I'm contemplating the idea of repackaging Oblivion's original texture BSA with no compression to get better performance. Is that a bad idea? Has everyone been doing it but me?

I'd have to split it into two smaller BSAs since it's 1,9 Go uncompressed, and I hear BSAs can't be bigger than 1,5 Go. That might be a problem, since I don't want to keep the original BSA in Data Files just so Oblivion doesn't freak out.

Oh, and in what order does Oblivion check BSAs? Earliest to latest modified date? What if a later BSA has files conflicting with a previous one, will the latest "win" like with plugin ordering?

What about making texture packs into uncompressed BSAs? Good/bad idea?

I don't know if everyone is doing it, but certainly a lot of us are. A BSA can be up to 2GB, so you'll be fine. The vanilla mesh file is smaller than you think. My uncompressed copy which includes some custom resources as well is only 1.1GB.

The texture file may need to be split up into as many as 3 files if you're including a texture replacer pack like QTP3.

BSAs are not checked in any specific order. They need to be older than loose stuff in the Data folder but the game doesn't use date order on the ones that are packed. Duplicating resources within a BSA is generally a bad idea. Sometimes it works, sometimes you see the missing mesh icon or purple textures. Sometimes the game crashes. A BSA therefore should be only NEW content and not overlap existing content.

Oh, good. Thanks for the info. Basically not two BSAs should have overlapping files. Somehow I was confused about that part.

Oblivion - Textures - Compressed is the only one that's compressed, right?

How do you get Oblivion to check split BSAs, say Oblivion - Textures - Uncompressed1 and Oblivion - Textures - Uncompressed2, over the original one? Just by editing the ini to point to them instead?

@WC: I'm doing that at the moment, and it works good so far =)

to load BSA's you can register them in the ini (1) or rename them to match a plugin [an ESP]. If you rename the BSA to Oblivion - tex - uncompressed it will load as long as oblivion.esm loads > edit: this was wrong.

meanwhile, ob - tex - uncompressed, would not and would require ini registration.

=)

Then what do you do with Oblivion - Textures - Compressed? Unregister it in the ini and move it outside \Data?

I imagine leaving it there would cause problems due to overlapping files, not to mention it would inflate the Data folder needlessly.

Have you tested this? I ask because the last part you write goes against all common knowledge about BSA loading. The common knowledge is that the BSA's name must start with the exact name of an active esp file. So matching the bsa's name with an active esm file (like Oblivion.esm) does not make it load.

WyndChyme: Moving the unused bsa to somewhere else is the best.

That only works in Fallout. Oblivion requires a BSA to be registered in the ini if it's used for an ESM file. Otherwise it has to match up to a named ESP file. This is exactly why Bethesda made a dummy file to load the Shivering Isles assets.

I didnt know that.