Load Loose Files? Can someone please tell me what that means? Probably a noob question :facepalm:

Did you Defragment your install?

He's talking about the option under data files in the launcher- you can tick "load loose files." I've never really known what it did either myself.

I didn't think it had to do with defragmentation though.

I always assumed that it meant loading files that were not in the BSA archives (perhaps favoring them regardless of file dates). :shrug: I really don't know.

Same

It seems to do a whole lot of nothing though. This makes me think that they might have put it in, and never got around to making it work.

Now that I think about it some more....

That could be for Mods that have individual Graphics files. Normally the Data structure folder contains little or nothing unless it was added by a patch, or, mostly mods. The graphics data is contained in BSAs that are unpacked by the game as needed. Think of it as a compressed graphics file database and you are not far off. Some folks have tried unpacking the BSAs in hopes of the game running better with Oblivion and Fallout 3, but little comes of it.

So, it could have to do with mods. Let me move this thread over there so those folks can answer.

I am curious too. Looks like it is intended to remove the need for ai?

It's been in all the games(morrowind/oblivion/fo3), but it's never worked. The engine seems to always load bsa's and esm's regardless of what you do unless you have some form of invalidation active.

it loads any loose files that are just hanging out in your data folder say you just have a texture just sitting there not organized or anything it will auto load it up will also load any .esp that are sitting in the data file if you have all the stuff to it in the data file as well( by that i mean not where it belongs like in textures or sound folders.)

You do know it does not get used much though based on the mod's response. I don't think almost anyone uses it unless they have a very improperly packaged mod they really really want to use as is. I don't think I've ever needed to click on it regardless of what kind of mod I've used (whether it's one that replaces existing meshes etc.)