Actually slightly more complicated than you put it.
The 8mb limit wasn't "set" by the developpers, it's just the limit the game can handle.
In fact, the bigger problem here isn't even the 8mb limit but the fact that savefiles bloat constantly.
Also, I kinda disagree to point out developpers for the issue.
If they had more time to work on the game they would probably have found the issue and fix it before release.
Actually, the point of this topic isn't to be offensive to anyone but merely try to understand what causes the issue and find ways to work around it (maybe even fix it, who knows).
So, of course, you can't prevent some people to be mean and just shout insults willy nilly because internet but this is not the purpose of this topic which is actually to help each other.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I too, sometimes lose faith on humanity when I read certain comments but this is not the purpose to this thread to blindly point out a bug and blame CDPR for it, we're trying to help the community until they fix it (which I'm sure they will but in the meantime, people want to play the game and want to know how they can achieve that without losing hundreds of hours of playtime).
I don't need to count how many 'CDPR lier' in this topic, I hope ... but, this can help in this insue... i just don't know how ... but, I think that all information, technical, feasible, with the purpose of helping others, is welcome to a potential problem.
I don't need to count how many 'CDPR lier' in this topic, I hope ... but, this can help in this insue... i just don't know how ... but, I think that all information, technical, feasible, with the purpose of helping others, is welcome to a potential problem.
I'm gonna go put cyberpunk on the background, new save. And do absolutely nothing, other than just save after a session. See if my savegame goes up or not when you do nothing.
I'll let you know how that goes. (will take a few days though)
Also, I kinda disagree to point out developpers for the issue.
If they had more time to work on the game they would probably have found the issue and fix it before release.
I'm inclined to both agree and disagree with this. I agree because it's possible that if they had more playtime, someone could have possibly run into the issue, or even noticed the save file bloat by an off chance when their save file exceeded 5.5MB
Where I disagree is because their QA team is, ultimately, such a small dataset to draw from. Let's say they have 150 testers total, that's 150 people who could potentially run into the issue, but, not all of them are going to be QA for the PC, or they may have had to split their time between the consoles. Two consoles versus PC means that more QA time is spent playing on consoles, even if they split the time evenly between the three. Which means there will be considerably less time spent on PC than if it was a PC exclusive for example.
If you look at how many people online, not just here but in other communities, who are reporting corrupted saves, you'll see that the numbers are staggeringly higher than the example QA team of 150. Even if the actual tester amount was something like 500 people, you're still getting way more people reporting the issue than there are testers. BUT, that's out of the millions of players who are playing.
So by comparison, the odds of the QA team running into this issue were greatly miniscule compared to the odds of the player base running into this issue simply because we have a dataset to pull from that's over how many millions of people versus the amount of QA testers they had.
Again, it is possible that they could have encountered the issue given more time, but, I'm not sure if it would have been statistically likely, between the smaller dataset of players and the time spent on consoles versus PC.
One could argue that a dedicated PC tester department would rule out the time spent on consoles. It would, however, they would have to split those testers from the pool, making THAT dataset even smaller, thus overall reducing the odds that they would run into the issue.
So, yeah, I can both agree and disagree.
What I can 100% agree with is that they needed more time overall, no doubt.
I'm gonna go put cyberpunk on the background, new save. And do absolutely nothing, other than just save after a session. See if my savegame goes up or not when you do nothing.
I'll let you know how that goes. (will take a few days though)
Something you can do, is, save the game before a mission, note the file size, do the mission one way, save to a new file, note the file size and reload to your old save, do the mission ANOTHER way, save to a new file, and compare the file sizes to see if there's static mission bloat, or if accomplishing different mission paths change the amount of data bloating the save (if any)
I would recommend doing this on "The Pickup" as it's the most diverse mission as far as outcomes and branching paths.
Here is what has been proven so far:
1. Crafting bloats the save file faster than anything else in the game does
2. The save file will automatically bloat on it's own just from a normal playthrough, we don't however know what causes the "natural bloat."
3. Once the save file exceeds: 8192KB, the save game gets permanently corrupted.
4. When it comes to consoles, we are not 100% sure how they are impacted.
Hey. I'm writing here because I'm really nervous about my save file.
I'm not very far into Act 2 and my save file is already 3.5 MB. Some people are saying the save file on PC probably won't be more than 5 MB but I'm a completionist. I did all of the yellow side quests in Watson that were available to me before the heist and I fully intend on doing every single side quest in the game.
Should I stop playing until they patch? Can they even patch this?
I have the auto-dismantle junk perk and I sell or dismantle any guns/clothes I am not currently wearing/using.
If it can help, I'm in a similar situation, early act2, lot of sidequests and my savefile is at 3287kb.
Also, I've been looking at many posts on this topic and it seems like this is roughly the size at which people seem to be when they reach this point in the game with about that much commitement so, I don't personally think it's alarming.
If you want to make sure, try to stay away from crafting as much as possible and be more picky on the items you pick up.
Also, skipping 48 hours after a game session help to purge part of the memory, so, I would recommand that too (it may seem annoying at first glance but it's very easy to do).
If you don't know where this option is, you'll find it at the bottom of your screen in your inventory.
Try to keep an eye on your savefile once in a while so you're sure you're not getting too close to the 8mb limit without realizing it.
EDIT: I forgot one thing: The scrapper perk may be problematic for this bug since it's still unclear whether or not crafting material causes the bloating effect.
If you can respec to get rid of it, it would be perfect but at the same time, picking up less items should kinda fix the problem by itself (no junk picked up, no dismantling to be done).
For testing purposes, here's my save file at 8069K with the other stuff.
I DID craft excessively. If you open the file with a hex editor, you can plainly see multiple sections of what I would consider "counting" up. Just because I'm curious and have no idea what I'm doing, I deleted a section, edited the json to match the new file size, and then tried to load the save. Got the black screen of eternity.
Here is what has been proven so far:
1. Crafting bloats the save file faster than anything else in the game does
2. The save file will automatically bloat on it's own just from a normal playthrough, we don't however know what causes the "natural bloat."
3. Once the save file exceeds: 8192KB, the save game gets permanently corrupted.
Point one can be argued against in that, while crafting DOES bloat the save, it bloats the save in smaller increments. The mystery bloat, which is likely other player data like missions tracked, phone messages tracked, your location, buying a car, etc will also bloat your save file in LARGER increments, but it will not do it as often. It's the general consensus that, yes, crafting will bloat your save file faster, but, not occasional crafting. The main people reporting massive save file bloat are people that craft something like 10, 20, or even 30k items to break them down for components to sell because, well, crafting IS broken.
Point two, the file doesn't bloat on it's own per se. It's tracking some kind of player data. If you never leave V's apartment, play the game for an hour a day and save, and never leave, chances are your save file will remain ultimately the same, give or take a 1 to 5KB variance, which is tolerable for control, and wouldn't constitute as bloat. The save file bloats when you do things. Drive to new areas, get into firefights, run over pedestrians, buy a car, doing a mission is a big one, changing your loadout, adding items to stash, looting a bunch of weapons etc. All of these things will contribute to bloat in some way, whether miniscule or not. But you're right in that we don't know 100% for certain what causes the natural bloat, only that crafting, missions, and map exploration do.
Point 3, when you're playing the game and, let's say your save was 8190KB, 2KB below the limit, and you load the game, and you craft a bunch, your game data in memory will exceed 8192KB. The game will allow you to play with your player data in memory exceeding that amount. It's when you try to save and the game tries to write that data to file. It's limited to 8192KB and doesn't know what to do with the rest of the data, so it destroys it, rendering the save file corrupt. So affected saves will never exceed 8192KB, the only thing that can exceed 8192KB is the player data that's loaded into memory.
Interestingly enough, and someone correct me if I am wrong because I am having a hard time finding the post, the game will also cut off any data in excess of 8192KB when you load a save file. So for example, if you try to recover your corrupted save by adding an End of File marker (which wont work because there's missing data in the file) but let's say you tried it, the game will cut off anything added to the file over 8192KB, just the same as when it tried to save the file and cut off all data after 8192KB.
It's a weird issue, and I really hope it gets fixed soon.
To be absolutely clear: It doesn't fix the issue, your savefile is still gonna bloat and there's nothing, to this date, we know that can prevent that from happening, however, it does help to purge part of the game memory and cause your savefile to slightly decrease in size when you do it (I tested multiple times). Your savefile is still gonna grow in size but at a slightly slower pace, if you will.
MaxFileSize* to 100MB still no surprise, the save is still capped at 8388608 octet, so anything beyond 8388608 octet is lost and not recoverable.
I believe something else is capping the save at 8388608 octet, 8388608 in decimal is equal to 0x800000, the default value of MaxFileSize but a value also present in many portion of the Cyberpunk2077.exe file (70MB).
Not even sure the cap is in the main binary, could be an external dll library defaulting to this number.
I dont think it is a simple hotfix to release and this will be probably be part of a larger update.
Thank you this file seems an excellent test case because the 1st load is working, if you immediately save and try to reload it a 2nd time this time you get a black screen. No crafting involved. The first save put the file at 8.4 MB here.
Nothing you have posted has been helpful in this topic. You are making claims that contradict ALL the research and information in this topic without providing any sources whatsoever...
You should just leave the topic if you have nothing productive to say.
If you actually want to help, then post your save game, so we can verify the claims you are making... that would at least give what you say SOME credibility.
If you have nothing of actual value to say, or if your only intention is to antagonize others, do not post. This thread is about a very real, very serious, and very upsetting issue, and does not need non-constructive posts.
A few posts deleted, including simply for quoting deleted content.
Its definitely the crafting guys I'm surprised its even a discussion. As I mentioned before I have completed a completionist run with all missions done including NCPD dispatches.
However the bloat can be easily reproduced, as I mentioned go to Vs apartment then just craft away, ammo, components, whatever, check ur file size, notice the bloat increase within a few minutes of constant crafting, then play the game normally, notice how it doesn't on normal gameplay.
I took this file, loaded it, crafted 2 Ashura rifles, saved the game under a new slot, loaded this new one and there was no corrupt save file message - everything was loaded correctly. Are you sure it's reproducible via that save file?
To be absolutely clear: It doesn't fix the issue, your savefile is still gonna bloat and there's nothing, to this date, we know that can prevent that from happening, however, it does help to purge part of the game memory and cause your savefile to slightly decrease in size when you do it (I tested multiple times). Your savefile is still gonna grow in size but at a slightly slower pace, if you will.
"Another site" (I can't link it because forum rules, but, it's another community investigating this) has had this to say about crafting and bloat
Towards the end of my 120 hour playthrough I had just about one of every single piece of clothing along with every iconic weapon and one of every normal weapon in the stash, not to mention having crafted at the very least a conservative estimate of around ~2000-3000 items and my save is at 5.7mb. So it's clearly not a universal thing. I would really like to know what exactly it is that the people who've had their saves end up at 8mb did.
Edit: So I figured I'd test this properly, I changed the crafting button to only require a click and not a hold, and gave myself 999999 of all crafting materials, and set an autoclicker to spamcraft maxdoc consumables for an hour and a half. I went from ~10 of the consumables to 9999+. The save game went from 2.6mb to 5.6mb, so I think it's fair to say that since my other save got to the same file size just by playing the game a whole lot and this one went to that file size from crafting an obscene amount of crap then it's very unlikely you'll end up corrupting your save just from normal play. Now this is something that shouldn't be an issue in the first place though and frankly it's baffling that cdpr hasn't fixed this [issue] since it was a problem in witcher 3 too.
I disassembled all 45000 or so maxdocs, and the file size went down to 4.5, removed all my crafting materials too and it stayed on 4.5, so better to just not craft ridiculous amounts of [stuff].
So even though he was able to recover save file size, the end result was a net gain of about 1.1MB. I wonder if he waited for 72 Hours or more to see if the game would have purged those items from memory. From what you've said, there's clearly some form of garbage collecting going on, i'm just not sure whether or not it's being used effectively. But that's just an issue affecting items. I would like to know why exploration increases file size as well.
I took this file, loaded it, crafted 2 Ashura rifles, saved the game under a new slot, loaded this new one and there was no corrupt save file message - everything was loaded correctly. Are you sure it's reproducible via that save file?
Yes, just craft 400 grenades for example. I crafted 40 legendary weapons and 300 grenades and then the save corrupted. But for some people, it corrupts straight away from saving again. So, there is something else apart from crafting.
Thank you this file seems an excellent test case because the 1st load is working, if you immediately save and try to reload it a 2nd time this time you get a black screen. No crafting involved. The first save put the file at 8.4 MB here.
So basically all you do is save and the save bloats?
Does it corrupt both files or just the new save? also are there any "hidden message sources"?
like what i posted in my last post? (to think about the crafting messages that float on left side) if those messages also come with delay it could also be possible to bloat the file post load ?
