What is Currently the Easiest Way to Pack a .bsa?

[steve40]

The archiver in the CK doesn't find image files that are embedded in book texts.

Edit: although, I've discovered that these won't work if they are packed into a bsa anyway :whistling:

Edited May 15, 2012 by steve40

[Ironman5000]

David here is a way to manually pack your BSA

 

1 - Create a folder with the exact same name as your esp/esm in a new directory

2 - Make a data folder with the meshes and textures folders inside, plus sounds if you use them

3 - Place your files in the correct places, make sure they are all there

4 - Open up the Archiver.exe in the skyrim folder

5 - Flag the meshes and textures boxes on the left, others if necessary.

6 - There is a list to the left to check, just do the top two and the bottom options (I forget the names, my gaming cpu is being mended atm but they are the right ones)

7 - Now to go to "edit" and "choose directory", then locate your folder and select the folder named the same as your file

8 - You should have a list of all the meshes and textures, go to "edit" and select "check all"

9 - Save the file to the skyrim\data directory, but that should be the default path anyway and save as the same name as your esp/esm

 

I think that's it, if you run into any trouble or I left anything out PM me and I will fill in the blanks. It does work because I use it for my mods :thumbsup:

[steve40]

I've recently tried BSAOpt. It works well, just remember to run the prog as Administrator. You can recompress bsa files or archive & compress a folder as a bsa. However, I found that if I compress a bsa that contains music files in xwm format that they didn't seem to work when packed, so I recommend using zero compression. An uncompressed bsa made with BSAOpt is smaller than one made with the CK archiver anyway :tongue:

[David Brasher]

The wiki now contains more information on this topic: Archive.exe, Edited May 22, 2012 by David Brasher

[EnaiSiaion]

My solution is pretty simple: all of my files are prefixed with Apoc_ so I can just do a Windows search for Apoc_ and it will turn up everything associated with my mod and nothing else. Then I just generate an archive and when it shows the file list I drag the whole bunch over into my CK window.

 

I wonder if the often reported "scripts in a bsa randomly don't work" issue is actually because the scripts were not even packed in the first place and the modmaker didn't notice, and if not, whether it could be resolved by using an alternate bsa packer?