PSA: Number of saved games affects load times and general performance

[Zyrusticae]

Hmm, another game had this issue too, cant remember which tho.

I've been told that other Unity games like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny have suffered from the same problem, so it could be a core engine issue. Don't know if the devs have access to the part of the code that's affected by it.

 

[CrysisCannon]

And I don't just mean the pre-mission load times, either, though it obviously affects that. It also affects general menu navigation - even the simple act of switching between rooms on the Argo or changing patterns on your mechs is affected by this!

This is an utterly baffling occurrence and it is completely beyond me to guess why in the world old saved games would affect general performance like this (seriously, what kind of spaghetti code are we talking here??), but my performance results speak for themselves. The contrast between before and after I cleared out my old saves really is night and day. Literally, I shaved minutes off of my typical load times.

So, if you're suffering from long and annoying hitches like I was, clean out those saves. You'll be happier for it.

Wow okay, this is huge. I just deleted a whole chunk of saves I didn't even notice piling up. Used to wait upwards of about 8-9 seconds for Mechbays and refits to load, a handful for each function in the argo. Now it's nearly instant. You are a life saver man! Thanks

 

[TLS]

Just wanted to second this, thanks so much. it got to the point where the game would pause each day on the Argo screen when fast forwarding time or travelling. Cheers!

 

[Delta Assault]

Huh.

Well that's one way to discourage save scumming, I guess.

 

[gavicola]

WOW ! Thanks for telling me this. Time to go on a deleteing spree.

 

[Robert#3]

How do you save the game? I have not seen where I can even exit? Just finished the intro and was going to start the 1 st mission?

 

[Drasius]

How do you save the game? I have not seen where I can even exit? Just finished the intro and was going to start the 1 st mission?

Hit Esc and choose the save button.

Edit: You can save mid-mission and when you're on the dropship, so no need to wait if you need to go do something else.

 

[_Sohei_]

Well that helped performance a great deal. But I am still going to keep saving often because I still get crashes.

 

[Robert#3]

Hit Esc and choose the save button.

Edit: You can save mid-mission and when you're on the dropship, so no need to wait if you need to go do something else.

Thank you that helped!

 

[Jumbik]

Well this actually asks for an automation process from the devs. Something simple as save rotation for example.

It would keep limited amount of automatic saves (10-20) and when it would reach the limit, it would simply delete the oldest ones as new ones would be saved.

You would also have a limited amount of manual saves which would rotate too.

I'm going to clean up the saves today too. I have noticeable lag in the management screens.

 

[Jumbik]

Hate to do a doublepost but this needs to be on top.

It would be nice to add it in the FAQ until the issue gets fixed.

 

[_Sohei_]

Well this actually asks for an automation process from the devs. Something simple as save rotation for example.

It would keep limited amount of automatic saves (10-20) and when it would reach the limit, it would simply delete the oldest ones as new ones would be saved.

You would also have a limited amount of manual saves which would rotate too.

It does ask for an automated process from the devs to optimize performance. A rolling autosave is a good idea but probably only needs one or two slots. That would be enough insurance against crashes for users to refrain from frequent manual saves which can hurt performance. However, restricting saves made by the user is not the right approach.

There are other ways to mitigate the growth of the number of saves without a hard slot cap. There could be a button to archive old saves for example that would copy the entire save folder to another folder that is not regularly accessed by the game - perhaps into the user's documents folder for example. Then have a second button to delete all older saves from the main folder which would delete all but the last five saves or so. This lets the user maintain control while making the process of managing saves require just a few button clicks in game. When performance has become very slow because of many saves it becomes very time consuming to clear them within the game since the UI will be less responsive and take a long time to refresh the list each time you delete one file.

 

[Rifter]

Ill try this when i get home, i have serious lag issues. I also have easily 200+ save games...

 

[yrrot]

I'll have to try that out.

Do you guys have the high-quality UI option turned off? I turned it off and it definitely took some of the load off of the GPU. It's possible that the save game UI is just being loaded in the background--and stacking with whatever UI over-utilization of the GPU was already going on.

 

[Gloranor]

Well this actually asks for an automation process from the devs. Something simple as save rotation for example.

It would keep limited amount of automatic saves (10-20) and when it would reach the limit, it would simply delete the oldest ones as new ones would be saved.

You would also have a limited amount of manual saves which would rotate too.

I'm going to clean up the saves today too. I have noticeable lag in the management screens.

It does ask for an automated process from the devs to optimize performance. A rolling autosave is a good idea but probably only needs one or two slots. That would be enough insurance against crashes for users to refrain from frequent manual saves which can hurt performance. However, restricting saves made by the user is not the right approach.

There are other ways to mitigate the growth of the number of saves without a hard slot cap. There could be a button to archive old saves for example that would copy the entire save folder to another folder that is not regularly accessed by the game - perhaps into the user's documents folder for example. Then have a second button to delete all older saves from the main folder which would delete all but the last five saves or so. This lets the user maintain control while making the process of managing saves require just a few button clicks in game. When performance has become very slow because of many saves it becomes very time consuming to clear them within the game since the UI will be less responsive and take a long time to refresh the list each time you delete one file.

Um, no. Those are good workarounds, which are fine as temporary fixes while waiting for an actual patch.
They don't fix the underlying problem that the number of savegames noticeably affects gameplay that doesn't interact with savegames - that shouldn't happen. Figure out why, then figure out a way so that it doesn't happen (easier said then done, but that's what one has engineers for . Or mechtechs)
(For that matter, what happened with Pillars of Eternity shouldn't happen either - the time it took to save/load a game increased rather dramatically as the number of existing savegames rose. I hope they fixed that for Deadfire...)

 

[Bayushi Tasogare]

This sounds great. Must try it out. OP is a lifesaver.

 

[Panpiper]

I was not able to locate my steam save files. They were not in the directory suggested by an earlier poster, nor was I able to find any other reference in appdata or wherever. What I wound up doing is deleting within the game. Doing it one save file at a time would take an eternity, due to the screen needing a minute to refresh because of the same bug, every time I hit delete. What I did instead was to delete the campaign(s) entirely and with them, all their saves. Because I was still in the game however, I was then promptly able to make a new save. Total number of current save games, one.

And yes, the screens are much faster now. Thank you.

 

[Fiddlersitch]

Can confirm. Deleted a heap o saves and the game loads faster

 

[Red Army]

HBS did a really bad job with a lot of this game's technical aspects. It seems like a real step back from Shadow Run. What a bizarre interaction.

 

[_Sohei_]

Um, no. Those are good workarounds, which are fine as temporary fixes while waiting for an actual patch.
They don't fix the underlying problem that the number of savegames noticeably affects gameplay that doesn't interact with savegames - that shouldn't happen. Figure out why, then figure out a way so that it doesn't happen (easier said then done, but that's what one has engineers for . Or mechtechs)
(For that matter, what happened with Pillars of Eternity shouldn't happen either - the time it took to save/load a game increased rather dramatically as the number of existing savegames rose. I hope they fixed that for Deadfire...)

Since it appears that it is an issue with the Unity engine there is nothing the HBS devs can do to fix the underlying problem. That is work for the Unity dev team. But the HBS devs can implement workarounds rather than just wait on a patch. They do not have control over the timing of the underlying fix either - it could be a long wait. Best to do what they can about the issue now.