Topic on official forum about bsa's and conflicts

[anandus]

I didn't see a mention about this yet, so thought I'd spread the word.

 

There's a topic in the official forum's mod section, named [!IMPORTANT] BSAs and You by Lojack.

It's clear and well-written. An excellent job by Lojack!

 

It's a really important read to understand how conflicts and load order are handled. Both for mod users and modders it's useful to know and understand.

 

In short (if I understand correctly, please read the OP in the topic itself):

Basically the load order is as follows:

* Official bsa's (registered in Skyrim.ini)

* Loose files in the data-directory, manually or NMM-installed mods for instance.

* Custom bsa's (loaded through similarly names .esp's), Workshop-instaled mods come in this form.

 

When there's a resource conflict (a texture for instance) the latter loaded 'wins' (as it always works). But what if there is a conflict between two custom bsa's? How is the conflict handled, what's the load order? Well it turns out that it's alfabetical. So if you have a conlicting textureA.bsa and textureB.bsa the latter will always win. Regardless of date, etc.

 

Also the fact that custom bsa's always override loose files (like mods installed with NMM) is important to know. If you've installed something through the Workshop and later install something manually or though a mod manager like NMM and there's a conflicting texture for instance then the Workshop-mod texture will always win.

 

I find it important information so wanted to share it here on the Nexus as well :)

[anandus]

*bump* to get this in the picture

[Deleted12998390User]

Yes. I want to know this. What's the load order of 'loose vs BSAs'?

 

I will make one mod pack for data about 200 mods.

 

Example:

 

I have Bethasda Hi-Res DLC Optimized mod. That's BSA. And I have 4k textures mods 'loose files'.

 

If I paste that two mod what will be load order? Will BSA override my 4k mod? Or BSA first and looses second?

Edited June 7, 2015 by Guest

[sLoPpYdOtBiGhOlE]

The alphabetical part is good to know and I wasn't aware of that.

 

But....

 

 

.....

Also the fact that custom bsa's always override loose files (like mods installed with NMM) is important to know.

.........

I always thought that to be the other way round.
Loose files override bsa files.
Well that's what I'm finding anyways.

For example I made my mod and packed all the scripts in a bsa.
When I edit my mods scripts, then the loose edited scripts override the scripts that are in the bsa.
Always been that way for me.

[cdcooley]

That thread is now out of date and should be un-stickied (and I've submitted a request on the official forums about it). Notice that first posting was last edited in February 2012 just after the update 1.4.26 had been released. That was the update which made major changes in how files were chosen. I'm not sure if its changes were even incorporated into that thread and we've had more game updates since then that made even more changes.

The second point isn't universally true. If you change the "bInvalidateOlderFiles" INI setting then loose files and BSAs provided by mods can't override original game resources. (Apparently at least one version of Mod Organizer changes that setting to support its own resource file management feature but since it completely reverses the game's own logic it seems like a bad idea to me.)

I'm fairly certain that in the final patch version 1.9.30.0.8 the rules are much similar and sensible than what happened in the early releases of the game.

The current rules (as far as I can tell) are that the game loads the BSA files listed in the INI file, then the BSAs matching plugins (in the same order as the plugins) and then finally loads the loose files (but possibly only if the loose files have their archive bit turned on for some strange reason). Unless you've change bInvalidateOlderFiles then the last version of the file found is the one that will be used (which is the same logic used to process records loaded from the plugins).

 

Unfortunately, the CK still uses the old bizarre timestamp logic for plugins and semi-random logic for loading other resources.

 

The thread with the most up-to-date information is [uPDATE] BSAs and You.