Experienced modders - BSA question on priority

[prideslayer]

Had a forum or wiki page somewhere that explained all of this, but I've lost the link, so to you other modders that have experience with BSA's -- specifically for FNV but other games may be similar -- I have a question.

 

If two BSAs have the same file(s) in them, what rules govern which asset will be used? Is it simply a matter of whichever one has the newest timestamp.. or is it the oldest.. or something else?

 

I'm trying to get all the sexout assets rolled into BSAs and some of these override vanilla assets, and while it appears that the sexout BSAs are taking precedence over the fallout BSAs, I want to understand how this is decided by the engine when it loads assets.

 

Anyone who knows how the 'load order' of assets in BSAs works, please feel free to chime in.

[Guest Shendar]

I worked only with TES III, IV, V mods but I'm pretty sure Fallout data processing is similar. If I remember correctly, files are loaded in this order:

• BSA listed in *.ini files.
• Loose assets in data directory.
• BSA associated with ESP plugins (must have the same name).

Edit: Found this forum post in my bookmarks. I believe this should help with most BSA-related issues. 

[prideslayer]

Thanks. With archive invalidation in FONV, the loose files in data always override any BSAs, this is how I understand it to work anyway, but the other part is what I was interested in -- do you know if ESM plugins work the same as ESPs?

 

If 'somefile.nif' is in a BSA listed in the INI, and also in a BSA that accompanies an add-in mod, the add-in mod's somefile.nif will be loaded instead of the one from the BSA listed in the INI?

[Guest Shendar]

If 'somefile.nif' is in a BSA listed in the INI, and also in a BSA that accompanies an add-in mod, the add-in mod's somefile.nif will be loaded instead of the one from the BSA listed in the INI?

 

That's how it works (from my experience at least). No idea about ESM mods though, sorry. By BethSoft logic, BSA associated with ESM should be loading before ones associated with ESP (like Dawnguard content that is being overridden by various ESP mods) but this is just my speculation.