Their is no fault with reznod's Easy Companion Share (doesn't use PlaceAtMe at all), it's the fault of the author of the companion mod because they are the one who set the companion to have infinite of an item! Killing the NPC who has been afflicted infinite item bug (caused by using removeallitems to a container then back from the container to the NPC) will stop the infinite allowing the items to be removed.



Purge cell buffers removes unused objects from your RAM and video card RAM not your savegames.

Quarn,

question this topic of having infintie of an item does this effect a npc who has this -1 item in a leveled list or does this not apply?

is there a tool to remedy this?

You can't set items in a level list to infinite (-1), infinite items in a NPC's inventory cannot cause bloating in a standard game, it's only triggered by mods and console commands.

just thought I would ask about it thank you

Morrowind has SetDelete 1 to fix that problem. What about Oblivion?

It also has DontSaveObject to avoid putting in the savegame all the data about things that don't need to be saved, like the state a moving activator (such as a shop sign) is. Again, what about Oblivion?

I have seen modders speak of moving objects spawned with PlaceAtMe to a "trashcan cell", but i havent heard anything about how this would prevent the savefile to grow.

If anyone would care to enlighten me, feel free.

In fact, Reznod's Easy Companion Share does have a bloat problem. It uses DuplicateAllItems (duplicating them to a duplicate of the NPC) in order to calculate and display encumbrance. If any of the NPC's items are scripted items, then they become permanently duplicated (and impossible to destroy) every time the Duplicate AllItems call is made. Since that call is made every frame while the companion's inventory screen is open, you get bloat very quickly (tens of megabytes in a few seconds).

I did come up with a fix for Simyaz to use in later Ruined Tail versions, which instead of duplicating items uses RemoveAllItems to transfer them to the companion and then back. That does fix the original bug (scripted items don't cause bloat anymore), but I didn't know about the negative items bug with RemoveAllItems .

Oh well, at least it is possible to avoid that one by creating the companion NPC correctly.

[edit]
Thanks to everyone for the info .

It's a different strategy, in fact.

The idea is to always use the same item, and hide it in a special cell when not used.

It's much better than creating a new item every time.

Quarn,

It would be much appreciated if you could follow up with a response to andyw's post.

Thanks!

With this talk of the Easy Companion thing, I'm wondering... does Toaster's Companion Share and Recruit have any such problem?

FYI, dev_akm asked me to take a shot at his bloated savegame (about 26 Mb, bloating due to older version of Reznod's companion share). After a bit of analysis, I was able to come up with a bish script that discarded the obvious junk. Result was that savegame was trimmed down to 5.9 Mb and (somewhat surprisingly) still ran.

If you're concerned about bloating, first, look at the size. If you're below 8Mb, I wouldn't worry about it. Second thing to do is to go to Bash, right click on the savegame and choose "Statistics" command. (If the game really is bloated, this may take a little while to display.) Statistics will list various info. Main things to look at are:

Created Items: These are the items created and remembered in-game, e.g., spells, enchanted weapons, alchemical potions. The other major addition here is scripted items on an npc that has been duplicated. E.g., your statue in Bruma is actually a duplicated copy of the player, with all your inventory elements duplicated. The problem here is with older Reznod's which duplicates the companion repeatedly, thus duplicating all of the companions scripted elments as new "created" items. Dev_akm's save had 57k created weapons -- all multiple copies of the same enchanted weapon.

Change Records A number of entries (e.g., 21 Books) that show the types of change records. These show the entries, broken down by source mod (or the savegame itself at the end), along with number of entries belonging to each mod/savegame. The thing to look for here is the number of entries belonging to the savegame. E.g., dev_akm had 97k books (all the same) and 120k object refs -- about 1/3 of those object refs were legit, but the rest were bogus somehow.

In terms of size, the created items are the major space consumers, since they're complete descriptions of the items, and since they're in the space-inefficient mod file format. The change records are less of a size problem. However, it might be possible that they affect the game in some otherway (e.g., FPS) -- after all they're all entries in the ingame database, and so their mere presence might slow access to other components. (I'm guessing here -- it's possible that their impact is negligible.)

After cleaning dev_akm's game, I now know a little bit more about how the savegame handles created objects in-game, and it's probably possible to go through and delete all instances of a given type (e.g. all dropped torches). So probably past bloating can be removed to a certain degree. (The main concern here is the question of how safe it is to remove objects -- dev_akm seemed to not have much problems, but others might not be so lucky.)

Generalized bloating cleaning: While I hand tailored the deletion script for dev_akm, it's probably possible to automate that to a fair degree. I'll take a shot when I get a chance (which won't be any sooner than this weekend, and may not be for several weeks.)

Cool. If anyone can solve this, it's Wrye!

Oh wow, I am kind of scared now. My savegame is around 7 mb, steadily increasing. I just checked the stats of my latest save game:

Array Sizes
177 Created Items
82066 Records
16201 FormIds

Oops, looks like I miss-read, thought someone said Reznod's Easy Companion Share used PlaceAtMe. I wasn't aware of the problem with DuplicateAllItems... DuplicateAllItems seems a rather nasty command when used on a NPC/player with equipped items to duplicate to a container, causes a game crash if the duplicated equipped item is removed from the container.

I think the problem is that in the game as released by Bethesda, DuplicateAllItems is only used in some very specific and controlled instances (eg, the Bruma statue of the player). As a result, there are some bugs in it that simply weren't an issue for Bethesda - and were probably never even known about.

It looks like the same is even true of RemoveAllItems - and I'm sure a host of other commands .

If Wrye is able to work out an automatic purging of bloated savegames that would be fantastic. Even a fairly conservative removal of the most obviously faulty entries would be a great boon - all that's needed is to get the savegame size low enough to make the impact bearable. I'll bet there are plenty of people out there with mildly bloated saves who don't even know, and aren't bothered.

As I said in my PM to you, you're a miracle worker! I haven't been able to find any problems in my savegame after the bloat cleaning, so I definitely think it's worth attempting a general-purpose version of that code. Thanks again, Wrye!

My question seems to have gotten passed over...



And Wyre, thats awesome news. I try my hardest to keep from using mods that bloat, but I'm not about to check every single mod I download. Luckily my save file is sitting at a nice 4.6MB right now, so it seems I've gotten pretty lucky. If I ever get a bloated save though, something to fix it (like the incredible Wyre Bash) would be priceless. Keep up the amazing script work.

Just guessing here, but unless he calculates encumbrance like Reznod did, then probably not.

Doesn't look like a problem. Created Items looks pretty reasonable, esp if you're an alchemist. You might check to see if one of your subrecord types has a particularly large number of changes belonging to the savegame, but that's it. Again, this doesn't look like a problem to me just from this section of the statistics.

Note that to date, the only problems that I've seen with bloating are due to the older companion duplicating bug. If you've got this problems it becomes apparent pretty rapidly (savegames start heading towards 20 Mb, and keep going -- I think I recall someone from the discussion 9 months ago who had a savegame aroud 80 Mb) I think that's a pretty small number of players these days.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the useful thing would be to see someone who's never used companion sharing and yet has extremely high numbers of created records and/or some object change type (according to Bash statistics command).

I don't use any companion sharing mods, but I was planning to download one until I stumbled upon this thread

I remember there was a mod that incorporated Reznod's mod by giving your character the ability to recruit/dress guild members once you have become the guildmaster. Good thing I did a search for it here before I searched at TESS.

Most of the records in my stats are associated with the saves. I do use about 100+ mods and a large number of references are associated with Oscuro's OO. But other than that it looks pretty decent. *wipes sweat from brow and waits for the cleaning script*

Geeze I feel like we just realized mods have high cholestrol and we are creating a movement for a "leaner, fitter, virtual space!"

Ah-ha!

Now I know why my game starts to crash while attempting to autosave/quicksave after a while. While I'm not able to 'clean' my savegames properly I can at least minimise further damage by weeding out the mods that are known to have an issue (i.e. Harvest Flora).

Thanks for all this information, guys! It does make sense when you think about it - it's just that I never really thought about it that much. Heh.

Anything my mod leaves in your save games can be cured with a clean save, as they are unique activators from my mods folder.

However, if your save is ALREADY bloated by ANOTHER MOD, you will naturally keep reaching the limit, as the main bloat from those other mods persists, of course.


What is this limit then? Dark Dragon made an educated guess that there´s probably a buffer of some 32Mb (a power of 2 anyway), so it SHOULD be safe as long as you keep below, say, 20 Mb. There´s no actual proof of this, but the theory seems to work, from what I have heard.

couldnt someone create a mod/tool (i know this is gonna be near impossible, sorry) which 'tags' unessessary data as its created in game and then when the size reaches a limit it purges all the non essential data from the save. Like a tool which will notice if an item has been duplicated and tag it for deletion when the time comes. Just an idea though.

The thing that bumps cleaning DOWN my todo list is the complete lack of data here. I see a bunch of people screaming, "OMG! My savegame is sooooo bloated!", but I'm seeing zero statistics posted. How big is the savegame? What stats are out of whack?

Get the numbers from Wrye Bash's statistics command and post them here. Things to post:
1) Size of savegame. If it's less than 10Mb, quit worrying.
2) Number of created objects.
3) Any record type that has over 10k objects from the savegame. EXCEPT for objectrefs -- in that case, the number of objects has to be over 60k.

I've got a bunch of stuff on my plate, so I don't want to waste time fixing a phantom problem, when I could be working on something more productive (e.g., COBL, LGNCP Seyda Neen, support for unicode, etc.). So, before I work on this, Show me the money!! Err... Numbers.

Hey, sorry Wrye. I thought you already had fleshed out how you were going to go about this and didn't want to be boggled down by a ton of stats. Here is more detailed stats from my latest save.

Abomb Counter
Integer: 0x475740F8
Float: 55104.97

Array Sizes
196 Created Items
87690 Records
16624 FormIds

Created Items
184 ALCH
3 ARMO
2 CLOT
6 ENCH
1 WEAP

FormIds
587 Lost Refs (FormId == 0)
12610 Oblivion.esm
194 Mart's Monster Mod.esm
2 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
5 DLCHorseArmor.esp
25 DLCOrrery.esp
136 DEJ Harvest - Flora.esp
670 moDem's Life - English.esp
1570 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
1 Mart's Monster Mod - Less Bone Loot.esp
1 974-Faster Turning Horses-TESSource.esp
5 1298-Horse AI-TESSource.esp
7 Better Oblivion Pack 17 - Oblivion Gates.esp
3 Illumination.esp
20 Cyrodiil Most Wanted v.1.0.esp
19 LG's Unique Enemies.esp
223 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
72 DLCFrostcrag.esp
3 teleport ring Frostcrag.esp
14 DLCThievesDen.esp
13 DLCVileLair.esp
91 DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
186 Knights.esp
1 Balance fixes.esp
67 DLCSpellTomes.esp
2 Days&Months.esp
1 1310-Chamelion-NoRefraction-TESSource.esp
1 No psychic guards v1.2.esp
4 IS_CaskOfSouls_1.1.esp
1 Toaster's Brutal Stealth.esp
5 P1DkeyChain.esp
4 HorseSpeedEqualsPlayerSpeed.esp
9 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
3 MM_SneakMarksman.esp
3 Will_to_Kill_by_Mojodot.esp
1 No Sun Damage v1.0.esp
1 Vampire Aging Disabled 2 XYoung.esp
1 Casual Oblivion 0.2 Levelled Rewards.esp
1 drzwi.esp
20 RenGuardOverhaul.esp
2 Unlimited Rings 2.0 -auto.esp
38 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
2 _Ren_BeautyPack_onlyhairs.esp

6 Faction
30 Oblivion.esm
1 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
31 Total

20 Armor
3 Save 42 -
3 Total

21 Book
53 Oblivion.esm
2 DLCOrrery.esp
1 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
5 DLCFrostcrag.esp
61 Total

22 Clothing
3 Oblivion.esm
2 Save 42 -
5 Total

27 Misc. Item
1 Oblivion.esm
1 Total

33 Weapon
4 Oblivion.esm
1 Save 42 -
5 Total

35 NPC
1059 Oblivion.esm
558 Mart's Monster Mod.esm
5 DLCOrrery.esp
44 moDem's Life - English.esp
1063 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
8 Better Oblivion Pack 17 - Oblivion Gates.esp
154 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
3 DLCThievesDen.esp
2 DLCVileLair.esp
52 DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
36 Knights.esp
1 DLCSpellTomes.esp
2985 Total

36 Creature
10 Oblivion.esm
15 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
25 Total

39 Key
17 Oblivion.esm
1 DLCFrostcrag.esp
1 P1DkeyChain.esp
19 Total

48 Cell
3376 Oblivion.esm
1 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
2 DLCFrostcrag.esp
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
247 Save 42 -
3627 Total

49 Object Ref
49395 Oblivion.esm
5 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
5 DLCHorseArmor.esp
21 DLCOrrery.esp
68 moDem's Life - English.esp
2457 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
14 Better Oblivion Pack 17 - Oblivion Gates.esp
47 Landmarks.esp
2 Illumination.esp
2 Cyrodiil Most Wanted v.1.0.esp
23 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
512 DLCFrostcrag.esp
1 teleport ring Frostcrag.esp
103 DLCThievesDen.esp
49 DLCVileLair.esp
169 DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
188 Knights.esp
8 IS_CaskOfSouls_1.1.esp
1 Toaster's Brutal Stealth.esp
1 HorseSpeedEqualsPlayerSpeed.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
1 Will_to_Kill_by_Mojodot.esp
12 RenGuardOverhaul.esp
71 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
18611 Save 42 -
71767 Total

50 NPC Ref
1566 Oblivion.esm
5 DLCOrrery.esp
134 moDem's Life - English.esp
234 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
16 Cyrodiil Most Wanted v.1.0.esp
121 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
1 DLCFrostcrag.esp
3 DLCVileLair.esp
50 DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
50 Knights.esp
1 DLCSpellTomes.esp
3 RenGuardOverhaul.esp
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
343 Save 42 -
2528 Total

51 Creature Ref
554 Oblivion.esm
1 DLCHorseArmor.esp
2 moDem's Life - English.esp
152 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
5 DLCFrostcrag.esp
7 DLCThievesDen.esp
43 Knights.esp
3334 Save 42 -
4098 Total

58 Dialog Entry
2129 Oblivion.esm
1 DLCOrrery.esp
52 Knights.esp
14 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
2196 Total

59 Quest
232 Oblivion.esm
62 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
1 DLCHorseArmor.esp
1 DLCOrrery.esp
2 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
1 Better Oblivion Pack 17 - Oblivion Gates.esp
4 Player Hunters Fame and Infamy - Normal.esp
1 DLCFrostcrag.esp
1 DLCThievesDen.esp
1 DLCVileLair.esp
1 DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
12 Knights.esp
1 Xero's Fame Indicator.esp
1 Toaster's Brutal Stealth.esp
3 P1DkeyChain.esp
2 HorseSpeedEqualsPlayerSpeed.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Skills & Stats.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
1 Better Oblivion Pack 12 - Retroactive Health.esp
6 RenGuardOverhaul.esp
3 Unlimited Rings 2.0 -auto.esp
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
339 Total

That doesn't look very bad. How large is your savegame?

ripple: Exactly. That doesn't look bloated to me.

My lastest savegame is about 7.5 mb. I've had no problems, but I am only about 35 hours into the game. In a previous incarnation, when I was 100+ hours into the game, the savegame became corrupted and I could no longer load from it. Of course, that was months ago, before I knew anything about bloating. If I had that savegame still I'd post it here :/

If anyone is actually suffering from a bloated savegame, now is the time to report it here. Otherwise, Wrye is likely to lose interest in creating a general-purpose fix for it.

Well I'm not "suffering" as of yet, but is 8MB really the clinch point? I have a game approaching that, but I don't think I have any mods that are going to cause this problem, plus, it's not given me any problems yet.

The strange thing is, i'm about 33 hours into the game with this character, and i have another one with about 60 hours, and that save is only 4MB. (this one is 7MB)


What would really be nice is a save cleaning feature like Wrye MASH had for morrowind (in that, you could do a "Sync to load list" and it would clear out unneeded data and sync up the mods (in this case, formIDs))

Probably a long way off, but I hope it can be attained someday. Wrye Bash (And Mash) is an essential tool for me.

EDIT - I see Wrye is guessing at a buffer limit of 10MB (Would more likely to me to be 8MB or 16MB, as it would be a multiple of 8).

As skycaptain said above I made a guess at more around 32MB, hence why a lot of people with 20MB or larger savegames are having problems.

On a side note, Skycaptain, I did run a clean save with my 7,011KB save game without your mod, and it had very little effect, so your mod really doesn't bloat all that bad (And this character shield bashes, a LOT). It went from 7,011KB to 7,009KB. Only a 2KB differance after 7 levels of shield bashing madness.



EDIT - Also like to report that I DO have savegames from awhile ago (that is, that haven't been played with ALL my mods as I haven't played them recently) with 100+ hours, and they are not too large either. In fact, my longest savegame at 151 hours (last saved in October, 2006 though) is only 4,995KB (smaller than my more recent save in fact)

So yeah, no idea why people would have such large saves.

Now my morrowind saves are a differant story... (largest there is 11,312KB, but we're not talking about Morrowind of course)

Man, brings back memories. In TNR the Imperials I must have used the Placeatme function at least five hundred times - saving over the file every five NPCs or so. At one point my game stuttered to roughly 2 frames per second. Insane. My saves are much cleaner these days.

Yea i use the harvest mod and i have been starting to get unusual slowdowns aswell even in Very Low Quality Video mode which always gives me blazing FPS rates. I also noticed i never had this problem in one version of harvest mod which included clams. I accidently used another version without the clams and now am seeing slow down.

Am not sure about this but i heard slow downs also occur due to dead bodies and plant branches in caves twitching. The Unofficial Patch fixes this along with some other mods out there.

I was a longtime Harvest[Flora] user (using Realistic Flora now). I still use Harvest[Containers], but that's not a problem.

Size: 10588KB
Hours: 273.05

Abomb Counter
Integer: 0x48D2C842
Float: 431682.06

Array Sizes
421 Created Items
162735 Records
24828 FormIds

Created Items
289 ALCH
6 ARMO
8 CLOT
25 ENCH
3 INGR
53 KEYM
2 LIGH
21 MISC
1 NPC_
1 SLGM
12 WEAP

FormIds
2121 Lost Refs (FormId == 0)
20025 Oblivion.esm
241 Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod.esm
18 Francesco's optional new creatures add-on.esm
505 Francesco's optional new items add-on.esm
41 AWS-Core.esm
33 Natural Interiors.esm
638 Mart's Monster Mod.esm
12 Crafting Skill Engine.esm
7 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
4 GuildStorage.esp
1 Cliff_BetterLetters.esp
1 Deadlier Traps.esp
2 Marksman Velocity.esp
1 BuyLockpicks.esp
4 Trainer_Book.esp
1 noreplicas.esp
3 attack and hide v1.0.esp
5 KT_DetectHostility.esp
1 haz_blackjack.esp
2 Deadlier Sneaking 1.1.esp
6 Multicolored_Glass.esp
14 CallSteed3.0a.esp
1 BoneGrind.esp
2 MM_AllowRepair.esp
10 More Realistic Encumbrance.esp
1 More Sigils.esp
58 TimboeMultiMark & Recall.esp
1 DarkAltars.esp
5 P1DkeyChain.esp
20 DLCThievesDen.esp
1 GalerionLeveling-v11.esp
29 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
4 HaroK_Arrow_Forge.esp
5 AlternativeLightArmors1.2.esp
96 DLCSpellTomes.esp
1 rdweaponpack1.esp
1 CM_Better Wine.esp
1 CyrodiilicBrandy.esp
12 kt_dancingweaponbeta.esp
29 Encyclopaedia Cyrodilica.esp
2 Flee Further.esp
42 geomancy.esp
25 Gray Fox's Armory v2.0.esp
13 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Skills & Stats.esp
8 wd purse of wonders.esp
34 Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
66 Town_Ceremonial_Armor.esp
19 MD_Saddle_Bags_Lite_v2.esp
1 A's Silver Ebony Armour and Weapons.esp
5 LouderNirnroot.esp
9 Pestilent Afflictions.esp
2 FemaleArmorPack1.esp
1 Quest Award Leveling - Spell Leveling Compatability.esp
6 SM Racial Spell Leveling.esp
6 SM Start Spell Levelling.esp
2 Quest Award Leveller.esp
6 Improved_potion_of_exploration_11.esp
7 zDangerSensev1-0.esp
23 zDangerSenseV1-2.esp
27 Q - More and Moldy Ingredients v1.1.esp
52 RTSWelkyndClstrTreasure.esp
24 Piratelords Trade Fixes.esp
10 bnmDLTIC-1-6.esp
23 RandomEncounters.esp
1 Bonemold_helmet.esp
12 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
18 IWR - Windows Lights Shutters - Optimised.esp
9 Confessional Priests -Ver 1.1-.esp
2 Bullettimemodsetkey.esp
1 Leyawiin Bridge.esp
5 Rowboats.esp
2 Slof's Oblivion Robe Trader.esp
7 SSEE.esp
1 Francesco's optional house chest loot.esp
12 AWS-Storms & Sound.esp
4 weather inside [silent seasons] v1.2.esp
2 Natural Interiors - Cities.esp
1 Players with Jobs.esp
1 TNR - The Redguards.esp
12 Mart's Monster Mod for Francescos.esp
83 Mart's Monster Mod - Gems & Gem Dust.esp
18 Harvest[Containers].esp
2 Harvest[Containers] - Flat-Top Barrels Add-on.esp
18 Harvest[Containers] - Havok Crates Add-on.esp
5 Francesco's HC compatibility.esp
3 P1DcandlesForKleptos.esp
20 Special Abilities.esp
1 City Gates.esp
3 Rope Ladders v1.esp
7 Stealth Entrances v1.esp
23 AliveWaters.esp
16 AliveWaters - Koi Addon.esp
3 RenKnockOutArrow.esp
13 BlackpowderBombs.esp
4 Assassin_Blade.esp
2 DBShadowSet_NE.esp
7 DM-ACArmor.esp
1 StealthOverhaul.esp
23 LCE-addon.esp
7 DeadlyReflex - Combat Moves.esp
10 PortableOblivionPortal.esp
67 Morrowind Ingredients_MMM.esp
4 RealisticFlora.esp
11 Shields Of Antiquity.esp
1 Better Bell Sounds.esp
3 HTFpcb Extended.esp
2 RobMaleBody+ElaborateEyes+Ren(OH).esp
2 Rainbows.esp
2 Divine Magicka.esp

6 Faction
36 Oblivion.esm
36 Total

19 Unknown
20 Oblivion.esm
20 Total

20 Armor
561 Oblivion.esm
42 Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod.esm
533 Francesco's optional new items add-on.esm
6 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
1142 Total

21 Book
229 Oblivion.esm
1 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
3 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
233 Total

22 Clothing
493 Oblivion.esm
11 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
504 Total

25 Unknown
2 Oblivion.esm
2 Total

26 Light
2 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
2 Total

27 Misc. Item
196 Oblivion.esm
1 HaroK_Arrow_Forge.esp
21 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
218 Total

33 Weapon
848 Oblivion.esm
94 Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod.esm
663 Francesco's optional new items add-on.esm
12 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
1617 Total

34 Unknown
58 Oblivion.esm
58 Total

35 NPC
1336 Oblivion.esm
355 Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod.esm
1 Francesco's optional new creatures add-on.esm
558 Mart's Monster Mod.esm
3 DLCThievesDen.esp
4 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
1 DLCSpellTomes.esp
37 RandomEncounters.esp
38 Francesco's optional chance of stronger bosses.esp
74 Francesco's optional chance of stronger enemies.esp
75 Francesco's TNR compatibility.esp
111 Mart's Monster Mod for Francescos.esp
75 Francesco's HC compatibility.esp
3 LCE-addon.esp
1 PortableOblivionPortal.esp
1 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
2673 Total

36 Creature
83 Oblivion.esm
54 Mart's Monster Mod.esm
1 kt_dancingweaponbeta.esp
138 Total

38 Unknown
24 Oblivion.esm
1 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
25 Total

39 Key
29 Oblivion.esm
53 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
82 Total

48 Cell
6043 Oblivion.esm
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
1 Rowboats.esp
1 Stealth Entrances v1.esp
873 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
6919 Total

49 Object Ref
83693 Oblivion.esm
4 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
3 GuildStorage.esp
3 Cliff_BetterLetters.esp
1 Trainer_Book.esp
2 Multicolored_Glass.esp
1 TimboeMultiMark & Recall.esp
11 DarkAltars.esp
1 P1DkeyChain.esp
103 DLCThievesDen.esp
1 GalerionLeveling-v11.esp
1 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
2 HaroK_Arrow_Forge.esp
1 AlternativeLightArmors1.2.esp
1 rdweaponpack1.esp
1 Encyclopaedia Cyrodilica.esp
1 geomancy.esp
1 Gray Fox's Armory v2.0.esp
100 Landmarks, w Wells.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
4 wd purse of wonders.esp
1 Town_Ceremonial_Armor.esp
3 MD_Saddle_Bags_Lite_v2.esp
5 Pestilent Afflictions.esp
30 zDangerSensev1-0.esp
63 zDangerSenseV1-2.esp
4 Piratelords Trade Fixes.esp
6 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
1986 IWR - Windows Lights Shutters - Optimised.esp
7 Rowboats.esp
32 Francesco's More Wilderness Life.esp
28 AWS-Storms & Sound.esp
44 weather inside [silent seasons] v1.2.esp
35 Natural Interiors - Cities.esp
1 Players with Jobs.esp
109 Francesco's TNR compatibility.esp
289 Mart's Monster Mod - More Wilderness Life.esp
108 Francesco's HC compatibility.esp
1 Special Abilities.esp
15 Rope Ladders v1.esp
7 Stealth Entrances v1.esp
482 AliveWaters.esp
27 AliveWaters - Koi Addon.esp
1 RenKnockOutArrow.esp
1 CheydinhalSanctuaryMarker.esp
1 BlackpowderBombs.esp
1 DM-ACArmor.esp
16 LCE-addon.esp
5 PortableOblivionPortal.esp
16 Morrowind Ingredients_MMM.esp
1 Better Bell Sounds.esp
1 Rainbows.esp
52695 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
139957 Total

50 NPC Ref
1605 Oblivion.esm
4 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
1 DLCSpellTomes.esp
1 zDangerSensev1-0.esp
1 zDangerSenseV1-2.esp
10 RandomEncounters.esp
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
4 Confessional Priests -Ver 1.1-.esp
1 DM-ACArmor.esp
14 LCE-addon.esp
110 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
1752 Total

51 Creature Ref
674 Oblivion.esm
9 DLCThievesDen.esp
1 zDangerSenseV1-2.esp
1 Enhanced Quest Roleplaying.esp
1 Confessional Priests -Ver 1.1-.esp
16 Francesco's TNR compatibility.esp
16 Francesco's HC compatibility.esp
2 Stealth Entrances v1.esp
73 LCE-addon.esp
969 Save 1215 - Carius Seianus - The Colovian Highlands, Level 58, Playing Time 273.05.34.ess
1762 Total

58 Dialog Entry
4684 Oblivion.esm
3 Francesco's optional new items add-on.esm
1 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
17 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
3 Enhanced Quest Roleplaying.esp
2 Confessional Priests -Ver 1.1-.esp
4 LFox Expensive Arena Gambling.esp
4714 Total

59 Quest
244 Oblivion.esm
24 Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod.esm
1 Francesco's optional new creatures add-on.esm
359 Francesco's optional new items add-on.esm
3 AWS-Core.esm
2 Natural Interiors.esm
8 Crafting Skill Engine.esm
65 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
1 CallSteed3.0a.esp
1 More Realistic Encumbrance.esp
1 P1DkeyChain.esp
1 DLCThievesDen.esp
1 GalerionLeveling-v11.esp
1 Toaster Says Share 2.12.esp
2 HaroK_Arrow_Forge.esp
1 kt_dancingweaponbeta.esp
1 Gray Fox's Armory v2.0.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp
1 Toaster's Legendary Skills & Stats.esp
77 wd purse of wonders.esp
2 Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
1 Town_Ceremonial_Armor.esp
1 Pestilent Afflictions.esp
4 Quest Award Leveling - Spell Leveling Compatability.esp
1 SM Racial Spell Leveling.esp
1 SM Spell Quest Levelling.esp
2 SM Start Spell Levelling.esp
9 Quest Award Leveller.esp
10 zDangerSensev1-0.esp
10 zDangerSenseV1-2.esp
1 bnmDLTIC-1-6.esp
14 RandomEncounters.esp
1 EshmesBodiesV2.esp
1 IWR - Windows Lights Shutters - Optimised.esp
1 Bullettimemodsetkey.esp
3 AWS-Storms & Sound.esp
2 Players with Jobs.esp
2 Special Abilities.esp
1 Assassin_Blade.esp
3 StealthOverhaul.esp
1 LCE-addon.esp
1 Deadly Reflex - no damage and durability changes.esp
3 DeadlyReflex - Combat Moves.esp
1 PortableOblivionPortal.esp
1 RealisticFlora.esp
1 HTFpcb Extended.esp
1 Bow UnNock.esp
2 Rainbows.esp
1 Divine Magicka.esp
877 Total

61 AI Package
4 Oblivion.esm
4 Total

Oh dear, I was going to use the placeAtMe All the time for my mod Is there any workaround?

Pretty easy to avoid PlaceAtMe (or clean it up if you do), what exactly are you looking to do?

I'm going to make a bow that spawns monsters where the arrow lands.

It moves a rock (for now) that will put a monster there.

Edit: check sig below

Well as long as you're not placing down creature level lists, creatures marked as quest item or respawn you'll be fine, the game will clean them up.

Awesome! Thanks.

Ok so basically its a deadly bug with no way of stopping it... humm I'm just going to go check my system...

Couple of questions for you guys who know more then me!

Does this save game bloat occur from companion mods which "respawn" a new companion whenever you change their inventory?

Does this problem occur when using furniture mods like the Imperial Furniture store, or that buyable display cases one?

Last, does Realistic Flora cause bloat?

Thanks.

Please read. If you had, you'd have noticed in this very thread:

1) Yes, companion share mods can quickly cause massive save game bloat.
2) Realistic Flora was created as a bloat-less alternative to Deja's Harvest Flora.

I don't have any reason to suspect that furniture mods will bloat the save game significantly. Even if you place a few hundred new pieces of furniture, I doubt it would do much.

Could anyone tell me if the following companion mods are bloatless or if they are suspect?

- ME_MERCENARIES
- CM Partners
- Toaster says share (I thought I saw in the previous posts that this was OK, but asking just in case).

I think I've cleared up most of the other possibles...

CM Partners is safe and bloatless.

Toaster's mod is safe.

Tibixe's Unique Companions is safe.

Vincente and Valeria are safe (they have their own custom share which does not use the vulnerable commands).

As far as Companion mods go, it's really only Companion mods based on the old version of Reznod's Easy Companion Share (before AndyW's fix) which cause bloat. IIRC, CreateFullActorCopy and it's antithesis caused duplicates of scripted items, but did not delete them, which is what led to the bloat.

The most recent versions of Ruined-Tale, the Butcher of Armindale and the Legacy should be safe, since they use AndyW's fixed version, but the older versions of Ruin (for example) were not safe, which is why AndyW made the fix.

Ariana Trudeaux used the old version of Reznod's mod, and is thus NOT safe from bloat, for example.

Basically, check to make sure that the Companion mod you like does NOT require Reznod's Easy Companion Share, or if it does, that it uses AndyW's fixed version.

Best thing would be to type EXACTLY what version of a mod is safe instead of saying "the latest version".

Like "foobar mod version 1.7 or higher is safe".

I agree, but without going through all of the scripting, how do I know which of the mods I'm using are absolutely, positively safe?

Also...

Dunno if this is on-topic, but while tracking down some pesky goblins with Companion Neeshka (v1.4a) I placed a loaf of bread I found in a cavern container into her inventory.

After exiting the cave when I accessed her property (to do some armorer work) I found 9K of bread... >9000 loaves... and Neeshka wasn't encumbered at all! So I transferred most of the bread to my own inventory, leaving her ONLY 1 loaf and then, of course, found I couldn't move. I was over-loaded.

I dropped all of my bread on the ground (in one package) and when I went back to her inventory... there were another >9000 breads!

This time I removed ALL of her breads to myself and then dropped them (again in one package) to the ground and consoled "disable" on each of the >9000 grounded loaf packages. When I rechecked Neeshka's inventory there was no more bread. I've not had a similar problem since.

The above happened somewhere around Save 58 or 59. I'm now playing just past Save64 at level 31. I regularly use OBMM with Wrye Bash and run Repair Abomb. My save games have increased in size from 1,630 KB (Save1) to 3,858 KB (Save26) to 4,133 KB (Save52) to 4,711 KB (Save64) now.

I have no bloating, I'm thinking, but easily might have, had I not noticed the unusual "bread-count". After reading this thread, I loaded some of my previous Saves and although I was able to find one created in that game-area I was not able to reproduce the complication. Sorry.

Now YOU know all that I know I know...

To the above poster:

You're fine, most of my saves are between the 4MB and 6MB range, a couple getting upward of 7MB and they run fine.

I get occasional crashes/lockups, but I attribute that to just Oblivion being Oblivion (Morrowind does it too).


May I recommend two awesome things that when used in combination can REALLY help avoid losing precious gameplay time when Oblivion inevitably crashes.

The first is Safety Net, this autosaves your game every 3 minutes, unless you are in combat.

I've found it very useful.


The second is an external program Incremental Saver. It takes almost no memory to process, and what this does is automatically back-up and rename autosaves and quicksaves as they are overwritten up to a point, you can tell it how many backups you want to have before it goes back and starts overwriting again. I do 3 for quicksave and 3 for autosave.

That way you have a nice buffer zone where even if you do get a crash, you can load right back up and continue playing usually, with little to no loss of data.

9000 loaves on a companion means that you've got some sort of companion sharing problem.

Re: Incrementat Saver: Odd -- that ability is actually built into Oblivion, so you don't need an external program for it. See Backup Files.

Yes, but that scenario has more than a few variables. Could that particular bread placed, in a cave container by another mod, have been done so in an incorrect manner? Might the cave, itself, been modified in such a way that the bread or container might pass on an incorrect instruction?

I mean, Neeshka's inventory has been without any strangeness since then and in fact even now contains a single (non-replicating) loaf of bread, along with a few other (non-replicating) edibles and such.

BTW, you have my thanks for putting together the VERY helpful programs that you have made available to us all.

Oh, I didn't know that. Well, the nice thing about incremental saver is it saves right to an .ess, so I'll keep using it for now unless it gives me problems. I knew oblivion created 1 backup of the auto/quicksave, but did not know you could increase that.

Does Harvest Flora Lite cause save game bloating to or is it just the one that adds the harvest effect?

Vorwoda_the_Black mentioned that we should check if companion mods use a non-fixed version of Easy Companion Share, but how do we actually check such a thing? Is basing it on the file date and time sufficient?

The reason I ask is because it was stated that Ruined Tale (1.0) uses a safe version whereas Ariana Trudeaux uses an unsafe one. I have version 1.0 of Ruined (confirmed in the readme as using a fixed version) and 1.1 of Ariana, though I've not used either yet. The file date and time on Easy_Companion_Share.esm from both mods matches, as does a binary file compare of the two, so is 1.1 of Ariana safe?

Also, if a mod uses an unsafe version of ECS is it OK to simply replace Easy_Companion_Share.esm with the patched version, or will that break it? I'm assuming it would be OK since they all use the same ECS plugin with the same name, so it wouldn't be possible to have to different versions enabled at the same time anyway.