Hi

I have been playing with my urw character quite long now. Problem I am seeing is
that the savegames are starting to be HUGE.

All other files in the savegames are 10kb-10megabits... Then the zoommaps.dat is absolutely huge! Its over 450 megabits! :blink:
Growing bigger and bigger all the time! I haven't been over the first winter with my character and I can't even think about my savegames when I have played some more with my character. :(

Maybe do something about this in the future versions? Maybe change the earlier map size back? The large maps that are now are... too large :ph43r:

also the new map size makes my house buggy in the world map... it looks like i have many houses now

450MB isn't really all that much. I realize there are probably some people here running on older PC's, but even a PC from 5 years ago would have 40GB+ of storage space.

I noticed the save games are kinda huge too, but I realize there's a lot of data to be saved too. Making the save files smaller would probably involve losing detail in the game world, which we desperately need more of to make the world more interesting.

I've got 750GB of storage on this PC, so it doesn't bother me that much ;)

450M is rather excessive, no matter the level of detail.
At that point, taking JPEG images of the zoomed in areas would probably save space!

Anyways, my guess is that somewhere along the line, the game wrote something in the file that told it not to erase, and just append, when you start another version of the character.

I got into the details of the save files size issues awhile ago. But the real issue is that it's just dumping fixed arrays of the game data to a file rather that taking into account how much data is actually needed to be saved so a lot of that is just empty records. The real size problem is the map item data. Originally there was a 200 item limit(with each entry being 14 bytes in length) so 200 items were saved regardless. In the first windows version that limit was expanded to 900 due to people having problems with disappearing items from having too many on a local map. Since then an item entry has bloated to 44 bytes I think and it saving 10,000 items per map(and it always saves 10,000 even if it's just empty entries and there is no actual item associated with it). Which means you have 430k bytes saved per 50x50 local map no including actual map data and a few other minor pieces of data but that amounts to some thing insignificant compared to the item data. Also when entering a local map to allow it to smoothly transition it has to generate the surrounding maps so it can display them if you get near them which means more maps than just what you have visited are actually being generated and saved.

The last time I tinkered with the files in a hex editor has been awhile though so actual numbers may have varied a bit since but I'm sure the game still uses the same storage method. The files do compress very well though since they consist of mostly empty space so if you right click on your URW folder, go to properties, click on the Advanced button, and check "Compress contents to save disk space", click ok a few times to clear the dialogs and have it "Apply changes to this folder, sub folders and files", and then ok once more. This will have a very large impact on the size URW and its saves will take on your computer. A cheap hack anyway until URWs save system is revamped to use a much better approach :P.

Haha, wow. Telling it to compress the folder made my UrW directory go from 512 megabytes to 47.3 megabytes. Nice :)

boy... I had no idea it was so clunky (read inefficient).

It's not Sami's fault, text just compresses very well. Plain text takes up a lot of space in a file.

Well, no, it is Sami's fault. The files have millions of completely blank characters, and the world map has no run-length encoding. I railed on him for it during the 3.00 beta. ;-)

There's no good reason for the game not to use a better save format instead of just raw array dumps, other than simple lack of interest in space efficiency. Even the existence of run-length encoding would shave down URW's size by a tonne. A better solution would be implementation of the LZMA compression algorithm. The best solution is the simplest: write only that data to disc which actually needs to be written to disc, and keep "length of data" bytes in the saved file so the game knows how much data to read back out when it loads a specific area. Recycling of "unaffected" maps would also be ideal -- if the player barely affects a given map at all (cuts down one young tree, picks up rocks and branches, etc.), that map is still unimportant and can be discarded if the player doesn't visit it within X amount of time.

jtgibson
Don't bother Sami with the compression.

...and maybe he will make newer versions faster. ;-)

Well, if all it takes it enabling file-compression on a Windows XP machine, is it REALLY that much of an issue?

Especially at about 90% compression. :blink:

my ancient laptop has only a 30Gb hard drive. currently URW in its entirety takes up 270Mb. i don't sweat it B)

I put two 300 gig hard drives in this thing last year.

That should tell you something.

(yeah, I'm out of space almost!)

The 3.00 beta wasn't that long ago. I haven't said a word about it since.

I tolerate a lot of minor issues because I understand that Sami does this on his free time, but there are some things that just plain aren't acceptable. =)

For instance, this is the size of an Oblivion saved game for a level 14 character:

2.87 MB (3,011,191 bytes)

This is the size of a URW saved game for a character who has survived just two months of winter in a single village without travelling a great deal:

233 MB (244,415,487 bytes)


If you include ALL of Oblivion's non-art data, you get 235 MB (247,388,848 bytes).

250 MiB for the data for an entire industry-standard game, not including graphics, compared to 245 MiB for a single saved game in URW. Horrible.

Well, someone's pointed out a way to fix it, for the space-conscious. ;)

Yeah I'd rather have Sami work on fixing stuff I can't fix with a few simple clicks. Like the obnoxious rate at which people flock to you as soon as you build any sort of structure ;)

You know, I was thinking... Maybe it's not that they flock to you, but that you are simply in the same spot for longer.

I mean, one typically has an encounter every two days or so, and you just might be more apt to notice it when you're spending 5 hours a day chopping logs, and then another 6 turning them into a piece of wall.

I have 30qb storage, but i dont like these 600mb files.
Parents likes it no more.

Actually, something I noticed after putting in a cellar, and surrounding it with pits....

I've got wolves everywhere, all trying to get into my cellar.

as was mentioned earlier, if the save sizes are an issue for you, compress the folder and it's contents.

Still, it's ridiculous that you're suggesting that a hacky workaround is actually a solution to an obvious problem. Worse, the save game has to be created before you can compress it (unless you compress the entire URW folder, which drags down the program loading and the map generation).

The game world consists of literally thousands of empty or garbage bytes. We just don't dump arrays to disc any more. =P

As a doctor would say, cure the disease, not the symptoms.

I know, and I was one of those voicing the same idea before.
However, refusing to take a few simple actions (a Properties menu isn't that complex:P) in the meantime, before an improved save system is implemented, is just foolish.

Indeed, as N said....

The map system probably isn't done being rewritten, so making huge changes to the format and generation only has potential to slow down development and possibly introduce new bugs.

And again, if I can fix it on my end, or not worry about it (300 megs per save is a drop in the bucket for me), then I'd rather dev work be performed on new features, and fixing bugs.

And really, my 304 meg save file compresses to under 10 megs. Is this REALLY something that should be worked on right now, or should he wait until the map system is done being rewritten?

As far as I can tell, the map generation is pretty much done as much as it's going to be for a good long while. (Also, since each version he's released over the past four years has broken savegame compatibility with previous versions, what's the problem with developing a proper system? He can update the format with each new release.)

That save file should be taking up those 10 MB on its own, with no external compression required. To make the file a little more dynamic, I could understand if it got up to 15 MB. Any more than that is an obvious waste.

I find it appalling that people are willing to live with a system that is completely broken. The point is, this is a bug. Do I want Sami working on fixes/features? Hell yes. He can start with this. =P

Broken, but not critically broken. I would put easily controlled disk usage low on the priority list.

I'd kind of like to see grappling added. Or Locks (re?)implemented. Or poison ivy. :D



Also, has anyone tried using a save from an older version to see what happens?

Again and again i'm asking you friends, don't bother Sami with the savegame-files compression!

Let him concentrate on gameplay and bug-patches!
Your system will compress the files for you (and for him).
WinXP compress files many times faster and easier.