The science of modding. What do we know? : V - Skyrim

» Mon May 14, 2012 10:46 pm

I completely disagree; I really dislike BSAs in general. I like to see what's involved in mods I download.

I like to look at what a mod contains as well ... but it is only a minor inconvenience to use a BSA extractor.

Loading from disk takes time as well ...

Packing into non-compressed BSAs may actually reduce loading time as they help Windows place the files close to each other.

» Tue May 15, 2012 1:07 am

Packing into non-compressed BSAs may actually reduce loading time as they help Windows place the files close to each other.

Copying BSAs around may actually reduce loading time as they help Windows place the files close to each other. :ninja:

» Mon May 14, 2012 8:54 pm

For now, I agree with this. As an individual who runs over 250 mods for oblivion. It gets to be a real Mess when trying to remove anything if it isn't in a bsa. Plus we don't have to worry about overwriting original files.

Hmm, I don't understand this, but I've never had to mess with BSAs before. This was never an issue in Morrowind modding as we had pretty good modding conventions established that most people followed, such as placing all your mod's resources into a folder named for the author (so you could find anything from me by finding the JCSpencer folders in your data files). If you wanted to delete my mod, all you had to do was delete my folder(s) and my .esp. Pretty easy. And this method also had no chance of overwriting anyone else's stuff.

» Tue May 15, 2012 4:17 am

Hmm, I don't understand this, but I've never had to mess with BSAs before. This was never an issue in Morrowind modding as we had pretty good modding conventions established that most people followed, such as placing all your mod's resources into a folder named for the author (so you could find anything from me by finding the JCSpencer folders in your data files). If you wanted to delete my mod, all you had to do was delete my folder(s) and my .esp. Pretty easy. And this method also had no chance of overwriting anyone else's stuff.

Well it isn't hard at all once we have a proper mod manager. Then it doesn't matter. I never played Morrowind, therefore I have no experience using mods for it. With oblivion I don't think you can just name a folder and add stuff to it (Textures and so on) you had to place them specifically in the mesh folder or texture folder and so on. I could be wrong, and if I am, your method of naming a folder with the author is excellent! So could someone enlighten me if this is true for oblivion?

» Tue May 15, 2012 1:39 am

He means subfolders of those, actually. Like Data\Meshes\DW and Data\Textures\DW and such. It's still really trivial.

» Tue May 15, 2012 11:14 am

Do we know if the 400 files thing is going to be an issue this time around? If it's not, then distributing mods in BSA files becomes much more practical and desirable. If it is, then it will be absolutely essential that we don't get people making BSAs to hold 6 files or something because it would rapidly exhaust that file limit.

» Tue May 15, 2012 10:21 am

Do we know if the 400 files thing is going to be an issue this time around? If it's not, then distributing mods in BSA files becomes much more practical and desirable. If it is, then it will be absolutely essential that we don't get people making BSAs to hold 6 files or something because it would rapidly exhaust that file limit.

Where are the devs when you need them! Arthmoor, I forgot about that. :/
That changes things.

» Tue May 15, 2012 3:15 am

How hard would it be to, say, rig the werewolf race attack H2H anims to a non-werewolf race? Just wondering for some mod ideas.

» Tue May 15, 2012 5:01 am

I completely disagree; I really dislike BSAs in general. I like to see what's involved in mods I download.

As zone says, a proper mod manager is more appropriate for dealing with install/uninstall issues.

I agree--seeing what's involved in mods.