Modding, bad scripts and the inevitability of bloating

[varulv]

Helloo! Hopefully this is the right section to talk about this..

 

Hello! So seeing how I'm relatively new to modding Skyrim, I wanted to educate myself a little bit, and what better place to ask than my favorite communities, of which I'm not an active participant, but hey, this doesn't deduct from their sheer awesomeness and the amazing people in it. Looking at you @TechAngel85. :3

 

Hopefully there are some creators that see this and know a thing or two about scripts and modding in general. So, bloating, what causes it? Rather, is it mainly bad scripts that don't clean after themselves properly, or those that run constantly in the background? I assume the only way to properly identify culprits and solve things is by using one of those saving game cleaner, like scalpel. Recently for example I installed all the Immersive Wenches mods, sheer hilarity and makes fights an AoE fest, spawn spamming enemies, but boy oh boy does it have scripts. Uses a bunch of scripts to summon the NPC's you fight it seems, but of course there's no way to tell if something is volatile just by looking at it, at least not without some knowledge. I have to say, no matter how many heavy scripts I DON'T use, the file size keeps getting bigger and bigger, but seems to stabilize a bit at certain points, so I guess file size increase can't be helped, and any save eventually becomes a big mess. I guess such is the engine of Skyrim? :(

 

I wonder when problems start happening with a heavily modded Skyrim, some say when the save file reaches 20mb+(while others are fine at much bigger sizes *shrug*) others mention the .ess file and that this one plays a bigger role. Any kind of info regarding this is more than welcome!!!

Edited March 20, 2016 by varulv

[DoubleYou]

My level 74 character has a ~18.5 MB save file and is very stable. But then, I don't use many script-heavy mods.

[varulv]

My level 74 character has a ~18.5 MB save file and is very stable. But then, I don't use many script-heavy mods.

Nice! script-heavy mods are those with, well, heavy scripts that constantly run in the background making checks, injecting, cloak-type etc. right? Not those that activate only when certain conditions have been met. I assume the mods that belong to the first category are the ones causing the bloating, or scripts in general that don't clean up after themselves after they stop. Looking at my load order I have Ordinator for example, it has scripts with certain perks, but never had any issues with this mod alone, the creator looks like some script master, it's very light. But then there's something like Footsteps, frostfall and wet & cold or enhanced blood textures. I got rid of both W&C (also has some issues with the latest version of W&C) and EBT, oh, iNeed is also out, though I'm pretty sure that 'needs' mods are pretty lightweight in general. Hopefully having just Frostfall around won't be a problem, combined with Vivid Weathers, which happens to have some scripts to check for time (changes brightness) they can't be too bad.

[hishutup]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about save bloat, its just persistent data.

Now if you see the save go from ~20MB to 200MB in a few hours, I'd start to worry.

[varulv]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about save bloat, its just persistent data.

Now if you see the save go from ~20MB to 200MB in a few hours, I'd start to worry.

I see, so I guess a game that starts from 6mb and reaches 20 after ~70 hours of gameplay is rather normal. And yeah, second case probably means that some scripts are running rampart, guess it's always good to check the file size from time to time.

 

Curious, has anyone here ever used a mod like: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64413/? 

 

There was another one in the past, but many people reported issues with it, corrupted saves, saves that could not be loaded etc. This one looks okay. Any opinions? I do wonder how exactly this one works though and how lightweight it is.