BSA Creating, good idea or not?

[LordEmm]

I recently unpacked all the original BSA's to find some meshes and textures and did some unrelated reading about the "mysterious search forays" Oblivion does into its data folders. Some people suggested that the more files there are, the longer it would take, obviously. So it got me to thinking, would it then be of advantage to package files into BSAs? Or would that not have an effect at all?

 

It would certainly help to organize a little i would think. Is there a limit as to how big a BSA can be? Could i, say for example, pack all the meshes into one, like the unmodded install does as well?

Or am i on the completely wrong track here?

 

Also in theory, if two BSAs had the same content, the newer one would trump the older one, right?

[Hickory]

The creation of .bsa archives is a double edged sword. On one hand it keeps the data sub-folders from becoming ridiculously bloated, but with many mods installed it creates it's own problem of adding to the number of files in the actual Data folder, for which there is a game engine limit which will cause the game to crash when it is exceeded. There is also a load trade off for highly compressed bsa files. I think you can see where I am going with this...

[LordEmm]

Yeah i was afraid of something like this. However i did not know that BSAs also count towards the file limit. I thought it was only ESPs and ESMs (also in bak, or unactivated from by WryeBash)? So it is any type of file that count?

That might explain some other things that have been causing problems. TESGecko likes to put files into the data folder and there are quite a few INI files around as well.

 

I know there is a limit of 255 ESPs in total, but is the limit for actual files known? Is there a limit for files in the subfolders maybe as well?

[Hickory]

Oblivion processes ALL esp, esm, bsa and ini files in the Data folder, whether or not they are installed, so the file limit includes bsa files, yes.

[Shadowfen]

Yeah i was afraid of something like this. However i did not know that BSAs also count towards the file limit. I thought it was only ESPs and ESMs (also in bak, or unactivated from by WryeBash)? So it is any type of file that count?

That might explain some other things that have been causing problems. TESGecko likes to put files into the data folder and there are quite a few INI files around as well.

 

I know there is a limit of 255 ESPs in total, but is the limit for actual files known? Is there a limit for files in the subfolders maybe as well?

 

Don't know the exact limit - I've heard that the total esp/esm/bsa limit is in the range of 350-400.

 

EDIT: Don't know of a limit for files in subfolders. I have heard of people who unpack the Oblivion bsa files to run with (which would result in an incredibly high number of files in the subfolders).

[LordEmm]

Shadowfen, i currently have almost 100,000 files in the meshes and texture folders alone (although that now includes the extracted BSA files). I extracted them mainly to get at the meshes and pyffify them, but also i sometimes noticed a missing "vanilla" texture in game and extracting solved that problem.

 

Hickory, does the game also look for BSA and ini files in the subfolders of Data or do they have to be in the main folder? At least for ini that should be true, right, because many mods put them in subfolders...

 

You all have been a great help in solving some of the remaining mysteries of this game for me.

 

I am thinking of making a few BSAs out of the mesh and texture folders once i have finished my modding, just to see what happens (and if that might help speed up the game a little).

[Hickory]

Hickory, does the game also look for BSA and ini files in the subfolders of Data or do they have to be in the main folder? At least for ini that should be true, right, because many mods put them in subfolders...

 

You all have been a great help in solving some of the remaining mysteries of this game for me.

 

I am thinking of making a few BSAs out of the mesh and texture folders once i have finished my modding, just to see what happens (and if that might help speed up the game a little).

 

Oblivion looks for bsa files only in the main Data folder -- bsa files must follow the folder structure of the Data folder. Any ini files in the subfolders are usually mod or extension (OBSE/OBGE type) files. By default, Oblivion has no ini files in the Data folder, and only one (backup Oblivion_default.ini) in the main Oblivion folder. The game keeps it's ini files in \Documents\My Games\Oblivion\.

[theuseless]

just remember that if you do choose to pack a bsa file to only include files that you use in the specific mod. In other words, if you pack a bsa with all the vanilla oblivion meshes/textures you will be just increasing the amount of bloat in the data folder.

 

I put my vote in to pack a bsa. I like them more and many mods can be merged with tes4gecko.

[LordEmm]

If i am not mistaken, OBMM can pack a BSA which only uses the files that the esp (or esm) actually refers to. Have to try that one of these days.

 

However my main idea was, after finally finishing modding, as a way to reduce the amount of total files, to pack many mods into several large BSA files. Would that work? Do BSA files have to correspond to the esp/esm name or can others use resources out of a differently named BSA? I guess the latter, since that seems how Better Cities BSA works?