How do you register BSA Files with OpenMW?

[Kael]

^Title^

I am trying to register The Facepack Compilation (it comes with .bsa files).

[Ravenwing]

I think this will clear up many of your questions. If there is anything unclear let me know because I'm the author lol. The documentation is very much a work in progress so many other portions are missing or incomplete, however I think this section at least contains what it needs to.

Edit:
I realize the guide doesn't refer specifically to .bsa but I believe it should be the same. It would be in the top level of your data folder as BSAs are included next to their ESM.

[DestinedToDie]

Find openmw.cfg and add in the corresponding line here.

[Ravenwing]

@DestinedToDie

Do BSAs have to be in the fallback portion?

[DestinedToDie]

If you want the game to load them, yes. Just try deleting the morrowind.bsa line. Your game will fail to load textures on loading screen and crash once you get to the game menu.

[Atahualpa]

@DestinedToDie

Do BSAs have to be in the fallback portion?

Let me quote the current FAQ video section regarding .bsa archives:

.bsa archives are files which contain an arbitrary amount of game assets, e.g., textures, meshes, or sound files. To make the original engine use the files inside such an archive, you have to register the archive itself via an external tool. You can also extract all included assets to the Data Files directory but this method is not suitable for more complex setups or quickly switching mods on and off. OpenMW doesn't need any external program to register .bsa files. You can simply add them as a so-called fall-back archive in the openmw configuration file. In the future, the OpenMW team wants to abandon the use of .bsa archives for newly created content in favour of OpenMW's capability to use multiple data paths.

[AnyOldName3]

The bsa should be added as archive= not as fallback-archive=. My understanding is that the fallback stuff is supposed to just be the stuff directly imported from morrowind.ini. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to edit it if you're a user unless you're running an entire new game (e.g. the example suite). I think that OpenMW only uses fallback values in the absence of hardcoded defaults, whereas the 'regular' values override stuff. If you're installing mods, risking having your changes overridden for essentially no reason doesn't seem like what you'd want.

Source: I've actually worked on some of the code related to this, and this is what it looked like it was probably doing.

[Atahualpa]

The bsa should be added as archive= not as fallback-archive=.[...]

I've just tried that -- and the .bsa file wasn't loaded. (Or did you mean that it SHOULD work this way but wasn't implemented yet?)
This is why I used the "fallback-archive" option in the first place. I found the suggestion here.

[Ravenwing]

The bsa should be added as archive= not as fallback-archive=.[...]

I've just tried that -- and the .bsa file wasn't loaded. (Or did you mean that it SHOULD work this way but wasn't implemented yet?)
This is why I used the "fallback-archive" option in the first place. I found the suggestion here.

Le sigh, well let me know which it is so I can add this to our mod installation guide. Regardless, Kael, I think you should read the documentation we have so far anyway since I think it should help answer some of your questions in other threads.

[Atahualpa]

Well, the "fall-back archive" method works, so you should use it in your guide. If the other option is possible / gets implemented, you could easily change the wording.