If I merged all the .bsa of bethesda dlcs

[anonimousone]

how would I make the .esp recognize the newly made .bsa and get the files from here?

[Surilindur]

Have you tried naming the .bsa after a plugin that you currently have loaded (as in, active in your load order)? For example, the Shivering Isles .esp file (DLCShiveringIsles.esp) is just a dummy file (empty) for the purposes of loading the respective .bsa archives. The game sees that DLCShiveringIsles .esp file is active and loads all the DLCShiveringIsles* .bsa archives (DLCShiveringIsles - Textures.bsa, DLCShiveringIsles - Meshes.bsa and the like).

 

Edit: For example if you have "SomeRandomMod.esp" loaded, you could try renaming the archive to "SomeRandomMod.bsa" to see if the game loads it. It might, or might not. I think it will, but it is always worth testing first! :happy:

 

Edit 2: Or, if you have "DLCShiveringIsles.esp" loaded, just renaming it to "DLCShiveringIsles - Stuff.bsa" or something. Maybe? Maybe not... ?

Edited November 28, 2017 by Contrathetix

[DrakeTheDragon]

For what it's worth, it doesn't matter to the plugins/.esp. As soon as a BSA is loaded, no matter which way, the plugin will find its contents. It is, after all, nothing else but a virtual image of your data folder's contents, well, parts of it.

Look at it like a ZIP file that gets extracted into your Data folder every time you run the game and cleanly removed again afterwards.

 

Then there's 2 distinct ways to get the game to load a BSA.

1) By entry of the archive into a list in your "oblivion.ini" inside your "My Games" folder,

2) Like Contra said, by having a plugin, .esp, with the fitting name loaded by the game.

 

The latter will auto-load any BSAs with fitting names, that is, the name of the plugin is at the beginning of the name of the BSA. That's why there's an empty "DLCShiveringIsles.esp" coming with Shivering Isles. Did you ever take a look inside with the CS? It "is" empty. But as soon as this plugin gets loaded by the game, every BSA inside your Data folder starting with "DLCShiveringIsles..." will get auto-loaded by the game.

 

And for further clarification, I can very easily reference assets from DLCs inside a plugin I make, and don't need to take care it's loaded by my own doing or my mod. But, as it is a legal requirement for your plugin to have as master the .esp of the DLC for you to be allowed to use its assets inside your mod, this will automatically make it so the DLC's .esp is loaded when your plugin is loaded, and thus also its BSA(s) via the mentioned auto-load mechanism.

 

 

Oh, well, I hope I'm making sense. This day wasn't an easy one, and my mind's a little toast right now.

 

edit: Proof for how toast it is... Contra said just about everything I did about the DLCShiveringIsles.esp as well already... and I didn't see it until now.

 

edit2: BUT, I almost forgot the most important part I wanted to say, BSAs have "limits". No 1 BSA can ever be above 2 GB for the start. And BSAs don't know priority or loading order. No one BSA should ever contain the same files as another, or it's undetermined which one's file will be used in case of conflict.

 

In general it is a rather bad idea to "merge" all BSAs. There was no report of increased load times or performance or anything either, as far as I know. It's just asking for trouble rather later down the road.

You can, however, try and see how far you get. It's not like there's been any reports with significantly worse results, too.