Bethesda gets Burned, IGN has called them out over PS3 performance problems Options

[Thomas Kaira]

Link to Article

From a site as big as IGN, that is a truly scathing article they put out there. Time for Bethesda to start kissing up and giving some details, the world is losing patience with them fast about the PS3 issues here.

[Thomas Kaira]

Yes, the 360 users are beginning to get hit by this lag problem, too.

The issue is with how Skyrim is caching memory. Simply put, as it is now the consoles do not have enough of it for extended play sessions. PS3 can't go beyond 30, and the Xbox 360 seems to crop up at 120. Then the game starts lagging because it's having trouble keeping everything loaded. Every time you save a game, Skyrim takes a snapshot of the entire world, figures out what is different from Skyrim.ESM at the time, and records the differences in an ESS save file (NPCs changed positions, chests looted, apples moved, etc.). That's how Bethesda's games have always done their saving.

Unfortunately, for the memory-strapped consoles (with memory going up into the GigaByte range, PC is effectively immune to this problem, that's why no one on PC is reporting memory-based lag), this approach is extremely inefficient. Every time you load a new save, the game is loading up the original ESM and then loading in all the changes based on the ESS. When the ESS gets bloated, more stuff gets loaded initially and the game starts running out of room to stream things as you play on. That's when the lag starts.

That is an ultra-basic explanation of the problem. Fixing it will likely mean overhauling how the game handles saves, so it will not be easy.

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Dec 8 2011, 08:20 PM

[SubRosa]

That is an ultra-basic explanation of the problem. Fixing it will likely mean overhauling how the game handles saves, so it will not be easy.

Not to mention it would also doubtlessly break all the old saves.

It is funny, I was looking at the specs on the consoles compared to my computer. My video card has 3 times the memory its does, and the ram is two generations ahead. 8 times the drive space of the big X-Boxes with 320 gig drives, and I do not even know how to compare my i7 with those power pc processors they have. I guess there is no point in coming out with a new generation of consoles however...

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 9 2011, 12:39 AM