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Well tickle me pink! I didn't know. There I am thinking, "Hey, if I convert all my default Morrowind textures to .dds and repack the .bsa file, it'll improve my fps."
But apparently all the textures in my Morrowind.bsa are already in .dds format.
I guess that one of the expansions was responsible for updating Morrowind.bsa, once Beth caught on that .dds was a more efficient format for their uber-graphic beast.
Well, we live and learn, eh? 
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Hmm, that partly explains why the dragon statue in Ebonheart chanegd colors I guess.
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I read this quite some time ago in the Mods forum, in an answer to the always repeated claim that texture replacers using .dds files would improve the game performance. The poster claimed the .dds containing .bsa came with the GOTY edition, but I don't think that part is right. Maybe it came with Bloodmoon.
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Tribunal would be my guess.
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Yup Tribunal seems most likely to me.
When I first bought Morrowind, I was already behind the times and my version came with Tribunal. I didn't install Tribunal for a long while though, and now I remember that a couple of pieces of Dwemer architecture changed colour when I did.
Hehe. That really bugged me at the time. I was using them to start modding and I thought I'd done something wrong and corrupted the models (was a bit newbish  ).
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It comes from the original MW.
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Quote:
It comes from the original MW.
What do? The .dds textures?
Why are they all .tga and .bmp on the TESCS CD then? 
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Quote:
Why are they all .tga and .bmp on the TESCS CD then?
Because they want to be? Who are you to judge those textures for the file formats they choose to be?
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To let people without Photoshop be able to mod.
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Hmph! Don't know if that's the case. Do you have a MW only installation you've checked that against, or are you just guessing?
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Yes, I have a TB\BM and a Morrowind-only Installation. It's useful for testing mods.
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Oh, OK then. And you checked out the .bsa and it contains .dds textures, does it?
Well I'm blowed! 
I didn't know that.
So in any case, this theory that .dds textures dropped into the Data Files\Textures folder take precedence because they're .dds is a nonsense then. They take precedence because they're in that folder and therefore the game engine gives them a higher priority.
Edit: I must have imagined the colour change in the Dwemer models then. I convinced myself that one of the ruin pieces used to have a goldish base.
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Edited by Nigedo (07/09/04 08:23 AM)
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Not only do the .BSA files contain textures, they also contain meshes, sounds, and ALL the resources used in-game. The .BSA format is actually rather impressive, and there was/is a utility floating around somewhere to unpack, or pack (for those making .ESM-style TC's/Mod) your own .BSA's.
I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that an addition needs to be made to the Morrowind.INI file to reference textures, meshes, whatever, contained in custom-made .BSA's.
Not to rain on the day, but the .BSA format is kind of... old news. =)
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This is interesting. I always kinda wondered why there wasn't a noticable increase in fps when using dds files -and come to find out we were already using them in the first place. 
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Indigo: Just nitpicking - the presumed discovery of this thread was not that there are BSA files (they're hard to overlook  ), but that the BSA files contain the textures in DDS format, while they're TGA and BMP on the CS disk.
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Some more details:
1-DDS in Textures folder take prcedence because they are dated later. There's a line in Morrowind INI general section saying:
TryArchiveFirst=0 ;-1 Use raw data, 0 Use Newer, 1 use Archive Only
So, the default is 0, and the newer Data will be loaded. If you changed it to 1, it wouldn't understand anything except BSA, and, obviously if changed to -1, BSAs will be ignored.
2-The dwemer piece color change may have happened if the texture exists in both Morrowind.BSA & Tribunal.BSA, but as Tribunal.BSA is newer, it loads the tex from there.
3-BSAs don't include ALL the resources. Sounds & Music won't be loaded for example AFAIK.
4-Yes, the BSAs must be registered. These lines are from my Morrowind.INI:
[Archives]
Archive 0=Tribunal.bsa
Archive 1=Bloodmoon.bsa
Archive 2=Complete Morrowind.bsa
This tells the game to load the 3 custom archives. Morrowind.BSA is hardcoded though. There's a program called BSAReg, by ghostwheel, that automatically updates this. It can be freely put with any plugins.
5-I'm not sure about this, but I once tried to unpack all the BSAs into Data files, and noticed that load time significantly increased. I'm not sure about it, but that what it seemed like to me.
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Dumping the entire .BSA into Data Files (something specifically stated NOT to do in the BSAPack utility instructions) only really ever gave me one problem: Attempting to browse my textures directory (in Photoshop, for instance), resulted in HORRIBLY slow refreshes when moving more than one or two pages of textures at a time!
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BSAPack meant that you don't EXTRACT it in the Data Files folder. It automatically deletes all the entries there. And I have a Russian version, which doesn't have the second CD. That's why I HAD to extract all the files.
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Quote:
1-DDS in Textures folder take prcedence because they are dated later. There's a line in Morrowind INI general section saying:
.
TryArchiveFirst=0 ;-1 Use raw data, 0 Use Newer, 1 use Archive Only
.
So, the default is 0, and the newer Data will be loaded. If you changed it to 1, it wouldn't understand anything except BSA, and, obviously if changed to -1, BSAs will be ignored.
That's really interesting Max, thanks for pointing that out.
Now, the thing is that this doesn't seem to hold true if you replace stock textures (obv. stored in Morrowind.bsa) with textures of the same name stored in a .bsa of a later date.
I found this out when I was creating the Enchanted Icon Selection pack. I wanted to create the selections as five new .bsa archives, each containing one replacement set of icons, to make uninstalling easier for users.
When I tried this approach, Morrowind always used the default icons, rather those in the replacer archive with a later date. It would only use the replacer icons if I dropped them in the Textures folder.
So it seems the "Use Newer" actually means "Use newer in non-archive folders".
I'm right into .bsa archives at the moment, they're such a clean way to store added art and make managing mod updates a lot easier. 
Here's my current archive list:-
[Archives]
Archive 0=Tribunal.bsa
Archive 1=Bloodmoon.bsa
Archive 2=Textured Signs Neutral.bsa
Archive 3=Better Heads.bsa
Archive 4=Ice's Robe Replacer.bsa
Archive 5=The Black Mill.bsa
Archive 6=Dragon's Lair.bsa
Archive 7=Illuminated Order.bsa
Archive 8=Barabus Fireplaces.bsa
Archive 9=Morrowind Patch.bsa
Archive 10=Glass Extension.bsa
Archive 11=The Dwemeri Secret.bsa
Archive 12=Key Replacer.bsa
Archive 13=White Senche.bsa
Archive 14=AV Female Shirts.bsa
Archive 15=City of Thieves.bsa
Archive 16=More Trees and Foliage.bsa
Archive 17=Pelagiad Forest.bsa
Archive 18=Guiding Beacons.bsa
Archive 19=Rhedd's Heads.bsa
Archive 20=Ice Canus Robes.bsa
Archive 21=AV Female Armor.bsa
Archive 22=Assassins' Armory.bsa
Archive 23=Ice's Glass Cuirass.bsa
Archive 24=Official Plugins.bsa
Archive 25=MWE Combat.bsa
Archive 26=Windows Glow.bsa
Archive 27=Havish.bsa
Archive 28=Sils Long Hair 1.0.bsa
Archive 29=MOTJEX Khajiit males.bsa
Archive 30=Astarsis HE Females.bsa
Archive 31=Astarsis HE Males.bsa
Archive 32=Better Female Pants.bsa
Archive 33=Hendalf Gold 1.1.bsa
Archive 34=Srikandi's Alchemy BM.bsa
Archive 35=Lillia's Robes 1.0.bsa
Archive 36=Authentic Signs IT 1.0.bsa
Archive 37=MWA.bsa
Thanks for pointing out that BSAReg tool as well, you star! 
I was actually intending to email Ghostwheel and request him to make just such a utility.
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Quote:
Now, the thing is that this doesn't seem to hold true if you replace stock textures (obv. stored in Morrowind.bsa) with textures of the same name stored in a .bsa of a later date.
I found this out when I was creating the Enchanted Icon Selection pack. I wanted to create the selections as five new .bsa archives, each containing one replacement set of icons, to make uninstalling easier for users.
When I tried this approach, Morrowind always used the default icons, rather those in the replacer archive with a later date. It would only use the replacer icons if I dropped them in the Textures folder.
So it seems the "Use Newer" actually means "Use newer in non-archive folders".
Are you certain you modified your ini file accordingly? With TryArchiveFirst set to 1 your custom icons should have shown up.
To re-iterate some previously mentioned stuff and further clarify precedence in BSA files (quoting from this thread):
Load order applies to bsa files, last one taking precendence. This also means that us modders will still need to stick to naming conventions to avoid in-game conflicts.
In regards to using archives for textures replacers, it is possible, but requires the end-user to alter their ini file.
;-1 Use raw data, 0 Use Newer, 1 use Archive Only
TryArchiveFirst=1
Using the default 0, I observed the following precendence from highest to lowest: Loose files >> Morrowind.bsa >> custom.bsa.
This means that loose files will 'overwrite' standard game textures, but Morrowind.bsa content takes precendence over custom files.
However, if you alter the above ini line to 1, the custom.bsa file takes precendence, meaning you CAN use BSA files for texture replacers. I used Carnajo's textures replacers for testing; red in loose files, green in an archive. Set to 0, I get red, set to 1 I get green, set to -1 crashes with error message. Having both in archives gives the standard MW brown.
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No, as you can see from my response to Max, I was not aware of that .ini setting - I clearly missed your post on that thread.
Thanks for reposting the info - it's really helpful.
Nevertheless, my point was that the option "Use newer" does not indicate newer archive files, which I am grateful you have confirmed.
I am a complete convert to .bsa now, thanks to you btw.
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Yeah, the phrase 'Use newer' in the ini file is quite misleading- perhaps the devs lableled loose files as 'newly created' and as such not yet packed into the archive.
I'm still not sure of the purpose of the 'Use raw data' option though.
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I don't expect that the Devs considered that the mod community would be packaging .bsa files. So 'newer' would have only applied to loos files otherwise and would be a sensible enough label.
Hmm...'Use raw data'.. no idea. 
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Just a note I thought you would like to know: Vanilla Morrowind doesn't support custom BSAs. I was testing Complete Morrowind(which has a BSA) on a fresh vanilla Morr instalation, and it gave me tons of errors. Had to make a standalone TB\BM and a standalone MW versions. BTW, MW without TB\BM doesn't have even an "Archives" section in its INI. And the BSAReg doesn't help.
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Thanks for the info Max - that's something I'll need to include in the documentation for BSA Browser.
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Of course, because then it load both set : the bsa and the unpacked data !!!
Plus : bsa load faster, always, which is why I always put all the data from the plugins I installed into bsa, speed up load time significantly
always best to unpack a bsa outside your mw folder, when you need to examine or use that data. the mw data is directly accessible in the construction set cd, not so for bloodmoon or tribunal. you need to unpack them.
Cheers !
Astarsis
Quote:
Some more details:
1-DDS in Textures folder take prcedence because they are dated later. There's a line in Morrowind INI general section saying:
TryArchiveFirst=0 ;-1 Use raw data, 0 Use Newer, 1 use Archive Only
So, the default is 0, and the newer Data will be loaded. If you changed it to 1, it wouldn't understand anything except BSA, and, obviously if changed to -1, BSAs will be ignored.
2-The dwemer piece color change may have happened if the texture exists in both Morrowind.BSA & Tribunal.BSA, but as Tribunal.BSA is newer, it loads the tex from there.
3-BSAs don't include ALL the resources. Sounds & Music won't be loaded for example AFAIK.
4-Yes, the BSAs must be registered. These lines are from my Morrowind.INI:
[Archives]
Archive 0=Tribunal.bsa
Archive 1=Bloodmoon.bsa
Archive 2=Complete Morrowind.bsa
This tells the game to load the 3 custom archives. Morrowind.BSA is hardcoded though. There's a program called BSAReg, by ghostwheel, that automatically updates this. It can be freely put with any plugins.
5-I'm not sure about this, but I once tried to unpack all the BSAs into Data files, and noticed that load time significantly increased. I'm not sure about it, but that what it seemed like to me.
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Hehe.. who knew? "Morrowind.bsa" contains .dds textures!
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Re: Hehe.. who knew? "Morrowind.bsa" contains .dds textures!
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