[LE] Help using archive.exe...

[yarddogg77]

I need to repack my vanilla bsa files, I'm going to use archive.exe and I am unsure which check boxes to tick to make sure they will be playable in game. Can anyone tell me how to use this program? I've scoured the web plenty of times in the past for comprehensive directions on how to use this very basic tool and am coming up empty handed. Seem like it would be a major thing to provide directions on.

 

Don't refer me to Skyrim Creation Kit wiki, it's useless as usual, don't answer this thread unless you know the answers I'm looking for. Don't ask me why I want to do what I'm doing, don't chime in just for the sake of having 'something to say about something'. The question is clear, I have my reason to do it, that is all you need to know. I'm serious I will report you if you highjack my thread, I need an answer to this. Several years after owning this piece of crap broken undevelopment passed off as a game, I still haven't had even one stable play-through, sick of not finding answers.

[agerweb]

Place you meshes/textures directories and anything else your packing into a new directory called what you like.

 

Open Archive and at the bottom where it says Root Dir select your new directory.

 

Drag your meshes/textures etc directories into the white panrl in Archive.

 

On the left side of Achive Stats check the boxes that match whats in your archive (not sure how important this is may not make any difference)

 

On the right side of Achive Stats check all the boxes except Xbox 360 Archive

 

Under Edit select Check all items.

 

Under file select Save As and pick a name that is the same as your mod esp.

 

Done

[yarddogg77]

Thank you for claification. That's about how I was thinking of doing it too. I was going to check all the boxes on the left because I want it to compress everything I put in it. I was the most concerned about the check boxes on the right. Some of the 'tutorials' I've saw, checked only the top two boxes and I was unsure why. I knew I didn't need the xbox checked.

 

Have you ever heard of anyone, extracting all 9 of the main bsa files, then merging them into one bsa for the main skyrim esm to read from? I was hoping to ulimately have a singular main bsa, then seperate bsas for the dlcs of course. I was thinking if I was able to do that, then maybe I could change my ini to load the single bsa rather than 9 of them for one esm. I will probably try it anyway, lol, I have plenty of backups, but I was just wondering if you know anyone who has had a success at it. I'm just trying optimize my game.

[agerweb]

There is a maximum size for a bsa; I have seen different figures quoted but between 2-3GB - so you wouldn't be able to combine them all anyway, I don't think it would make any difference in game because Skyrim internally extracts all archives when it starts.

[yarddogg77]

So as far as installing mods, I'm a little confused about bsa verus loose. I can place texture replacers and most any other mod that doesn't contain an esp, even mods that do contain esps are easy enough. But when I get to a mod with scripts and an esp I start to get confused. Is it better to extract the bsas of scripted mods, then compile them into loose files? Or is it better to retain a bsa for each each scripted mod with an esp.

 

In my mind I think I'm better off to compile them into a loose version, but if the game has to work harder to read them because they are not compressed then I wouldn't want to do that. I have read that esps refer to the main skyrim esm, but that may be just for skyrim creation kit purposes, as far as game play I have no idea. I would prefer to stay away from scripted mods, but something like the unofficial skyrim patch has scripts in order to fix certain things. This s#*! gets to be too much sometimes. I wish bethesda would just fix their own bugs.

Edited December 28, 2016 by yarddogg77

[MShoap13]

 

but if the game has to work harder to read them because they are not compressed

 

Compression works the other way my friend. Compressed files take up less space on disk but require decompression overhead in order to be useable. Additionally, the game doesn't and can't decompress all .bsa files on start up. That would take upwards of 3 Gigs of RAM with all vanilla files.

 

For minimum load stutter in-game you want to extract and ignore as many of the game's default .bsa files as possible. I believe there are a number of files in the meshes, sounds, and voices archives that do not function properly if you extract them. I can confirm that so long as you have a loose file replacement in your \data\ directory (or your virtual \data\ directory if you're using MO) for everything in your textures.bsa you can just omit it in the list of .bsa's to load in your Skyrim.ini file.

 

As far as messing with mods that ship with .bsa files I would typically leave them alone. It's probably rare that they're substantial enough for you to see any significant performance gains. If say Vurts Flora Overhaul were in a .bsa I could see that being a candidate for extracting but it's rare to find a mod with that many commonly used textures that ships with them compressed.

[yarddogg77]

Lol. Ive been learning that the hard way all morning. At first I thought I'd get clever, extract all of them, compile them neatly into one folder, replaced all the textures I wanted to add, then I broke the files up into manageable sizes thinking I could completely customize them. Needless to say it didn't load worth a crap after altering my [archive] ini lines. So I went back to all the original bsa files except for the meshes and textures because those are the only ones with my replacements. I had the break up the textures into 2 bsa's, but the game loads now. Well not quite yet right now. I made a slight mistake naming the meshes file Skyrim-Meshes instead of Skyrim - Meshes. Notice the spaces. The creation kit threw a fit claiming it couldn't detect a sky nif. So I'm recompressing that one as we speak. I have more questions.

 

I still have to recompress my dlcs and they contain sound files. What should I do? I've read that wrye bash can exclude compression of sound files but honestly I am not comfortable using wrye bash. It's very complicated and I've tried before. Is there some kind of a tweak or string I can add to archive.exe to make it add the sound files to the bsa but leave them uncompressed? Because that would be best for simpletons like me. It only took me 5 years to pull my head out fix my vanilla bsa's after all. lol

 

If there's nothing I can do with archive.exe such as mentioned, would it be possible to just plop the dlc sound files in the data folder as loose and compress the rest?

Edited December 29, 2016 by yarddogg77

[yarddogg77]

MShoap13. I know what you are saying about running loose files, sometimes it's best becase esm and esps don't ever complain about reading them, but I've tried to run the game with the files loose and it's very sluggish. I was reading an article earlier about how the guy who made BSAopt did extensive testing on the performance of loose vs BSA packed files and he claims the bsa files work much faster than loose. I think it has to do with the files being tighter together over comes the time it takes to uncompress and use them during play time because modern processors have better 'things' about them. I would have to find the article again to elaborate. Also, there is something very weird about the file heirachy of the bsa's in the vanilla folder. If you extract them all and plop them in the same folder, there are overwrites, meaning duplicates, and I'm not talking about the meshes and textures. There are also text files at the end of each bsa with the word "Temp" inside of them. The files are named placeholder. I believe those mark the end of each bsa file so the esm knows when to load or refer to the next. So with all the files plopped into the same folder the way it seems like it should be, the main esm doesn't know what to do with it, and that could also be the reason my game ran sluggish when I tried it. All of highresolutiontexture packs had those placeholder files also. Those could mean the different between having a properly packed bsa in game. It's probably the reason why people have to make fake esp's in order to load their custom bsa,s. I tried to add one to the last object in one of my bsa's but windows explorer wanted to put it in alphabetical order so it wouldn't have worked. If my game doesn't load when I get off of here, then I will be looking into that. Thanks for the help, now I know better how use archive.exe.

Edited December 29, 2016 by yarddogg77

[yarddogg77]

Well I don't know what's going on. I was having an issue with the creation kit for a bit, but I made fake esps, then changed the ini archive list to my bsas, the creation kit loads up just fine now, but the game ctds when I try to load my bsas without the originals in there, this is annoying as crap. Why is the main esm so danged picky about which bsa it loads. There must be some line I need to add to ini to make this work. For the record I haven't installed skse or anything at all just yet. I was hoping tho get my altered vanilla working first. I did use the textures from highresolution maps with roads in these bsa packs,and fantasy sky, but those are just like any other texture replacers, they plop right in there and that is that. I'm baffled. I'm gonna try installing skse and see if it helps to bypass the skyrim launcher.

 

Maybe I should just repack them with only Bethesda textures and not other non Bethesda textures and see if that gets it.

Edited December 29, 2016 by yarddogg77