Question of legallity

[nelvahin]

Hi,

With a friend, we ha a progect.

to do our mod, we would like to ddo an esm file, an esp file, and bsa s files. The problem is that we don't know if it's legal to take some files in the bsa from oblivion and then to put they in our bsa, to finaly upload our mod.

[Vagrant0]

Hi,

With a friend, we ha a progect.

to do our mod, we would like to ddo an esm file, an esp file, and bsa s files. The problem is that we don't know if it's legal to take some files in the bsa from oblivion and then to put they in our bsa, to finaly upload our mod.

If the files (the nifs and textures) aren't altered, there is no reason to. If they are altered, you can only include your changes within any mod. You cannot include anything which has not been changed in some significant way. Although, it should be mentioned that BSAs only make sense when you have more than a few hundred resources (eg. full tilesets). Otherwise you should just be using folders within the datafolder. Working with new BSA files also makes it harder to implement minor changes (since people would have to download the whole BSA again), and necessitates additional changes to the .esps and .esms that use them.

 

As far as using .esm and .esp go, this depends largely on the project. Typically .esm should only be used in large projects where there are large portions of the game which belong to that mod, and where other mods may need to use resources defined in that mod. In most cases, a single .esp is all that is needed. A housemod, or even a fairly large worldspace alone in and of itself doesn't gain any benefit from being a .esm. Even as far as making your mod have less of an impact on ram, if the mod (just the .esp) is smaller than 1mb, there won't be any noticible difference.

 

ESM usage is important because having too many .esm files can occasionally screw up other mods, or loading order dependant mods. Again, only in the cases of very large projects, or ones which will be used as the basis for future works, should a .esm be used.

[DarkWarrior45]

I think Vagrant0 has given some very excellent advice on this matter.

 

My question on the esm/esp/bsa part: Why make your mod more complicated than neccesary? But of course we don't know the size of your project either. Just a thought. :whistling:

[nelvahin]

thank's for your advice Vagrant0. In effect, we have a big progect, but I don't want to talk about it (if it don't works, you'll be thery sad and disapointed). Perhaps if 6 or 7 mounths...