The problem is that the game is producing corrupted save files. The development team are the only people that would be qualified to diagnose and give a technical explanation (if they chose to do so) and to decide at the proper solution. I'm sure every person that has been impacted by this problem has already reported it to CDPR via their support site and thus CDPR is working on it. Everything else is just us folk poking for answers and flinging ideas at the wall to see what sticks. ;-)
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I mean no offense, but walking away from the game because you speculate that some day you may run into this problem is not healthy my friends. You don't need to do that. Keep playing if you want to keep playing. Save and reload every so often if you want to confirm that the save is valid.
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I got some new information from a Cyberpunk Modding discord I am a member of.
So the game is keeping entire areas of the game in memory, that have only been used once, or for cutscenes. For example, if you exploit your way back into Konpeki plaza, every single enemy, alive or dead, will still be there. Including any loot you may have missed. The room from the cutscene when Johnny is being interrogated by Saburo Arasaka? Still in memory. Even the woman from the cutscene is still in the game, just walking around in the room. I have a suspicion that the game keeps other such areas in memory as well, even though they are one-time use areas and don't need to be in memory.
You sound like the two other concern trolls who came in here earlier. You don't need to be a developer of the game to give a technical explanation of the problem if you understand what the problem is and how it works. Just like you don't need to be a pilot to know that a plane losing altitude is bad, or you don't need to be a firefighter to know that a fire spreading to other buildings is bad. What you're doing is called "gatekeeping".
If you understand the problem, then you can begin to formulate a pool of possible solutions. Again, you don't need to be a developer to suggest a solution. It helps if you understand the problem, but it's not entirely necessary. It wasn't a developer that figured out why The Witcher 3 saves were going corrupt. It was a user, on these forums, doing the very thing we're doing right now.
To suggest that we're flinging ideas against the wall to see what sticks would imply that we don't understand what the problem is or how the problem works. That's also called the shotgun blast method. You don't need to be accurate, you just need to be approximately in the right place.
We know exactly what the problem is, and we know exactly how the problem is affecting the save files.
If you would like to contribute by adding more data to our pool, and maybe making suggestions about possible solutions, you're more than welcome to. However, gatekeeping troubleshooting by saying we must be developers in order to have any sort of actual opinion on what the problem is ,and to recommend solutions, is not productive.
Please, either contribute, or simply read the post and observe. Your call.
So the game is keeping entire areas of the game in memory, that have only been used once, or for cutscenes. For example, if you exploit your way back into Konpeki plaza, every single enemy, alive or dead, will still be there. Including any loot you may have missed. The room from the cutscene when Johnny is being interrogated by Saburo Arasaka? Still in memory. Even the woman from the cutscene is still in the game, just walking around in the room. I have a suspicion that the game keeps other such areas in memory as well, even though they are one-time use areas and don't need to be in memory.
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You sound like the two other concern trolls who came in here earlier. You don't need to be a developer of the game to give a technical explanation of the problem if you understand what the problem is and how it works. Just like you don't need to be a pilot to know that a plane losing altitude is bad, or you don't need to be a firefighter to know that a fire spreading to other buildings is bad. What you're doing is called "gatekeeping".
If you understand the problem, then you can begin to formulate a pool of possible solutions. Again, you don't need to be a developer to suggest a solution. It helps if you understand the problem, but it's not entirely necessary. It wasn't a developer that figured out why The Witcher 3 saves were going corrupt. It was a user, on these forums, doing the very thing we're doing right now.
To suggest that we're flinging ideas against the wall to see what sticks would imply that we don't understand what the problem is or how the problem works. That's also called the shotgun blast method. You don't need to be accurate, you just need to be approximately in the right place.
We know exactly what the problem is, and we know exactly how the problem is affecting the save files.
If you would like to contribute by adding more data to our pool, and maybe making suggestions about possible solutions, you're more than welcome to. However, gatekeeping troubleshooting by saying we must be developers in order to have any sort of actual opinion on what the problem is ,and to recommend solutions, is not productive.
Please, either contribute, or simply read the post and observe. Your call.
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I did a brief bit of testing with the drop box item glitch. My thought was that most of the testing so far in this thread seems to have been done with crafting, and trying to create items in a different way might be interesting.
At the start of the experiment, my save game was 3.81 mb.
Then I created some 40k crafting components by glitch-buying from a drop box and make a new manual save. Save game remains at 3.81.
I created some 20k purple CHAR incendiary grenades the same way and made a new manual save. Save game remains at 3.81 mb.
I disassemble the stack of 20k grenades and now I'm at 40k epic components and 80k epic upgrade components. Save game remains at 3.81 mb.
So the general gist here is, simply creating an enormous pile of stackable items with fixed stats does not appear to create save game bloat. Having that amount of stuff in your inventory does not appear to create save game bloat. And breaking down 20k grenades did not cause any bloat.
My gut feeling is that the bloat comes from mass crafting of items. Further, I suspect that simply picking up items and disassembling them does not cause any significant amount of bloat. But I guess I will try to glitch spawn some guns now and see if that bloats up my save.
At the start of the experiment, my save game was 3.81 mb.
Then I created some 40k crafting components by glitch-buying from a drop box and make a new manual save. Save game remains at 3.81.
I created some 20k purple CHAR incendiary grenades the same way and made a new manual save. Save game remains at 3.81 mb.
I disassemble the stack of 20k grenades and now I'm at 40k epic components and 80k epic upgrade components. Save game remains at 3.81 mb.
So the general gist here is, simply creating an enormous pile of stackable items with fixed stats does not appear to create save game bloat. Having that amount of stuff in your inventory does not appear to create save game bloat. And breaking down 20k grenades did not cause any bloat.
My gut feeling is that the bloat comes from mass crafting of items. Further, I suspect that simply picking up items and disassembling them does not cause any significant amount of bloat. But I guess I will try to glitch spawn some guns now and see if that bloats up my save.
You seem to be reading way too deeply into my post. Of course we can offer ideas. We can identify what we think are problems or what smells like problems. I did not say only developers can have opinions. I was saying that the development team is whom will actually fix the problem, and everything in this thread are working ideas and concepts rather than official information.
I would stop short of making an absolute statement that "We know exactly what the problem is". We can make some pretty good speculative educated guesses, but the development team are the people that have the specs and knowledge of what should be happening and can compare that with what is happening to know for sure.
Heya folks. I've been hearing about the save game corruption and am looking to understand it better because I am one of those types of folks that goes around picking up everything and trying to do every mission / see everything.
I understand the general gist - 8MB or above on save.dat and you're hosed, and I understand at least one general cause - crafting and disassembling.
What am unclear on is if the problem is solely limited to crafting and disassembling lots of items or if there are other factors in play as well. Should I stop collecting all the grey junk items I see? Should I stop disassembling all the weapons I'm collecting?
Apologies if there a post that lays out all of this already, this thread is quite lengthy (50+ pages). I'm many many hours in and don't want to hose my first playthrough. Thanks in advance for any replies.
I understand the general gist - 8MB or above on save.dat and you're hosed, and I understand at least one general cause - crafting and disassembling.
What am unclear on is if the problem is solely limited to crafting and disassembling lots of items or if there are other factors in play as well. Should I stop collecting all the grey junk items I see? Should I stop disassembling all the weapons I'm collecting?
Apologies if there a post that lays out all of this already, this thread is quite lengthy (50+ pages). I'm many many hours in and don't want to hose my first playthrough. Thanks in advance for any replies.
So an update to the previous test I did. I glitched about 100 new rare pistols into existence. Having 100+ new guns in my inventory increased my save game size from 3.81 mb to 3.82 mb. Then i disassembled those pistols. Save game went back to 3.81 mb.
My gut feeling is, picking stuff up from the game world and disassembling it does not cause significant amount of bloat. That is just a gut feeling, though.
My gut feeling is, picking stuff up from the game world and disassembling it does not cause significant amount of bloat. That is just a gut feeling, though.
I think it might be an issue that any weapon or item generated in the game, stays as is. You kill 100 enemies, their unique weapons and information of each is saved. Crafting is just on top of that. I've done a million bazillion crafting items, deconstructed those I don't need for materials. I gather almost everything. Near 200 hours in and my saves are 4.5 MB.
CDPR HAS TO FIX THIS. The comment they made, don't play the game so much, is horrible. It is exactly like EA/DICE saying players not to buy their game if they don't like it. Fix... this.... You're officially ruining Christmas CDPR.
CDPR HAS TO FIX THIS. The comment they made, don't play the game so much, is horrible. It is exactly like EA/DICE saying players not to buy their game if they don't like it. Fix... this.... You're officially ruining Christmas CDPR.
Hi, sorry for my bad writing but instead of trying to figure out whats causing the problem with save file been corrupted why not just increase that 8MB save limit to like at least 2GB so everyone can enjoy the game with no fear of losing there progress? cause if the game continues like this ain't nobody gonna want to play or even buy it in fact i believe they already trying to get a refund. i got over 140 hours play and my save is sitting at 6MB if my file gets corrupted am done with this game, am not gonna start over trying to unlock everything again and am sure there is players out there with the same opinion as me, so why keep losing more players by the day instead of gaining?
No worries. It's quite a perplexing bug. Is the problem solely limited to crafting and disassembling lots of items? No, you can completely avoid these things and still experience bloat. Crafting in some ways, especially large quantities, exasperates the problem, but it's been quite tricky to find anything more concrete than that. As for junk collecting and disassembling, there hasn't been anything concrete enough to confidentially say it helps/hurts the save bloat.
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I am in the same boat where I don't know what is best when it comes to looting. I stopped crafting as it seems I will get up over 8 in no time by doing that.
From what I read looting and disassembling doesn't add much bloat. I assume looting and selling is the same.
Does the game delete un-looted items? It seems hit or miss as I see items on the ground from my first day playing and I have over 100 hours in now. Is leaving enemies on the ground untouched going to bloat my save?
From what I read looting and disassembling doesn't add much bloat. I assume looting and selling is the same.
Does the game delete un-looted items? It seems hit or miss as I see items on the ground from my first day playing and I have over 100 hours in now. Is leaving enemies on the ground untouched going to bloat my save?
Yeah this is my understanding too. It is not about glitching. It is not about crafting. It is about the persistency of items. Every item (weapon, armor, items with random stats) generated by killing enemy or crafted is saved on file.
Again, guessing, but I think grabbing all the items dropping to the ground and deconstructing them for materials keeps the file size smaller. Like you could kill every enemy in the game and not pick up their stuff and every single weapon and armor info would be saved as they would be somewhat unique. This is ridiculous.
"The development team are the only people that would be qualified to diagnose and give a technical explanation"
The key word here is "qualified". So when someone is qualified to do something, they are generally the only people allowed to do that thing. For example, only law enforcement are qualified to carry a gun (depending on your country of course) but what this statement means is that only law enforcement are allowed to carry guns and in order to do so, you must meet the standards for that qualification process.
So by saying that only the developers are qualified to diagnose and give a technical explanation is that we, as users, don't meet those requirements to give technical explanations and to diagnose issues. Even though we have had developers of other projects come in here to troubleshoot, and people who developed their own apps have looked into this issue. People who have met your aforementioned requirements in another profession, though, are not qualified to do those same things that they do for a living here.
I wouldn't stop short of saying we know exactly what the issue is. The issue is file size bloating in the save.dat file. The data kept in memory in game is being allowed to exceed 8192KB, so you can still play the game just fine. The moment you save your game, that player data is dumped from memory to file to create the save.dat file. Except the application is hard coded with a limit of 8192KB. This has been confirmed as being in the executable itself.
So when the game writes your player data from memory to file that exceeds 8192KB, it just cuts off any data after 8192KB and destroys it, including the end of file marker, rendering the save file "corrupt"
If the application was allowed to finish writing that data to file, but the data was unreadable, there would still be an end of file marker, because that's the last thing that's written to file.
Do we know EXACTLY what causes bloat? No. We know crafting can play a part. We also know that doing some missions or entering new areas can also play a part. There are too many variables for us to know what contributes to the bloat without a working save game editor that would allow us to look into the save file in a readable format to see exactly what the game is tracking.
Everything that we have found out has been reproduced consistently, so these are not speculative educated guesses. At one time they might have been, but, over the course of time we have verified this information and reproduced it reliably.
I just did a test with crafted pistols instead of glitched pistols. When I glitch ~100 pistols into existence, the save game goes up from 3.81 to 3.82. When I disassemble, it goes back down to 3.81.
When I craft ~100 pistols (not sure how many, but less than with glitch), the save game goes up from 3.81 to 3.83. When I disassemble the pistols, it goes down to 3.82.
When I craft ~100 pistols (not sure how many, but less than with glitch), the save game goes up from 3.81 to 3.83. When I disassemble the pistols, it goes down to 3.82.
Thanks for trying that.
I was actually trying to get the quest for the space oddity painting to try this with the painting and various items and components. Still going to test it out myself to see if your test is replicable with the same outcome. But seeing that someone has tried this actually makes me feel a bit better about my chances of success.
As for the post above, yes, I tested with weapon and clothing mods. Appears the game "saves" a small chunk of crafted items information even after they are gone, either consumed or destroyed.
It isn't about glitching, but having glitch data for contrast is interesting, as it tells us whether it is simply the existence of an item in the game world that causes the bloat or if it related to the process that created the item.
I have increasing confidence that glitch buying (or vendor buying in general) operate differently from crafted items and much less problematic in terms of save game bloat. Meaning that random items in the game world will be saved when they are spawned, they will get item rolled once you pick them up, and they will not take up space in the save game once they are purged from the world in one way or another.
Items created through crafting, meanwhile, do appear to have problems getting purged from the save games.
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No problem. It just seemed like something that had not really been tried so far, but please do see if you can replicate.
I posted earlier a report from another source, that I can't link because forum rules, but they basically gave themselves a ton of mats and crafted 45k maxdoc 1's and that bloated their save file considerably. Like there was an increase in MB in regards to the size, then they deconstructed all of those items, and their save file did decrease, also in the MB in regards to size, but there was a permanent increase of 1.1MB to the save file.
I remember reading somewhere that it was possible that the game was inflating the save file when your stackable items reached some arbitrary limit. Like for example, if the limit was 1000 items, and each grenade you craft increased your save file by 1K (Keeping it easy for quick maths here) 1000 grenades would be 1000KB, but, on top of the 1000KB increase, the game would also tack on some value like 500KB or something like that, putting you over the 1.4MB mark.
I've not been able to confirm this though, I don't think anyone else has either, but I am keeping it in the back of my mind for something to consider in the future. Right now I have just been hyper focused on finding out what causes the bloating, not necessarily by how much though, although knowing that would be nice as well.
I don't understand why you are dissecting my words, but either way I'm not trying to discount any work that anybody is doing here. The work is good. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm simply saying that us as people that aren't on the development team cannot say without a doubt that we know the root cause of what's going on so we shouldn't make absolute statements in that regard.
I don't want people to feel suppressed from presenting other information due to somebody declaring that "We've found the exact issue". There are all sorts of various cases of what might actually be wrong. Maybe the "bloat" is working as designed but the writing to disk isn't. Maybe they have a save clean-up algorithm but it's not being triggered at the right moment. Etc.
I currently have 350k crafting materials in total, give or take, and that causes no size increase. I had beyond 20k grenades and that caused no size increase. In other words, I am nearly 100% certain that there is no bloat just from having huge stacks of stackable items, meaning grenades, components, consumables, junk items, et cetera.
But do note that I effectively bought those stacks, even if I used a glitch to make it a lot more convenient. The other users did not buy items, they crafted them. I strongly doubt that simply having 45k maxdocs is going to do anything in itself, if you buy them or pick them up from many, many enemy drops. But if you craft 45k items, regardless of type, and the game sticks each item in a separate spot in a list so it can check later on if x or y item is one of those items you crafted? That would obviously be a different story.
