[Bug] Save and memory consumption grows with each load cycle

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Eagle_Four
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Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
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[Bug] Save and memory consumption grows with each load cycle

Post by Eagle_Four » Tue, 20. Sep 22, 12:56

I'm dealing with a pretty nasty bug.
I noticed that my save has increased massively in the last few days. From about 90MB to partly 250 MB.

After a hard weekend of troubleshooting I came across the following problem.
When I reload a save in the game, the memory consumption of X4 increases every time. If I then save, my save is a lot bigger.

For example, if I load the same save 10 times in a row, X4 goes from about 7.5 Gb of memory to a whopping 26 GB. This then goes from the 1st load cycle 7.5Gb to 8.5 then to 12 Gb to 14 Gb and so on.
The save then grows with each time save.

Exactly the same bug, with the same massive growth of the same entries in the save, is described here:

viewtopic.php?f=180&t=430633&p=4985525#p4985525

I can only interrupt this cycle when I quit the game and restart. That means if I want to keep my 90MB save (of size), then I have to reload the game after each save so the bug is not in the game.

I can play for hours, then if I save at the end and load this save at the next X4 start everything is ok.
But if I save in between and reload this save in the game, my save is already a lot bigger.

At first I thought it was due to mods. I have turned off all mods except ROR, VRO, XR Shippack, NPCs Recovered by Gramston, without which my save does not run. But it shows the same behavior, so even without mods. I know that this is only conditionally meaningful and the bug can also be triggered by mods.

Then I went back many saves to see if the bug shows up from a certain save. I noticed that this behavior exists for a long time. I just didn't notice it, because the increases of the saves were within limits. Always a few MB. But it's exponential, now after saves that are almost 1000 hours old the increases are so big that I suddenly noticed it.

Test starting a new game doesn't do much. The increases are barely there, it only gets stronger with time.

I read that there was a bug fix in V3.2:

Version 3.20 (400261) - 2020-06-04
Fixed issue causing savegames to become larger with every save/load cycle.

But what if my savegame is from before V3.2 ? Is it possible that I carried this bug slowly from save to save? I just recently updated from V3.3 to V5.1 and carried over the old save.
Also, I switched from Win 7 to Win 10, it wasn't until I did saves on Win 10 that the saves increased much more.

I have to solve the problem somehow, restarting is out of the question, I'm too far along for that. I have gone through all the plots, found all the data vaults, built some factories, modified many ships etc.. There is so much work and effort in it. A restart would be the X4 off for me.

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Ketraar
EGOSOFT
EGOSOFT
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Joined: Fri, 21. May 04, 17:15
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Re: [Bug] Save and memory consumption grows with each load cycle

Post by Ketraar » Tue, 20. Sep 22, 13:25

Would be good to have the save you are referring to so it can be looked into.

MFG

Ketraar
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