The Skyrim External Script File Design Flaw

[David Brasher]

Skyrim is not a good game to use mods with.

 

Oblivion was bad enough with external meshes and textures and sounds and things, but Skyrim has external scripts and this prevents a lot of mods from getting packaged right, installed right, or from working right in combination with other mods. Not only do you have to worry about a mod's position in the load order, but you have to worry about what order the mods were installed in because the scripts will overwrite other versions of the scripts. So if you are using mods with loose files, and two mods both edit the same script in different ways, then you have to figure out which change you want most badly, and install or reinstall that mod's scripts after the other mod was installed.

 

That sounds bad enough, but what if you are using mods with .bsa files that have conflicting scripts? I have not heard if there is a way to set your .bsa file load order. If you had two mods editing the same script, you would wish that one particular .bsa would override the other.

 

Now a modder could jump in and extract the script in question and run it as a loose file or merge the scripts or merge the .bsa. But what about gamers who can't mod, or modders who don't want to mess with all that and just want to play Skyrim?

 

What is the best course of action to take if you have two conflicting .bsa files and you want to keep using both mods and you want a particular one to win the conflict?

Edited May 31, 2012 by David Brasher

[jet4571]

There is the .bsa list in the skyrim.ini, possibly add one of the mod .bsa files to the list?

 

[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa

[DreamKingMods]

To the best of my knowledge:

 

Resources in BSAs will be loaded into the game according to the user's mod load order.

 

Conflicts between loose files can be managed fine by Wrye Bash's installation system.

 

The real problem comes if you try to mix mods with BSAs and those with loose files--because loose files will always override BSAs. In other words, you could have a mod with a BSA positioned lower in your load order than a mod that uses loose files, but the loose files will override the BSA. I imagine that eventually the ideal is to have Bash scan the contents of BSAs to detect conflicts in archives, but that's probably a goodly ways into the future.

 

For now, it seems best to either unpack all BSAs into loose files before installing using Bash, or to pack all loose files into BSAs before installing using your mod management method of choice.

Edited June 1, 2012 by DreamKingMods

[steve40]

Skyrim's a great game to use mods :tongue: . You should try FSX, now that's a disaster :sick:

 

AFAIK the bsa doesn't need to have the same name as the mod, it is only an archive of assets afterall. You could rename the bsa's, I presume they would load alphabetically. Otherwise, use skyrim.ini as Jet4571 suggests. But really, you should avoid changing the base vanilla scripts at all costs, or import the base script into an empty script and then add the event blocks that you want to override. Loose files are bad. I've removed most mods that have many loose files, it's given me a much more stable Skyrim experience.

[gasti89]

As Steve40 said, noone should modify Vanilla scripts. Default scripts are very useful, but they are designed to work "as they are".

 

So by just editing properties you won't create a PEX version and everything will work well.

 

If a modder wants to edit a default script, he just has to copy the source and paste it on a new script.

 

So the chances that two custom scripts have the same name are veeeeeery few.