I have hit a brick wall - I cannot get any BSA packer to work with FNV. I have tried both the NVMM version and the new FOMM (you have to access it from the start menu but it works like normal). I manually edited the default_fallout.ini file adding the following:

SArchiveList=4AcesVanilla1.bsa, 4AcesVanilla2.bsa, 4AcesVanilla3.bsa, Fallout - Misc.bsa, Fallout - Meshes.bsa, Fallout - Voices1.bsa, Fallout - Sound.bsa

and just to be safe

sUnessentialFileCacheList=Data\Fallout - Meshes.bsa|Data2\Fallout - Meshes.bsa, Data\Music\Dungeon\*.xma, Data\Music\Base\*.mp3, Data\Music\Battle\*.mp3, Data\Music\Explore\*.mp3, Data\Music\Public\*.mp3, Data\Music\Special\*.mp3, Data\4AcesVanilla1.bsa, Data\4AcesVanilla2.bsa, Data\4AcesVanilla3.bsa

Yet when I try to load the game cannot find any of the textures in my BSAs. As you can see I removed references to their original BSAs and moved them to a temp folder to force the game into using mine. If I use them as loose files it works like a charm, but this time around I want it much neater than 22K loose texture files (no, that is not an exaggeration). I am limiting the total size of the files to 1.5GB so it cannot be the BSA filesize limit since that is around 1.8GB (at least that is what I found in F3 - and then it only corrupts some files). With my current attempts, it crashes right out at start, and I am running no other mods with patch #3.

Has anyone managed to get a non-empty BSA to compile and work with FNV?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

4Aces

I had the same problem when I tried to PYFFI optimize the Meshes. Even when I just repacked the Meshes BSA with FOMM I got the same crash on startup. This was after the first patch.

Hopefully you find something that works. I would be interested to hear a solution.

Eww.

Ive found that "optimizing" meshes only stripped the files of important things, like fusing duplicate verts thus removing any smooth groups as well as improperly facing normals.

Uhhh, yes. It was as straightforward as my experiences with FO3.

File is here, if you want to look at it: http://www.finhosting.fi/~fallout/downloads/development/NVPhalanx-009.zip

.esp is named: NVPhalanx.esp. .bsas are named: NVPhalanx - Textures.bsa and NVPhalanx - Meshes.bsa , you must expect to obey that naming convention.

It was no biggie and I believe the program I used to create the .bsas was FO3Archive (can be found on nexus somewhere).

Edit: In my experience, you cannot use one .bsa file to overwrite resources in the vanilla .bsa files. You must distribute as directory structures to accomplish that?

I had no issue with getting a proper .bsa to work. Like Tarrant, my naming was tkTest.esp and tkTest.bsa, and no entries added to the .ini

-I say proper, since I discovered that using (F3)FOMM, I couldn't add folders separately and have them work. I manually added meshes\, then textures\, but those top-level folders get ignored, I had to select a folder up from them. (ie Data\ containing meshes\ and textures\)

So the ones that got them to work had to also include an ESP. I would prefer to not do this to keep it as clean as possible (since my HiRes would have 6 ESPs). I am trying to remove the Fallout - Textures.bsa and Fallout - Textures2.bsa to another folder and make the game use my three which were all created using this file structure:
data/textures/* (where * is the particular sub folders - my three BSAs contain everything found in the originals)

I tried renaming them with the "Fallout - " convention and that did not improve anything (and I updated the fallout_default.ini accordingly). I also tried renaming to Fallout - Textures1, Fallout - Textures2, Fallout - Textures3 and it still did not work. I toggled ArchiveInvalidation off and on, and still nothing.

While I still hope that someone can figure out what I am doing wrong - I will try the ESP method. What exactly should I be adding to the ESP since I have no changes to make to the main.esp, or do I have to make three separate ESP files with the same filename as the BSA file (so 4AcesVanilla1.esp for 4AcesVanilla1.bsa ... for all three)?

Thanks again!

There is no not-including-an-esp. You must have an ESP (or an esm) associated with this, or, the game has no cue to load your .bsa.

Not to mention - - with no .esp, this cannot work at all. You cannot use a .bsa to do a direct replacement of resources within NV's own .bsa, it doesn't work that way. If you use a .bsa you must edit each object and point the new texture or whatever to your own one (which the .bsa holds). To make that edit, it's an .esp or .esm.

To do a simple override of NV's bsa resources you must use subdirectories etc. and not a .bsa.

That is why I edited the fallout_default.ini and added my files (and removed the Vanilla) to both the unessential files area and the SArchiveList since that is what tells the game where to look for assets.
An ESP/ESM should not be required. That is why this is so confusing. If you use the same filenames as the ones you are replacing it works (at least it did in F3) so there must be another file controlling this (and the fallout_default is be overridden).

Anyway, what should I be doing with the ESPs? Are they just empty but share the same names as my BSA files? Or is there some global setting for assets that can be set (I checked but could not see anything like that - and I have some exp. with the GECK).

Thanks!

I've never attempted something so nonstandard so I am not sure what could work vs. fail.

As far as the .esp goes, I think what you would do is, make your .esp edit the item in question, and then, use NVEdit to repoint the path to the texture you wanted (its a virtual path of sorts, as it lives within your .bsa's represented directory structure if there is one).

If what you're trying actually works but then, people have to edit those .ini files to use your mod, note that you're setting yourself up for 100,000 of those "i can't get it to work, heeeelp" sorts of requests, eh ... :> one of the bigger reasons I took Phalanx into .bsa files was to eliminate that.

Alright, then loose files it is. I have upgraded all the texture maps (~16K of them - the other 6K were not touched - mostly heightmaps/icons). I use the same pathing as the Vanilla, so when my BSAs are decompressed they are of identical folder structure as when Vanilla BSAs are decompressed. So I guess it will just have to be another loose file mod (though at 22K this is much larger than F3's 12K).


Thanks for the help! :foodndrink:

Uh, how exactly are you 'upgrading' all these textures? I've seen other people try and upsample images and call them 'high res' in the past. I think a few tried to pull off adding sharpen filters or awful high-frequency patterns over the images to make them appear more 'high res' without actually adding any detail to warrant the double size. (ie, wasteful and irresponsible use of VRAM)

edit: but it always amuses me when people "really notice the difference" because they were told they are 'high res'.

Once again, I have no permission to edit my own post (with no posts after it) - so here is a double post :violin:

I finally :banghead: until :celebration:

Apparently the main executable (FalloutNV.exe) or programs that use it (FOMM or the 4GB enabler) did not take into account my altered fallout_default.ini. :swear: So as I was just removing all my test files when it hit me to give it one last try with the launcher (FalloutNVLauncher.exe) and the silly bugger worked. So right now I am running Fallout - Textures.bsa, Fallout - Textures2.bsa, and Fallout - Textures3.bsa with no ESP/ESM and a test in game showed textures from all folders without issue. So you can just make your BSA, add it to the INI under [Archive] (you probably do not need to add them to the unessential cache at the top).

Now I have to pack my 9GB of HiRes and make sure it can handle that many.

To be clear: The original are not listed in the INI and their BSAs are in a folder far away from the game's reach.

Warnings about BSAs:
I believe that you have to pack your folders alphabetically across all your BSAs (if you have more than one that targets the same root folder - as mine target Textures). I found this out the hard way in F3, if the game is looking for folder "clutter" and instead it finds "dungeons" because you did not pack them in order, it will stop looking. It is not very robust, so put everything in order even if that means more BSAs. The other thing I discovered (the hard way of course) is that there apparently was (and probably still is) a limit on the size of a BSA which is around 1.7 GB. If you put more than this into a single BSA you will find that some files will suffer corruption in the game. If you decompress them they will be perfect, it is likely that the game's limited use of RAM prevents it from being able to decompress a file of that size on-the-fly. The thing that make this very strange is that I do not use file compression on my BSAs for the max FPS boost (it was small for Vaniila sized textures in F3 ~ 5 to 7 FPS but it was much better for HiRes). So there should be no overhead for decompression, but still I will not pack anything over 1.5GB per BSA even with no compression. If you are using high compression like Obisidian did (~90% for the Textures) then it is likely that you need to lower the max size even further to allow for the extra RAM (I suggest 1.2GB @ 90%).

Thanks again to everyone for their help! :foodndrink: