Oblivion & MO2, question about dating BSA's

[Murielkai]

Hey, I looked into using MO a few years back for modding Oblivion and it seemed like a bit of a mess but with MO2 a lot of the headache has been cleared up. I just have a couple of questions really...

 

Mainly, doesn't OBMM re-date BSA's to tell the Oblivion engine how to load them? If this is so then how does MO2 handle this when adjusting mod and load order?

 

I am currently running OBMM as a tool through MO2 to unpack OMOD files into the overwrite folder, I'm assuming that OBMM is dating the BSA's at the time I unpack them, I'm just curious what happens when I adjust the mod install order (left side in MO2).

[DrakeTheDragon]

In native Oblivion there was no install order or priority when it came to loading BSAs. One BSA simply could not contain the same files as another, or the result which got loaded over which would've been random at best. That's also why replacer-type mods never used BSAs but only loose files back then.

 

The re-date BSA timestamps feature you mentioned was for the original game's BSAs only, in order to make replacement mods with loose files actually work. As also in native Oblivion the file date of a BSA file being newer as the one of a loose file meant to replace some of the previous' contents effectively prevented the loose file from ever being even considered to be used. And digital distributors such as Steam and GoG were known to date the BSAs of the original game with the date of their download onto your drive, not as in the disc versions around 2006, which they instead must've been.

 

I don't know exactly how MO2 handled that part though, enabling Archive Invalidation and asset replacements to work, but wasn't there something about an Override folder or some such? Never used it myself, so I'm just guessing from past readings.

[Murielkai]

@_@

 

Honestly the whole re-dating BSA's kinda confuses me. The override folder is kinda like an "overflow" folder most of the time, it catches .ini files and similar generated assets from various mods. You usually (or at least I do) create a mod out of those files to keep the override folder empty, or it can quickly become confusing. Files in the override folder are ALWAYS considered to be at the very bottom of the mod install order so they override everything else.

 

How do you enable "Archive Invalidation and asset replacements" again?

Edited August 21, 2019 by Murielkai

[ReverendFelix]

Use this;

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/10724

 

Get the installer version. Make sure to remove any other type of invalidation first. Don't listen to the hype, this works for me perfectly with around 40 bsa's installed.