BSArch Mod Packer

ABOUT

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BSArch Mod Packer

is an intelligent and fully integrated MO2 plugin that overhauls your packing experience, by automating entire lists or simply handling a few select mods, or even one single one. It allows you to batch process various mods in your list to pack into respective archive files according to the game you are running the tool for.

The process was created to be very simple and easy to understand. Essentially, it involves running the tool, selecting mods with loose files you want to pack (Either by selecting individually, or by separator), selecting your game type (Which is automatically handled, but there may be rare cases it doesn't) and processing in the order of priority your modlist is setup in.

This is ideal for modlists that use an enormous amount of mods that introduce meshes, textures or other larger files in a loose file format. It can significantly improve things like load times, game stability and stuttering, performance, and so on.

If you find any bugs or processing issues, please report them in the Bugs tab! Anything posted in relation to the plugin in the Posts tab will be ignored.

INSTALLATION

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The installation is super simple, drop the .py file into your MO2 plugins folder, then run the plugin via the Tools dropdown and click BSArch Packer. In the pop-up, top-right, you will see a path option titled BSArch Tool, with a browse button. Install BSArch, drop it somewhere in your MO2 folder, and specify the path in the plugin pop-up to the executable. (Be sure to use the CLI version of BSArch and not BSArchPro)

The process of running the tool is also rather simple, but may require some explaining. However, most of the options in there have tooltips that explain what each option does and what other options are processed along with it.

USAGE

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Run the tool by clicking BSArch Packer in the puzzle icon, top-left of MO2. A pop-up will appear with your entire modlist indexed and any mods with loose files available to select. Any mods that DO NOT have loose files are grayed out and unavailable to select. Choose the mods you want to pack, either by separator or by clicking each tick box to enable them. You can optionally (NOT RECOMMENDED HOWEVER) use the Select All option to just select the mods in your entire list.

On the right-hand side of the plugin pop-up, you can see a list of options for the process. This involves a few options, which can depend on the process of your workflow and modlist. We'll start from the top and move our way to the bottom.

Output Settings



This declares where and how the archives for the mods you select will be packed. To start, we'll choose where we output the packed files, which involves:

• []Pack in the original mod folder; does exactly what it says on the tin, it will pack the loose files from a mod folder into the same folder you're loading from (And if it has an existing plugin, the archives will be named after that plugin)

  []Create new mod folder with suffix; will copy and pack all of the loose files from each mod, based on your modlist priority order, into a new empty mod folder with a suffix attached for organization

• Output to specific mod folder; also does what it says on the tin, if you have a existing mod folder, say with a plugin, you can output all of the packed BSAs here

  Depending on where you pack the loose files, you can choose a couple more options below those to specify how to handle mods with existing plugins and whether or not the mods should be combined into similarly named archives.

  For example, you have plugin MyMod.esp and output to a mod folder with that plugin, all archives will be created to use this plugin name, or if you choose to enable the Smart plugin handling option, it will name the packed archives of mods that DID NOT have an existing plugin to your plugins name. This also works in tandem with mods that have an existing plugin, naming the archives after the existing mods plugin and putting them in the output folder.

  The benefit of using the Smart plugin handling option is that when you pack BSAs accordingly with any existing mods plugins, these can be organized in priority based on what other archives you want to overwrite. This can be especially useful if you have mods that handle specific textures and they have existing plugins. If you want this