Hoamaii Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Hey guys, I've just release a failry heavy house mod (animations + lots of custom meshes and textures) and I've had a hell of a time with Archive.exe. The first BSA I uploaded completely squashed the music files - a problem I solved thanks to LeiannaG's advice to add the music files as loose files. But most of the BSA files I tried to create as replacements (remove the music files so it doesn't bloat users Data folder to have them both in the BSA + as loose files) after that backfired at me. When I test them, there's always something not working!.. So far I've always compressed them - because I see no point as having a BSA which is as heavy as the loose files version - maybe I was wrong about this?They should contain: meshes, textures, sound, music and scripts. Or maybe my Archive.exe is corrupt - in which case how do you replace it without reinstalling the CK? Or maybe I'm doing something wrong - my previous mods did not need BSA's at all. Can some of you offer some guidance here? Many thanks in advance, Cheers to all, Hoamaii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdcooley Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Yes, build without compression. There's still a performance boost advantage to having files packed in a BSA without compression. Some types of files can't be compressed without causing trouble. Music is probably in that list. Only your meshes and scripts are actually getting compressed anyway since music, sound, and texture files are already individually compressed in their original format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoamaii Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 Oh, thanks!.. I was under the impression that textures get compressed too because that's actually the heaviest file in my mod. The BSA weighs around 350 Mb and the loose files are over 600 Mb. I'll try that the, see if if works any better. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBizkit Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 on a related note: I have read the modding skyrim modder's edition and I make my bsas by searching for every mesh and texture and script (tif_) manually. So far, I have forgot files in every update I uploaded. Is there a way to get at least all the script files? Missing meshes are easy to identify (users tell me something isn't there) but missing scripts are another thing. Oh and "Create Archive" causes the CK to crash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoamaii Posted February 25, 2015 Author Share Posted February 25, 2015 Well, the way I did was to start all my scripts names with the same 3 letters and an underscore - that makes them easy to find and select in the script folder. And I've done my BSA's using the Archive.exe from the Skyrim folder - never done them from the CK, it seems to be an even worse hell. Of course, you may still have errors too - but creating a separate folder containing all your mod's data folders and files and then opening it in the Archive.exe window does make things a bit easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBizkit Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 Well, yes I do use Archive.exe. It is only that I have read that using the CK to make a bsa might be an easy way of gathering all the mod's files. Anyways, I also check the boxes according to this http://www.creationkit.com/File:Archive.exe04.JPG. (I don't have music so np on the compression part). Only that I've noticed that that way the files in the bsa retain the whole "C:....../common/...blabla" path and not just e.g. meshes/example.nif (like they should). I have thus circumvented the problem by first putting all the folders (e.g. meshes) directly into C:, and then in the bsa. Sorry for hijacking your thread it is only that your question seemed answered and the title fits my problem as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoamaii Posted February 25, 2015 Author Share Posted February 25, 2015 Not at all, you're not hijacking this thread ar all!.. Actually, you've given me information I did know about, like BSA structuring everything as to put it in the "C" drive - but I'd guess it is fairly harmless, as that is something NMM fixes by itself when you use it to install that mod, isn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts