One of Many

That's incredible news. Thanks!

Is this still being looked into? With the added content of the upcoming expansion pack(s) and the way the game currently handles saving and restoring saved games, I can't imagine saving/loading times not taking a further hit.

Increasingly long save-times are still what keeps me from playing the game. I know there may be other issues of higher priority- and limited resources for the ongoing support process- but if optimizations in this department are still on the table, and if there's anything we (the players) can provide in terms of save-games or detailed reporting of behavior, then do let us know. Thanks!

Will the new save format speed up saving and/or loading games?

There was another thread about this, which is now locked. I posted a work-around: It's not ideal, but it will allow you to play the game in window-mode.

I'm hearing the excessive sibilance, too. If there were some way I could reliably de-ess the audio and batch-schedule the processing (plus format conversions, if any), then I would give it a shot. Otherwise, it's a daunting task with relatively little payoff.

Like many other players, I've also been experiencing increasing save/load times that appear to scale with progress. One thing that may possibly factor into it is the very large quantity of items I have picked up and sold to merchants.

Hi guys, I have the same (or a very similar) issue but have managed to work around it. When the game starts and the screen goes black, hitting cmd+F repeatedly occassionally makes the menu appear for a very short moment before it disappears again. It seems you can still click the buttons by repeatedly alternating between cmd+F and clicking the button area. If you can make it into Options through the flickering menu, click the Resolution drop-down, select a lower resolution, and untick Fullscreen (if it's ticked). Then press escape. A prompt should appear the apply the change, and doing so will create a fully working display window.