Megatarius Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 (edited) I see a post about this literally every time I look at this forum, so I thought I'd write up a topic to clarify something that newbies don't understand. I was in the same boat myself once and would have loved a topic like this to clear things up. Would it be possible to pin this topic so everyone could see it? File Replacers do not actually replace anything. If you want that giant bouncing boobs body replacer, and you download it, and it turns out to be not realistic at all in its movement, what are you gonna do? You're stuck with it now, because you replaced the vanilla body meshes. Right? You're gonna have to reinstall or somehow get the originals back, right? Wrong. Fear not. Your tiny, barbie doll stiff vanilla body mesh boobs are still on your computer! All the files for the game (except the music! back up the music!) are contained in the .bsa files that are located in your Data Folder. Meshes, Textures, Sounds, Voices. Meshes contains all the animations too. The game, however, does not look in them first. It looks in your Data folder. If it finds nothing (because you have little or no mods), it then moves on to the .bsa files. Therefore, when you install that bouncing boob replacer mod, and it puts femaleupperbody.nif into your Data/Meshes/Characters/_male/ folder (even the female stuff is in _male), that is the file the game will look at and use. If that file contains a mesh with oversized-gazongo hooters that move like two ferrets fighting in a gunny sack, that's what you'll see in the game. If through some terrifying mix up that file contains Conan the Barbarian's waxed heman-chest, that's what you'll see on your little mystic elf female in the game too. If that .nif file contains a sword, or a rock, or an IC Manor house, it will be used for your character's chest. It will use whatever it finds in your Data folder at that file location. So feel free to delete whatever files you don't want from your Data Folder. (There are some exceptions.) The game will, at that point, revert back to the vanilla originals in the .bsa files. If you open the .bsa files with BSA Unpacker, you'll see they are arranged just like your Data Folder in file structure. So just mimic that file structure when making your own file replacers. BSA Unpackerhttp://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3117 I recommend anyone not familiar with this stuff use that tool to browse around in their .bsa files and get a feel for how they work and what's really going on here. You can even use it to extract those files out and work with them. You can even put them in your Data Folder and the game will use them instead, even though they're the same. As for the exceptions, music is one of them. Those files are only stored in your Data Folder. Replace the music, and you really do have to track down the originals or reinstall. There are a few other exceptions, but I can't remember them. They're mostly odds and ends. When you first install the game, look through your Data Folder. You'll see a few files in there. Those are the off-limits files. Replace those without making backups, and you lose the originals. Also, this goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: Don't try to update or change the .bsa files in anyway. You can open them and extract them, but make a backup first, just in case something goes wrong. Screw those up, and you really did just replace those files. Edited January 3, 2011 by Megatarius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts