Long save time

[gilmar]

Hi,

I'm running :
Windows XP Pro 64 bit
Intel R Pentium R D 3 Ghz 3 Ghz CPU (XE 925)
Micro-Star P4M890M3-V Mainboard
GeForce GT 440 1024MB DDR3 graphics card
450 W of power supply
3G of RAM DDR2-SDRAM

My game takes about 1.5 hours onwards to save.
Could this be memory related? I'm planning on having 4G of memory max, would this help?

[Chain_Reaction]

I admire your patience levels to let a program sit for an hour and a half unresponsive, I would have axed it after 5 minutes. This is not memory related, it's likely your town is just burnt toast. How about doing something logical like trying a fresh town and see if it still occurs? And for heaven's sake, find your End Process button.

[Roobs]

I used to get long save times, until I reinstalled the game. *shrugs*

[witch]

Try nuking memories with awesomemod. clearmemories I think is the command.

[kissing_toast]

Also this.

[gilmar]

It's an old neighbourhood, about 950 Mb in size but still, 1.5 hours?
New neighbourhood takes just minutes.
I tried re-compressing, is this also known as decrapifying but every time it takes only about 5 Mb out of my save file. I'll give it another try.

[kissing_toast]

It's an old neighbourhood, about 950 Mb in size but still, 1.5 hours?
New neighbourhood takes just minutes.
I tried re-compressing, is this also known as decrapifying but every time it takes only about 5 Mb out of my save file. I'll give it another try.

Two different things.

[GnatGoSplat]

The only way I've found to fix this is to use Twallan's Porter to port out the sims I wanted to keep and re-import into a fresh new hood.
I'm not sure what causes this kind of save game bloat, but it seems related to how many households have been made active.

[J. M. Pescado]

It's an old neighbourhood, about 950 Mb in size but still, 1.5 hours?

Sheesh. *950* MBs?!? Something is WRONG with that neighborhood.

[gilmar]

It's an old neighbourhood, about 950 Mb in size but still, 1.5 hours?

Sheesh. *950* MBs?!? Something is WRONG with that neighborhood.

Could it be my processor dying to process the game? Yup, about 940 Mb now, it fluctuates around 930s to 960s. The save file has been there since 2009 I think when I first started to play.
I'll try re-compressing it.

[J. M. Pescado]

No, I think the problem is that your save is 950 MBs, and since the game attempts to compress save files to save disk space, this results in enormously long save times, as if you attempted to use s3rc on the entire Fullbuild packages, a problem made significantly worse by the fact that the game tries to do the entire thing in a single thread, so the game gets zero performance benefit whatsover out of modern computars.

[Lord Darcy]

It's an old neighbourhood, about 950 Mb in size but still, 1.5 hours?

Out of curiosity, how long does it take for your game to load, if it takes 1.5 hours just to save?
And when you said "950 Mb in size", did you mean the whole save folder (including vacation 'hoods), or just .nhd file for the main 'hood?

The save file bloat and increasingly longer loading time is the one reason that I don't play TS3 as much as I used to play TS2. It's hard to develop any attachment to the game when you know that the eventual save file bloat will make the game almost unplayable.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm actually somewhat unclear as to what is *IN* these save files that causes them to bloat like that, since I have never seen a save file bloat to such mammoth proportions.

[gilmar]

I'm sorry if I used the wrong term, I meant the whole folder is 950 Mb. The .nhd (Sunset valley)  file is about 289 Mb.
It takes about 20-30 mins to load.

Should I re-compress the .nhd (Sunset Valley) file?

[J. M. Pescado]

No, that won't really help. First, it helps to identify what the largest and most bloated file is. Take a look inside the save directory and try to determine which file appears to be of unreasonable size.

[gilmar]

Okay.
These are the files :
1a5tf1l3.dat : 26 b                                               
China_0x0859db4c.nhd : 57.8 Mb
China_0x0859db4cExportDB.package : 4.99 Mb
Egypt_0x0859db48.nhd : 175 Mb
Egypt_0x0859db48ExportDB.package : 4.66 Mb
France_0x0859db50.nhd : 48.5 Mb
France_0x0859db50ExportDB.package : 6.66 Mb
Meta.data : 297 b
Sunset Valley_0x0859db3c.nhd : 289 Mb
Sunset Valley_0x0859db3cExportDB.package : 130 Mb
TravelDB.package : 232 Mb

I'm not so sure how to see which files are abnormally large.
Maybe the Egyptian and Sunset Valley files are a little big.

[J. M. Pescado]

All of that looks awfully huge. Are you taking way too many junk photos or something? I am presently investigating travelDB bloat.

[gilmar]

Okay.
I used to take photos last time, but hardly nowadays. Also I used to travel a lot but not much nowadays. I have a graveyard since the first days where it hosts ghosts of sims since I first played.
The bloat has nothing to do with the age of the neighbourhood?

[J. M. Pescado]

I have a certain amount of difficulty imagining 250+ MBs worth of ghosts, although I suppose it could be possible. If I were you, I'd pull open the NHD file in IngePE and see what the most commonly seen things in the file are.

[GnatGoSplat]

Have you switched houses very often?  Every time I switched to a house I hadn't played before added around 5MB of additional bloat to my neighborhood .nhd.

[gilmar]

Okay.
I've downloaded sim3pe.
Here is what I found                                         
China_0x0859db4c.nhd : Lots of files with the tag UNKN.
China_0x0859db4cExportDB.package : Lots of files with the tag TXTF and TXTC.
Egypt_0x0859db48.nhd : Lots of files with the tag UNKN.
Egypt_0x0859db48ExportDB.package : Lots of files with the tag TXTF and TXTC.
France_0x0859db50.nhd : Lots of files with the tag UNKN.
France_0x0859db50ExportDB.package : Lots of files with the tag TXTF and TXTC.
Sunset Valley_0x0859db3c.nhd : Lots of files with the tag SNAP, UNKN and some INV.
Sunset Valley_0x0859db3cExportDB.package : Lots of files with the tag TXTF and TXTC.
TravelDB.package : Between the files with the tag SIME and UNKN and some IMG.

But I have no idea what they are. Only can guess that txt are text files, img are image files and maybe unkn are unknowns?

@ GnatGoSplat, yes I do switch houses quite often, I play a household for a few days and then I normally will switch.

[J. M. Pescado]

All the travel and export DBs can be burninated with no apparent effects, I've found. You may also try using IngePE to destroy all of the SNAPs, but that part is untested.

[gilmar]

Okay.
Does this mean I can delete the travel and export dbs? Will they regenerate?

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes. If you strike them down, they'll just come back, and pick up all their stuff.

[gilmar]

I've deleted the travel and export dbs. They haven't regenarated so far. It still takes about 30 mins to load and 1.5 hours to save.