Eliminating lag from large mods... BSA packing?

[ZariduOmega]

Greetings,

 

I've experienced a great deal of lag and stuttering since installing multiple large mods with lots of files (OOO, MMM, Unique Landscape etc...). The lag seems to stem mostly from loading objects and whatnot as they come into view and when switching external cells, as I can hear my HD struggling to keep up. I've downloaded several optimizer mods that I have yet to try out, but I read on a forum post (http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=718322 for those who are interested) that some lag can be eliminated from large mods by packing their associated files into a .bsa archive with low compression.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this tweak and know if it makes a large difference? If it doesn't make much difference then I won't bother with it since it would take several hours to do with my slow HD. If it does make a difference, then my next question is how do I update the mod's .esp/.esm files so that they will load their respective .bsa archives (if necessary)?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Vagrant0]

While true, some performance gains can be made by packaging up files, most in game performance loses are usually from either too many scripts or AI processes being run at the same time or from trying to render everything every frame. Slow loading of cells could have more to do with lack of ram than hard drive speed. OOO, MMM, and similar mods don't really add as many new items or resources to a single scene. Most of the time you have only a couple of the custom resources used per cell, with almost everything else being standard meshes and textures. You would probably gain more of a performance increase by merging the UL mods and making them a .esm.

 

What BSA archives do is allow faster indexing of files, and compression so that they take up less space on disk. They still have to be unpacked to be used by the game, it's just slightly faster for the game to locate them. For modders, they're actually a bit more of a problem than they're worth. This is because any corrections which might need to be made to the file must be made and applied to the BSA, making it harder to work updates, addons and bug fixes. Additionally if you have files in a BSA anything in the same location in your data folder as the files in the BSA will get used instead of what is in the BSA. This means that when you install the mod with the BSA it won't overwrite any of the files you currently have in your data folder if there were any conflicts. Instead the game would just use what is in your data folder. It also means that if you install anything which might have same named resources that you don't get any overwrite dialogues when you install letting you know that there is a resource conflict.

 

As for making a BSA work... Havn't a clue. Don't think there's anyone outside Bethsoft has had reason enough to use them. Their primary goal afterall was not performance, but smaller file size so that their game could fit on a DVD. It also allowed them to keep the resources out of the hands of users (until methods of extraction were figured out) so that resources couldn't go missing.

[ZariduOmega]

Thanks for the info Vagrant0. I figured the .bsa archives were too much trouble to be of any use. I did as you suggested and merged the UL mods using TES4Gecko and the stuttering was definitely reduced, though still present. Guess it's time to bit the bullet and turn down the view distance :(

[Vagrant0]

Thanks for the info Vagrant0. I figured the .bsa archives were too much trouble to be of any use. I did as you suggested and merged the UL mods using TES4Gecko and the stuttering was definitely reduced, though still present. Guess it's time to bit the bullet and turn down the view distance :(

Did you turn it into a esm as well?

 

How much ram do you have?

[ZariduOmega]

I tried the .esm but had some really weird results, like the Imperial Isle disappearing :P I don't have a lot of experience using TES4Gecko (read: none) so I might have screwed up there, but more likely the huge array of mods I use simply makes the load order extremely sensitive (I use a grand total of 26 mods not including UI mods, 5 of which use .esm's). This is most likely the source of my lag: simply having to load 26+ mods.

 

I'm running Oblivion on a Dell laptop with 2 GB ram, an NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 (256 MB memory) video card, and a Intel Pentium M 1.86 GHz processor. Also, I run Oblivion off of an external HD (not sure about the speed, but it is rather old).

 

Oblivion ran just fine before I installed all of the mods, so I'm sure the lag and stuttering issue has to do with the large number of mods I use. But, it isn't game-breaking so I feel that it's a small price to pay.

[wayne0188]

Vagrant, While I mostly agree with you, the problem is more likely the processor. 1.8 ghz is not recommended, the minimum requirement is 2ghz, and 3ghz is the recommended.

 

@op, 26+ is nothing, Ive seen load lists that include: OOO, MMM, warcry, fran's, and another 100 or so mods to go with that.

 

 

Edit: this is a good site for checking where your computer stands in being capable of running certain games.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

[ZariduOmega]

Vagrant0: thanks for the info, I'll rummage through my mods and see if I can eliminate a few with lots of textures addons.

 

(Edit: I use the Crowded Roads mod: do you think that this could add a lot of background scripts that might be slowing me up? Just a thought since I don't have any trouble in interior cells where Crowded Roads doesn't apply.)

 

wayne0188: thanks for the link! Nifty little tool there. As for the processor speed, a Pentium M is actually about 1.5 times as fast as it is rated so the actual speed is around 2.8 GHz (2.79 GHz according to System Requirements Lab). I won't pretend to understand clock speeds and all that, but so far as I know the Pentium M is sufficient to run Oblivion.

 

The System Requirements Lab analysis stated that my computer more than meets the minimum requirements, but in terms of recommended requirements the processor speed falls short as does the video card (though it meets the recommended amount of dedicated memory).