Need help packaging modded textures back into the game

[PiemasterXL]

Hey doods. I modified some textures in photoshoop and I tried to use the archiver in the main skyrim folder, but then when i put the bsa and bsl files in the data folder it does no appear in my nexus mod manager.

 

thanks in advance,

 

 

pie.

[David Brasher]

It is my understanding that Nexus Mod Manager deals with .esp files. It sort of sounds like you just created a .bsa file. So Nexus Mod Manager would not be the tool to use to install a mod like this. Manual installation would be the way to go. The .bsl file has no known function for gamers. You may go ahead and delete it. If you are trying to make a texture replacer mod with no .esp, so that your new textures overwrite and replace the original ones, you probably should not use a .bsa. You should probably install the mod in the loose files format. This is because there is no good way to adjust the load order of .bsa files as there is with the load order of .esp files. But loose files trump .bsa files. So if you install the mod as loose files, it should definitely override the vanilla Skyrim .bsa file in question. There is also the matter of the game not being able to see into any .bsa that does not have an .esp or .esm of the same name. So if you use a .bsa file, you will need to have a mod with the same name even if it is empty and contains no edits.

[PiemasterXL]

Thanks for the reply, and sorry for the questions: how do i make a .esp or whatever file/folder is needed to have it toggleable?

[David Brasher]

The CK is the tool that you use to create .esp files. If all you need is an empty .esp that contains no edits, for purposes of unlocking a .bsa, then you would not really need to know much about how to work the CK. You would just need to load up Skyrim.esm as a master in the CK and then save your mod and give it a name when prompted. (If you already had an empty .esp, you could simply copy it and rename it in Windows Explorer.)