Does Fallout NV PS3 lag explain Skyrim issues?

By Richard Leadbetter Published 5 December, 2011

Project director provides insight into engine design.

In our weekend article on the Skyrim PS3 lag issue, we analysed the performance of the game running from a fresh save compared to a crippled 65 hour game, and then put the new patch through its paces - and found it wanting.

Our best theory on why it happened at all came down to the notion of an unbounded game world with thousands upon thousands of objects having to be tracked as they moved from their default positions as the player moved through the game. It's an enormous undertaking to store all of this information, and of the three platforms Skyrim is available for, it's the PlayStation 3 that presents the most challenges from a memory management perspective.

Thanks to Eurogamer reader mcmothercruncher, who posted a revealing link to the Bethesda forums, this theory appears to have gained extra weight through Formspring comments by Obsidian's Joshua E Sawyer, lead designer and project director of Fallout: New Vegas - which ran on an earlier version of the same engine.

Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas exhibited an issue very close to that seen in Skyrim. The game save gradually increases in size until performance is impacted, resulting in the same kind of performance drop we see in Skyrim.

"It's an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored off as bit flag differences compared to the placed instances in the main .esm + DLC .esms," Sawyer explained, referencing the database files used by the Fallout 3/New Vegas engine, which remain in place in Skyrim.

"As the game modifies any placed instance of an object, those changes are stored off into what is essentially another .esm. When you load the save game, you're loading all of those differences into resident memory."

Sawyer also explained that the issue isn't a simple bug that can be easily fixed - for New Vegas at least. If it is indeed the same issue that manifests on Skyrim, it's not a section of errant code that can be corrected, but something more fundamental - which may explain the limited impact of last week's patch.

"It's not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place or declared something as a float when it should have been an int. We're talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment. Obsidian also only had that engine for a total of 18 months prior to F:NV being released, which is a relatively short time to understand all of the details of how the technology works."

Asked why the Fallout NV lag issue impacts the PlayStation 3 more severely than other platforms, Sawyer noted the differences in the memory set-up of the respective consoles.

"The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory," he said. "The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It's the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of."

On the 12MB, 65 hour Skyrim save we analysed, last week's patch improved performance over the day one update, but judder and hugely impactful frame-rate drops are still there.

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (134) Latest comment 5 months ago

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  • Zozzilla #1 6 months ago

    Thing is, they know this now but will still use the same engine for whatever their next game will be.

  • UnblestCarpet #2 6 months ago

    @Zozzilla apparently this is a 'new engine' ...

  • King_Edward #3 6 months ago

    The problem is Bethesda are shit, and Sony are pussies.

  • Moarachanox #4 6 months ago

    The problem = people with the big money in the company dont give a fuck about you.

    get over it, ass long you buy there games and DLC, nothing changes

    Edit; MW3 gets 20 DLC
    Edited by Moarachanox at 05/12/11 @ 12:10

  • The-Jack-Burton #5 6 months ago

    It's no surprise that Bethesda new about this problem for years and has never done anything to fix it. It will be interesting to see if this somehow manifests itself into a lawsuit.

  • Inmediasress #6 6 months ago

    Well I don't know why they bought Carmack if they don't tell him to make a new engine for them.
    Then again Carmack probably fooled them with Rage, making Bethesdanimax think they got their hands on a good engine for sandbox worlds.
    Truth is of course that engine so far seemed to be piss poor and only usable for some limited environments not a full blown sandbox style game.
    No wonder Bethesda was cracking down on Carmack and ID in general after the failure that Rage was.

    Oh and it should be pretty obvious by now that the so called new engine that they used in Skyrim is just the Gamebryo engine reskinned a bit.
    I wouldn't call that a new engine more like Gambryo 1.1 beta.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 05/12/11 @ 12:15

  • weebl #7 6 months ago

    OK, so it can't be easily fixed but it beggars belief why they implemented a system that was known to be faulty in previous games, unless of course they don't give a crap about the consumer?

  • cussers #8 6 months ago

    Did Bethesda not say that they had created a brand new engine from the ground up for Skyrim? The 'Creation Engine,' was it?

    Just Gamebryo in drag.

    Now, I'm not one of those who slates Gamebryo. It's unstable and a bit weird and buggy, but it's given me many happy hundreds of gaming hours and is clearly an amazing open-world piece of technology/code/whatever. I don't know of any other engine that could do what it does, at least. It does cheese me off a bit when devs just blatantly lie about new engines, though.

  • Rogueywon #9 6 months ago

    This does make one thing very clear - MS, Sony and Nintendo need to make sure that their next gen hardware actually has a sensible amount of RAM. Even back when these machines launched, their RAM limitations looked pretty harsh. The PS3 in partiuclar has consistently suffered from having some otherwise-excellent hardware constrained by RAM limitations.

    It's not even as if the stuff is particularly expensive these days. I was able to put 24 gigs in my latest PC without the cost hurting that much.

  • The-Jack-Burton #10 6 months ago

    @UnblestCarpet, it's the same engine, they just optimized it further.

    Bethesda has long been known to be completely full of shit, they somehow think it increases their sales. Maybe it does . . .

  • stuarty_2003 #11 6 months ago

    Never understood the split RAM architecture decision from Sony. It's not something devs will flock to defend; however, it's not an excuse for a 4 year old bug.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #12 6 months ago

    So what they are saying is that the used an engine without understanding how it works only to discover two games later that the way it manages data is totally unsuitable for their games? Nice one.

  • Cjail #13 6 months ago

    "It's not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place or declared something as a float when it should have been an int. We're talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment"

    So we are now left with a game that, potentially, could require months to be fixed.
    If they knew/suspected this could have happened then they deliberately let it happend: this is negligence.
    Edited by Cjail at 05/12/11 @ 12:36

  • inutaihanyou #14 6 months ago

    Well i think we have two parties at fault here.

    Sony for making their console intentinoally hard to code for and making the nonsensical design choice of splitting up their ram thinking that their cell processor would cover any issues(which is technically impossible outside of SCE which knows the tech down to a science these days.

    (Epic really helped Microsoft out by persuading them to go unified 10MB embedded with 512 full spectrum system memory ram)

    And Bethesda is at fault for shipping their engine in this state. If they knew that this was an issue for the pS3, it would have been better off to simply rewrite their engine with a unified solution in mind. Hell even if they did not want to spare the time and energy to doing it from scratch. At least....AT LEAST have the decency to not release this game on the PS3 with the explanation that it would have been better to not ship a technical mess like what we see here. Something like

    "our standards are such that to the fans of our games around the world, it would be an insult to ship a product that could not live up to the expectations that surrounded it". Hell, i know plenty of people who would have picked it up for PC or 360 had they atleast had that explanation for why PS3 was not chosen for a platform.

    Now all we have to show for it are technical issues instead of praising the actual great game underneath it. Bad move Bethesda, bad move.

  • EvilAspirin #15 6 months ago

    I think most of us with PS3s that had Fallout 3 and New Vegas knew that the same problem occurred in those games after a save file reached a certain size. I remember the games lagging in frame rate after a bit of play and most of the time crashing the console. I guessed at the time that it was suffering from a memory leak, but it's pretty bad that the changes to the database are causing the problems when loaded in.

    If it is the same in Skyrim (which looks likely) that's THREE games that they haven't fixed the same known issue. I can understand Obsidian (New Vegas) not finding or fixing it (18 months is a pretty short development time with unfamiliar code), but Bethesda have had this same code since developing Fallout 3, which released over 3 years ago. That's pretty poor, especially when it was pointed out a number of times that the issue occurred when the file size became large.

  • anomagnus #16 6 months ago

    I feel sorry for PS users. I was playing the PC version, and it is my game of the year.

  • Otis_Inf #17 6 months ago

    I don't think this is the issue (because what's then causing the slowdown? unclear). He talks about bit differences, but 'bit flags' can only be stored as different if you know which bits have changed. If you have 32 bit flags (longword) and you reset 4 of them, which 4 are reset? You still have to store the 32bit longword to know.

    I do think the guy refers to storing differences, but not as simplistic as 'we store the changed bit flags'.

    Let's do some maths, shall we? The only information that's interesting for the player to persist into a save file (and keep in memory) is the objects the player interacted with. All objects the player hasn't interacted with are the same as they were initially designed, so you don't have to store data in the save file nor keep information about it in memory other than the data you load from the game disk.

    Let's say the player played for 100 hours and interacts with an object every 10 seconds. That's in total 36,000 objects. Let's say these are all containers of some sort. Objects have IDs, and to be safe I think they use at least 3 bytes for this, although I doubt there are more than 65535 (16bit) different objects in the game you can interact with. So that's 3*36,000 = 108,000 bytes to store all IDs of all objects the player interacted with and which are totally empty over the course of 100 hours. Say you need to store other information, e.g. chunks of data specific for the object type. Say on average you store 100 bytes of extra info per object. That's 10,800,000, or ~10.5MB. And 100bytes per interacted object is a lot: to store that the chest AB0101 was cleaned by the player takes at most the ID and no other data to signal the chest is empty. After all, if data was inside it, the IDs of the objects inside the chest would be stored with it.

    Is 10MB of data a lot? Well, it might be, after all the PS3 mainmem is ~200MB (as the rest is OS). But let's see it from a different angle: the map of Skyrim and other Bethesda RPGs is a grid: you move from 1 cell to another and the game loads the data relevant to that grid cell into memory. Say you move from cell X to cell Y on the grid (e.g. you enter a town or dungeon) or simply walk from cell X to cell Y through the woods. All objects interacted by the player which are NOT in cell Y can be swapped out to the HDD (every PS3 has one!), as the player can't interact with them at all: the player is in cell Y, not in cell X so all objects in cell X can be swapped out of memory, the player won't change them while being on cell Y.

    This is all background work, a background thread can swap the data to a pre-created file, right after loading the data for the cell the player entered. When saving the gamestate, load this data into memory, save it as a whole, swap it out again.

    The PS3's memory architecture might require a different approach than the PC / 360, but that's not something new. What Bethesda has to ask themselves is: as we committed ourselves to PS3, why didn't we implement a different data management system for PS3? You can abstract away this system in most engines.

    Anyway, I'm sure I simplified things a lot in my simple calculations above. I'm not suggesting things are dead simple with a vast world and thousands of objects in that world. However what's a bit sad is that things are presented as 'we tried everything and it's not solveable in any other way'... if I have learned one thing in the 18 years I now write software (o/r mappers) for a living is that there's always a way, maybe you didn't think of it, but someone else did.
    Edited by Otis_Inf at 05/12/11 @ 12:45

  • Cadence #18 6 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:50:34 12-12-2011

  • Cjail #19 6 months ago

    @inutaihanyou
    You can't blame Sony for Bethesda's mistakes.
    Developers like Naught Dog, Santa Monica Studios, Guerrilla Games, didn't have problems working on PS3 and never failed to deliver because the system architecture is different from the Xbox one!

  • richardiox #20 6 months ago

    The real problem here is that the PS3 has 256mb of RAM which is half of what the 360 has and 1/16th of a modern gaming PC. An emergent game world as huge as this whereby the savefile has to capture so much information it's always going to struggle with limited RAM.

    Unfortunately short of changing the fundamentals of the game (remembering all your actions to date in the game world) I can't see how this can be fixed on PS3.

    So the issue is - should Beth have just released this on 360 and PC? Or have a warning sticker on the PS3 game cases? I don't want them to lessen their ambition as on PC and 360 the large save file issue seems to be negliable.

    I accept that MSs decision to use DVD media has had consequences this gen with games spanning multiple disks. Sony's decision to only include 256mb ram has consequences with ambitious games like this. And I can't think of another console open world experience in the same league as Skyrim...other than Fallout (which also struggled on PS3 for the exact same reasons)

    Would the PS3 owners - if it transpires it's a tech limitation of that specific console (looks to be the case) - rather of not had the game or would they rather have it, lag issues and all? Bethesda can't do anything about the lack of ram.

  • kickerconspiracy #21 6 months ago

    Wouldn't it make sense to create an engine that had the technical limits of the respective platforms in mind?

    I'm all for pushing the boundaries of what a game looks like and what it can do, but at the expense of the critical factor; fun?

  • Darren #22 6 months ago

    I seem to remember Bethesda claiming that the Creation Engine used for Skyrim was new and designed to benefit the game. Strange how this engine has the same flaws as the previous Gamebryo ones. Sounds like Bethesda knew what the issue was from Fallout: New Vegas but didn't see fit to fix it for the PS3. That is very poor IMO and I'm betting that they'll try to reduce it but they won't ever fix it on the PS3. It may even rear its ugly head on the Xbox 360 at some point as well as the Digital Foundry article says.

    Is this issue what also causes the PC version to unexpectedly exit to the desktop at random unless you use the 4 GB Skyrim executable which cleverly adds the Large Address Aware tweak? I had about eight of these annoying 'exits' from 8 hours of play the weekend before last (after the v1.1.121 update that Steam forced on us which disabled LAA) but this weekend I decided to use the 4 GB Skyrim executable and played for almost 20 hours with only ONE unexpected exit (and that was after hours of playing, again, suggesting that a memory leak was maybe responsible?).

    Seems to me like Bethesda need to put a bit more effort into testing their engine after dozens and dozens hours of play as this isn't a short sub-10 hour game like most on the market but one that potentially has hundreds of hours of gameplay (I've been playing for 105 hours for example and feel that I'm only at the half way point!).
    Edited by Darren at 05/12/11 @ 12:57

  • rotmm #23 6 months ago

    @richardiox, "The real problem here is that the PS3 has 256mb of RAM...."

    It's almost 2012 and people still think this?

    No, the PS3 has 512MB RAM, just like the 360 has (well, the 360 has another 10MB of EDRAM on top) but it's split into 2x256MB instead.

    Your real problem is that you didn't even read the fucking article where it clearly states that the PS3 has 512MB RAM.

    FFS!

  • 43n1m4 #24 6 months ago

    @Richardiox

    "Sony's decision to only include 256mb ram.."

    No, please read again. PS3 has 256 MB system ram + 256 MB GPU(RSX) RAM. The PS3 OS, however take a little over 40 MB for the OS, which leaves little over 200 MB left for the system.
    Xbox360 has a unified pool of 512 MB ram, which the developers can use as they want, with the exception of the 40 or so MB for the OS.
    The difference, as the article says, is flexibility.
    Edited by 43n1m4 at 05/12/11 @ 13:10

  • inutaihanyou #25 6 months ago

    @inutaihanyou
    "You can't blame Sony for Bethesda's mistakes.
    Developers like Naught Dog, Santa Monica Studios, Guerrilla Games, didn't have problems working on PS3 and never failed to deliver because the system architecture is different from the Xbox one!"


    Okay, #1

    Did you even read what i said? All of these studios are property of SCE! They all have unique experience with Sony's PS3 architecture, third party studio's are not going to be expected to know how to utilize the cell processor to shoulder the weakness of the initial 256 split meg ram.

    Almost every third party which has come across PS3 has had SOME form of issue or tradeoff with it as far as porting multiform games not built from the ground up for the console.


    #2

    i'm not "blaming Sony for Bethesda's mistakes". as i said, there is plenty of blame to go around, but this problem, as much as Bethesda is a lazy developer for simply shipping it out on the console knowing of the issues, is still down to the PS3's narrow architecture.

    I repeat, that is not excusing Bethesda for shipping the game in this manner and disappointing PS3 owning fans. I'm only saying that there is blame shared here.

  • Darren #26 6 months ago

    There are issues with Skyrim on all three platforms so the problem isn't the hardware but the coding/engine. Bethesda evidently do not do near enough testing on their games as Oblivion and Fallout 3 had their share of issues too (I remember a bug in Oblivion which would remove items from the world once a certain number had been reached for example which was eventually fixed months after the game had been on sale).

  • joelstinton #27 6 months ago

    This is depressing. As a sole ps3 owner i would love to play the shit out of this game. But not going too with how it is. The oblivion port had issues, but nothing compared to the fallout, nv and skyrim. How did the people whom ported oblivion contain the issues that the core game makers couldn't?

  • Bigglesworth #28 6 months ago

    This is interesting in that it suggests that sooner or later, this problem is going to affect the 360 game, too. However, it doesn't explain why the savedata file is growing to such proportions only on the PS3 version of the game. Do PS3 players simply interact with more objects? I don't think so.

    I still stand by my initial comments on savedata size, especially after gaining this insight into how the engine saves data. Something is not right if the savedata is climbing into tens of megabytes; certainly not if the data is growing at different rates on different platforms.

  • jonbwfc #29 6 months ago

    So what they're actually saying is "We've known about this bug for years but we can't be arsed/don't know how to fix it"

  • hiddenranbir #30 6 months ago

    Thing is PS3 has shit all memory.

  • BonzoBanana #31 6 months ago

    Every PS3 has a hard drive, it has more cpu power and a generous amount of optical storage. It seems to me that the PS3 limitation of having its memory split could be worked around but it might need radical redevelopment of the engine. The trouble is to get the best from the PS3 you need to develop for it from the beginning for its architecture. Adapting 360/PC code isn't going to work as well I believe.

    Bethedsa want PS3 sales but aren't commited to doing a fully optimised port to the ps3 and so its a game best enjoyed on a different console. Its a shame for people who only own the PS3 but then there are many great PS3 exclusives which 360 owners are denied. I own both and will be looking forward to buying this on 360 and will probably only pick up the PS3 version when its in the bargain big as a curiosity.

    Bethedsa should really have farmed this out to competent PS3 developers like they did with Oblivion.

    Maybe Sony should do what they did with the PSP and offer a revised model with more memory. The original psp was 32meg of main memory and the later models went to 64meg. The extra memory was used to cache the UMD drive increasing battery life and decreasing load times. Perhaps something like that can be achieved with PS3, perhaps they can bring back PS2 compatibility at the same time.

  • Cjail #32 6 months ago

    @inutaihanyou
    Developers can ask Sony for help you know, or can hire people that know the PS3 architecture and know how to program/use it (this is what Human Head is doing for instance: check link here); also Developers' Kit exist exactly for this reason.
    Anyway after 5 years it is not possible that only 2-3 developers actually know how to use the PS3 properly: it is no more an unexplored territory.
    Edited by Cjail at 05/12/11 @ 14:33

  • Subdominator #33 6 months ago

    @UnblestCarpet No, it's not. It's just a stupid lie. In late 2009 Todd Howard said in interviews that their new game would of course use Gamebryo again because it is best suited for those kind of games. Starting middle of 2010 he was shifting towards saying that they created a brand new engine - all because people were mad with the bug infested New Vegas. But let me put it this way: If you created a brand new engine, would you write a DirectX 9 (!!!, yes, not 10 or even 11) engine in 2010? No, you wouldn't. And all the problems and features of Skyrim show that it is still the same engine. They just rewrote the graphics engine to some degree. All the stuff that is running in the background is still the same.

    The PS3 version might be broken, but it is not buggy. It is just how the game's performance is on that platform due to the split RAM. If you think back, the whole problem existed already in the 360 version of Oblivion. If you dropped a lot of items performance would slow down massively - until a couple of ingame days passed and everything that wasn't in containers in houses you owned would get deleted.

    For PS3 the solution is pretty simple: Get rid of the persistence. Only keep quest related enemies (if they die and have a quest item in their inventory) stored. Make chests open once only or respawn their inventory every day (obviously the first solution would make more sense). If a player clears out a dungeon just respawn enemies the next day, so you don't have to keep track of every single NPC in the game. After all, most people don't go back to dungeons they already cleared in a game with 330 locations. And typically you don't open a chest a second time unless you stored something in it yourself. It's something they already do on all platforms. If you get all the ingredients from a cupboard and return three days later you'll see they have all magically respawned. This would reduce game save file sizes a lot because the game would only need to save progress for the last three ingame days (plus more for quest related stuff).

    They just save too much redundant data. How often have you killed someone, stripped him of half his inventory and then returned a couple of days later to get the rest? It's not like you are constantly out of money in this game - in fact there is very little to do with money because you almost never buy ammo (with bows being the only weapon that needs ammo and arrows being pretty much everywhere for free) and you never have to replace your other weapons either, because they don't degrade. It's not like any lvl 20 player would return to a corpse to get his fine leather clothes to sell them for 2 gold.

    However this is not news. It's been known for years that the 360's unified RAM as opposed to PS3's split RAM is the reason why most games run and look better on the Microsoft platform than on the Playstation. Just from raw power the PS3 is way ahead of 360, but two stupid decisions hold it back: RAM and Blu-ray (great for cutscenes but long seek times make it much slower than a DVD drive if you're streaming content, that is why PS3 has so many mandatory installs).

  • scuffpuppies #34 6 months ago

    As wonderful as Bethesda are at creating not just the best RPG's, but some of the best games in the past 10 years...technically they leave a lot to be desired. Morally? Totally bankrupt.

    As much as I love the worlds they create, I will never buy a Bethesda developed game again after this.

  • lockload #35 6 months ago

    Doesn't sound good for ps3 owners if they still have the issue on previous games and its not been fixed.

    Almost sounds like an unpatchable issue without recoding the engine memory management

    This must be a know issue prior to this game being released, i wonder how many play more than 50 hours...probably less than 1%?
    Edited by lockload at 05/12/11 @ 13:31

  • carlosdfn #36 6 months ago

    PS3 owners should get their money back, it's that simple.

  • Gusdor #37 6 months ago

    Are they trying to tell us they load the entire save into memory when you load up? Surely they stream in relevant data only. Right guys? If not, memory use will grow and grow and grow. It's basically a memory leak.

  • shadowmind #38 6 months ago

    I love the game, but with it being broken am I entitled to a refund?

  • LEONOFDEATH #39 6 months ago

    Just gonna post this on every article that i read:

    VIDEO PLAYER ISNT WORKING FOR ME.

    Im using google chrome, Fully updated.

    Also, The hydrophobia ad is stoping me being able to click in this text box.

  • LEONOFDEATH #40 6 months ago

    @hiddenranbir

    It had the same amount as the 360...

  • hiddenranbir #41 6 months ago

    Why should they waste their time trying to work around cramming their massive game into 512MB when they can enjoy the benefits of much more elsewhere?


    Is it a wonder games this generation have had articles comparing what issues each console has with games more than any previous?

  • hiddenranbir #42 6 months ago

    @LEONOFDEATH Yeah I'm saying in general it is rather low for what Skyrim represents. It is a huge game and I think it sucks it has to work with so little.

  • Retro_ #43 6 months ago

    It would be interesting to see how Skyrim runs on a SSD'd PS3. Id not expect it to solve the problem but I'd be interested to know anyway.

  • strangerism #44 6 months ago

    I think is correct to add that the Gamebryo engine, which is being made here as the culprit of the problem, is only resposible of rendering the graphics. The real problem lies in other part of the "game engine" especially those dedicated to managing the data itemization/management or maybe at a more core level and it is probably the parts which have been developed by bethesda since morrowind.

  • Stratix #45 6 months ago

    There needs to be some sort of cleanup function.

    Is the object different to default?
    If yes, is it still nearby?
    If yes, PUT IT FUCKING BACK.

    That might help those that Fus Ro Dah dinner tables a few more times that is necessary.

  • Darren #46 6 months ago

    I must admit to being impressed at how Skyrim (and Fallout 3/Oblivion before it) keep track of all the items, remembering exactly were they were when you dropped or knocked them over. While it makes the world more believable, it is sometimes overdone as no-one ever seems in a hurry to clear up as you'd expect.

    The game should reset all non-player related items to their default positions after a few days of game time IMO (36 hours would suffice) as people don't leave stuff lying around in real-life; dropped loot outside would be stolen or disposed of/tidied up for example. There are houses and guild containers to store stuff in so everything else should be wiped cleaned and reset IMO like in other RPGs which don't have memory leaks, etc.

    As long as this resetting of items isn't done immediately then I don't see how this would be a problem for most people as you'd still have time to return if you, say, had to drop loot due to being encumbered. And you cannot drop quest-related items either so there's no risk of an essential item being erased from the game.

  • kangarootoo #47 6 months ago

    @Otis_Inf

    Good post, interesting stuff. Swapping stuff in and out based on your world location occurred to me too. But then I wondered if the game has to know the state of all objects for mission based reason (i.e. something you do could have effects later, regardless of where you are at the time).

    I guess if you were given a mission to go get item X, at that point the game could load the data related to item X from HDD to memory?

    I'm a bit technical, but not a coder, so my question is part me thinking our loud and part me asking your opinion? :)

  • FortysixterUK #48 6 months ago

    Buy the rights to use the RIFT engine for an open world game?
    Or the one used for Warhammer online.
    or Age of Conan.

    Buy the best and make the best

  • Gusdor #49 6 months ago

    @strangerism That is incorrect. A game engine is more than just a render. It is a full IoC container that just happens to support multimedia, data persistance and whatever game code required to glue the parts into a whole.

  • intpleeus #50 6 months ago

    So it's not a bug, after all, but rather a performance issue like framerate, screen tear, or texture pop. It's just a quirk of Skyrim that the idiosyncratic Playstation 3 architecture struggles with more than rival platforms.

    What Bethesda should do is release a patch for the Playstation 3 version to introduce a new option to the menu: "Reset World." It would allow players to voluntarily reset all non-critical objects in the world to their initial states, reducing the size of the save file and, presumably, improving performance.

  • mcmothercruncher #51 6 months ago

    My name in lights, something to tell the grandchildren about as we sit around the virtual fire :-D

    What disgusts me most is the cynicism with which Bethesda sold a PS3 version of Skyrim knowing of a game destroying bug waiting for us after enough hours.

    After so much time with the underlying engine code and so much bug testing they cannot have failed to note this issue.

    It is not surprising then that PS3 versions of the game were not given out for industry reviewing and also not surprising that DLC is not imminent on that platform since it will only exacerbate the problem.

    Whether I go with Microsoft or Sony next console generation, on principal, I'm certainly not going with Bethesda.

  • technotica #52 6 months ago

    But if its a memory limitation wouldn't it also affect xbox 360 at some point? Even if at a far later point?

    But it doesn't seem to do that...

  • captainCandy #53 6 months ago

    They don't really have to keep all the changes in the world in the RAM all the time, just those that are needed (i.e. are near the player). Their engine must suck a lot if it cannot handle a small thing like this...

  • kwolf666 #54 6 months ago

    @mcmothercruncher I have decided to go back to PC gaming after this generation. I mean, what's the point of playing on a console if you constantly have to worry about the quality of ports and glitches, not to mention the fact that so many console games STILL SUFFER FROM FRAMERATE DROPS. Wasn't the "next generation" going to be high-tech and all? Sorry, I guess I'm pissed off by the Skyrim-issue (I really wanted to play the game)
    Edited by kwolf666 at 05/12/11 @ 15:11

  • Anufea #55 6 months ago

    @technotica

    Well, this far far later point might be so far away that it isn't reached at all.

  • kangarootoo #56 6 months ago

    @intpleeus

    Surely determining a "non-critical" state is the hard part though.

    Could such an option not introduce a wave of unforseen mission breaking bugs? Or at the very least, a massive "rob the same chest over and over for crazy money" exploit?

    Clearly Bethesda are clever people, and what we seeing here is a result of taking on a bit too much perhaps (perhaps coupled with not building a new engine from the ground up, but I don't think some commentors realise just what sort of investment they are talking about there).

    What I am saying in summary is that if the solution were simple, to consider and to implement, (despite there being some clever people in this thread), we would probably have seen it in the last patch.

    Not defending it all, just trying to understand it, and not attack it just 'cos I can.

  • AnotherIdiot #57 6 months ago

    I think you need to cut them some slack and be realistic here. Which developer creates a game as detailed and magnicifent as SkyRim, that runs like a dream on multiple platforms?

    It's not the same as a creating a linear game exclusively for one system. These consoles are quite old now and showing their limitations.

  • kangarootoo #58 6 months ago

    @technotica

    I think the difference is access speed, not amount of data. The 360 isn't ok because it has more memory, its ok because the data "causing the issue" can be accessed super fast on the 360. I forget where I read that now, I thought it was in the article but it might be in the thread.

  • arcam #59 6 months ago

    There really was no point in Bethesda writing a new engine for consoles that would only be around another year or so.

    I have no doubt Bethesda are working on (if not already finished) a 'next-gen' open-world engine for their next games, which means console owners can finally wave good bye to this bug and PC owners can finally see the game improvements we have been waiting for for 5+ years.

    No doubt Bethesda were thinking: "if we can just stick it out until 2012 we'll be OK". And they will. The next Elder Scrolls won't have this problem, but of course that doesn't help people trying to play Skyrim today.

  • spekkeh #60 6 months ago

    I agree with Darren. It's nice to watch trick shot youtube vids where somebody shoots an arrow, fast travels to another location and then watches the arrow plunge into someone, but in the greater scheme of things, gameplaywise, there's really no reason for the engine to keep track of that. Arrows could have easily been deleted upon fast travel and not impacted the experience of the game at all. The same goes for dungeons. It's good that enemies don't respawn, but do we really need to have their bodies lie in exactly the same location (or lie there at all) when we return ten hours later? Furthermore, I thought that in Fallout when you enter a locale, the companions immediately respawned next to you. In Skyrim, the game seems to track how long they spend taking the actual route before they enter the same building as you. Again, do we really need the game to run these calculations? Especially considering we now have to wait for the companion to finally arrive?

  • ashmon #61 6 months ago

    @captainCandy

    The Engine does suck. They couldn't even code ladders into the engine.
    "No really, the engine in Fallout and Elder Scrolls runs into AI problems if ladders are introduced" - Bethesda's Todd Howard
    http://kotaku.com/5613374/hey-+-why-arent-there-any-ladders-in-fallout

    Perhaps gamers will do more research on the products they buy. Instead of buying into the hype "its LIKE an all new engine" and then complaining that the game does not meet their standards.

    You've paid for a re-skin of Oblivion.
    Edited by ashmon at 05/12/11 @ 15:55

  • spekkeh #62 6 months ago

    @Otis_Inf That's a very efficient way to store the data, but one I feel very few programmers will be able to cope with in such a large project. More likely they will e.g. have an abstract class Projectile, where an instance of an arrow is created whenever a player (or NPC) shoots one. This instance will have information like appearance, heading vector, begin vector, force, poison, modifier, etc. And when it has been shot and landed, your typical programmer will write this entire instance to the save state.

    Of course if they would store the entire class for every such object, it would immediately crash your game, so they'll optimize it by abstracting, and using bytes etc. But going from an OO programmed world to your efficient storage (and the saving of your game is only allowed to take a few seconds tops) seems nigh on impossible to me. Let alone that the resultant bytestrings will become unintelligeble for anyone wanting to add something. (conversely this could explain the bugs)
    Edited by spekkeh at 05/12/11 @ 15:57

  • funkateer #63 6 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:50:34 12-12-2011

  • Otis_Inf #64 6 months ago

    @spekkeh I think you're right, it could very well be done with a nice OO object model which totally crumbles down to a nightmare to optimize... (and hard to fix for them)

    @kangarootoo that's a struggle, as you then have to seek on disk where the object is. So it might be better if an item is a quest item, that it is kept in-memory and not swapped out (so placed in the list of objects which is always kept in memory). IMHO this list is small though.

  • Psychos1s #65 6 months ago

    This may not be the "end all hostility and keep all PS3 owners happy"–but you'd think the simple solution would be to remove/block the code that remembers where objects are. Games like Witcher 2 didn't allow for objects to remain once you zoned out of the area. It would simply disappear. Bethesda could have "default" objects reset after you zone in and out of an area and have objects that you drop disappear after you leave the area. This would solve the memory and extra .esm file(s) issue. *Of course keep the objects inside of a bookshelf or chest.

    Probably easier said then done.

  • Neil__ #66 6 months ago

    @AnotherIdiot
    We need to cut them some slack because Skyrim only has a few bugs, right?
    Edited by Neil__ at 05/12/11 @ 16:24

  • Bigglesworth #67 6 months ago

    @spekkeh But going from an OO programmed world to your efficient storage (and the saving of your game is only allowed to take a few seconds tops) seems nigh on impossible to me.

    This is just an issue of serialization, a fundamental of data I/O. I fully accept that there intricacies in the Skyrim code that our idle speculations and estimates don't even approach, but at the end of the day, this isn't rocket science*.

    *more accurately an engineering discipline
    Edited by Bigglesworth at 05/12/11 @ 17:20

  • hiddenranbir #68 6 months ago

    @Bigglesworth It'd be easier then, wouldn't it? :p

  • Cjail #69 6 months ago

    @Neil__
    That's the mother of all bugs lists!
    I picked up some of my favourite bugs, just to cheer up the morale a bit:

    -NPC body parts may be randomly disappearing post patch 1.2 screen
    -Smoke can suddenly begin erupting from the player. screen
    -NPCs can ride invisible horses. screen
    Edited by Cjail at 05/12/11 @ 16:55

  • PlugMonkey #70 6 months ago

    @kangarootoo

    The weird thing is that Oblivion used to clear out "non-critical" stuff.

    Skyrim still has the loading screen tip about it. It tells you that stuff left in containers in your house is safe, but stuff left in other containers might not still be there when you get back.

    Now, not only does that no longer seem to be true, but the game also seems determined to remember the location of every single plate I've dropped and broom I've knocked over - as if I actually give a shit if I go back into the tavern and OH MY GOD SOMEONE'S PICKED UP THE BROOM AND PUT IT BACK WHERE IT WAS BEFORE!!!

    The idea of avoiding a "rob the same chest over and over for crazy money" exploit doesn't seem worth the effort or the downside either. They don't have to reset it immediately, and if I break into a shop and clean out the till, it's not exactly beyond the bounds of reason that if I break in again 40 game hours later that someone would have put some more gold in it. That seems normal.

    I find both of these things more believable than everything in the world remaining exactly as I leave it, so why they've gone to so much effort, and compromised the rest of the game, to stop them happening is baffling.

    Finally, the mission breaking bugs appears to already be covered in game by the "You are unable to remove quest items from your inventory" feature that already exists. They already have to stop you dropping quest items because even if the game remembers where they are, they can't guarantee that you will. It's a fat lot of help having a 12 mb save remembering where I dropped a key artifact if I'm just left combing forty square miles of game world to try and guess where I dropped it. Actually, in that instance, eventually putting stuff back where it came from would if anything be MORE useful to the player.

  • kangarootoo #71 6 months ago

    @PlugMonkey

    All good points :)

  • kangarootoo #72 6 months ago

    @Bigglesworth

    A chemist friend of mineused to flip out at the use of the term "rocket science". He maintained that at best it was an engineering disciple, and not a "science" :)

    I have sent him a telegram, informing him of your actions.

  • Matfink #73 6 months ago

    I for one applaud the detail and persistence put into the game world. Just a shame the PS3 aint up to it :p

  • Bigglesworth #74 6 months ago

    @kangarootoo
    Post edited for accuracy; did your friend also get annoyed when people discussed someone's 'meteoric rise' to success? =)

  • Starsailor #75 6 months ago

    It seems evident here that Bethesda put in the stores a faulty game for PS3, and the people who bought it deserve a full refund. I was lucky enough to read the news on the Internet so I didnt buy it. Considering how PS3 games cost about $10 more than Xbox games, this is even more annoying.

  • Neil__ #76 6 months ago

    @Cjail
    I think it's terrible that the game was released in such a broken state.
    At least those made me laugh for a change, I especially like the smoke and was hoping I could get it fitted.
    Edited by Neil__ at 05/12/11 @ 17:35

  • Rodchenko #77 6 months ago

    Well, tbh, I actually love the persistence of the world items.

    In every other game corpses fade away or magically dissolve into bubbles, chests are refilled and areas that you return to have enemies which respawn for the umpteenth time. Here I come across a wolf's carcass and it reminds me that I killed it 40 hours ago when I was still a miserable level 2 character and there I come across the skeleton of the first dragon I killed - they are both part of my 'history' so to say. I find that rather amazing, that the game keeps track of all these things. Then again, I am playing on the 360...

    That said, the game does remove killed NPCs, doesn't it? There is at least one instance I can think of (entering Markrath for the first time) where someone who is killed disappears upon entering the city again at a later time

  • intpleeus #78 6 months ago

    @kangerootoo

    If Bethesda tried to implement my suggestion, they'd have to be careful about how they did it. It might also enable some crazy game breaking exploits, but the game is already broken at this point: at least people would have the choice to use the exploit or not, but they don't have much of a choice about the crippling lag.

    There is obviously no solution to this problem, but only trade-offs. Since each player will want to make that trade-off slightly differently, Bethesda should give people options rather than force a one-size-fits-all approach.

  • Ingram85 #79 6 months ago

    Heres what needs to happen:

    I think Bethesda need to release a press statement asap apologising to all PS3 owners for conning them into purchasing the product. There were a total of zero articles regarding the state of the ps3 version that I can rememeber from announcement to launch. No word what so ever on the state of the ps3 version. At. All. I blame bethesda and journalists alike for this part.

    They need to say sorry and explicitly say if they are working on fixing this issue for good or not, let people know timescales of a fix or IF they cannot fix it completely, then they need to announce a mass recall of all ps3 copies and offer full refunds to stores and customers.

    Even if they are working on it behind the scenes, they need to announce something as the cynic in me is saying that they are keeping quiet as they cant fix it and are know frantically evacuating their bowels of all fecal matter.

    Im thankfull that I opted for the 360 version and I really do love their games when they work, no other game worlds come close but this is not on at all, their PR and morals are severly lacking.

    Just let the customer know what the fuck is going on instead of greedily taking loads of money from one console maker and only telling us how that particular version is shaping up and performing.

    Its all a load of big fat hairy bollocks and they should be ashamed of themselves for this shambles.
    Edited by Ingram85 at 05/12/11 @ 18:06

  • StooMonster #80 6 months ago

    New engine? Same engine?

    I'm not sure that it's the same engine on PC, the old engine wasn't fixed to two CPU cores whereas the new one is (boo hiss).

    RockPaperShotgun summarised this Game Informer article in their own article to show how Creation Engine is not the same as GameBryo Engine.

    Game Informer wrote "Bethesda went back to the drawing board and rewrote every major system powering the gameplay experience. The result is the newly dubbed Creation Engine and Kit."

    There's some interesting titbits on what's new and how they rewrote it, but I guess they didn't redo their world object reference model that's proved problematic on PlayStation 3 in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas before.

  • Cose #81 6 months ago

    This game is really memory heavy. Bodies, object, don't disappear. The first wolves I confronted days ago when I started the game are still in the same place. I moved a cart close to the river in Riverwood and it remains there....

  • coomber #82 6 months ago

    Well it's not all bad. I just returned my PS3 copy to Amazon after playing it for over 25 hours and completing the main quest. Had minimal framerate issues but enough to be noticeable and I knew it would only get worse if I bothered to start doing side quests and the like.

    Full refund, including postage, so I effectively got to rent the game at no cost. And if just a fraction of PS3 Skyrim owners do the same, Bethesda might just take the hint.

  • MeBrains #83 6 months ago

    i am sending my game back if I ever get to see something like in the DF video. I hope a lot of us do and that bethesda indeed gets a lawsuit on its hands...

    on second thought... it is even more insulting that you are able to release a full console with known and major defects without getting a lawsuit, so scrap the latter part. Bethesda did create a wonderful world...

  • PlugMonkey #84 6 months ago

    @Cose (& redchenko)

    But I just don't get why is this even remotely necessary? Or laudable? I mean, keep the dragon skeletons by all means, they're cool and the central action of the whole game, but a wolf I killed 40 hours ago? Isn't that utterly irrelevant? And, quite frankly, wouldn't it have been almost certainly taken by some other creature in the intervening weeks?

    Do you think it would actually detract from the game if we just had to make believe that the farmer moved his cart back when you weren't there?

    I think it's a questionable feature, even if it didn't break the damn game. Personally, I find it a bit weird and creepy that if I move somebody's stuff, they never think to just move it back again.

    It's like Bethesda are trying to set up some sort of M. Night Shyamalan twist where it'll turn out the entire kingdom are actually all ghosts, and I get to the end and think "You know, now that you mention it, I never did see anyone actually touch anything."

    It seems like a bloody stupid feature to break the game to implement at any rate.

  • chaosquack #85 6 months ago

    I have the same exact issues I had with NV as I do with Skyrim. The game freezes at loading screens often. It freezes sometimes when an npc starts to talk as the game is streaming data, the game freezes when I am out in the middle of nowhere running in the wild.

    Because both NV and Skyrim did this, I plan on buying all of Bethesdas games used, so that they don't see a dime of my money.

  • Kaminari #86 6 months ago

    So, what's more important?

    More RAM to hide the piss-poor coding job, or better developers to make the most out of the available RAM? At any rate, you have to thank the PS3 for highlighting how obsolete the Gamebryo engine is.

  • PlugMonkey #87 6 months ago

    @kaminari & gotyourmoney

    A bit of both would be nice. I built my current PC about the same time as the PS3 and 360 came out.

    I didn't build it with 512 mb of ram.

    I mean, ram's the cheap bit you never really need to skimp on. Why not add an extra £5 to the rrp, go absolutely crazy hog wild, and see if you can somehow cram a whole entire gigabyte in there?

    Imagine that!

    A whole gig!

  • bluetoothion #88 6 months ago

    Personally I don't care why its not running properly.... I care that it is not.

    A company such as bethesda must have know this would be bound to happen since day 1 so there is little point blame the host console for what is now know as relatively full tapped architecture. We are deep in the development cycle, they ve coded before for ps3 if it won't suit to their engine APPROACH don't give us the game.

    I look at the recent articles just as another opportunity to bitch slap PS3 instead of Bethesda refusing to make a versatile engine ( not that they had to, but if they want PS3 users money actually they did )

    The thing is that just like any other game suffering on PS3 there is one occasionally more demanding that works pretty well...

    In short PS3 shows its age and how its crippled by certain choices that developers didn't buy in the long run ( 360 aged but with a steadier life cycle ) PC is the way to go at least until the next generation that will have to see where it goes how big the gap in performance and price is.

  • Farzlepot #89 6 months ago

    Certainly I'm not excusing Bethesda when I say this, but much like Microsoft when allowing the texture bug through (on the lead platform no less), don't Sony certify games before allowing them to be released? Isn't it in the console manufacturers' best interests to force third parties not to release utterly broken games on their machines? It may be Bethesda's fault (I got tired of excusing them as I realised they have never once released a game that isn't bug ridden - but I still love them) but it can't do the consoles' image much good.

    They layman doesn't read EG, and won't know what the real problem here is. They'll just see their mate's Xbox running the game fine and assume it's a hardware problem, unless they bother to research it before trading it in.

  • hiddenranbir #90 6 months ago

    @gotyourmoney Maybe they could have put more RAM in if they didn't decide to invest so much in a Cell processor. I think that was their biggest expense and was it really worth it in the grander scheme of things?

  • TheGuvernor #91 6 months ago

    Lag in FO games was caused by the appallingly shite graphics making processors feel really sick..

  • orangpelupa #92 6 months ago

    maybe bethesda in some kind of dillema here...
    what need to sacrificed for the game.

    this problem maybe (strong on maybe) can be fixed simple by reducing the memory requirement a-lot. Maybe by disabling some audios, disabling some NPC, reducing the scope of radiant AI. if the database is graphic RAM, then just reduce the draw distance....

    negative impact is yes, but the game will be playable again.

  • ROCK-NYC #93 6 months ago

    @inutaihanyou DO you really think Bethesda would leave all that PS3 money on the table?

  • Hellion83 #94 6 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • matty_matt_mattmatt #95 6 months ago

    looks like the PS3 needs a little ram expansion pack like the N64 had back in the day, I loved that thing

  • jellyBelly #96 6 months ago

    Better programming practices are almost always more desirable than brute hardware force. If you look at the speed gains in hardware for example they usually jump 2-10 times every 5 years. However by using your tools strategically, your algorithms, data structures, design patterns etc you can gain 1000's of times speed and memory gains as well as code that is flexible to change and less bug prone.

    I will not be buying this games as it is not fit for purpose. Well done EG and DF for giving this the coverage it deserves as most other 'journalists' (with the exception of OPM that i know of) seem to have buried their heads into the sand. The game should be re-reviewed on the PS3 and Bethesda should come clean on what precisely is the problem and whether they can feasibly eradicate it and to what degree

  • TechnicPuppet #97 6 months ago

    They should just have dumped the PS3 version, the system simply isn't capable of this game, simple as that. And no I don't think you simply say better programmers needed, 3rd parties don't squillions of pounds to spend messing about trying to get PS3 games up to parity and neither should they.

  • Otis_Inf #98 6 months ago

    @Neil__ Ugh... reading that massive list of issues, I can't stop wondering who wrote the code... I mean, a lot of the bugs are so stupid, that you wonder why it's even possible? Like the first person/third person switch which resets the oxygen counter. The switch is a camera switch, it has nothing to do with game mechanics. But someone in their giant while loop (;)) in game.c they managed to alter game mechanics data while switching a projection matrix!

    I have little hope they'll ever fix even the majority of issues, considering the current code has these kind of messy, sloppy mistakes.

  • mastablasta #99 6 months ago

    It proves the P$3 is a poorly made console that skimped on memory.

  • sirtacos #100 6 months ago

    This whole rimlag clusterfuck may warrant a PS3 re-review.
    That, or an addendum / disclaimer by EG in the original review.

    Smashing job with the coverage, though.
    Bethesda should be marched to the gallows as a warning to publishers who might want to cut corners and cheat consumers to such a degree.
    Edited by sirtacos at 06/12/11 @ 09:11

  • byakuya83 #101 6 months ago

    Post deleted at 10:03:41 30-03-2012

  • ToAks #102 6 months ago

    @spekkeh
    Of course if they would store the entire class for every such object, it would immediately crash your game, so they'll optimize it by abstracting, and using bytes etc. But going from an OO programmed world to your efficient storage (and the saving of your game is only allowed to take a few seconds tops) seems nigh on impossible to me. Let alone that the resultant bytestrings will become unintelligeble for anyone wanting to add something. (conversely this could explain the bugs)
    but why was there not several save game splits?
    There is quite a few PS3 games which has seperate savegames for seperate sections.

    say there is one for objects, one for location, one for settings etc.
    the only catch is that one has to have streamlined savegames , like borderlands has.

    Also, i don't remeber if savegames are using DMA access or not , several things indicates that it goes into PIO mode or simmilar as soon as it starts saving, a simple test is to press HOME button while saving (in any game).

    XMB/system code is not my field btw,so i might be wrong ;)
    Edited by ToAks at 06/12/11 @ 09:29

  • funkateer #103 6 months ago

    @Otis_Inf
    "I do think the guy refers to storing differences, but not as simplistic as 'we store the changed bit flags'."

    It's not only that, but it's just part of the story and nothing unusual. They just store an array of bits to keep track of which objects have changed. Let's say there is a maximum of 65536 objects, that's just 8Kb of possible changes to keep track of, which is the only thing that they have to keep in memory at all time.

    The rest (the actual values of the changed objects) is obviously not part of that, and they should be stored in the save file, and this data should be merged with the world data as it is streamed in.

    So let's say they stream in some wold data that contains an object with ID '42'. They look up bit 42 and check if it's set. If so, they merge object 42 from the save file with the world data.

    The above is probably an over-simplification of things, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it and this doesn't necessarily need lots of memory, so I still suspect that this is simply an implementation issue that of course can be fixed. Not saying it's an easy fix, but of course it's doable.

    But I also suspect that since it only happens after a very long time and hasn't ever stopped their games from being hugely successful, it has always been stuck on the bottom of their priority list for years.

  • TechnicPuppet #104 6 months ago

    The PS3 is the problem, every minute spent trying to get around the hardware problems is time taken away from making the overall game better. At some point it stops being worth it, the ROI on PS3 multi-platform titles must be dreadful compared to the PC and 360. I'm sick of the PS3 holding things back.

  • Lamb #105 6 months ago

    Sounds like Texas Red is running round Bethesda Studios. Call, The Ranger.

  • Gecks #106 6 months ago

    @Rogueywon @PlugMonkey
    the xbox 360 was launched in 2005. its spec would have been locked long before that.

    in 2005 1GB of memory of DDR2 cost ~$250 (source), compared to ~$130 for 512MB. bearing in mind that the 360 actually has DDR3 memory (higher performance graphics memory, not available to consumers separately - ie, expensive), and considering that they probably had the system priced and locked down much earlier than 2005.

    it was simply not financially viable for these systems to launch with more memory than they had.
    Edited by Gecks at 06/12/11 @ 12:20

  • PlugMonkey #107 6 months ago

    @Gecks

    Wow! That puts things in perspective. How far we've come.

    It really shows how creaky and long in the tooth these old consoles are getting now, compared to the perception I still have of them being quite powerful.

    I mean, 512 mb is surely a downright offensive amount of memory to have in a games console? I have that in my telephone.

  • Otis_Inf #108 6 months ago

    @funkateer Sure, but you don't need the bit array at all. If '42' is in the save file, it *is* changed, otherwise it wouldn't be in the save file :) All objects which are not changed are not present in the save file, so what's read from the save file are the changed objects.

    Regardless, if this is the issue, i.e. keeping large sets of diffs in memory, the problem would appear right away after you load the save game right after booting up. But as the DF article states, it appears to occur only after a couple of minutes, maybe even 30 minutes. Suggesting it initially works, but after a while it gets its nickers in a twist and keels over.
    Edited by Otis_Inf at 06/12/11 @ 11:58

  • Bigglesworth #109 6 months ago

    @PlugMonkey
    To me, what it puts into perspective is that given what PS360's can do with it, 512MB is surely a downright offensive amount of memory to have in a telephone!

    re edits: something weird going on with posts today!
    Edited by Bigglesworth at 06/12/11 @ 12:46

  • arcam #110 6 months ago

    PS2 had 32MB of RAM :D

    As a PC person, the simple solution to me would be to have a slot where people could put another 512MB stick of RAM later in the console's lifespan, when it only cost a few quid. But I understand that this is goes against the whole point of consoles. I do remember the N64 had this, but I guess it wasn't all that successful?

  • Lemming81 #111 6 months ago

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it save a lot of memory and hassle if on the console versions the save game file didn't save dead body locations or physical locations for all those pots/pans/crap (when they are knocked around or moved I mean) outside of a player's home? I would have thought players wouldn't even notice things like that anyway.

    Assuming it does save those kind of things of course, and it is implied.
    Edited by Lemming81 at 06/12/11 @ 12:58

  • 43n1m4 #112 6 months ago

    @Arcam

    If you 'upgrade' your console - what should developers aim for? How can you guarantee good performance on a non-upgraded 'vanilla' console?

    It goes against the 'closed box' aspect of console development, which is by and large the greatest advantage of consoles, and one of the reasons that this bug in Skyrim shouldn't have been there in the first place. Bethesda knew the hardware available in the PS3, and had every opportunity to work around the limitation(s).

  • arcam #113 6 months ago

    @43n1m4

    Well yes, that's the problem. You couldn't guarantee performance on the vanilla console, so developers would have to work to the new spec, although I'd consider a 10-20 fee to significantly improve the performance of your console more than worth it. Hell, I'd pay it just for the improvements to Skyrim and BF3 alone, let alone all the other improvements that could be made if a PS3 or Xbox 360 doubled its available memory.

    But then that kind of thinking is why I choose to play on PC, and it goes against the raison d'etre of consoles so I understand why they don't do it.

  • PlugMonkey #114 6 months ago

    @Lemming81

    My sentimonies exactly. It's such a non-feature to break the game over.

    The sort of thing I can imagine being on someone's list of "things that would be quite nice" that gets shot down a few months into development as not being worth the cost and performance risk.

    If that really is the reason behind all this mess, then that just makes it even more idiotic.

  • arcam #115 6 months ago

    I would assume that since it's a problem that has plagued Bethesda for their last 3 games, fixing it is not as simple as disregarding the placement of pots and pans...

  • hiscore #116 6 months ago

    It seems some kind of bureau of customer protection in Norway is looking at the case, saying refunds will become justified when developers wait too long with patching/product support. [source: Bethesda's official PS3 forum].

  • man.the.king #117 6 months ago

    @TechnicPuppet

    They should just have dumped the PS3 version, the system simply isn't capable of this game, simple as that. And no I don't think you simply say better programmers needed, 3rd parties don't squillions of pounds to spend messing about trying to get PS3 games up to parity and neither should they.

    I guess you are also of the opinion that Square Enix shouldn't spend "squillions of pounds" and a lot of time getting the 360 version of FFXIII-2 up to parity as well?

  • IvorB #118 6 months ago

    So Bethesda shipped three separate products that they knew were faulty and not fit for purpose. Man, I may just buy this game so I can sue them. There are three things wrong with this situation. One is Bethesda (obviously). The second is game journalist being compliant in the cover up to keep those information out of reviews. By this I refer specifically to this saved game issue. Other minor bugs don't really break the game. Eurogamer is still advising 10/10 gaming experience to PS3 gamers. Just wow. Way to build trust, guys. The third problem is the gamers. Why are so many okay with this, even coming to Bethseda's defense with all manner of excuses. You don't find this type of brand loyalty with other products.

    My theory is that gamers experience a deep and intimate relationship with their favourite gaming series due to all the hours spent together, and by extension the publisher. It seems telling that this a technical issues and Bethesda have delivered the gameplay experience that people are in love. So the relationship is not betrayed and there is a sense of taking the good withe the bad as in any relationship if the love is still there. Witness the universal hate for Final Fantasy XIII where SquareEnix dumped us fans and left with the dog.

    To some extent this mentality is understandable. But Bethesda are taking the piss. Three games??? Three fracking games with the same game-breaking issue. Have they even apologised? No, they're just waiting for this to blow over while they trumpet their sales. Copies are sold, no one seems to be aware you can return it. And all the other publishers watch with interest thanking Bethesda for the valuable lesson. You can apparently ship three technically broken games in a row and still pull in the 10/10 and have fan defending you on the forums. Why bother with fixing that game-breaking issue when you can just ship it anyway. Zero frames per second?? The lowest reading ever recorded in DF. That's okay to some folks?

  • arcam #119 6 months ago

    @IvorB

    You've also got to realise that this is a PS3 problem, so two-thirds (if not more) of the people playing (and talking on forums) are not having these problems. I certainly had no idea quite how bad this issue was until the videos started coming out recently.

    The other thing to remember is that EG, of course, didn't even review the PS3 version, so there's no reason their score of 10 should be affected.
    Edited by arcam at 06/12/11 @ 17:09

  • mooseti #120 6 months ago

    39 hours in and smooth as u like (360)

  • IvorB #121 6 months ago

    @gotyourmoney
    Which ones? I reckon Apple has some of the strongest brand loyalty going. Yet when iPhone's antenna issue came up even the great (and arrogant) Steve Jobs switched his initially dismissive attitude pretty quickly and they did the best they could to sort it with free cases and what not. It's not in the new iPhone is it? They fixed it right?

    The gamer mentality first amazed me with the RROD issue. Now Bethesda is pushing the boundaries again and no one's budging. Console gaming is already becoming blighted with patches, formerly a PC speciality. So this is precisely the wrong message to be sending publishers. We even have day one patches now. What the f**k is that? They already knew the issue on day 1 but they shipped it anyway. As I said publishers will watch this with interest. There are a myriad of reasons a publisher would want to sacrifice quality in a product. None of them benefit us. Bethesda will show them how far they can push it.

  • jimmyjimbob #122 6 months ago

    @Darren Only got 2gb ram on my win7 32bit setup here, after 50hrs of play only 1 CTD

  • jimmyjimbob #123 6 months ago

    Bethesda really should have known better TBH. Even if they properly acknowledged that the fix wasn't enough and that they were now diverting resources to investigate the best workaround that'd be better than nothing!

    50hrs into the PC version though and it's all good on that!

  • IvorB #124 6 months ago

    @arcam
    Problem is when I come to read a review for a multplat game, and there is no mention of platform specific issues, I will think it's good to go. I don't think the version tested information should be taken as a message that the review is only specific to one version if so then they should make that clear on their reviews. So they didn't know about it at review because they didn't play that version. But it's not a secret is it? I could think of a couple of places they could readily find information like, oh I don't know, their own website? Has there been any update to the review? Give 360 version the 10/10 and re-score PS3 version. They are skanking PS3 owners as bad as Bethesda are. It stinks.

    Read a review of Galaxy Nexus phone on CNET the other day. They praised the phone high and low but gave it two stars. They said they couldn't recommend the phone with volume bug and would update score if a satisfactory fix was deployed. Now that's more like it, isn't it?

  • jimmyjimbob #125 6 months ago

    @IvorB wow only 2 stars due to a small volume bug when using GSM networks? At least it's been fixed now, makes you wonder what score they'd give to the iPhone4 with the grip of death problem.

    At least EG now says which version it's reviewing, so that's more than most other major gaming websites etc. Glad I don't do much PS3 gaming, it's my last resort, my 360/PC take preference due to problems like that seem to plague the PS3 every now and then...

  • IvorB #126 6 months ago

    @gotyourmoney
    Apple is a brand and so is Bethesda and the Elderly Scrolls for that matter. By brand loyalty I mean the measure of people's affinity for it. This is my understanding of brand loyalty. The higher someone's affinity for a brand the more likely they are to purchase that brand over competing brands, even taking into account inferior spec, known issues etc. Both examples include a company which has shipped a faulty product and I highlighted the different behaviours of the corporation and their fans (who can be considered to be brand loyal). For this reason I thought (and still think) my comment was quite relevant.

  • IvorB #127 6 months ago

    @gotyourmoney
    Apple is a brand and so is Bethesda and the Elderly Scrolls for that matter. By brand loyalty I mean the measure of people's affinity for it. This is my understanding of brand loyalty. The higher someone's affinity for a brand the more likely they are to purchase that brand over competing brands, even taking into account inferior spec, known issues etc. Both examples include a company which has shipped a faulty product and I highlighted the different behaviours of the corporation and their fans (who can be considered to be brand loyal). For this reason I thought (and still think) my comment was quite relevant.

  • HokutoNoKen #128 6 months ago

    Skyrim — what we’re working on (Updated)

    "Updated 12/6: While the 1.2 update fixed the long-term play issues for most PS3 users, we are aware that is not the case for some. We’ve been reaching out to a number of those users to collect save games, so we can take a look at their specific issues. Right now we know it’s not one thing, but a combination of smaller ones that some folks are seeing, but others are not. Some seem to be the PS3 autosaving in the background (you can turn that off), some may be SPU AI updates, and some may relate to dynamic system memory allocation. These fixes are not in the current 1.3 update that is in final testing, but will be in future ones. We understand how frustrating it can be when your game is having issues, and we thank all of you for your continued feedback and patience. Rest assured we take your gameplay experience seriously and will continue working on this until it’s resolved."

    http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

    / Ken

  • IvorB #129 6 months ago

    @jimmyjimbob
    Yeah I know, 2 stars is pretty harsh. I saw it on Google search page and thought there must have been a mistake. The volume would apparently cut out in call and randomly muted the ringer. This made the core functionality of the phone unreliable so two stars it was. Just checked now and it's 4.5 stars with a short explanation that they've tested it and happy the issue is resolved so they are now happy to recommend it. Now that's some journalistic integrity right there. Isn't that why we read reviews?

    Eurogamer know full well this information should be mentioned in the review but probably have a very good reason why they don't. Only they know what that reason might be. If they are so lazy in their approach to review journalism that it didn't even occur to them then frankly that's quite worrying. I would find that more worrying than straight up corruption which is what I currently suspect. Either way I think their reviews should be avoided unless you like one of your review websites giving you their highest recommendation only to take it home, play it for 30 hours and realise a known, documented bug makes it unplayable.

  • reeferchief #130 6 months ago

    I'm 88 and a half hours in on the ps3, level 31, and whilst I'm experiencing some lag now, it's certainly not game breaking so far and has improved since the update.
    My save file is at 11mb, I've also had a few game freeze/crashes, but again only a few not enough to make playing unbearable.

    It is a shame that a lot of people are having such issues, as tech problems aside this game is clearly a masterpiece, it's so addictive I can't put it down.

    Gutted I'm yet to see no backward flying dragons, although Louis Letrush from Riften who you do a little side quest for popped up near whiterun stables the other night, he was stood there in full and next to him was the top half of his body sticking out of the path, it provided me great amusement as you could to talk to both heads and he looked a little confused by the whole situation.

  • arcam #131 6 months ago

    @IvorB

    That's just the way EG (and other sites) do it, only review the 360 version but imply the review is multi-platform. You should try being a PC owner, often the review bears very little resemblance to that version of the game, despite the 'PC' tag.

    There is however also the more controversial point that many games websites simply do not mention bugs for AAA games in their reviews, even when they are serious and quite obvious. In my view that is an unfortunate by-product of the cosy relationship between publishers and reviewers, but you're unlikely to find many reviewers willing to admit to that.
    Edited by arcam at 06/12/11 @ 19:55

  • WadiumArcadium #132 6 months ago

    Seems PS3 players got the short end of the stick. I've had one bit of slowdown on my Xbox playthrough, but I restarted the console and it stopped.

    It's a shame really, a lot of PS3 players will have their memories of what is in fact a great game, tarnished by glitches and lag.

  • kwolf666 #133 6 months ago

    @reeferchief Seriously?! I'm 75!

  • cjs #134 5 months ago

    @IvorB "Day 1" is generally a couple of weeks after a gold master has been shipped to the pressing plant, so it's quite reasonable that they had a bunch of bug fixes on Day 1 that didn't get into the pressed release. Should they hold those back for some period of time?

    That said, yeah, QC tends to be pretty poor with a lot of games. This bug we're discussing is particularly appalling because it was fairly easily demonstrable in Fallout 3, three years ago.

    However, while part of the reason for this is probably the managers just not being smart enough about software development, there is another issue. The rise of patches coincides with a large rise in the complexity of games and the cost of making them. If you're still going to sell a game for $60, but it now costs you twice as much to make it, increased sales can go only so far: you need to try to keep your costs down as well. The market will eventually find a balance where we find out how many bugs people are willing to put up with to save how much money when they buy a game. Given the sales on Skyrim, and that it's got pretty much the same issues that two earlier successful games had, I think we may have found it.

    Consider: if they were the same price, and you were given a choice between this version or one with fewer bugs but half the content, which one would you buy? Which one would most people buy?

    At least I lucked on FO3; I have a 14 MB save file with over 200 hours of play, and it only locks up once an hour or so.