Save File Issue - Potential Fix Here

[MrCJohn]

Just one note on alienware: while yes they make great rigs, their products don't have the best longevity and freezing is one of the first warnings that it's near the end of its life. I've had 2 alienwares and while they did great, for the same money you can get something that will do everything just as well and will last much longer.

I can appreciate that. This one is 4 years old.. My two sons' laptops are older yet. The locking and freezing has only occured with SS2/chapter 2 ... which is why I brought it up.

John

 

[p0xus]

@kinggath

I have not seen the slow saves with my SSD to the magnitude as I started a new game with the latest version of SS2/chapter 2. I am just about ready to power up the beacon to call Jake.

For me, during the long save times, there was negligible disk usage. So I don't think disk speed has anything to do with it. Also, I have the game on an NVMe drive.

 

[MrCJohn]

For me, during the long save times, there was negligible disk usage. So I don't think disk speed has anything to do with it. Also, I have the game on an NVMe drive.

Exactly, which is why I think it is WSFW and/or F4SE issue.

John

 

[eldiablo]

Exactly, which is why I think it is WSFW and/or F4SE issue.

John

Doubt it's F4SE since this issue hits xbox players even harder. My uneducated guess is something in the SS2 plot code as it's easy to replicate if you place the proper plots down. If you don't place plots, no long save issues. Think it's something to do with industrial plots from my tests. But I'm probably way off. Could even be some unforeseen vanilla bug or limitation SS simply stumbled on like all the other game engine limits modders have located over the years.

 

[XxA1xX]

Easy way to determine if f4se is an issue or not is simply disable it ss2 will work with or without it. My guess is still wsfw or ss2 chapter 1 it’s something that was added to the base mod as the issue is present even without chapter 2 installed. But since kinggath had the issue on his live stream I’d guess he has a better idea then I do.

and a couple of people have had success in getting it narrowed down to possibly starting when the resource part of the mod starts meaning maybe it’s the resource generation that the plots use.

im really hoping this is solved ASAP as I lost like 3 hours the other day since I had auto saves disabled. Normally I leave the resting autosaves so I get a save every hour or so.

 

[smitty420]

Easy way to determine if f4se is an issue or not is simply disable it ss2 will work with or without it. My guess is still wsfw or ss2 chapter 1 it’s something that was added to the base mod as the issue is present even without chapter 2 installed. But since kinggath had the issue on his live stream I’d guess he has a better idea then I do.

and a couple of people have had success in getting it narrowed down to possibly starting when the resource part of the mod starts meaning maybe it’s the resource generation that the plots use.

im really hoping this is solved ASAP as I lost like 3 hours the other day since I had auto saves disabled. Normally I leave the resting autosaves so I get a save every hour or so.

I thought we'd ruled out F4SE because xbox users can't use it. Whether they can or not, I've compared mod lists with players that don't have it and still have the save issue. we should be past the mod conflict stage. Players with only SS2 and WSFW have the save problem. You can update WSFW without a problem. When you update SS2 to 2.0 slow saves start whether you have Ch2 or not. It's only been 17 days since the update, not long enough to have forgotten all that.

 

[TooN0ble]

Its definately something in either WSFW or SS2. In a previous post, I talked about being able to clear all of chapter 1 with no issues and untill the past couple days, thats how it was. I still do not have chapter 2 installed. Now I am getting occassional longer saves. They are not much longer, instaed of instant, they have taken up to about eight seconds. Its likely from my settlements now getting bigger then they were previously. Before, I had only built that which was necessary for quest progression. Now more settlers are arriving and stuff is getting built on its own. The problem was added right after chapter 2 got released. My suspicion is 2.0-2.0b. There were also at least a few WSFW releases since then. I have been modding these Bethesda games for years now. This reaks of scripts being part of the problem. Either too many or too aggressive or buggy, or some combination of those three.

 

[ThunderboltDragon]

In my experience it got allot worse after the latest hotfix (g)

Attempted a quick save in vicinity of Covenant took 10-15 minutes. Walked back into Covenant and did a new quick save which still haven't finished (after 5 minutes).

 

[Orissa]

I tried something new after taking the HQ. I cleared and claimed Jamaica Plain, this is my only claimed settlement in the south. I decided to pre-place the plots before building a beacon and recruiting any settlers. I'm also using vanilla beds instead of residential plots. The next save took almost 2 minutes, much longer than in my populated Starlight. So I think we can rule out that this has anything to do with settlers and their actor values or keywords. It's something about the plots, and they don't even have to be built or powered.

 

[Keaba]

i like many others have been having the long save issue however am on a computer that only just matches the system needs for fallout 4 and have found that the issue is also present with fast travel and entering load doors disabling autosave did not sort this issue and since i am on a potato (laptop) leaving auto saves disabled is not an option so from the look of how things are reacting there is something over loading the game engine as it is not causing a ctd just make the engine stop dead after awhile i generally open task manager and find it says that fallout 4 is not responding

 

[Sarge85]

Any of you on PC dealing with the long save file issues who'd like to be part of an experiment to try and get to the bottom of this, I've got something for you to try.

Several folks have tried this in private, but the results are mixed, so I'm looking for a larger sample group to see if my theory is in the ballpark or not.

Theory

The best theory I have right now is that the long save file times are coming because we added a ton of new ActorValues in the 2.0.0 patch - these are used to store information on references. There are a special type of ActorValue called Resource ActorValues, these automatically transmit their values to the workbench, so they are very powerful - but it's possible having too many of these causes a save to have to record a significantly larger amount of data. Especially after a City Plan is built/upgrades, as a ton of new items would need to be recorded in the save.

This file takes about 75% of our new Resource ActorValues and converts them to normal AVs, which if my theory is correct, will mean they don't have to record a value or be tested for a value unless it has been explicitly set on an item, and none of these particular AVs are used outside of HQ.

Using This

To use this, simply download the attached mod, and enable it your load order, and then go try and trigger the long save file. So go do all the sorts of things that seemed to result in such a save problem with this installed and see if the issue still occurs.

Note that occasional long saves of a minute or so are not unusual after a large number of workshop items have been built (City Plans being a huge source), as workshop items have to be recorded to your save since they are non-temporary objects. 20 minute saves though should never be happening....

Please report back any feedback or anecdotes you have using this.

Warning
Assume this will invalidate your save, and so you should only play with it for the sake of experimenting - when trying to make actual save progress, you should disable this.

If will also break several features in HQ, such as the disease research system - another reason not to use this plugin on a save you plan on making longterm progress on.

Goal

If the majority of folks testing this have a positive experience over the next few days, it will mean I need to recode some things in HQ before I can make this a permanent fix. So assuming my theory is correct, assume the earliest we can have this fix incorporated into the mod will be sometime after Christmas. This is high-priority for me, but this is not something I can just hotfix without considering all the consequences.

Ok so I was having the ~20 min save times problem like others have been having. Saving quicksave or hardsaves back to back and 20 minutes each time. I turned off all auto saving, cranked graphics up/down, tried all the fixes people were saying and none of it helped. Even saving in a small room like the sanctuary root cellar was just as slow.

Came across this thread and tried your mod download file to see if that made any affect. With it enabled i can quicksave or hardsave back to back to back to back, with ~440 plugins running, in the middle of Sanctuary, with ~15 settlers, each with a SS2 house plot and a SS2 farm plot, and the longest any of the saves took was about 5 seconds. So whatever it is you stumbled on as a possible reason, this seems to be a part of it.

Hope my little contribution helps and hope you get it fixed so we can all keep using your wonderful mods. You sir are a wizard!

Happy Holidays

 

[kinggath]

Going to toss in my own experience to the mix.

While working on some patch stuff, I used the cheat commands to skip ahead to the middle of Chapter 1. I have 0 plots built, and am experiencing the very long loadscreen times on a super small load order - the loadscreen time coming from the autosave being done in the background.

So I don't know that it even has anything to do with settlements, plots, settlers or any of that. Still digging in, but hitting the slow autosaves like this is very interesting from an analytical perspective - and maddening as the developer...

At least this gives me some points to dig at. Giving how little of the SS2 code is running at my save, I'm going to dig into the esm file itself and see what could be causing these massive save times.

 

[nosfsos]

Going to toss in my own experience to the mix.

While working on some patch stuff, I used the cheat commands to skip ahead to the middle of Chapter 1. I have 0 plots built, and am experiencing the very long loadscreen times on a super small load order - the loadscreen time coming from the autosave being done in the background.

So I don't know that it even has anything to do with settlements, plots, settlers or any of that. Still digging in, but hitting the slow autosaves like this is very interesting from an analytical perspective - and maddening as the developer...

At least this gives me some points to dig at. Giving how little of the SS2 code is running at my save, I'm going to dig into the esm file itself and see what could be causing these massive save times.

That's good news.

From a technical point of view (from someone who knows how to code but knows nothing about FO4 mods) it looks like an active wait somewhere that it is taking longer than it should do whatever it is supposed to do. Here is why I think this:

• CPU usage is minimal during long saves
  • this points to some kind of wait where the CPU is not processing anything heavy
• I/O is zero, nothing is being written to the disk
  • this points to not being a problem with the save itself... maybe the serialization before the write to disk is called?
• The game becomes unresponsive until the save is done
  • this points to an active wait in the main thread, otherwise, it would not hang. To the people complaining that they can't alt-tab and need to restart their PC if you have 2 monitors, you can see that you are able to alt-tab and continue using windows normally in the other monitors. (try windows key + L next time that happens... might be enough to force minimize the game and allow you to open the task manager to close it down).
• Considering several players reported that they finished SS2 chap 1 with version 2.0, without having Chap 2 installed, I would start looking there. I suppose chap 2 is in your small mod list

As for my previous post, after a few more tests, those things only happens in Sanctuary. I tried the same tests at the drive-in and had zero long saves.

I'll dig around FO4Edit looking for conflicts between SS2 Chap2 and the game files. As usual, I'll report if I find anything interesting.


Keep up the good work @kinggath and team

 

[Lowjax]

I use the drive-in and get long saves there. Even with Sanctuary or RR as my SS2 settlement, or starlight also, if I build SS2 plots in the drive-in I'll get slow save.

 

[nosfsos]

I use the drive-in and get long saves there. Even with Sanctuary or RR as my SS2 settlement, or starlight also, if I build SS2 plots in the drive-in I'll get slow save.

Yeah, that's the problem. I thought I had found a consistent and replicable way to cause long saves, but it is not consistent, not even in the same save file.

I'll dig around FO4Edit looking for conflicts between SS2 Chap2 and the game files. As usual, I'll report if I find anything interesting.

I found that the following records had conflicts with FO4 base game files. Nothing major, just timestamps differences in some world spaces. I overrode chap 2 values with the ones from the base game and did some testing. The first test I did was to try to replicate the storage container long save in sanctuary... nothing, it was instant. So I decided to keep playing until a long save occurred. Didn't take long, I walked from sanctuary to the red rocket station, paid for a residential plot (it was already placed down), then B lined in direction to the Blbernaties and quicksaved near the water tower. Got a 4min save here. I'll keep playing, try to narrow it down, but at this point, I have no clue what to try. It seems everything I observed in the game was just symptoms and not the trigger itself.

If anyone has any ideas for me to test let me know. My vacations are almost over and then I'll just play normally.

PS: SS2 base mod also has tons of workspace timestamps conflict, so although I gave it a try, I was 99% sure it wasn't going to do anything.

 

[eMYNOCK]

I do not know how relevant that is, i am experiencing long saves with variying times like everyone else (longest "Quicksave" took one hour, yes i am that patient).

I recently went from the Commonwealth (Long Saves) to Far Harbor and have not experienced a single longe Save as long as i was on the Island, relatively shortly after returning the long Saves were back.

As said, i don't know if it is relevant but maybe this info helps... maybe there is something up with the Commonwealth Map it self?

Regards and happy Bughunt.

 

[Nosimo]

I do not know how relevant that is, i am experiencing long saves with variying times like everyone else (longest "Quicksave" took one hour, yes i am that patient).

I recently went from the Commonwealth (Long Saves) to Far Harbor and have not experienced a single longe Save as long as i was on the Island, relatively shortly after returning the long Saves were back.

As said, i don't know if it is relevant but maybe this info helps... maybe there is something up with the Commonwealth Map it self?

Regards and happy Bughunt.

They can and do happen in Far harbor too, just took them a little while to catch up to my romp there, but they came eventually.

 

[kinggath]

I found that the following records had conflicts with FO4 base game files. Nothing major, just timestamps differences in some world spaces.

As far as I know, all of our remaining timestamp differences are those that are also in Automatron. I opted to leave them so that Automatron's previs data would presumably get used for those cells. I'm not an expert on how that stuff works - but I don't run into any stuttering in those cells, so I think we have them set up correctly.

 

[MoonShadow]

Not sure if it will be helpful but on a new start with ss2 2.x (no chapter 2) I still get the long saves after building during "If I had a hammer" so might be related to industrial / agri plots? If I revert to 1.1.0b (Workshop stays at 2.0.18alpha) then the long saves do not happen. So not sure Chap 2 has caused anything on it's own.

 

[jpowzy]

Just a quick 2 cents here.
I took break in order to wait for a save fix but updating now and will be giving it a fresh attempt right from the vault.

Anyways, I read through this thread and spotted a couple posts talking about plots maybe being the issue. I spotted this issue just after talking to Codsworth, don't think I even touched the Sanctuary workbench yet so hadn't built a recruitment beacon/tower and Jake hadn't shown up yet to build the first house. So don't think plots have anything to do with it.

Edit Update:
Ignore the above stated. Started a new play and was saving fine up until Jake arrived and completed the house. Save issue immediately after house was completed.

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