archive invalidation in Skyrim?

[kevkiev]

Having some texture troubles and, if this were FONV, I'd swear archive invalidation wasn't active or (actually more likely) my display settings for texture sizes weren't on large. But toggling archiveinvalidation in NMM doesn't make a diff, and there isn't a texture size setting in the in-game display setting menu. Although, in the steam game launcher "options" (advanced) my "texture settings" are on high (which I'm guessing is the same as "Large" in the FONV in-game display settings?).

 

I'm wondering if it might help to DL a manual archiveinvalidation file, but can't seem to find one for skyrim. Can someone explain to me how archiveinvalidation works in skyrim? Also, is the high texture settings in the launcher equivalent to setting texture sizes to Large in the FONV in game display settings?

 

Short of a complete reinstall of everything, I'm not sure what to try. (My problem is described in detail here.)

 

Thanks,

 

Edit: surprise, surprise: it seems Skyrim doesn't even need archive invalidation? That's what I read in various webby articles anyways.

Edited March 7, 2012 by kevkiev

[6Domino6]

For me I found the active skyrim.ini in Documents\My Games\Skyrim but you may have it elsewhere. Find where it says archive in your skyrim.ini and make sure it has all of the following listed. As for the actual texture size I'm not sure about that. If the problem still persists, did you download and install a texture pack from anywhere? If so, you may want to consider redownloading it to see if a reinstall fixes it.

 

 

[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa

[kevkiev]

Thanks for the reply. I have a slightly modified version of the archive thing in INI, based on the STEP guide. I suppose that does act as archive invalidation in a sense since it tells the game where to look for files. But in FO3 and FONV you need it more to tell the game to look at loose files in textures/ meshes/ sounds etc, folders that aren't there by default. Though I'm kind of a noob and don't know if that covers it.

 

Yeah, I'm in the final stages of a day-long reinstall of the game and, like, a gazillion different texture mods (again, following the STEP guide). Fingers, and toes, are crossed for when I fire the game up in just a little bit from now.

 

Cheers

[Rabbit1251]

If you are using the Nexus Mod Manager to download your mods there is a 'Reset Archive Invalidation' selection under 'Tools'. I don't know if that might help you.

 

 

Rabbit

[whaes]

having the same problem that some 2k textures I installed are not displayed, I'm still getting vanilla textures.

'Reset Archive Invalidation' did nothing.

How do I manually check if archive invalidation is on or off?

[Soulbringer1]

NMM's archive invalidation is not working with skyrim. Is there a BSA like in the other games? I cant seam to find one online anywhere.

[cdcooley]

The old "archive invalidation" idea doesn't exist. If you are having problems with resources not loading in the correct order make sure you do not have

bInvalidateOlderFiles=0   ; WRONG!

in your INI file. The default is 1 and it needs to remain that or everything breaks.

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 ; CORRECT (and the default)

Early versions of Mod Organizer changed that setting to support micro-managing the resource loading but that caused far more problems than it solved. Unlike prior games for Skyrim almost everything should be packed into BSAs and then those BSAs are loaded in the same order as the matching ESP files to ensure resources overwrite correctly. (Loose files still load last but that fact should only be used to resolve conflicts that result from wanting resources from mods early in the load order to be used instead of the ones the game picks.) The problem is that we didn't fully understand how the (new with Skyrim) system was supposed to work so those early Mod Organizer features were designed around the way things worked for earlier games.

[AggaAgostini]

Where does invalidate files go? (ACHIVE)?