kevkiev Posted December 7, 2017 Share Posted December 7, 2017 (edited) When converting a mod to ba2s from loose files, is it ok to leave out some of the mod's files (non-texture files, obviously) or is the main ba2 an "all or nothing" kind of thing? For example - bodyslide files. I'm a bit worried that they may not work in a ba2 format - would it be okay to leave those out? (Also, am I right in worrying that bodyslide files might be better left as loose files?) Or maybe scripts? I've read that scripts don't always play nice with ba2s. (Although I'm not sure that's true considering the vanilla game has its scripts in that format.) Or maybe somehow a mesh got missed in the packing process so it still resides in a loose file - will it still be recognized by the mod/game if all the other meshes are packed into a ba2? Edited December 7, 2017 by kevkiev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
werr92 Posted December 8, 2017 Share Posted December 8, 2017 (edited) It's totally okay to leave something in loose files. Can't tell you about bodislide files for sure, but I assume you can place actually anything into the ba2 archive. The way Bethesda archives work was explained in detail by Ethreon back in 2013 if I remember that right. So I won't write a long story here, just in a few words. BSA/BA2 archives store data with no dependency on time. Thus, a file with the same name as the one in ba2 will overwrite it. But packing stuff into ba2-s is good for optimization purposes. An archive itself doesn't alter what you place inside but it compresses the size. So the profit comes when the system is extracting data from the archive. It reads faster because of the smaller size of a file, then it decompresses the data. Bottom line, it takes your hardware less time to manage some bit of information in such way then say read the fully unpompressed file. p.s. never got any troubles with scripts not working from ba2. Edited December 8, 2017 by werr92 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevkiev Posted December 8, 2017 Author Share Posted December 8, 2017 Thanks for the reply werr92. That's good info, and I think I'll search for Ethreon's old post. Yeah, I sure notice the performance difference between ba2's and loose files. I recently saw, on Armorsmith extended, that Gambit77 also mentioned leaving some sound files out of the ba2. Still, scripts made me a bit nervous, so your post is comforting. And I'm more comfy packing up my cbbe retexts (I don't have many) into a ba2 and just leaving the BS stuff loose. Actually, I guess BS files don't really matter with better performance anyways, since they're used outside of the game. Anyways, that's something I can test out sometime. Oddly enough, as I posted on another ba2 thread in this forum, I had a strange experience with ba2s when dealing with power armor frame textures and the Vivid enviornment textures "all in one" ba2. Made me wonder if having more than 2 active sets of files, for textures anyway, was too much for the game engine. I.E. overlapping texture files in 2 sets of ba2s + (1 loose files mod or another ba2). Specifically, that mod included some pa frame textures that actually overrode a hi-rez loose file pa frame retext that I had (I thought that loose files always took precedence). I initially tried to fix things by packing my loose file textures into their own ba2 and loading the dummy esp after Vivid's, but that had no effect. But after I removed the pa frame texties from the Vivid ba2, my new retexture ba2 worked fine. So, yeah, the problem arose when there were overlapping textures in (i) two ba2s (VIvid and vanilla) +1 set of loose files (my hi rez mod) and (ii) three ba2s. Even if that's true, I suppose that scenario would be pretty rare, but it's something that caught my attention and I'm kind of on the look out for. For example, I'm thinking of using Jenn Cave's sweet-looking Clean & Simple Red Rocket for my next game. It has an esp and a main ba2. I already use Rocket's Red Glare, which also affects the RR and has loose file materials & textures. If there's overlap in the material files the 2 mods use, I might run into the same problem. If so, it'll probably be a relatively simple merging fix and this is all conjecture at this point anyways (I haven't looked at her ba2's contents) so... er, blah... blah... blah... I guess :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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