Have a question (sighs... surprise, surprise...)
After creating stablegame, finally came to read the BAIN full readme.
Turns out, there is no need to jump like mad to create BAIN package and one should use the various functions one should read about BEFORE installing the game.
So, the question:
How big is the difference in terms of performance between homecooked package by using Winrar and the BAIN created one with solid mode Pack Archive command?
Because if it is more stable than homemade package and only space loss is the concern, I have some 2TB I have dedicated to Oblivion and have to use them.
So, is BAIN created package better than winrar created package?
In other worlds, should I start reinstall them one by one? Or maybe only the large meshes and texture replacers?

Nessin if you install all BAINs at the same time yes Wrye Bash installs the install order backwards.

BAINs closer to the ==last== marker will overwrite conflicting files from BAINs further up the list of installers - And as you have noticed it seems illogical but they are installed backwards.

Simple example

BainOne.rar
Contains files a b c d
BainTwo.rar
Contains files c d e <-- These files respected being higher in the install order, c and d will overwrite c and d from BainOne
==last==

When you install all.....

BainTwo is de-compressed and installs first (which seems odd but read on)
BainOne is de-compressed and just installs files a and b, and a record kept of the missing files c and d from BainOne in case BainTwo is un-installed at a later date.

Installing in the order you think it should, would create an extra step and update for missing files that is not necessary doing it this way round, and so speeds up the installation process.

If in doubt, check out the conflicts tab after installing, Lower are overwritten, Higher respected. If your install order is wrong in the newer versions of Wrye Bash you can just drag and drop installers up and down the list, right click the installers header bar and choose anneal all.

I recently had Wisemans massive texture replacers being overwritten by the similarly huge Vibrant collection to test out which performed better on my machine, then changing that lot was a simple matter of changing the install order by dragging Wisemans down and anneal all. Total change of most oblivion textures with a drag and anneal.

BAINs can be created with Zip, 7Zip or WinRAR (the only reason I use winrar is because I bought a license for the full thing years ago). I think in terms of compression and saving HD space 7Zip is currently the better performer.

I use 7Zip to create archives (WinRAR to extract).

I have plenty of disk capacity and use the Store option when creating the BAIN archive - makes Wrye Bash perform faster - especially with some of the bigger complex BAIN archives that I have made. I generally combine mods into larger single BAIN archives (as per Psymon's examples), because I find it easier to not have a long list of mods. So for example, I have a BAIN archive called Animations that contains all my animation mods. Some of the bigger ones, like World texture replacers I have split into a number of separate archives to make a little easier to manage and faster to create an archive

Edit: Corrected typos.

This is a very nice, useful thread, Psymon. Thank you.

Maybe I waste my time on this, but I think it's worth mentioned anyway because I've noticed there is no link for the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31766 program an addon for the original http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516 utility. :thumbsup:
That gui addon convinced me to use the BOSS utility for a couple weeks ago and I was surprised how easy that was to use it with the master list update function.

I also hope this thread and the http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/ site can give me further knowledge about using the BAIN feature in Wrye Bash.


Btw... Thank you Psymon & Tomlong75210 for your efforts on this. :clap:

You are welcome.

I'm taking a bit of a break from Oblivion and playing some Mount and Blade: Warband.

Coming around mostly for mod updates. I will try this gizmo out soonish and include in the opening posts with the next round of updates I do to them.

Oblivion still favorite game though, so most likely will be back.

Hey, just dropping in. If you want to actually have some of your BAIN so that you do not have to worry about thread recycling for certain parts, let me know. I am not quite at the adding new pages point yet, but I want to have the last few old pages ported by lunch. I can put "Psymon's BAIN Mod Installation Projects" under Miscellaneous or Installing Mods or wherever you would like. A number of users have requested that I put up some of the information about what you already have here. Maintaining pages is easy, so you can send me updates whenever you would like. Thanks to your diligence (with the formatting) translating the sections would be simple.

I looked into the GUI, and there were a few things I did not like about it. However, the only reason I have not commented on it since its early release is because I have not downloaded it and tried it out yet. That is one of my TODO's.


Thank you for all of your contributions Psymon!
- Tomlong75210

Yeah Tomlong as I stated before - anything you want to use you are free to lift, alter, mangle and repost/repage as you see fit.

If you want me write more I'd be willing too. Just not sure what else there is to say short of giving instructions on how to write scripts for the BAIN wizard, which I've not learned how to do.

I support this idea.

thanks

Thank you. I would not know what else to ask for, honestly. Once you see the page up, you may be inspired to alter the material. Send me a message or drop a post in one of the threads whenever. I will let you know when I get ready to put up your pages.


Happy gaming!
- Tomlong75210

I am bumping this for convenience, working on porting it to TESIV:POSItive at the moment.

What would be good is if someone could do a series of tutorials on video of like 15-30 minutes, good quality so eyes are not strained in full screen, and post on YouTube or something.
Some people struggle to do text-only self teaching and require visual learning, and other methods of learning.

Would a complete screenshot tutorial suffice? Do you have a specific repackage you want to see or some specific part of the process for which you would like to have a visual aid?


Edit: wording

Absolutely I do have a reading comprehension problem, so something visual would be fabulous...

It would have to be from the-ground-up for people with no idea about this stuff but want to learn.
How-to's for people just wanting to have control installing mods so if there is a mistake, it can be cleaned up.
There are no particular specifics. If someone has the teaching gift, and the technical skills, then by all means have at it.

How do you do that? I went into the Security tab and gave full control but it still didn't work, is there somewhere else?

And what options am I supposed to click for the rebuild patch step?

Where do you have Oblivion installed? If you right-click and go to the securities tab and add your username to that first group (via edit), you should be able to change the permissions.

@ITPaladin: It is really late over here in my timezone, but I can see what I can do about creating at least a short tutorial to introduce BAIN and the package process for beginners by the end of tomorrow. Please, choose a mod from the site or something from my package list (posted in the last post in the site's thread) from which I can make an example. I can take screenshots of the relevant BAIN windows in the meantime. Once I have Psymon's pages fully ported, I can add screenshots to support his content as well.

I have it in program files. It worked when I had it outside of there but the launcher was grayed out when I did that(my head exploded, didn't check at first and had spent the whole day trying to figure out how to setup mods).

I copied the data folder to another directory and then ran it to see if I could just manually copy its recommendations but it somehow seems to have automatically did it like that. Still need help on the rebuild patch step. Do I check any of these boxes besides the one already checked(Alias Mod Names)?

Bleh any few examples will do. This is for anyone else wanting to understand outside of text-only learning. Look for non-BAIN ready packages, explain the functions of the right-click menus, etc.

Right now I am trying to read some more, get some things converted now that I know >Data/(folders) > 7z'pd>BAIN>install, so I can not have so many grey boxes/text in my list. I have been learning more than playing ever since I bought this game two weekends ago

I think you should reinstall the game outside of the Data folder (i.e., to C:\Games) but, as for the Bashed Patch, you should probably check everything where any plugins (ESP and ESM files) appear. Plugins appear in all sections except for Replace FormIDs, Tweak XX, COBL XX, Power Exhaustion, SE World Tests, Contents Checker and Morph Factions. You might as well check off all other sections and, of the non-plugin sections, check Contents Checker as well. Put a check mark in the automatic box on the LL section, since you probably do not need to manually manage that. The ReadMe, the Bash Tags section in particular, gives a nice, brief explanation of the purpose of each tag. However, this is really not the thread for this discussion.


Did you check out the BAIN Installation page on my site, which goes through examples of how to go through this process. I was asking for you to pick out an example because it would be simplest if I showed this anolysis and packaging process with a mod both you and I already have. That is why I suggested looking through my BAIN package list, which holds about 80% of my downloaded mods, number over 1000. My package list is over 1000 strong now, but nearly 100 of those are probably PyFFI-ed mesh archives.

Ha! Welcome to the game that can eat more time in prepping than playing.

You will pick it up pretty fast most do - you already demonstrated the main ingredient "wanting to understand" - so many people I've read who flatly state 'I don't want to know how Wrye Bash works ... too complicated.' ... it isn't.

But I'd recommend slowing down or you will hit burn out. There is a lot to learn and the more you add the more you have to constantly work to weed out conflicts and stay on top of updates and check out that new mod and give accurate feedback to the great mod authors who labor and fret over making the perfect mod for a great game.

It can be so easy to get so far into tweaking this game that one loses sight of what have a stable playable game means - I know I've lost sight of that many times.

I like details and seems that even in what was supposed to be a game to escape the endless details I document I end up finding more. I recommend balance - don't forget to play for the joy of it. In that middle path one might find their way to nerdvana.

walls of text?!? Doesn't anybody read anymore? :cryvaultboy:

I probably have it, and if I don't, I can download it. I have over 300 files downloaded to my oblivion patches/mods folder to pick and choose for what I need
Right now I am resetting it up for thievery style play with the audio/graphics enhancements first.

I am working on four one-page tutorials, featuring different aspects of BAIN and the packaging process (with respect to BAIN.) I will cover OOO, UOP and Harvest Flora, explicity by using them as examples.

Here are some sticky note questions I have:




I am still slowly reading through your guides and the Psymon thread. So far subjects like BCF, when they come up, haven't really been explained enough IMO.

I am playing with a "test" character, trying to figure out if there is a conflict in my setup with Realistic Fatigue or if that is the way it should be (the meter never really stays full despite me just walking around town, not over burdened). Other issues are not smooth video even with SL installed only using purge and saving, while OSR handles the FPS. The FPS is in the low teens to mid 20s, whereas my last setup seemed higher and smoother. I changed the ini in OSR to max framerate of 60 due to my computer specs. I am using QTP3R.

Basic usage of BAIN only requires that you know how to apply BCFs (if even that) otherwise, knowing about them is not important to most users BAIN experience. Simply put, BCFs provide BAIN with a set of instructions for how to modify an archive's structure. A BCF only works for the exact package/archive for which it was made, and it basis that identification on an archives CRC data (meaning that the name of the archive does not matter, only the contents.)

The performance stuff is not relevant to this thread or this conversation so far (as I have kept track of it) so it is kind of confusing. Which installation tool you choose to use has little to do with performance. You can build the same setup (with few exceptions) via any installation method. If you want to discuss this in my site's main thread or a new thread, starting with a more detailed explanation of the "before" and "after" performance circumstances, we might be able to help anolyze and improve that aspect of your modified setup.