Concerning save files

[Capostrophic]

I'll just quote CemKey here.

Everyone knows that if an object was involved in the gameplay during the game it cannot be changed in a plugin, for this save file, ever, as the save file has more priority than any plugin.
So -- in OpenMW absolutely everything in the cell is saved in the save file, even the statics position, except probably landscape changes. I think it's wrong.
Moved statics stay on the initial positions forever in the current playthrough in OpenMW while the changes work fine in vanilla engine and saves.

[Jyby]

Yeah it's kinda an unpleasant side effect of modding video games... On another point, having a fully portable character would be nice. It would be nice if player item definitions and their meshes could be stored in game saves. Imagine then the ability to drop your character back into Vanilla after playing a bunch of mods and you'd still have your quest logs and items.

[CMAugust]

I take it this is one reason OpenMW save files are so large. It's funny seeing those next to my Skyrim Special Edition saves, which after 120+ hours of play sits at a mighty 5.34 MB.

[Jyby]

I take it this is one reason OpenMW save files are so large. It's funny seeing those next to my Skyrim Special Edition saves, which after 120+ hours of play sits at a mighty 5.34 MB.

I bet those Skyrim saves have more to do with compression. You still have to track what items were taken or moved. Also I'm guessing if you mod an item in Skyrim that was already altered by the player the mod won't take affect. Just a guess though.

[Pherim]

I take it this is one reason OpenMW save files are so large. It's funny seeing those next to my Skyrim Special Edition saves, which after 120+ hours of play sits at a mighty 5.34 MB.

That's interesting, they really seem to be a lot smaller than those from the classic Skyrim... I haven't played the SE much, but all my saves are below 3MB, whereas in classic Skyrim, a savegame immediately after the intro appears to have about 5MB already. My current character's savegames (with a number of mods installed) have just gone over 16MB after 75 hours or so. If the SE saves really are that much smaller, I wonder why.

[CMAugust]

Mods almost certainly make a difference. The aforementioned Skyrim SE playthrough is completely vanilla, while a 270 hour save file on my regular Skyrim installation with 100+ mods is sitting at 15.61 MB. To be fair, the OpenMW save I've been playing is modded too - all three of them (Delayed DB Attack, Illy's Solstheim Rumor Fix and Morrowind Patch 1.6.6 beta) so I can't say exactly how big OpenMW gets just by itself, but that file with not much besides the main quest completed is sitting at 17.6 MB.

I'm interested to know whether Bethesda's saves do in fact use compression, and if OpenMW could/should do the same. At the same time, the OpenMW saving process itself could probably be reviewed to see if it's as efficient as it can be.

[Pop000100]

I'm interested to know whether Bethesda's saves do in fact use compression, and if OpenMW could/should do the same. At the same time, the OpenMW saving process itself could probably be reviewed to see if it's as efficient as it can be.

They Do Wyre bash is currently deciphering it looks like LZ4.

Wyre Bash Issue
for those who don't know LZ4 doesn't give that good Compression ratio cause its very fast, so they traded size for speed.

[Jyby]

Neat read.

I definitely would agree with the speed over compactness idea. Saves in the tens of MB shouldn't be a huge issue for PCs and consoles.

[AnyOldName3]

I've ended up with gigabytes of Skyrim saves, despite them being under 20 MB each. Maybe a balance of both would be a better option than going for one over the other.

[Jyby]

I've ended up with gigabytes of Skyrim saves, despite them being under 20 MB each. Maybe a balance of both would be a better option than going for one over the other.

Or first check your saving habits that's a lot! How many saves do you have?