Long saving times after latest updates 1.8 & 1.81

[Moilanen]

Anyone else having the same problem now after newest updates (1.8 and 1.81) that the game saves 6 times longer than it used to? Game freezes every time while saving. It used to be like ½ a sec and now it can take 3 secs and game gets totally jammed.

Would not mind but in a long run it starts to be really annoying, like we all know, game saves a lot. Saving used to be totally smooth before.

[stirfoo]

I was wondering about this. I started noticing a freeze when saving a 150+ day sandbox. After I enter a cabin, the interior renders but the screen freezes. And it seems to be about the same 3 seconds you're experiencing. The "saving" icon appears in the lower right corner. But, I notice a difference if I start a new sandbox. No freeze.  So maybe it has to do with the amount of state that has to be saved. The longer the game, the more state you change. If you kill a rabbit, another will spawn in its place. If you craft clothes, that's more state change. Chop a plank, catch a fish, wound a wolf, reload, etc. A can you placed on a stove 3 months ago will still be there when you revisit the stove.

[acada]

I have registered this freeze long time ago. New sandbox does not have that. But when you gather some items, harvest few hundreds of meat stored outside, it will start. Hinterland tried to address that few weeks ago. But the fix was immediatelly followed by backout, which removed the fix for that. The fix caused inability to save at all for some players.

[PrincessAutumn]

I've noticed too that there is a pause when saving. Kind of reminds me of when you were climbing a hill and the game would hitch, thinking whether to punish you with a sprain or not lol

[UTC-10]

The more that has to be saved, the longer the game takes. 

When it comes to speed of saving the game versus the reliability of saving the game, I think Hinterland has chosen reliability over speed.  They tried to speed it up but then some people reported that their games were not saving game progress.  So, as they try to fix that, reliability in the process was given priority over speed in the process (i.e. running the game and the save concurrently). When and if they fix it, they can go back to looking at speed because reliability would now be a non-issue.

[Arcx]

Well, sorry - it shouldn't take several seconds to save a 10MB savegame. My system isn't the best one but it's got SATA6G and a Samsung 860 EVO SSD. My savegame is 10.8MB and it takes over 5 seconds each save. That's 2MB a second with a 550MB/s-SSD - something's wrong with Hinterlands save-mechanism.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Arcx

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

I think the longer saves are somehow linked to a bug after v1.78 that was causing the game to crash when you exited an interior- it would freeze on the loading screen before the little wolf icon appeared.  I don't think it was universal, but for me it was almost impossible to play as it would happen about every 4-5 times you left a building, only way out was ctrl/alt/del. 

Looking back through my emails to HL reporting the crash bug they thought it was fixed by a change in 1.81 ([General] Disabled Save performance improvements as they caused some Player’s sessions to enter an unsavable state. As a result of reverting these changes you may notice a slight pause when saving. We are continuing to investigate the cause of this ). 

In fact this didn't work, and so there was a further successful fix in v1.82 ([General] Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash when transitioning between an interiors and exteriors.)

My guess is that they somehow need to undo what they did in v1.81 that is causing universal slow loading times, but without inadvertently bringing back the crash bug that was solved in v1.82- anyway the upshot of all of this is hopefully long loading times are being actively looked at and won't be with us forever.

 

 

 

[gotmilkanot]

20 minutes ago, Valuable Hunting Knife said:

I think the longer saves are somehow linked to a bug after v1.78 that was causing the game to crash when you exited an interior- it would freeze on the loading screen before the little wolf icon appeared.  I don't think it was universal, but for me it was almost impossible to play as it would happen about every 4-5 times you left a building, only way out was ctrl/alt/del. 

Looking back through my emails to HL reporting the crash bug they thought it was fixed by a change in 1.81 ([General] Disabled Save performance improvements as they caused some Player’s sessions to enter an unsavable state. As a result of reverting these changes you may notice a slight pause when saving. We are continuing to investigate the cause of this ). 

In fact this didn't work, and so there was a further successful fix in v1.82 ([General] Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash when transitioning between an interiors and exteriors.)

My guess is that they somehow need to undo what they did in v1.81 that is causing universal slow loading times, but without inadvertently bringing back the crash bug that was solved in v1.82- anyway the upshot of all of this is hopefully long loading times are being actively looked at and won't be with us forever.

 

 

 

There were 2 bugs prior to 1.81: one is game entering into unsavable state (the confirmation text 'Saving...' no longer appears suggesting there's no save action being done) and the other is game crashing at loading screens.

1.81 fixed the former issue but at the expense of longer saving times which OP is concerned about. The latter was fixed in 1.82 and seems to be so far so good as I'm not getting crashes anymore.

[Moilanen]

21 hours ago, PrincessAutumn said:

I've noticed too that there is a pause when saving. Kind of reminds me of when you were climbing a hill and the game would hitch, thinking whether to punish you with a sprain or not lol

Well I still get these also.

[acada]

20 hours ago, Arcx said:

Well, sorry - it shouldn't take several seconds to save a 10MB savegame. My system isn't the best one but it's got SATA6G and a Samsung 860 EVO SSD. My savegame is 10.8MB and it takes over 5 seconds each save. That's 2MB a second with a 550MB/s-SSD - something's wrong with Hinterlands save-mechanism.

I dont think the disc operation is that long. IMHO it is computing/coding/zipping the save file. Apart from file header and footer it seems like it is coded or comprimed. I think players like me does not make the computing easy. I store hundreds kilos of meat outside on the ground. Not sure but maybe storing them in container could help. BUT placing them in container would cause disappearing the precious meat. I tried to tidy inside rooms and put everything in cabinets. It did not help. I am too lazy to try that with every item stored outside. And you know, tinder plugs and cat tail heads are laying on the ground over all Great Bear island.

Funny thing: In the file header are some information like name, display name, time, probably location. Then there is part starting with "boo". Maybe it should scare possible tinker from tampering with the file.

I noticed somebody in here has a personal goal to destroy every item on Great Bear. I wonder what are her/his saving times.

[Arcx]

4 hours ago, acada said:

I dont think the disc operation is that long. IMHO it is computing/coding/zipping the save file. Apart from file header and footer it seems like it is coded or comprimed. I think players like me does not make the computing easy. I store hundreds kilos of meat outside on the ground. Not sure but maybe storing them in container could help. BUT placing them in container would cause disappearing the precious meat. I tried to tidy inside rooms and put everything in cabinets. It did not help. I am too lazy to try that with every item stored outside. And you know, tinder plugs and cat tail heads are laying on the ground over all Great Bear island.

Funny thing: In the file header are some information like name, display name, time, probably location. Then there is part starting with "boo". Maybe it should scare possible tinker from tampering with the file.

I noticed somebody in here has a personal goal to destroy every item on Great Bear. I wonder what are her/his saving times.

This might be the correct explanation. I did a few tests today. On my normal save I have plenty of fish lying around as I try to get to skill level 5 on all skills. Saving takes about 5 seconds, disc utilization while saving is about 3.6MB/s, CPU utilization while playing is around 10%, while saving around 16%. Then I started a new game and all I did was entering a building to trigger the saving-process. Saving took less than a second, disc utilzation went up to around 2MB/s and CPU utilization was about 16% as well.

The question is: If it's zipping or something like that, why is my CPU bored at 16% instead of the game using more power to zip/encode the file faster? I still see some problems with Hinterlands saving-mechanism though. It really shouldn't take more than 1-2 seconds to save the game.

[acada]

@Arcx I dont have answers. I do not know the game code. Just observations. I hope Hinterland will solve this, but not by sacrifying the game stability. I kinda got used to this delay. Personally I can live with that.

[Arcx]

I'm on day 130 in my current run and the saving keeps taking longer and longer. I'm now at the point Windows thinks the game isn't responding and gives me the dialog to choose to wait or force-close TLD. Saving is broken guys - I really hope Hinterland has it on its list and fixes it with the next patch. It's frustrating as f*ck.