BA2 files

[Just your friend]

Hi LoversLab!

I have a small problem with my textures which are compressed to ba2 file. One day I decided to pack ALL my textures (literally a whole folder) into a ba2 archive. At first I packed one big ba2 file (about 15GB) but then I changed my mind and packed it into 5 ba2 files. So where is my problem? I've had a few texture replacers putted into my texture folder and they worked fine but when I packed them into ba2 file they stopped working. In example I've had a minuteman flag replacer installed and when flag files were uncompressed in textures folder it was working but when I packed and compressed files into ba2 only ugly vanilla minuteman flag appears. Does anyone know how to solve it? Because I don't want to install all my replacers separately from packed textures cuz it will take ages.

[Varithina]

From what I am aware the ba2 files name needs to match the esp/esl name to the letter, not to sure about capitalisation in there though it may or my not matter.

 

Even then I have had the same thing as you do, when in loose files they work when packaged the sometimes do, sometimes not.

 

It might be that there is a practical maximum size that ba2 can have even though technically they do not have one that I am aware off.

 

If you are using mo2, you could build the ba2 archive for the mod, normally I then exit mo2 and restart, and check to see if that ba2 is on the archives tab and active, it could be that for whatever reason the ba2 is not being recognised for what ever reason.

[Spyder Arachnid]

The game won't load the BA2 you made without an esp to activate it. Otherwise, it's basically just a zip file sitting in your folder doing nothing.

 

You need to create an esp for your BA2 to have it work and show your textures. I'm not too savvy on how to do all that though, so can't help ya with the creation process. But once you create an esp with the same name as your BA2, then activate it in your mod manager, your textures should show up.

[Just your friend]

Thanks for answers! I'll give it a try and then write it here.

[Just your friend]

1 hour ago, Varithina said:

From what I am aware the ba2 files name needs to match the esp/esl name to the letter, not to sure about capitalisation in there though it may or my not matter.

 

Even then I have had the same thing as you do, when in loose files they work when packaged the sometimes do, sometimes not.

 

It might be that there is a practical maximum size that ba2 can have even though technically they do not have one that I am aware off.

 

If you are using mo2, you could build the ba2 archive for the mod, normally I then exit mo2 and restart, and check to see if that ba2 is on the archives tab and active, it could be that for whatever reason the ba2 is not being recognised for what ever reason.

After your answer I downloaded MO2 but I can't figure out how to make a ba2 file in it. Any clues? Or am I just blind? ?

[AWP3RATOR]

MO2 does not create BA2 files.  You would need to use Archive2 (comes with CK, etc.) or BAE to pack archive files.  As others have noted though, you will need to have a plugin loaded by the same name.

 

You could create a BA2 file called "texture_replacers - Textures.ba2"  and have a completely empty plugin called "texture_replacers.esp" and that would work to load the files.

 

Though I fail to see the reason for doing this, other than potentially saving disk space.  I've seen some people state that BA2 archived files run better/faster at runtime than loose files, but I haven't personally researched the difference or experienced any difference myself when unpacking BA2s.  This could be attributed to the power of my system covering up any lags one way or other however.

 

At the minimum, they take up less space than the loose files would otherwise, and it's less files for the game engine, OS, and MO2 to deal with - so in theory it stands to reason it would run better/faster.   

[Just your friend]

Okay great to know!

 

I'm doing that because I'm totally frustrated with game lags (even on high spec PC) which occur sometime. And it's not a normal lag but it's something like a game freeze. It just stop in one frame for something about 3 or 5 (sometimes even 30!) seconds and then begin to play normally at 60FPS. It mostly happens when in combat, at red rocket and Sanctuary.

[Varithina]

If it is just going to be a archive loader then a esl would work fine for that and save esp slots.

 

BA2 does seem to speed up loading times, though you would likely need to pack all the loose file mods into ba2 to have decent changes and some may not work properly when packaged, unless you play around with their load order.

[AWP3RATOR]

Not the scope of this thread (but you may want to make a new one for it), but your symptom sounds indicative of heavily scripted mods hitting at once and/or stacking up to cause spikes in performance.

[Varithina]

2 hours ago, AWP3RATOR said:

Not the scope of this thread (but you may want to make a new one for it), but your symptom sounds indicative of heavily scripted mods hitting at once and/or stacking up to cause spikes in performance.

That is possible a lot of weapons mods and to a lesser extent armour mods, and quite a few workshop mods are going for the scripted level list injection/set-up for menus and such, some other mods like zombie walkers do massive lag spikes when their scripts are running as well, though most of the armour/weapons one should be done pretty much at game start and never again, note the word should .

[AWP3RATOR]

16 minutes ago, Varithina said:

That is possible a lot of weapons mods and to a lesser extent armour mods, and quite a few workshop mods are going for the scripted level list injection/set-up for menus and such, some other mods like zombie walkers do massive lag spikes when their scripts are running as well, though most of the armour/weapons one should be done pretty much at game start and never again, note the word should .

Right, I would generally assume these would be more geared toward gameplay mechanics, like damage scaling, locational damage, weapons/encounter scaling, combined with mods like diverse bodies, etc.  Scrips that are constantly scanning/reacting to the game environment in other words.  By themselves, they might be fine, when stacked up - they can cause issues like this.

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, AWP3RATOR said:

Right, I would generally assume these would be more geared toward gameplay mechanics, like damage scaling, locational damage, weapons/encounter scaling, combined with mods like diverse bodies, etc.  Scrips that are constantly scanning/reacting to the game environment in other words.  By themselves, they might be fine, when stacked up - they can cause issues like this.

Very true, but if they bodged the scripting well anything goes.