Mods with Loose Files

[Moksha8088]

One of my favorite mods has an alpha version with loose files because with the Creation Kit the BSA file cannot either be saved or does not work for testers. Sorry for the fuzzy details since all this technical stuff is over my head.

 

My somewhat incompetent spider senses are tingling with the thought of all those loose files and the nightmare of mod management, especially with a mod over 2GB compressed in size.

 

Helpful information, reassurances, and thoughts are sought and welcomed. Is there an undiscovered secret with BSA creation or a size limit that makes saving fail?

[NexBeth]

Manually download to a separate folder. Take note of the folders and files in the mod. Copy the equivalent folders you currently have without the mod so that they can be preserved. (Meshes, Textures, Scripts, SEQ., etc.) You can use a compression program for your copied folders not in use. Now add the files folder over to the Data directory, keeping a copy of your original download so you know exactly what got copied over. If you want to remove files later, you have to hunt and pluck, but you will have your orginal download to tell you exactly what files you need to look for. However, you may have other mods that share the same files, in which case, you'll need to keep track of that so that you don't delete those and break the other mods. I like to do this regardless just so I know exactly what's going into my game folders.

 

Alternatively, if you note the date of installing these files, you will be able to reference the associated files later by looking for the date on each file, as long as you don't install several mod on the same day.