Oblivion Mod talk:BSA File Format

What? Why does this say that the data under "Compressed File block" is the size of the original data and the note says "deflated"? --FMan 17:34, 2 October 2006 (EDT)

I'm having a problem creating a BSA file with BSA commander that works in-game with Oblivion. Meshes for armor, their textures, and various other things are going missing when using the BSA it produces. I believe I am setting the file flags and archive flags as best I can. Strangely, everything in my mod Daedric Recon works with this BSA generation, but it does not have any armor type items. MentalElf

Well, I did it, I was able to write a complete replacement for BSA Commander into TES4FILES (TCL/TCK). Problem is, I'm getting the same results. Then I thought, perhaps it needs to be like Oblivion, with separate NIF and DDS BSAs. So I added a feature "SPLIT" which generates two BSAs, one with all the DDS textures, and the other with whatever is left. Worked fine, I made it so it even makes a dummy "esp" you can enable in data files to pull in the second BSA. This proved to work in-game, with a mod like mine, Daedric Recon, but with Rumare Castle and Sloth's Goth Shop, I get the same problems (missing textures). I'm running out of ideas... grrrr sometimes I hate Beth. MentalElf Oct 14 2006

I've *FINALLY* figured out and fixed the problem. It's that some NIF files have texture paths using forward slash instead of backslash. Oblivion is smart enough to convert the path to lower case (as needed) but it's not smart enough to change forward slashes to backslashes, and it cannot find these textures!!! MentalElf Oct 15 2006

Ambiguous naming

Something needs to be done about the somewhat trivial, but also potentially confusing naming of the "File Record Blocks" structure, this seems to be more accurately described as a file folder record, and indeed that is the case in the header structure variable table name column, and again has yet a different name in the description column.

Didn't want to go ahead and change it myself as someone may have done this for a reason, but I thought it could do with being highlighted. --Ancalagon

If you know what you're doing and it makes it better, feel free. If you don't know what you're doing and manage to break a good explanation, we send a team of ninja hit squad monkeys to your house/apartment/domicile. So, take your chances. (I'm no BSA expert, though.) Also, don't forget to sign comments on the talk page (just type --~~~~ while editing and it will convert when you save). --Wrye 18:56, 13 January 2007 (EST)

Will probably wait until I have finished my BSA parser, will more understand the BSA structure then, and may give someone else a chance to take the risk of being attacked by Ninja monkeys :/ --Cam 04:52, 14 January 2007 (EST)

Probably wise. :) I trust that you're aware that there are already several BSA tools? (See Oblivion Mod:Programmers). But if you go ahead with project, you should also check with Timeslip regarding the way he munges the hashes for files to hide them and thus avoid the archive invalidation problem. Since many people use his tools, this affects BSA for many people. --Wrye 22:55, 14 January 2007 (EST)

archiveFlags bits

I tried to store some of my modding setup in compressed BSA files to save disk space and found out that to override built-in textures, the custom BSA must be listed in sArchiveList before the official BSAs *and* have bit 8 set, otherwise stock textures/meshes will be used. I'm not yet sure if that way of doing things has drawbacks, so I didn't add it to the front page --Morth 77.183.99.166 09:28, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

IFF origin and Commodore Shout out

Now I know that Electronic Arts and Commodore made the original IFF formats to be used on Commodore's Amiga. But should we link to wikipedia or some such resource describing IFF, and why it's still used some 26 years after it's first instance? Link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_File_Format -- Metricjester 20:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

BSA research

I've spent somewhere around a week, cumulatively, reverse-engineering how Oblivion handles files, including how it handles conflicts between BSAs and between loose files and BSAs. I've fully detailed how ArchiveInvalidation and BSA redirection works (among other things, I've discovered that contrary to what the community has believed, they're totally unrelated to each other). However, I'm not sure of the best way to integrate this into a wiki article, nor am I sure whether it would be of interest to the wiki.

The site's edit filters are mad at me because I already added a(n off-site) link to my research to my userpage, so... uh, reply to me or just check my userpage if this seems like it'd be of interest. DavidJCobb (talk) 13:34, 22 August 2019 (UTC)