DemiseOfLogic

Disclaimer for those happening to read this post Firstly, any performance increase provided by this method is theoretical and not tested. This procedure is time consuming; I am mostly doing it to remove clutter from the Data directory and provide a relative fast way to switch massive texture replacements on and off. Secondly, this is not a through guide -- I dislike writing technical documentation. I assume a familiarity with tools and methods. Creating the replacement meshes BSA 1) Using bsacmd GUI, extract the "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa" to it's default, the "in" directory. 2) Now, overwrite the meshes with the desired replacements, in the correct order. I used Qarl's Texture Pack 3. 3) Open the command line and cd the bsacmd program directory. 4) Execute the following: bsacmd.exe -pack in "QTP3 - Meshes.bsa" -af=783 -ff=41 5) Delete anything in the "in" directory. Creating the replacement textures BSA 1) Using bsacmd GUI, extract the "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa" to it's default, the "in" directory. 2) Now, overwrite the textures with the desired replacements, in the correct order. I used Qarl's Texture Pack 3, Bob Markinson's QTP3 Reduced Lite and Regular. 3) This is the fun part, BSA files seem to suffer from a 2.1GB file size limit. So, create an "in2" directory in the bsacmd program directory and copy some of textures into it. Be careful to preserve the correct directory structure. 4) Using the same command prompt, execute: bsacmd.exe -pack in "QTP3R - Textures1 - Regular.bsa" -af=703 -ff=2 bsacmd.exe -pack in2 "QTP3R - Textures2 - Regular.bsa" -af=703 -ff=2 5) Delete anything in the "in" and "in2" directories. Installing the replacement BSA files Note: the BSA names are arbitrary, pick whether you like. 1) Copy the BSA files we just created to the Oblivion data folder. 2) Backup then edit your oblivion.ini file. 3) In sArchiveList, replace: Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, -- with -- QTP3 - Meshes.bsa, QTP3R - Textures1 - Regular.bsa, QTP3R - Textures2 - Regular.bsa, 4) Replace: SMasterTexturesArchiveFileName1=Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa SMasterMeshesArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Meshes.bsa -- with -- SMasterTexturesArchiveFileName2=QTP3R - Textures2 - Regular.bsa SMasterTexturesArchiveFileName1=QTP3R - Textures1 - Regular.bsa SMasterMeshesArchiveFileName=QTP3 - Meshes.bsa 5) Defrag, seriously. Done None of these changes should lead to a save-game corrupting issue. The worst result will be that Oblivion crashes at boot or is missing meshes/textures. Incidentally, this looks rather funny when it happens. By the way, I do not recommend deleting the stock Oblivion BSA files. Not only is re-installation a pain but the CS requires them. Thanks Qarl -- for this great re-texturing Bob Markinson -- for providing the means for my sub $300 video adapter to use Qarl's textures Vasiliy -- for creating BSA Commander dev_akm -- for the wonderful site: http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/ Bethesda -- of course

Thank for the input Terminator. I have done some experimentation and the results are: It appears that regardless on the order in the oblivion.ini, the BSA files are preferred by lower offset number in the archive's index. I created a BSA file with just the mesh and textures for one of the sewer doors. When this BSA was placed in the ini, the object was successfully replaced. However, when I created the full replacement BSA, only select textures, a wall here, a rock there, were replaced. This behavior is of course undesired; so I have implemented a work-around. I will post this to the topic shortly.

Basically, my question is: which files are loaded if two files of the same path exist is separate BSA archives? Scenario I downloaded the Qarl Texture Pack 3 and created an omod file: to easily install and uninstall. This all works fine. However, I want to be able to easily activate and deactivate the package without the massive decompression time. Further, the single BSA file should reduce loading time by decreasing the disk seeks required. Additionally, all those meshes and textures create a cluttered data directory. So... I created a BSA file using OMM named: QarlTexturePack.bsa Then, I created a dummy plugin named: QarlTexturePack.esp Now, from what I have read, the BSA file should load when the ESP is active. Also, since the BSA modification time is greater than the Oblivion BSA files, the packed files should take precedence. However, the replacement textures do not load. I am suffering a gross conceptual error or is my implementation flawed in some way?