Technical questions

[assobanana76]

WTF is that???



another problem in addition to the failure to screenshots with F12

I think I've reached the maximum number of people possible for my old PC.
the game is very slow ... it don't snaps screenshots (new games instead yes)

[A Nonny Moose]

You may have reached a limit in the number of saved games the program can handle.  If that is the case you should clean up old versions of your saves you don't expect to ever load again.  This can be done by finding the relevant saves (you could use the game panel) and deleting them.

I never keep more than one set of saves for a village at a time and I have a script that clears out the save area.  I am running Ubuntu, and here is the script:

john@john-12-10:~$ cat bin/wipeBanished
#!/bin/bash
rm ~/Banished/Save/*.sav
echo Banished wiped

[assobanana76]

You may have reached a limit in the number of saved games the program can handle.  If that is the case you should clean up old versions of your saves you don't expect to ever load again.  This can be done by finding the relevant saves (you could use the game panel) and deleting them.

I never keep more than one set of saves for a village at a time and I have a script that clears out the save area.  I am running Ubuntu, and here is the script:

john@john-12-10:~$ cat bin/wipeBanished
#!/bin/bash
rm ~/Banished/Save/*.sav
echo Banished wiped

you may be right!!
indeed usually I take only a single save to every village (in fact now only "New Las Vegans" and "TestCity") but this time I played with the mod to try to use FM: HS on the saved game and I wanted to be sure I do not miss anything .. as already it happened to me in the past ..  two times..
Now I am convinced that I can not use FM: HS on "New Las Vegans" I can delete all previous saves leaving just one!
tonight I try!

p.s. I don't know what "script" is... 

[rkelly17]

I'm not sure the game cares how many save files you have. Awhile back, after I hadn't been paying attention for too long, I realized I had about 20+ save files of various towns I'd "finished." The game had never cared in the least and ran fine. I did go in and clean out the save file directory--I do like my drive to be neat and tidy, unlike the rest of my life. 

[A Nonny Moose]

<snip>
p.s. I don't know what "script" is... 

If you are a regular Windows user, don't worry about it. 

A script is a set of console commands for, in this case, my Linux system.  Windows has scripts too, but most people don't get that far involved with the operating system to want to use them.  It is ultra easy on Linux to pretend the Graphics User Interface (GUI) isn't even there.

BTW, that script deletes every saved file in the catalogue.

[Paeng]

I'm not sure the game cares how many save files you have.

That's right, the game reads only the save you are calling up to play...
I usually have plenty saves for every town, and I only delete them once I close a town (because sometimes I like to go back to an earlier stage). That does not impact your game, it just clutters your HD 

So to clean it up once in a while is a good idea anyway 

[A Nonny Moose]

I'm not sure the game cares how many save files you have.

That's right, the game reads only the save you are calling up to play...
I usually have plenty saves for every town, and I only delete them once I close a town (because sometimes I like to go back to an earlier stage). That does not impact your game, it just clutters your HD 

So to clean it up once in a while is a good idea anyway 

That's right, but since the game presents saves in a special window it is possible, I suppose, for this to have a buffer overflow.  I am interested whether @assobanana76 was able to fix his problem by dropping some files.  A bug like this, if present, could present an opening to hackers.

[irrelevant]

Right now I have ~150 save files in the documents/save/banished directory. I add a new one every time I play (I have moved hundreds out of here into other directories as a sort of archive). I have noticed that the more save files in this directory means that it takes longer to bring them all up when I select "Load." I can easily imagine that there could be other bad side effects caused by more files in this directory. I really need to go through and move a bunch of these out into the archive, but you know how that goes....

I have a total of 689 Banished save files 

[assobanana76]

ok.
I deleted all the previous saves except 4 (Test City, New Las Vegans, Skylindsborn and that rescue abnormal).
and that rescue is still abnormal (honestly I don't tried to open it but it is selectable by pointing the arrow on the little image, it surrounds of white).
tonight I try to open it.
Banished currently it opens in 10/15 minutes !!!
the running process fills the RAM to 99%!!

[A Nonny Moose]

<snip>
the running process fills the RAM to 99%!!

How much RAM do you have?  Any activity on your backing store (swap file)?

[assobanana76]

<snip>
the running process fills the RAM to 99%!!

How much RAM do you have?  Any activity on your backing store (swap file)?

I have 4Gb (3,25 useable)
swap file what??

[rkelly17]

This is definitely not right. I've never had Banished use even close to 4Gb. Are you having this problem only with the one save file or with all save files? If it is only this one, the file is damaged and will have to be abandoned. If it is with all your save files I would recommend a re-install of Banished (but be sure to save your mods in a different location). After the re-install of the game re-introduce your mods one at a time to make sure that one of the mod files is not buggy or damaged.

I would also recommend staying away from introducing a new version of a mod to an older saved game. It can work and often does, but when it doesn't work . . . . well, let's just say that trouble can ensue. I start a new town (you can use the map seed of the previous town) every time I update my mods. I also back up towns every time I update mods. A friend calls this the "belt AND suspenders" method. 

The worst case scenario is that the problem is caused by aging hardware. Are you having other problems with other programs on this computer? Have you backed up all your files? I've always found that the day I let my backups get out of date is the day the HDD decides to fail. Back ups are your friend--and in some cases your salvation.

[kee]

Amen to backups. My computer completely lost its hard drive this spring (it wouldn't map), of course a couple of weeks after last backup. Fortunately my accounting and other buisiness data are mostly remote server based. Had to reconstruct ctop rotation/fertilizer plan othervise it was all there.
As for assobanana76 's trouble I suspect that someone has paid of that savefile. It is corrupt.

[A Nonny Moose]

It really sounds like a malloc call gone wild (malloc ::= memory allocation).  A simple loop in code can do this, when it thinks it has failed and tries again and again until the process is scrubbed on memory overflow.

I asked about your swap space (backing store) because on some systems a memory overflow glitch like this will also fill up your backing store with bogus pages all marked "dirty".

This is an operating system kind of screw up, but since there is so much procedure created by modders in this game, it could happen to anyone, any time.  This is why each and every mod needs an intensive test before you accept it.

[A Nonny Moose]

Ignore this.  Erroneous key click.  Should be deleted.