Bunce97 Posted February 1, 2018 Share Posted February 1, 2018 Sorry in advance I'm really new to this .-. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WastelandAssassin Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 well , I'm not sure what a BAR file is , but in general it's pretty simpleRAR files are archives that hold other files , in a compressed manner (so they weigh less than the sum of their contents)this is a generally favorable method of uploading multiple files in a single download , and is a common file typethese can be opened with programs like Winzip\Winrar\7zip , so there are plenty of options here (and these are free programs) game folders (like Meshes , Textures , Sounds etc) are simply folders that contain files , and are named in the specific convention the game recognizesthese are just folders of loose files , organized in a very specific way , and this way is set up by modders in how they create their files and plugins (so if you install a file to the wrong folder , the game won't find it and hence won't load it) BSA archives are a special type of archive that can contain files the game can access , but it's set as a single file rather than loose files with a folder structure (inside it's organized in the same way , but to use it's just a single file)for these you need to allow the game to load these BSAs , as the game is only supposed to load the ones that come with the game , but this is usually done easily through whichever mod manager you use plugins (esp and esm files) are files that contain specific game content , which can be created through the Creation Kitthese hold information like quests , scripts , places etc , so the game basically reads from these filesthe game has Skyrim.esm as it's master file , the DLCs have these , and most mods have these types of filesthese are the files that make up your load order (which is limited to 255 plugins , though it's always recommended to stay well below this limit if possible , especially for inexperienced mod users) I tried making this as simple as I can , while being as clear as I canIf you have any more questions , or still don't understand anything regarding this subject , feel free to askalso know that there are amazing tutorials and guides for beginners (for example on YouTube) , so there are plenty of sources of information for you to start your journey into modding with Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunce97 Posted February 2, 2018 Author Share Posted February 2, 2018 oh so that's why they are put as plugins cuz they are created with the games engine or via whatever editor the developers release? and I meant bsa not bar and so bsa and rar are basically packages that contain content and the difference between those and zip files is basically rar and bsa are packaged neater? but if that's the only difference and you are gonna extract them both anyway why go though the process of making bsa and rar files? why not just do zip files? or is it where if its a rar or bsa you don't have to extract? and ive watched a TON of videos but you cant ask specifics like you can on a forum and I find one on one interaction just helps me learn better Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkRudra Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 There are lots of different methods for creating compressed file archives like RAR or ZIP files floating out there. RAR is less popular and sees less usage because it is a proprietary format. That means someone somewhere created and owns that format. Only the software that person creates or licenses can create RAR files. For example, If Bethesda wanted the Creation Kit to produce RAR files, they would have had to pay that guy money before ever releasing any game created with the Creation Kit. Because of restrictions like that, there is very little software that is actually capable of reading RAR files. In contrast, ZIP and 7z compressed file archives are non-proprietary formats free to use in other software, if one wants to do so. Why do the games use BSA instead of ZIP files? That's because not all ZIP files are created equal. Over time, the compression methods used to create ZIP files have changed. This is also true of 7z files and some other popular archive types. It's entirely possible to create two very different ZIP files from one given group of loose files by changing settings used when compressing the files. Coding the games to be able to identify and deal with those differences would be possible, but it is probably more efficient, and easier, to have the game a different format where the results of the compression are more standard. And that leads me into the difference between BSA files and other compressed archives. The BSA compression method was created by Bethesda specifically for use in their games like Skyrim. They are always created by the Creation Kit and it uses a specific method, settings, and type of compression for them. The games are programmed to know how to read quickly and efficiently without extracting the archives into a collection of loose files. As for extracting BSAs - I don't know that Bethesda ever intended for us, the end users, to actually do that. As far as I know, the only tools for doing so are third party (aka fan created) software. There's generally no reason to extract the BSAs that come with the game unless you're super curious about the layout of file folders like meshes/, textures/, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunce97 Posted February 2, 2018 Author Share Posted February 2, 2018 (edited) so archives (zip, 7z, rar, bsa, ect) are compressed files and depending on the archive type and or the way the contents are compressed they could be be a lil different and in order for the game to process it efficiently and or correctly they need to be built (aka coded) to deal with it but instead of deal with all the settings for zip and 7zip, ect. when making the game Bethesda decided to have a standard compression format which is bsa hence why we see bsa instead of the others in their game? and I have a zipped file aka archive and I extract the contents to a unzipped folder..are the contents now considered loose files? Edited February 2, 2018 by Bunce97 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkRudra Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 so archives (zip, 7z, rar, bsa, ect) are compressed files and depending on the archive type and or the way the contents are compressed they could be be a lil different and in order for the game to process it efficiently and or correctly they need to be built (aka coded) to deal with it but instead of deal with all the settings for zip and 7zip, ect. when making the game Bethesda decided to have a standard compression format which is bsa hence why we see bsa instead of the others in their game?*nods* Right. :smile: and I have a zipped file aka archive and I extract the contents to a unzipped folder..are the contents now considered loose files? If we were talking about anything other than Skyrim mods, my answer would be: yes, those extracted contents would be considered loose files. However, the exact term "loose files" has come to have a different, more specific meaning in some contexts when related to Skyrim mods. In light of that, a better term for the contents you extracted to an unzipped folder might be "extracted files." "Loose files" - when related to Skyrim or other Bethesda games - is sometimes a specific reference to the files that would or could be in a BSA archive for the game to use, but are not actually in a BSA archive. Mods are generally developed using loose files, with the BSA archive only being created when the mod is ready for final testing or distribution. Some mods are distributed without a BSA; these may instead include the loose files directly. (Of course, all those files are typically packed in a ZIP or similar archive for ease of download.) Some mods will offer you a choice before downloading - you can download a BSA version or a Loose Files version. The only difference between the two should be that the Loose Files version contains a lot of individual files and the BSA version contains all or most of those files (except any .esp files) in a BSA archive. For a specific example to illustrate this usage of the term "loose files," let me reference the Skyrim mod Bounty Gold. If you download it, you'll get a file called Bounty Gold-36534-1-1.zip. So that's a ZIP archive. It contains two files: Bounty Gold.esp and Bounty Gold.bsa; the latter is of course, a BSA archive. If extract those to your computer's Skyrim\Data folder (making them "extracted files"), then the game would see Bounty Gold.esp and automatically load Bounty Gold.bsa at the appropriate time. Tada, the mod is installed and works. Now, if we wanted to see Bounty Gold's "loose files," we could go through some extra steps. We'd get a tool like BSAopt that can extract the contents of a BSA archive. Using this, we could open the Bounty Gold.bsa archive file and see the files contained in it. We could then extract those files somewhere using BSAopt. The default output destination is a subfolder of the current folder called "out," so that would give us Skyrim\Data\out\ which would contain two subfolders: interface and scripts. Each of those would contain further subfolders or files that make up the BSA's contents. All this stuff now in Skyrim\Data\out would collectively be called Bounty Gold's "loose files." We could, if we wanted, go one further step here: delete the Skyrim\Data\Bounty Gold.bsa file and move the "loose files" up from the out\ folder to the Skyrim\Data\ folder. After doing that, the mod should continue to work in the game just as it did before, when Bounty Gold.bsa was present in Data\ folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunce97 Posted February 2, 2018 Author Share Posted February 2, 2018 so your basically saying it depends...there could be archives within a archive so therefore that wouldn't be loose files until you extracted each of those? so I have a zip folder and I extract its content I get a bsa folder and some meshes and textures the meshes and textures are loose files but not the contents as a whole until I take out whats in the bsa because that alone is a archive also Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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