Any option or mod to disable autosave? (or tips to speed up save efficiency?)

[ahungry]

On my setup (GNU/Linux) with a lot (or even medium amount) of mods, saving takes around 5 seconds.

This ends up adding a huge pause each time I transition areas due to the autosave (compared to cheat warping, which is instant) - I see Tweaks Anthology (cdtweaks) has options for interval_save and customizing save game names, so it seems the save feature is moddable to some degree?

If so, has anyone got any tips into how I could achieve this goal? (disable autosave entirely)

Edit: If it's relevant, I am on an SSD - I was going to try a ramfs but I don't think the slowness is writing ~3MB (save game size) to disk, but the game compressing or accumulating the globals/scanning the active BG game directory on save.

Edited January 9, 2022 by ahungry

[Endarire]

Hypothetically, a faster computer would work, but others may know better for other solutions.

[Jarno Mikkola]

SSD, and if this is on non-EE games, then you should install the Generalized Biffing LAST in your install order. This also speeds up the games start. This is after the SCS too. It speeds up the loading speed of the games files... but only on non-EE games. As there, it's not about RAM, but other stuff.

[TotoR]

TnT mod has a component that remove some auto-save: https://github.com/BGforgeNet/bg2-tweaks-and-tricks/blob/master/docs/convenience.md#less-autosaves

[ahungry]

Thanks - the code for that looks really terse - it's just:

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.are$~ override
  // remove "party required" flag on edges
  PATCH_FOR_EACH flag_off IN
    ARE_north_flags
    ARE_east_flags
    ARE_south_flags
    ARE_west_flags
  BEGIN
    WRITE_LONG EVAL ~%%flag_off%%~ THIS BAND BNOT FLAG_ARE_EDGE_party_required
  END
  //remove "party required" flag from regions
  READ_SHORT ARE_regions_count reg_num
  READ_LONG ARE_regions_offset reg_off
  WHILE reg_num > 0 BEGIN
    reg_num -= 1
    reg_flags_off = reg_off + (reg_num * ARE_REGION_size) + ARE_REGION_flags
    WRITE_LONG reg_flags_off THIS BAND BNOT FLAG_ARE_REGION_party_required
  END
BUT_ONLY

So, is that what controls the auto-save feature?  If the NESW party required flag is on/off?

I'm playing with bp-bgt-worldmap on an EET install - I wonder if it'd be possible to apply this patch/bit toggle to more (all) .ARE files and prevent any auto-save from triggering?

(https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/file_formats/ie_formats/are_v9.1.htm)

Anyone have an idea?

[Jarno Mikkola]

28 minutes ago, ahungry said:

 

I'm playing with bp-bgt-worldmap on an EET install - I wonder if it'd be possible to apply this patch/bit toggle to more (all) .ARE files and prevent any auto-save from triggering?

(https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/file_formats/ie_formats/are_v9.1.htm)

Anyone have an idea?

THEN WHY ARE YOU LINKING TO IWD2 .are file format ? The EE games use the BG2's .are file.

[ahungry]

5 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

THEN WHY ARE YOU LINKING TO IWD2 .are file format ? The EE games use the BG2's .are file.

User error

[Jarno Mikkola]

So, should we go through, in principle the brilliance of the code ? As shown, it copies all the .are -files, it reads the file headers 4 offsets between 0x0020 and 0x0044 and sets their zero'eth bit in those to be zero if it's 1 or leaves it as zero if it was already. Well, it first build a list for that purpose, but the result is the same. And it doesn't edit the bit 1 at all, or any of the others. Yes, a computer considers the first bit to be the zeroeth... and bit 1 is the second, and so on.

And if they don't have offsets, it does nothing to that portion of the files. And it uses a few WeiDU functions to obscure the #¤%¤%&¤%&% out of it.