.BSA Troubles - Texture + Mesh Replacer Won't Work

[FiftyTifty]

This has been giving me a headache for the past couple days now.

 

I've rigged together a compilation mod of Roberts Male Body, Hgec ECup, and Protective Female Armours. The good news? The .esp works, and everything loads dandily when the mesh and texture files are installed as loose files.

 

But when packing them into a .bsa? Nada, might as well be playing Vanilla. I've tested this repeatedly with a completely stock install.

 

Wrye Bash's BSA Redirection? Nada.

 

Redate the .bsa files (with the above), with Oblivion's given creation dates at 2006, and the compilation mod at 2017? Nada.

 

Oblivion Mod Manager's BSA Redirection? Nada

 

Redated the .bsa files again? Nada

 

Archive Invalidation Invalidated? Nada

 

Redated the .bsa files again? Nada

 

I've tried the above steps again and again, with different levels of bsa compression, and with different tools. Doesn't matter if I use OMM's BSA Creator, BSAOpt, or BSACommander, the replacer .bsa won't load.

 

It's right bizarre. I can access Shivering Isles and such, so loading new assets from .bsa files is working fine. But mesh and texture replacers won't work for me, unless they're loose. Which is a bloody nightmare, as I want to keep my data folder tidy. I do plan on making mods myself, after all.

 

With Skyrim, .bsa files just worked, replacers and non-replacers alike. Fallout New Vegas? Archive Invalidation sorted that out right quick. It's only Oblivion that's giving me the finger.

 

And yes, the file paths are correct. The BSA shows the topmost folders as Meshes & Textures, just like with the vanilla .bsa files. The filenames are as well, and appending " - Main" to it did nothing, nor did separating the files into two .bsa files, one for textures and the other for meshes.

 

 

So aye, what do? I've upload an archive of the .bsa and .esp file to Mega, if anybody fancies poking around in there: https://mega.nz/#!i08HyTyC!cgnJ-yR94HZXblyyDB8QRDvK1ctxZF_hiClY0INix5U

Edited April 13, 2017 by FiftyTifty

[DrakeTheDragon]

For all I know, in Oblivion files inside one BSA cannot replace files inside another, as there is no priority decision and it is unspecified which BSA's file will take priority at one point.

 

Only later GameBryo games got a solution for this added.

 

I'm not 100% certain, as there's still an odd chance it can be done, but I don't remember it ever having been done and it always being an unwritten law that this cannot be done.

 

 

edit: But at the off chance this is caused by a usage mistake, you do know how to get a BSA loaded by this game?

 

Either enter it directly into the "sArchiveList" entry inside your "Oblivion.ini" in your MyGames folder,

or simply have an ESP of the same name as the beginning of the BSA's filename to trigger auto-load of all accompanying BSAs.

[FiftyTifty]

For all I know, in Oblivion files inside one BSA cannot replace files inside another, as there is no priority decision and it is unspecified which BSA's file will take priority at one point.

 

Only later GameBryo games got a solution for this added.

 

I'm not 100% certain, as there's still an odd chance it can be done, but I don't remember it ever having been done and it always being an unwritten law that this cannot be done.

 

 

edit: But at the off chance this is caused by a usage mistake, you do know how to get a BSA loaded by this game?

 

Either enter it directly into the "sArchiveList" entry inside your "Oblivion.ini" in your MyGames folder,

or simply have an ESP of the same name as the beginning of the BSA's filename to trigger auto-load of all accompanying BSAs.

 

The general consensus is that .bsa files are overwritten depending on their creation date. I use BulkAttributesChanger, which worked a treat for fixing up how mods loaded in Fallout 4's GECK. It makes the changes to the .bsa files, but it doesn't make a difference.

 

I've constantly checked and re-checked that the .esp and .bsa file are using the same names:

 

HgecRobertsPFA.esp

HgecRobertsPFA.bsa

 

HgecRobertsPFA.esp

HgecRobertsPFA - Main.bsa

 

HgecRobertsPFA.esp

HgecRobertsPFA - Meshes.bsa

HgecRobertsPFA - Textures.bsa

 

 

None of those combinations made any difference. Judging from the fact that the DLC functions just fine, .bsa files work when they have the same name, and no file conflicts. BSA redirection is supposed to remedy this entire problem, by having the game check for an empty .bsa file. You then edit your .ini with the following settings:

 

 

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
bUseArchives=1
sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, Oblivion - Sounds.bsa, Oblivion - Voices1.bsa, Oblivion - Voices2.bsa, Oblivion - Misc.bsa

 

Doesn't work. And there is a 255 character limit to sArchiveList, which is something to consider.

 

 

Man, it'd suck if we really can't have replacers use .bsa files. I'll try appending it to the end of sArchiveList, but I'd really prefer not to do that. The vanilla .bsa files take up 202 characters alone.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Yeah, scratch that edit. I had a look at your archive in the meantime and the way your files are named the BSA auto-loading system should be triggered.

[FiftyTifty]

Adding the .bsa to the end of sArchiveList didn't work either. The line looks like the following:

 

 

sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, Oblivion - Sounds.bsa, Oblivion - Voices1.bsa, Oblivion - Voices2.bsa, Oblivion - Misc.bsa, HgecRobertsPFA.bsa

 

Removing ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa didn't help either.

 

If you load the mod with the .bsa, does the replacer work for you?

[DrakeTheDragon]

I'll try that out as soon as I finally get around to launch the game again (but this could as well take weeks, to be honest).

 

I won't expect it to work though either, if I'm quite honest. All I ever knew says replacements inside BSAs will not work, period. I always took this for "common knowledge" in fact.

 

I was trying to dig up some more evidence or reference material on the topic, as all I have right now is my memory and passed on knowledge from 10+ years ago, but all I could really find was those two people talking about it at all:

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Talk:Creating_your_Own_BSA_files

http://www.gamesas.com/bsa-files-and-its-problems-with-file-replacers-t67540.html

 

I still pretty much take it for a fact replacements inside BSAs just plain can't work, but the knowledge from those people is about almost as old as my history of active modding itself, so I don't know.

[Surilindur]

When I last tried to pack my (edit: to clarify, not made by me, the ones I use) mesh and texture replacers into BSA archives, I could not make it work at all. Even renaming the BSA archives after the Bashed Patch did not help. They just did not replace anything. Using loose files worked flawlessly. So there has to be some differences between Oblivion and Skyrim indeed. :thumbsup:

 

Also, out of curiosity, I tested using an archive and loose files with Mod Organizer (MO version 1.3.11 from Skyrim Nexus) just now, and again loose files worked when files packed in a BSA archive did not. If someone figures out a way to solve this, I would love to hear it. The MO BSA management actually does allow loading loading, for example, the Shivering Isles BSA archives without using the dummy .esp file, but even that one does not seem to help with replacers packed in a BSA archive. Or at least that is how it would seem. :huh:

Edited April 13, 2017 by Contrathetix

[FiftyTifty]

So we really can't use overriding files in .bsa archives. Christ almighty, modding Oblivion's a finicky nightmare.

 

Guess the proper approach is to unpack the archives with Oblivion Mod Manager, use WinMerge to compare the unpacked files with the replacer, repack sans the original conflicting files, and then make a .bsa archive for the replacer.

 

Yuck.

[Surilindur]

At least it would seem as if replacers in BSA archives would not necessarily work.

 

If you feel like giving it a try, Mod Organizer can help keep your data folder clean, as well. The 1.3.11 one from Skyrim Nexus works fine with Oblivion, however with the only major downside being that all OBSE plugins need to be manually installed to the data folder, at least when using the Steam version of Oblivion. And to have MO launch with a Steam version of Oblivion, one would need to set the launch mechanism in the MO workarounds tab to "script extender". Other than that, it should be pretty straightforward. It also seems like you should not have any issues manually "installing" (restructuring) mods so that they can be moved to the MO mods folder. I have not tried installing OMODs or BAIN-targeted archives with MO myself yet, though, but at least manually restructuring always works.

 

I use Mod Organizer myself at the moment, and while it does mean a bit more manual work to get some mods installed and such, it still helps keep the data folder (excluding the OBSE plugins folder) clean. It is a nice way to use loose files while keeping the data folder clean. Also mod development is extremely easy, when each mod is contained in its own dedicated folder! And the overwrite folder from MO also works, as long as one remembers to run every single tool through MO.

 

When using MO, and manually unpacking and restructuring mods, MO can be used to "install" all mods. OBMM might be needed to unpack some OMODs (unless MO handles OMOD archives, never tried it), but other than that, OBMM is not really needed for anything anymore when manually restructuring mods for MO. MO also has the back-date BSAs option in its workarounds tab, as well as some form of archive invalidation apparently (and Wrye Bash also has archive invalidation, right-click the column headers in the plugins tab, there should be an option there I think). Wrye Bash can be used to create a Bashed Patch, but MO can be (again) used to install manually restructured BAIN-targeted mods as well. Also, BSAopt seems to work just fine for creating Oblivion BSA archives (I use the beta 2.0.0 - not the 'risky' one, the other - from the Skyrim Nexus).

 

But then again, Tannin & Compnay might release the new mod manager at some point, so I am not really sure how long MO will remain relevant, especially if the new Nexus mod management tool also features virtual installation possibility (again, if someone in that project happens to read this, I would not want to nag, but virtual installation really is a godsend... :whistling: ).