130,000 files in one save file after 1 in-game year.

[CoarTel]

I played this game at my friend's (didn't buy it myself).
I would go to his place and play my saved game for a while. I didn't want to buy the game until I tried it. I think it's normal.
At some point, I was almost certain that I would buy the game, but it wasn't meant to be!
At one point, the game had a glitch, and I had to "save my progress."

Imagine my surprise when I saw that after 1 in-game year (which is approximately 10-12 days of gameplay or so), my saved game had a size of 533 megabytes (and 130,000 files in one folder!!!!!!)
I spent a long time wondering why the game on my friend's SSD drive was severely lagging and had long loading times, considering he has an excellent PC!

Now I know the reason! Don't believe me? Play for 1-2 in-game years, evenly and without rushing to unlock new locations.
130,000 files are no joke! Such a game kills your SSD drive!

I'm not bothered at all by the fact that one save file is 530 megabytes in size.
What greatly disturbs, annoys, and frustrates me is the fact that there are 130,000 files, and my map is only about 15% open (which means there's still a long way to go!). However, there's already a critical number of files that simply kill the SSD and, most importantly, the game's loading speed.
Based on my estimated data, when I fully unlock the map, I will have over a million files in my save file, and the loading time will take approximately 20-30 minutes.

I have only one question for the developers:
- Why can't all the necessary files be bundled inside an uncompressed archive before saving to the disk?
- Has this issue been fixed already? OR not? Because I don't want to kill the SSD on my PC after purchasing the game.

Thank you for your attention.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Pfff 533 megs aint even that much wail till you reach the 1 GB treshold.
Also the PC being excellent argument does not stand without stating the specs.
(e.g.: For many folks an AMD 2700 with a 2060 GTX is considered an excellent computer, however these days it is currently in the middle and even there on the lower end.)

[Shurenai]

The proposed change of making the 130,000 files into an uncompressed archive would actually most likely be detrimental to the lifetime of the ssd; Not beneficial. Doing it that way would necessitate writing all 533~ some odd megabytes every time you save to disk, instead of only updating a few kb of individual files; Because the computer would have to zip up and replace the entire file, instead of only being able to edit specific ones.

The lifetime of an SSD is largely defined by how much data it writes- It doesn't matter if it writes 130,000 little files, or one big file, if both add up to 533mb, 533mb of write lifetime is used up... The difference is that with 130,000 little files, you only need to update bits and pieces, not ALL of it. So where the big file writes 533mb to disk each time, the small files might write a few kb, or one or two mb to disk each time.


Further than that, SSDs are not the anemic things they used to be in the 90s, Your typical user isn't going to appreciably affect the capacity of an SSD within it's lifetime (You need to be writing upwards of 250+terabytes of data to the drive over the course of 5-10 years; That's 256,000~gb over 1,825-3,650 days; Or about 70-140 gb a day, every day for years; Nor will the typical user appreciably impact the lifetime of the drive, since most typical users are largely Reading From the ssd, which has no particular impact on drive lifetime or capacity.. It's writing to the drive that causes it to degrade.

TL;DR: If you want the game, buy the game. This game isn't going to 'kill' your ssd.

[Pinkkifantti]

533 megabytes! *Dr. Evil laugh with pinky finger near mouth*

Well in this current era, where you can have 6terabytes size on your ssd's, it's not a problem.
You should install call of duty fully with the warzone and see how much that takes space!

*Laughs again like Dr. Evil laugh with pinky finger near mouth* 130,000 FILES!!!

[CoarTel]

Originally posted by Pinkkifantti:

533 megabytes! *Dr. Evil laugh with pinky finger near mouth*

Well in this current era, where you can have 6terabytes size on your ssd's, it's not a problem.
You should install call of duty fully with the warzone and see how much that takes space!

*Laughs again like Dr. Evil laugh with pinky finger near mouth* 130,000 FILES!!!

The problem is not how many megabytes are taken. The problem is that storing about 130,000 files on a hard drive is a serious problem. This amount of files will destroy the SSD. I don't buy an SSD just to have one game destroy it.

A year has already passed (a little less, but almost). Have the developers changed anything in their game? I remember there were promises to deploy the game through some kind of database (or something similar)

[VANGUARD]

So you're just going to ignore Shurenai's comment while making the same statement yet again.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Sceadugengan:

So you're just going to ignore Shurenai's comment while making the same statement yet again.

Ah also there are very detailed answers about why this kind of read and write will not destroy the ssd. Could have also looked up how SSD-s work:D

[xAlphaStarOmegax]

SSDs can withstand that sort of thing more now than in the past.

[Mythion]

Ah, I see 2010 is rearing its ugly head. No, SSDs especially nowadays are just fine at handling this kind of data. You don't need to fear monger.

OP, you're just flatout wrong, looking forward to yet more replies where you ignore the responses.

[andrekroon27]

Idk if we have large playstyle differences but after 1 year of game time I only have about 30k files.

[Hunterr]

Project Zomboid saves are too big anyway. I dont know why it is like that.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Hunterr:

Project Zomboid saves are too big anyway. I dont know why it is like that.

because they need to store a ton of info.:)
also this post is necro.

[Pherdnut]

Option to delete save on death would be nice though. I cleared out like 20 gigs of saves recently. And yeah, it shouldn't be surprising the game has massive save files. The amount of state this game handles is bonkers.

[neighbors ate my necrowinnebago]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Option to delete save on death would be nice though. I cleared out like 20 gigs of saves recently. And yeah, it shouldn't be surprising the game has massive save files. The amount of state this game handles is bonkers.

It takes 4 mouse clicks to delete a save after you die lmao. Nobody asks you to keep them for that long

[Ghost]

i wish i could use a banana as a weapon

[Shady Allie]

Originally posted by Ghost:

i wish i could use a banana as a weapon

that shoots banana rum daiquiri shots.