Game Performance  Question about savedgame loading time

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Knight
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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Knight » November 11th, 2018, 3:40 am

My save size now near 80 MB. Play time - more 100 sim-week. Aging off, EA plot off, don't have StoryProgression, Overwatch is installed, don't have any errors in-game. Sometimes (every 5-10 sim-weeks) i use save cleaner and do a reset all town, but loading speed not increased. The folder with the game is on the HDD; saves, mods, etc. on SSD. Loading time (everytime) - more than 30 minutes. Anybody knows how it works and how i can speedup this? Maybe create new save and use Porter for move all my old town?

Best Answer by igazor » November 13th, 2018, 9:28 am
Knight wrote:
November 13th, 2018, 8:28 am
Moving to a new save with old families now seems to me the easiest option.
At this point, you are probably right. But with a resident population of 81 after that much gameplay, whatever the problem is in that world it doesn't sound like it is at all overpopulated.

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by igazor » November 11th, 2018, 3:46 am

Just a shot in the dark before we start getting more granular here, but what happens to your load time if you do a test run of this save with all non-NRaas and non-critical Core Mods (e.g., AwesomeMod if you have it should stay in place) removed, and the scriptCache cleared?

And although not specifically mentioned yet, do you have or are you willing to try ErrorTrap? It does a fair amount of cleanup of debris that, even though it doesn't really take up much space in the save file, could still be hampering things.

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Knight » November 11th, 2018, 4:02 am

igazor, wow, really fast answer. All cache files size is 1 KB, i delete them sometimes, but I see no point. I have only nraas mods, few fixes from modthesims (for my game version, of course) and 3 hairstyles. Mods folder size is 10 MB. If start new game load time 2-5 minutes. I try run game without mods and then install errortrap. I will write about the result later.

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by igazor » November 11th, 2018, 4:10 am

The scriptCache.package file should be deleted whenever the contents of Mods\Packages changes in any way no matter how small it looks. The other three critical ones (socialCache is not so important), whenever other kinds of content are added or removed.

When the cache files are all 1KB, it means that they are acting as pointers to the hidden place that none of us have ever been able to reach where the real caching is taking place. Different worlds cache differently as per their design, some directly to the user game folder in Documents others elsewhere -- note this happens with the WorldCache files as well, though it's not typically necessary to clear those. Deleting the 1 KB top folder level files destroys the actual caches as well, wherever they are. We "kind of" know this because otherwise those of us who routinely play worlds that cache that way would have run out of hard drive space over the years by now, them having been filled up with bogus, stale caches that do no one any good.

If your game has been running that long without ErrorTrap, I imagine ET is going to have A LOT of cleanup to do so that may take a while. I should also ask, do you play with the scrapbook memory feature enabled? If not disabled or controlled by a mod, that one will tend to cause a lot of bloat in ongoing save files. Didn't really consider that right away because 80 MB for a save file sounds pretty lean.

 

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Knight » November 11th, 2018, 4:27 am

igazor, scrapbook is disabled and i never used errortrap for this save before. And one more question - after what size is it worth clearing the save through the program? Last time my save size has been around 150 MB and it's shrunk to 48MB.

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by igazor » November 11th, 2018, 4:35 am

Opinions differ on the save cleaning/size trigger. I'm going to assume with an nhd file that small, relatively speaking, that your resident sim population is pretty low. Personally I never see the need to take SaveCleaning action until one or more of my nhd files within the save exceeds 300 MB, sometimes I let them go longer but never over 400 MB. Others react much sooner than that. One instance of my entire game save, for this one ongoing game I've been playing for seven years now with 16 Traveler mod connected worlds in it and a pretty large TravelDB file keeping everything connected, currently weighs in at over 2.1 GB.

My loadup and save times are long, too long, but more like 16-18 minutes when active play is in my busiest world (over 250 resident sims) and the active household is a large one. In the smaller worlds that orbit the main one, more like 10-12 minutes, though note I don't have an SSD on this system at all. At 30 minutes, I would probably be looking for a way to shift everyone I cared about over to a new homeworld if nothing else seemed to help. But, for me anyway, that's a pretty drastic step and I would be trying all kinds of other things to help save the world first (sounds noble, but I mean save the world files).

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Knight » November 11th, 2018, 4:50 am

igazor, in my town (Sunset Valley) population around is 230 sims. With all role sims, service sims, etc. So, i understood, need to try clean boot and errortrap. I write here later, thanks for interpretation. :)

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Gargoyle Cat » November 11th, 2018, 7:40 am

igazor wrote:
November 11th, 2018, 4:35 am
Others react much sooner than that. One instance of my entire game save, for this one ongoing game I've been playing for seven years now...
Not to change the subject, but one of these days, can you reveal how you have managed to keep the same save going for 7 years?  You must have some serious sims finesse because I've never been able to keep a save going for more than 6 months.  

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by Sara_Darkees » November 11th, 2018, 9:22 am

I'm not sure if it will be effective for this problem, but the fewer objects the better. If your town has a Commission shop, the game will generate "written books" and other garbage. That's just written books will not disappear. These books are in the bookcase of the library and their number is through the roof. I periodically remove this "garbage" using MС - all the same nobody reads. But this is just an example. I'm think there's still something there that can be removed. You can also temporarily extract the save files associated with the travel. Until your Sims plan to travel, these files are not needed. But it is unlikely to help. Your main town is getting fat. That's the problem. I will suffer the same fate someday.
And yes, I also wonder how igazor loads the save, which is already seven years old. I'm kind of cleaning up the game thoroughly, but I think I'll be forced to restart in a year or two...

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Question about savedgame loading time

Post by igazor » November 11th, 2018, 8:42 pm

Knight - The critical number is residents, not all sims in the world. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. While the numbers reported for Homeless and Service may be interesting and of concern if they get out of line, it is the number of Residents that is more important. Do you really have 230 Residents in Sunset Valley? That seems really high for that world.

Sara_Darkees -  Nhd files for connected worlds within the save not being actively played and the TravelDB file do not add much to the load and save times. They are only being dragged back and forth for reference, they aren't loading into (or offloading from) RAM as only the actively being played world can be simulated. Removing the travel based files would potentially mess up the ability to host out of town guests.

Gargoyle Cat - One of the reasons my game has lasted so long is that I've managed, not by planning it this way it all just kind of evolved, to spread the messes that the game itself makes across 5 of those 16 connected worlds by playing them in rotations so it's really like having (at least) five games in one with the storylines all crossing over. I also play so slowly and meticulously that I'm really only still on generations 3-5 in these worlds. Had I tried to keep everything concentrated in one homeworld and progressed through 50 or 100 generations by now without letting anyone "important to me" (difficult to define) move away and out of the game, I might have a different and maybe not quite as successful a story to tell.


Of course, without many of the mods here none of this would have been possible without grabbing my sims and shoving them into new worlds repeatedly, thus more or less starting over. I've never had to do that. I deem Overwatch, ErrorTrap, Traveler, Register, Traffic, GoHere, and MasterController (for its Reset Everything function) to be essential. It also helps to be really "in tune" (this is difficult to describe as well) with my worlds' behavior. If something doesn't "feel right" as I'm playing, then it probably isn't and whatever it is that is going strange needs to be investigated and tended to right away. Of course an overstuffed world with 250 residents and active households over 12 sims with StoryProgression in charge isn't going to play the same way as a world with 55 residents and households of 2 or 3, but I'm so used to how each of them are "supposed to" run that I can feel the difference when performance begins to suffer pretty quickly.

I also follow most if not all of the tips outlined here.
TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE
 

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