BSA Questions

[sixth]

I'm trying to find things to pack into BSA's to decrease my ungodly long load times, what're the types of files I can safely pack into a BSA, and what're some i should absolutely not under any circumstances? Are there any useful tips or tricks when considering what to make into a BSA? Thank you !!

[Grey Cloud]

Why do you think that loose files are causing your long load times?

[sixth]

2 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Why do you think that loose files are causing your long load times?

I don't think they're the cause, but BSA's speed it up don't they? 

[Grey Cloud]

53 minutes ago, sixth said:

I don't think they're the cause

Then why not discover and remove the cause?

 

Have you noticed anyone else complaining about long load times or discussing BSAs in any context?

[sixth]

25 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Then why not discover and remove the cause?

I have 912 active mods, a lot of which are pushing my PC to it's limits (ENB, 2 grass mods working simultaneously for the intended effect with multiple other mods, DynDOLOD, etc) so it's either a mod that'll take me months of sorting and experimenting to find, or it's my whole setup not being right for my PC in which case there is no fix besides just getting a better PC, so guess you could consider this me grasping at straws for a quick solution to a probably not so simply issue.

 

27 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Have you noticed anyone else complaining about long load times or discussing BSAs in any context?

Yes, I saw a lot of posts either describing how BSA's can help, asking what can help and getting that as an answer, or finding that answer on their own and sharing that it worked for them, and so on

[Grey Cloud]

36 minutes ago, sixth said:

I have 912 active mods, a lot of which are pushing my PC to it's limits

Skyrim has its limits regardless of the specs of your PC. 900+ mods is a ridiculous number.

 

36 minutes ago, sixth said:

so it's either a mod that'll take me months of sorting and experimenting to find, or it's my whole setup not being right for my PC

That is incorrect and largely illogical.

 

36 minutes ago, sixth said:

Yes, I saw a lot of posts either describing how BSA's can help

I'll take your word for that as I have rarely seen such posts. Did any of these posts provide any evidence?

 

36 minutes ago, sixth said:

(ENB, 2 grass mods working simultaneously for the intended effect with multiple other mods, DynDOLOD, etc)

I run LE with, currently,  just over 300 mods (I think). I use an ENB; have 260 followers installed; 12+ female NPC overhauls; 2 or 3 male NPC overhauls; umpteen different terrain and building texture replacers; there are approximately 29,000 NPCs in my game; my female PC uses a different body to the NPCs who use a different body to the followers and Elder race NPCs use yet another body. [There are images in my blog if you want to see what my game looks like]

I have never put loose files into a BSA, on the contrary I have extracted files from BSAs to use them loose. I don't have a problem with load times.

 

[sixth]

48 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

largely illogical.

illogical that a heavily modded game can not run well on a PC?

 

49 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Did any of these posts provide any evidence?

No, but there isn't usually evidence when people give advice to others. You take their word for it because there's not many people in this community that're out to screw you over and give you entirely false information.

 

49 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Skyrim has its limits regardless of the specs of your PC. 900+ mods is a ridiculous number.

I'm aware, 600 of those are ESP/ESL's. About 300+ of the 900 are either patches, separate mods of the same mods that I made like that for organization sake, and other's are tiny misc additions that don't add or change much to the game. My performance hasn't changed much at all since I had roughly 300 mods, so it's likely the base mod's I listed earlier aswell as Populated Skyrim, High Poly NPC's w/ patches for my additional NPC's, Textures, and other's I can't name off the top of my head that're known to be pretty big performance hitters. Of course a lot of it can be owed to Skyrims limits itself, but it was already hitting these limits performance wise ages ago.

 

Since I first posted this I did play around with BSA's and there was a notable difference in time it takes for me to load up Skyrim, and I only packed 2 or 3 multiple GB mod's. Of course I didn't have a timer setup but it just felt faster than before I did any of that.

[fishburger67]

35 minutes ago, sixth said:

illogical that a heavily modded game can not run well on a PC?

 

No, but there isn't usually evidence when people give advice to others. You take their word for it because there's not many people in this community that're out to screw you over and give you entirely false information.

 

I'm aware, 600 of those are ESP/ESL's. About 300+ of the 900 are either patches, separate mods of the same mods that I made like that for organization sake, and other's are tiny misc additions that don't add or change much to the game. My performance hasn't changed much at all since I had roughly 300 mods, so it's likely the base mod's I listed earlier aswell as Populated Skyrim, High Poly NPC's w/ patches for my additional NPC's, Textures, and other's I can't name off the top of my head that're known to be pretty big performance hitters. Of course a lot of it can be owed to Skyrims limits itself, but it was already hitting these limits performance wise ages ago.

 

Since I first posted this I did play around with BSA's and there was a notable difference in time it takes for me to load up Skyrim, and I only packed 2 or 3 multiple GB mod's. Of course I didn't have a timer setup but it just felt faster than before I did any of that.

Forget the information you got above, the guy is a well know ass (although probably well meaning).  BSAs load faster because they are compressed and come off the disk faster, way faster than the CPU cycles needed decompress them.

 

As far as which ones not to put in the BSA file, don't put SEQ directory and meshes that are in the animations and behavior trees.   The rest you are safe with.  Make sure you pack only a single mod's files in a bsa.  Unless you are programming, you don't need any of the .psc files.   Only stuff in the Data directory is a valid target and only then files in the meshes, scripts, Sound, Source, and textures sub-directories.   Stuff in the Source directory can be just deleted if you don't want to screw with it, but it doesn't hurt much as it is highly compressible.

 

Hope that helps.

 

[sixth]

39 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

Forget the information you got above, the guy is a well know ass (although probably well meaning)

oh that's... unfortunate

 

39 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

As far as which ones not to put in the BSA file, don't put SEQ directory and meshes that are in the animations and behavior trees.   The rest you are safe with.  Make sure you pack only a single mod's files in a bsa.  Unless you are programming, you don't need any of the .psc files.   Only stuff in the Data directory is a valid target and only then files in the meshes, scripts, Sound, Source, and textures sub-directories.   Stuff in the Source directory can be just deleted if you don't want to screw with it, but it doesn't hurt much as it is highly compressible.

The only files I've experimented with so far are sound files and things relating to NPC's like facegen/CharGen/whatever. Sound I've had no issues with (I think I did when I chose to compress, but since I'm not lacking space on my mods drive I opted for uncompressed) but I did with NPC's, specifically High Poly NPC's. They lost all their hair and weren't using a High Poly Face. Would that have just been because of the new load order the mod had to go off being an esp or should I just not try that ever?

 

Just to keep things simple and reassure myself that i've understood this right, the things i should pack are Meshes, Scripts, Sounds, Source, and Textures, but in the case of Meshes that're in animations, I leave them alone. (ignoring SEQ cuz I don't know that off the top of my head so I just wont ever even be wanting to touch it) Do I have this right?

 

Another thing I want to confirm is the weird Load Order BSA's go by now. Let's say I wanted to pack something like Noble Skyrim into a BSA, but in the left pane of MO2 it's being overwritten by many MANY mods, mods that may not even have an esp. If I pack it into a BSA does this mean it'll always overwrite all of those mods except the ones with an esp that I've specifically put below the newly created Noble Skyrim BSA esp? And if I have this right, does this mean it's my best bet to only pack mod's already overwriting everything into a BSA?

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, fishburger67 said:

Once again, grey cloud saves the day with a bunch of worthless and ill-conceived words. 

Okay brains, tell the world where and why my words were ill-conceived.

 

 

[fishburger67]

38 minutes ago, sixth said:

oh that's... unfortunate

 

The only files I've experimented with so far are sound files and things relating to NPC's like facegen/CharGen/whatever. Sound I've had no issues with (I think I did when I chose to compress, but since I'm not lacking space on my mods drive I opted for uncompressed) but I did with NPC's, specifically High Poly NPC's. They lost all their hair and weren't using a High Poly Face. Would that have just been because of the new load order the mod had to go off being an esp or should I just not try that ever?

 

Just to keep things simple and reassure myself that i've understood this right, the things i should pack are Meshes, Scripts, Sounds, Source, and Textures, but in the case of Meshes that're in animations, I leave them alone. (ignoring SEQ cuz I don't know that off the top of my head so I just wont ever even be wanting to touch it) Do I have this right?

 

Another thing I want to confirm is the weird Load Order BSA's go by now. Let's say I wanted to pack something like Noble Skyrim into a BSA, but in the left pane of MO2 it's being overwritten by many MANY mods, mods that may not even have an esp. If I pack it into a BSA does this mean it'll always overwrite all of those mods except the ones with an esp that I've specifically put below the newly created Noble Skyrim BSA esp? And if I have this right, does this mean it's my best bet to only pack mod's already overwriting everything into a BSA?

This, in my view, is an issue of speed.  Anything you can put in a BSA will load faster than as a loose file.  If you are not concerned about speed, I would abandon the entire thing.  As to what to put in it, make sure that you only put a single mods files in a single BSA.  They cannot be combined.

 

I don't know about high polly stuff.  Is there a dll that loads it?   If so, it may or may not know whether to look in a BSA for the required assets.  If it is the game engine that loads the assets, it knows to look in a BSA first and then in loose files second. 

 

I think Noble Skyrim comes with all loose files.  I do not understand why they are not packed already into a BSA.  I would ask on their forum.  However, it is all about the texture files.  In this case, the last one on your load order wins.

 

If there is a texture file in a BSA and the exact same texture file exists loose, the loose file wins.

 

 

[fishburger67]

8 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Okay brains, tell the world where and why my words were ill-conceived.

 

 

As I have said before, just review your own posts.  As I have said before, if you have nothing helpful to say, don't say anything.  Be nice and not confrontational.

[Grey Cloud]

2 hours ago, sixth said:

illogical that a heavily modded game can not run well on a PC?

No. It is largely incorrect and illogical that it will: A. take you months and B. that your 'set up' is not right for your PC.

 

2 hours ago, sixth said:

You take their word for it because there's not many people in this community that're out to screw you over and give you entirely false information.

No but them being convinced of what they say does not make it true.

 

2 hours ago, sixth said:

I'm aware, 600 of those are ESP/ESL's.

Oh, so you are actually talking about plug-ins and not mods. I run 300+ mods and about 243 plug-ins. My comment about Skyrim having various limits stands.

 

2 hours ago, sixth said:

Populated Skyrim, High Poly NPC's

I use those also.

 

2 hours ago, sixth said:

Of course I didn't have a timer setup but it just felt faster than before I did any of that.

Of course it did. I would hate for anything to prove your ideas wrong.

 

Ask yourself how it is faster for the computer to unpack a file and load it rather than to just load it. Or, put another way, how does unpacking speed up the process/loading.

[Grey Cloud]

9 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

As I have said before, just review your own posts.  As I have said before, if you have nothing helpful to say, don't say anything.  Be nice and not confrontational.

So as per usual you cannot back up what you have said. Muppet.

 

13 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

I don't know about high polly stuff.  Is there a dll that loads it?

?

[sixth]

9 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

If there is a texture file in a BSA and the exact same texture file exists loose, the loose file wins.

Oh so its the opposite of what I was thinking? Anything in a BSA will always be overwritten by loose files? Nice that makes it simpler

 

10 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

This, in my view, is an issue of speed.  Anything you can put in a BSA will load faster than as a loose file.  If you are not concerned about speed, I would abandon the entire thing.

Unfortunately this is why I got interested in BSA's in the first place. I recently downloaded a few voice packs for mods to test them out and instantly just for the game to start from MO it was taking an extra 3 minutes which was more than double it already was, so I definitely need some more BSA's here and there.

 

13 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

I don't know about high polly stuff.  Is there a dll that loads it?

It looks like just an esp with meshes and textures. I had a lot of patches for other mod's with it, would that have done it? 

 

14 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

I think Noble Skyrim comes with all loose files.  I do not understand why they are not packed already into a BSA.  I would ask on their forum.  However, it is all about the texture files.  In this case, the last one on your load order wins.

Alright I'll give this a go.

 

Thank you for all the help so far too (:

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, sixth said:

The only files I've experimented with so far are sound files and things relating to NPC's like facegen/CharGen/whatever. Sound I've had no issues with (I think I did when I chose to compress, but since I'm not lacking space on my mods drive I opted for uncompressed) but I did with NPC's, specifically High Poly NPC's. They lost all their hair and weren't using a High Poly Face. Would that have just been because of the new load order the mod had to go off being an esp or should I just not try that ever?

 

Just to keep things simple and reassure myself that i've understood this right, the things i should pack are Meshes, Scripts, Sounds, Source, and Textures, but in the case of Meshes that're in animations, I leave them alone. (ignoring SEQ cuz I don't know that off the top of my head so I just wont ever even be wanting to touch it) Do I have this right?

 

Another thing I want to confirm is the weird Load Order BSA's go by now. Let's say I wanted to pack something like Noble Skyrim into a BSA, but in the left pane of MO2 it's being overwritten by many MANY mods, mods that may not even have an esp. If I pack it into a BSA does this mean it'll always overwrite all of those mods except the ones with an esp that I've specifically put below the newly created Noble Skyrim BSA esp? And if I have this right, does this mean it's my best bet to only pack mod's already overwriting everything into a BSA?

All this confirms my initial assessment that you are barking up the wrong tree as far as long load times go. Look to your own shortcomings and lack of knowledge.

[sixth]

4 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

No. It is largely incorrect and illogical that it will: A. take you months and B. that your 'set up' is not right for your PC.

I know myself and I'm saying that yes, something like that would definitely take me months. And I'm also certain my setup isn't right for my PC. I've downloaded far too many performance taxing thing's for what my PC is just simply to make the game look better. I'm not complaining about that, since I knew what I was doing while deciding if I wanted specific mod's or not, but it'd be illogical for me to expect nothing but good performance from those decisions. As for the startup times however, which is what my current issue is with, that's solvable with BSA's

 

8 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Oh, so you are actually talking about plug-ins and not mods. I run 300+ mods and about 243 plug-ins. My comment about Skyrim having various limits stands.

Yes I had a feeling there was that misunderstanding and I'm sorry for that. I just call them the same thing for simplicity's sake, obviously didn't make anything simple this time though lol

 

9 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Of course it did. I would hate for anything to prove your ideas wrong.

Ok.

 

10 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Ask yourself how it is faster for the computer to unpack a file and load it rather than to just load it. Or, put another way, how does unpacking speed up the process/loading.

I think you need to look up how Skyrim handles BSA's because that's just all wrong.

[sixth]

1 minute ago, fishburger67 said:

Suggest you just ignore this idiot.  He spends his days running people down without providing anything even remotely useful.

I think I will do just that, all of this is becoming pretty pointless now since I posted this in the technical support section for a reason, and all I've seen from them is passive aggressiveness and a constant need to prove me wrong and not accept any answer's other than what they believe or think they know, it was never about the support it seems.

 

Thank you again for your actual help!

[fishburger67]

5 minutes ago, sixth said:

Ask yourself how it is faster for the computer to unpack a file and load it rather than to just load it. Or, put another way, how does unpacking speed up the process/loading.

This is patently false and proven over and over.

 

Quote

 

......

i tested this and i unpacked skyrims original textures and used them as loose files results

bsa packed textures, loading time 3 seconds

loose files textures, loading time 18 seconds

 

 

 

Quote

 

Be careful that stuttering != loading time, in my experience:

• BSAs greatly decrease loading time over loose files;

 

 

Quote

 

In my testing BSA are the definite way to remove texture laoding stutter but of course there are many potential reasons for stutter like scirpts or physics

loading a loose texture requires the game to fetch the texture which results in a stutter and the image is put into ram/gpu/memory etc

BSA are made for the game engine to fast fetch

BSA Compression has no effect in my testing

 

 

Quote

It's no big secret that Skyrim was optimized for loading data from BSA files. The fact that Bethesda's game engine is optimized specifically for Bethesda's custom archive format is...kind of obvious if you think about it. The main problem though, is that the game is always going to load the BSA files first, then the loose files. It doesn't matter if you have an .esp loading last; if the assets are in BSA file, that will be loaded before all the loose stuff and end up being overwritten, potentially screwing your load order up. Old school MO had its own method for handling this, but MO2 got rid of it, so we have to actually deal with this problem manually.

 

Note that sound files should NOT be in a compressed BSA.  The individual sound files are already compressed and compressing them again in a BSA just adds CPU cycles, but DO put them in an uncompressed BSA.

[Grey Cloud]

2 hours ago, sixth said:

I think you need to look up how Skyrim handles BSA's because that's just all wrong.

And where would I look? What is special about a BSA?

 

2 hours ago, sixth said:

need to prove me wrong

You prove yourself wrong with almost everything you post. You didn't know how Skyrim

dealt with BSAs and loose files yet you tell me to look up how BSAs are handled?

If you are so keen on things being looked then may I suggest that you do some digging into how many plug-ins, active and inactive, Skyrim and your mod manager can deal with?

 

2 hours ago, fishburger67 said:

Note that sound files should NOT be in a compressed BSA. 

 

2 hours ago, fishburger67 said:

but DO put them in an uncompressed BSA.

Genuine question: what is the difference between a compressed archive and an uncompressed archive? A link would suffice.

 

2 hours ago, fishburger67 said:

This is patently false and proven over and over.

Who are the quotes by?

[fishburger67]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

And where would I look? What is special about a BSA?

 

You prove yourself wrong with almost everything you post. You didn't know how Skyrim

dealt with BSAs and loose files yet you tell me to look up how BSAs are handled?

If you are so keen on things being looked then may I suggest that you do some digging into how many plug-ins, active and inactive, Skyrim and your mod manager can deal with?

 

 

Genuine question: what is the difference between a compressed archive and an uncompressed archive? A link would suffice.

 

Who are the quotes by?

It is not my job to educate you.  The info is pretty simple to find and the math easy to do.

[Grey Cloud]

10 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

The info is pretty simple to find and the math easy to do.

That post wasn't addressed to you but you have jumped in again without providing any evidence to show how or where I am wrong. In other words you cannot back up your post again.

 

I had a quick search earlier and I didn't find any mention of 'compressed' or 'uncompressed' archives whether related to BSAs or any other type of archive.

 

So tell me, are Skyrim - Sounds.bsa, Skyrim - Voices.bsa and Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa compressed or uncompressed.

 

10 minutes ago, fishburger67 said:

It is not my job to educate you. 

This is tech support and I asked a technical question. Didn't you criticise me a few weeks back for not helping someone here in tech support?

 

I'm still waiting for you to say where those 'quotes' were from.

[sixth]

8 hours ago, fishburger67 said:

Note that sound files should NOT be in a compressed BSA.  The individual sound files are already compressed and compressing them again in a BSA just adds CPU cycles, but DO put them in an uncompressed BSA.

Yeah I figured this one out on my own through trial and error, but atleast I know specifically now not to do it for sound files, meaning I'll start doing it for other types of files.

[sixth]

5 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

You prove yourself wrong with almost everything you post. You didn't know how Skyrim

dealt with BSAs and loose files yet you tell me to look up how BSAs are handled?

If you are so keen on things being looked then may I suggest that you do some digging into how many plug-ins, active and inactive, Skyrim and your mod manager can deal with?

I only told you to look up how BSA's work because you spouted the nonsense that "but its exactly the same as any other files? how does the game unpacking a file before loading it make it faster" and the easy answer to that, that even I with my inexperience know is it's not the same as other files. "Bethesda Software Archive" is it's official name, why would they make a different file type for their engine if it didn't offer improvements when used? Think about that from a Game Development point of view. Please just give this up what's the point anymore it's very obviously not about the support anymore, but rather wanting to be right.

[fishburger67]

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

That post wasn't addressed to you but you have jumped in again without providing any evidence to show how or where I am wrong. In other words you cannot back up your post again.

 

I had a quick search earlier and I didn't find any mention of 'compressed' or 'uncompressed' archives whether related to BSAs or any other type of archive.

You didn't look very far.

 

 

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

 

So tell me, are Skyrim - Sounds.bsa, Skyrim - Voices.bsa and Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa compressed or uncompressed.

 

Surely you have tesArchive.exe do you not?  And a quick google search will tell you:

 

Skyrim - Animations.bsa		Compressed
Skyrim - Interface.bsa		Uncompressed
Skyrim - Meshes.bsa	Meshes	Compressed Retain Strings During Startup
Skyrim - Misc.bsa		Uncompressed Retain File Names
Skyrim - Shaders.bsa		Uncompressed
Skyrim - Sounds.bsa	Sounds Voices	Uncompressed Retain File Names
Skyrim - Textures.bsa	Textures	Compressed Embed File Names
Skyrim - Voices.bsa	Sounds Voices	Uncompressed
Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa	Sounds Voices	Uncompressed
Dawnguard.bsa	Meshes Sounds Textures Voices	Uncompressed Retain File Names Retain Strings During Startup
HearthFires.bsa	Meshes Sounds Textures Voices	Uncompressed Retain File Names Retain Strings During Startup
Dragonborn.bsa	Meshes Sounds Textures Voices	Uncompressed Retain File Names Retain Strings During

 

 

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

 

This is tech support and I asked a technical question. Didn't you criticise me a few weeks back for not helping someone here in tech support?

 

 

 

Quote

Genuine question: what is the difference between a compressed archive and an uncompressed archive? A link would suffice.

 

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_Mod:Archive_File_Format

 

As you can see the compression algorithm is chosen by the packer and stuck in the file header.

 

And Read the last post here:

https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/3125-bsaopt-compression-and-data-read-time/

 

 

If you really want to educate yourself, read this entire thread:

 

https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/4280-update-bsas-and-you/

 

 

I believe that I have now given you enough of my time on this topic.