Adding mod content to original archive and esm files

[ghosen]

Is it possible to add and optimize something like qarl's texture pack and the oblivion texture/mesh patches to the original bsa archives?

If it is how do you do this? I've tried unpacking the files, copy and pasting in qtp3full and the patch files and re-archiving but my game menu's are a mess. Not sure if I used 2 much compression, pyffi messed something up, or I'm just missing some other detail.

 

Also if it is possible can the archives with the new upgraded texture / meshes be optimised by pyffi after this is done?

 

I basically want to run qarls texture pack 3, RAEVWD, AWLS, GWLS, and FCOM so I'm hoping I can reduce the size of my texture / meshes folders a bit by moving my visual improvements to the original BSAs.

 

In addition I'm trying to reduce my esp count, can the official and unofficial patch changes be moved into the original esm files or possibly a single esp file?

[eric31415]

Packing mod-added meshes and textures into bsa files could gain you a little performance, but only if you have a slow HDD paired with a fairly good CPU.

 

That said, packing them into the vanilla bsa files sounds like a bad idea. If you want to do this, add all the mods you will want to use first, then compress the mesh and texture folders. Be very careful of file structure, has to stay exactly the same. Keep in mind that while i have been thinking about trying this as an experiment, i haven't had the time yet. So if you still want to do this, keep backups of your original working files, and post your results here. Also if you wanted to add a new mod (with meshes or textures) after doing this, you would have to unpack the bsa files, add the new mod, and repack them. I'm not sure it would be worth the time. I'm looking at 10gb to compress (combined mesh and tex).

 

As far as running everything thru PYFFI, the only mods that might show a benefit from this are the ones you see on screen all the time. Basically QTP3 and flora replacers. And optimized files for QTP3 are already available on the Nexus.

 

For merging esp files you will need TES4Gecko. I wouldnt mess with the UOP, but merging a bunch of small weapon and armor mods is a good way to reduce your count. Any part of the UOP that can be merged will become part of your bashed patch anyways.

[ghosen]

Is Qarl's texture pack 3 in the same file structure as the original files ? Ideally I only want to upgrade the base textures / meshes to qarls. That way any mod that calls vanilla resources would be pulling the improved graphics and optimized meshes. (Although from what I understand it is possible to pyffi the vanilla Meshes BSA if you wanted to and recompressing that.)

[DrakeTheDragon]

You could already run into trouble following that path, because Quarl's packages are usually quite big and a BSA file must not be bigger than 2 GB or the game won't load it. So if you can't compress all of Quarl's texture replacement files into the one Oblivion - Textures compressed BSA anyways, the whole idea is futile. You can package Quarl's into its own "two" BSAs and make the game use these, but that's not the same as what you're asking for. There are several most times good causes for "not" to modify the existing BSAs. BSA prioritizing is also quite unclear as of now, so packing "replacement" files into BSAs can already lead into priority issues.

 

And to answer your question, texture replacers must be in the same folder structure as the original Vanilla files, or they will not work. Some replacer mods alter the settings and file pathes with an ESP, so they don't have to replace the actual files, but I doubt that's the case with a pure texture replacer pack such as Quarl's.

Edited April 15, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[eric31415]

Kudos, Drake. That little tidbit about the game not loading large bsa files just saved me from a time-consuming and ultimately futile experiment.

[ghosen]

Sounds like the BSA size thing might be why my attempt made such a mess. At a guess you could BSA qarl's and then use an esp to make it replace, but you'd have to manually edit every single in game item and cell which would probably be more work than a megamod for very little return as you'd have to patch any mods you want to use the new resource files anyway.

 

 

"Kudos, Drake. That little tidbit about the game not loading large bsa files just saved me from a time-consuming and ultimately futile experiment.", eric31415

 

ditto