Just created an account here to say that this absolutely need to be #1 priority in fixing.
I'm at 7.7mb and just been playing the game as intended, but trying to clear everything, still so many many more missions to do but the savefile keeps growing even if I stop crafting (which would be silly as I've spec'ed everything in crafting, even a couple of points into the elite skill).
I'm at 7.7mb and just been playing the game as intended, but trying to clear everything, still so many many more missions to do but the savefile keeps growing even if I stop crafting (which would be silly as I've spec'ed everything in crafting, even a couple of points into the elite skill).
Just to be on the same page here; What do you mean with "works like a charm"?
The game still boots after you added that code, or are you experiencing a capability of being able to exceed 8MB savefile sizes?
What do you mean?
There was testing on the ini file before and it didn't avoid the save file corruption issue ?
Cheers
TalentX
ufff.. i have 85h gameplay and saves still work. but i think it will better to stop play for now.... -,-
I think he's referring to disabling AutoSave
Save files are corrupted
I did some extra testing. I'm going to conclude this for now. It's been interesting. I've missed my work, so a little puzzling was alright, but I'm expected back at work tomorrow so I'm going to enjoy the last couple of hours of my evening :p The posts with testing: Starting off...
forums.cdprojektred.com
Well, alright. If that's the case then I'm happy for Weaver2077.I think he's referring to disabling AutoSave
Save files are corrupted
I did some extra testing. I'm going to conclude this for now. It's been interesting. I've missed my work, so a little puzzling was alright, but I'm expected back at work tomorrow so I'm going to enjoy the last couple of hours of my evening :p The posts with testing: Starting off...
It does proof my suspisions then though. I don't think I understand this forum quite well. I've been clicking on "replied to" links that seemingly point to completely unrelated posts.
I've been enjoying the game up until this point despite the bugs and flaws, but this has finally convinced me to stop playing the game. Playing a game while constantly being worried that going on too many side quests or picking up too much loot might fry my save is just not fun.
Just had to voice my opinion that this is a game-breaking bug and should be addressed ASAP.
Just had to voice my opinion that this is a game-breaking bug and should be addressed ASAP.
Well, in all fairness it won't be priority 1. Priority 1 would be to get CP2077 back in the PS store, because this hurts their sales bad. Our issue, while definitely annoying currently doesn't hurt them that much. At the moment, only 393 users have downvoted this advice:
Cyberpunk 2077 - Saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.
Unfortunately the save is damaged and can't be recovered.Please use an older save file to continue playing and try to keep a lower amount of items and crafting materials.If you have used the item d...
I assume not even every user is going to get a refund so this doesn't cost them much money. The PS store does though. I'm not saying they won't fix it or that it isn't on their list (we don't really know anything official currently), but I believe their focus hasn't shifted.
Unfortunately you are absolutely correct...Well, in all fairness it won't be priority 1. Priority 1 would be to get CP2077 back in the PS store, because this hurts their sales bad. Our issue, while definitely annoying currently doesn't hurt them that much. At the moment, only 393 users have downvoted this advice:
Cyberpunk 2077 - Saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.
Unfortunately the save is damaged and can't be recovered.Please use an older save file to continue playing and try to keep a lower amount of items and crafting materials.If you have used the item d...support.gog.com
I assume not even every user is going to get a refund so this doesn't cost them much money. The PS store does though. I'm not saying they won't fix it or that it isn't on their list (we don't really know anything official currently), but I believe their focus hasn't shifted.
Okay, so, let's summarize.
I read a lot of comments from this topic and here's what I understood:
If you didn't encounter the issue just yet and are still early enough to adjust your gameplay the behaviour to have is to pick up and craft the minimum items possible.
Try to avoid stackable items (like grenades) as much as possible.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, progressing in the main quest causes the file to naturally bloat (and side quests probably have the same effect) so, it's technically nothing to be worry about as long as we're very picky on looting/crafting.
Am I getting that right?
Also, a couple questions (if someone can answer them because I fully realize that there's a lot of things about this bug that's unknown).
Does selling items and wait 96h to purge them from the game help in any way?
What about uprgading? Does it cause the game to bloat or can we upgrade our items normally?
I read a lot of comments from this topic and here's what I understood:
If you didn't encounter the issue just yet and are still early enough to adjust your gameplay the behaviour to have is to pick up and craft the minimum items possible.
Try to avoid stackable items (like grenades) as much as possible.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, progressing in the main quest causes the file to naturally bloat (and side quests probably have the same effect) so, it's technically nothing to be worry about as long as we're very picky on looting/crafting.
Am I getting that right?
Also, a couple questions (if someone can answer them because I fully realize that there's a lot of things about this bug that's unknown).
Does selling items and wait 96h to purge them from the game help in any way?
What about uprgading? Does it cause the game to bloat or can we upgrade our items normally?
As many pointed out before this is a game breaking bug and should be a top prio to fix right now as it breaks the only platform that can run CP fairly fine. Without a fix for this it looks like soon lots of people will not be able to play on any platform (apart from new consoles maybe).
And it would be really good to finally get some response from CDP.
And it would be really good to finally get some response from CDP.
Not necessarily, I know it's still an open question but the save bug may also affect consoles. If Sony refuses to greenlight the game on PSN until it is fully stable, I'd assume any game-breaking bug should be top priority.Well, in all fairness it won't be priority 1. Priority 1 would be to get CP2077 back in the PS store, because this hurts their sales bad. Our issue, while definitely annoying currently doesn't hurt them that much. At the moment, only 393 users have downvoted this advice:
Cyberpunk 2077 - Saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.
Unfortunately the save is damaged and can't be recovered.Please use an older save file to continue playing and try to keep a lower amount of items and crafting materials.If you have used the item d...
I assume not even every user is going to get a refund so this doesn't cost them much money. The PS store does though. I'm not saying they won't fix it or that it isn't on their list (we don't really know anything official currently), but I believe their focus hasn't shifted.
It's for each player to decide if this kind of self imposed limitation on how to play a game like this is what they want or even should do. For me this is not going to happen, I rather not play at all than constantly think if I should pick up that loot or upgrade that weapon and after each save go into the files to anxiously see if the file is getting too bloated.
In my eyes this whole issue is unacceptable, the only official response so far is unacceptable, and the fact that they have not yet addressed this issue in more depth than couple of sentences in their support page how this "might get fixed down the line" is a straight up god damn insult for their customers.
We can only hope that this is now an issue that prevents it from being greenlight. This would force it to be top priority.
Pretty much. Yes. A minor detail: Bloating suggests that the save file is filled with air. Completing the main story increases its size. That doesn't necessarily have to do with bloating
But all in all; yeah, you got it.In my tests it didn't really matter if you sold your items and waited for them to be purged, dropped them on the floor, or disassembled them. They all pretty much resulted in the same: No change in file size.
I've been following this post, silently, since the beginning and refreshing it every day, reading the input here. THere's a lot of good information here, however, I feel like everyone was so quick to dismiss Sigilfey for his hot take about how to work around the issue, that they failed to even consider the valuable information he provided in one of his responses. I know a lot of people want to hate on the mods and the company right now, but, anyone interested in the history of this issue should read this.
Sigilfey linked to a post from The Witcher 3 forums made in 2017 that highlights the extensive testing done to uncover why saved games were going corrupt. Back then, they weren't hitting a size limit, but, they were hitting something else just as terminal, and it all stems from the REDengines handling of itemIDs. Back then, during the testing, the user that did all of this testing called this a runestone bomb, because it was best duplicated with runestones.
In The Witcher 3, the REDengine assigns a unique itemID for every single item you come across, even swords that are the same sword with the same stats, even stackable items. Every runestone got it's own itemID. The engine didn't see a stack of 1000 runestones as one item stacked 1000 times, but a stack of 1000 unique itemIDs. This is only part of the problem. Another issue the engine has, is, whenever you get rid of items, or keep them in your inventory whatever, every time you save and reload your game, that stack of 1000 runestones? It got 1000 MORE unique itemIDs, and the old itemIDs were not released from your save file inventory. They existed as ghost items.
So what players in The Witcher 3 were running in to, was an issue where, over time and after hoarding everything not nailed down, their save would surpass the 16bit integer used for itemIDs, which is 65,536. When this happened, your save would be corrupted because it would cause an itemID overflow, rendering the save file unreadable.
It's important to know about the history of this issue because I believe it plays a critical role in the current issue we're having now. Players who are getting corrupted saves smaller than 8MB are potentially surpassing the 65,536 limit for itemIDs on their saves, rendering their saves unreadable. Everyone else is hitting the max file size for saves, as noted in earlier posts where the EOF is not being written to the save file, like it magically gets cut off.
The problem, is that every unique itemID is causing save file bloat. The solution is obviously some kind of garbage collector process that removes these ghost itemIDs attached to our character inventories.
However, CDPR has known about this issue, because it was brought to their attention during The Witcher3 days, and yet the issue persisted when they improved REDengine 3 to 4. Why? Both answers will likely make your heart sink.
Either they CAN'T fix it, because it's some kind of inherent flaw tied to the engine that will completely break the way it handles inventory, or, they WON'T fix it, because doing so would cause irreparable harm to the way the inventory system functions, so much so that it would cost them a lot of time and money to fix, more so than correcting the issues on console.
I don't believe this issue was left in maliciously. I believe that, if they were even aware of this issue, they never imagined that people would either 1.) Hit the save file size limit, or 2.) Would exceed the 65,536 itemID limit. While it's short-sighted, again, I don't believe this is a malicious thing. I believe there's a reason for why the engine handles itemIDs this way, and I also believe that there's a reason why this issue has persisted since the days of TW3, maybe even earlier.
All of this is a hypothesis based on the testing done in the post SigilFey linked to way earlier in this post. You can find that post HERE and I would advise anyone and everyone read this post, because I believe this engine related issue is at the very core of what is going on.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Sigilfey linked to a post from The Witcher 3 forums made in 2017 that highlights the extensive testing done to uncover why saved games were going corrupt. Back then, they weren't hitting a size limit, but, they were hitting something else just as terminal, and it all stems from the REDengines handling of itemIDs. Back then, during the testing, the user that did all of this testing called this a runestone bomb, because it was best duplicated with runestones.
In The Witcher 3, the REDengine assigns a unique itemID for every single item you come across, even swords that are the same sword with the same stats, even stackable items. Every runestone got it's own itemID. The engine didn't see a stack of 1000 runestones as one item stacked 1000 times, but a stack of 1000 unique itemIDs. This is only part of the problem. Another issue the engine has, is, whenever you get rid of items, or keep them in your inventory whatever, every time you save and reload your game, that stack of 1000 runestones? It got 1000 MORE unique itemIDs, and the old itemIDs were not released from your save file inventory. They existed as ghost items.
So what players in The Witcher 3 were running in to, was an issue where, over time and after hoarding everything not nailed down, their save would surpass the 16bit integer used for itemIDs, which is 65,536. When this happened, your save would be corrupted because it would cause an itemID overflow, rendering the save file unreadable.
It's important to know about the history of this issue because I believe it plays a critical role in the current issue we're having now. Players who are getting corrupted saves smaller than 8MB are potentially surpassing the 65,536 limit for itemIDs on their saves, rendering their saves unreadable. Everyone else is hitting the max file size for saves, as noted in earlier posts where the EOF is not being written to the save file, like it magically gets cut off.
The problem, is that every unique itemID is causing save file bloat. The solution is obviously some kind of garbage collector process that removes these ghost itemIDs attached to our character inventories.
However, CDPR has known about this issue, because it was brought to their attention during The Witcher3 days, and yet the issue persisted when they improved REDengine 3 to 4. Why? Both answers will likely make your heart sink.
Either they CAN'T fix it, because it's some kind of inherent flaw tied to the engine that will completely break the way it handles inventory, or, they WON'T fix it, because doing so would cause irreparable harm to the way the inventory system functions, so much so that it would cost them a lot of time and money to fix, more so than correcting the issues on console.
I don't believe this issue was left in maliciously. I believe that, if they were even aware of this issue, they never imagined that people would either 1.) Hit the save file size limit, or 2.) Would exceed the 65,536 itemID limit. While it's short-sighted, again, I don't believe this is a malicious thing. I believe there's a reason for why the engine handles itemIDs this way, and I also believe that there's a reason why this issue has persisted since the days of TW3, maybe even earlier.
All of this is a hypothesis based on the testing done in the post SigilFey linked to way earlier in this post. You can find that post HERE and I would advise anyone and everyone read this post, because I believe this engine related issue is at the very core of what is going on.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
I think CDPR made a mistake by showing this generic message about the save-file size, and removing the "contact us" button. With the button still in please, more people would report the issue and hopefully also attach before/after save files. This way, they could probably pinpoint the issue faster without figuring out how to reproduce the issue, simply because they could probably see the it quickly.Pretty much. Yes. A minor detail: Bloating suggests that the save file is filled with air. Completing the main story increases its size. That doesn't necessarily have to do with bloating
In my tests it didn't really matter if you sold your items and waited for them to be purged, dropped them on the floor, or disassembled them. They all pretty much resulted in the same: No change in file size.
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Yeah, I read through the suggestion and I have to agree with you that SigilFey only made one wrong response which he also didn't repeat. It was like throwing gasoline on a flame though.
That being said, the issue is way worse than in W3, because my very first W3 save had 17KiB and the last one (B&W completed, everything roughly 100%) had 4.5MiB. The very first CP2077 already takes 1.05MiB and after getting the first cyberware I am at 1.5MiB. Furthermore, for W3 I had a mod to remove the weight limit from the inventory and I basically looted everything and anything. I also played the game 3 times (to said 100%) and didn't exceed 4.5MiB. (However, I also didn't craft that many items, except for a few runes I needed for upgrades).
If the are using int16 - or to be more precise uint16 (*) - then the fix could be as simple as changing it to uint32 and writing a converter. I don't think this would take much time and it's also not very error prone. The only problem with this fix is that each and every item in the player's inventor needs 2 bytes of memory additionally. This could lead them to exceed the requirements for consoles.
But it remains to be seen how fast CDPR is able to fix this issue. Personally, I will not continue playing until this is fixed because frankly I wouldn't be able to enjoy the game.
*) If int16 is used than the fix could be fairly simple ;-)
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Of course, it would sound like a simple solution to just add a secondary int value, probably easier than converting existing values to float. Probably not a fun spaghetti digging coding task, but does not sound impossible.