I was finaly forced to do this now that I am working with Skyrim Nifs. But here is my worry...

What is the games load order now for loose files and BSA? Will the game now look at the loose files AFTER the BSAs?

IF so that means I now am forced to upack ALL the BSAs so that when I play I will not lose the HI def upgrade and all the other changes from each nif/texture bsa?


- Skyrim - Meshes.bsa

- Skyrim - Textures.bsa

- All the Hi def DLC BSA

- update bsa *

- Unofficial Skyrim Patch.bsa *

-HighResTexturePackFix.bsa

(*in case there are nif/texure files, and I bet there are.)


AND MUST UNPACK IN THAT ORDER SO AS TO OVERWRITE THEM PROPERLY!

THAT IS A HELL OF A LOT OF LOOSE FILES!


Will this effect game speed?

Loose files will always override BSA files, there is no need to unpack everything.

You will not lose your Hi-Def Textures unless you replace those specific files, and if you have no idea what those are then you're probably going to be fine. If you plan on using vanilla .nif and texture files in the CK, just unpack those alone.

er...no...

If I unpack the vanilla bsa nifs/tex they WILL override the BSA HI DEF because they load into the game last as loose files.

And the same goes for all the other BSA, if there is an update texture in the HighResTexturePackFix.bsa it will not show up in the game because of the loose vanilla textures.

And if there is an updated nif/tex in the Update.BSA file (there are I just looked) it would not show if I only unpack the vanilla nd the 3 Hi Def BSAs .... and so on and so on...

So to be sure all the nif/tex files will show in the game AND if I want the CK to have all the files available while I mod I need to unpack all the bsa as listed in my previous post and unpack them in the correct order as well.

I suppose if you are the kind of moder that only does Landscapes then yes you could only unpack the trees and rocks etcetera, and not worry to much, but I mod everything and I do not want any grey out choices while I am working in the CK.

Are there really moders that only mod trees and have no interest in any other parts of the game... I guess so...

Why would you unpack the BSA's and leave all the files loose in there? Why not, unpack them to a different location and only keep the loose files you want to use there specifically? That way you could pick and choose high res or not.

Edit: Clearly I only read half of your last post as you did say exactly why you would leave them all there. Second part still stands though, seems a sensible, if not hard disk space heavy solution.

Lol.... my hard dive is only 1/3 full. And that is with 8 years of work related Acad files, sound effects files and sound editing programs and ALL my 6 years of Oblivion loose files still on as well. But then I am I am not a collector of music and videos, I spend all my free time and money on special effects, animated props and and the pursuit of creating virtual reality (moding).

Just unpack the BSA files in the same order as your load list - that will ensure all your loose files are the ones you want. I never bothered to get the official hi-def texture pack so I'm not 100% certain on this next part, but it should be safe to unpack those at any time since they just affect visuals.

And no, there shouldn't be any performance issues since everything packed in a .BSA is just compressed to save space. If anything, unpacking everything should improve performance.

Unpacking everything can degrade performance slightly due to disk fragmentation.

I'm not sure why you need to unpack everything though. I've not seen a situation yet while in the CK where the BSAs being unpacked would have helped.

i unpack all BSA's in a separate folder (i have a "dummy data folder" right next to the real data folder), then i copy over what i need into the real data folder temporarily for what i need to do in the CK (like assigning specific nif models/creating texture sets, etc). once i'm done with it, i delete the file from the real data folder

Yes, I was thinking about something like that as well, maybe a batch file so I can press a button and move all the "vanilla stuff" back and forth and thus leaving my modded stuff because it would not be in my list in my batch file to move around. I already do this with backing up all my mod files into another folder with one click on my desktop. But I already unpacked it all in my data folder and the game runs fine and now I can see and work with all the nifs in the CK and Nifskope while I am brainstorming and designing. I just do not understand the other moders that do not do this but I guess it has a lot to do with moding style and what type of mods one makes.