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Compressing facegen data and sound files


Fatalillusion

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Hi,
In my quest to make all mods fit within the infamous 5 GB mod space limit on xbox, I was wondering if it is possible to downscale/compress facegen/npc textures for npc appearance overhaul mods and sound files from sound overhaul mods. If it is possible to do it while still making sure the mods work, how would I proceed?

I usually use cathedral asset optimizer to downscale textures, whereas I don't know how can I safely compress sound files such as xvm.

 

Thanks!

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Technically you can compress facegen meshes, however since they normally end up living with sound files the base BSA is not compressed as standard practice. Hence texture BSAs.

For Audio compression tactics, I compress dialogue at a lower bitrate than music. As long as it isn't terribly low and the audio isn't terrible quality (M'rissi) in the first place you can get away with squishing it a little harder with a lower bitrate. Music isn't as tolerant before you start getting the "AM Radio" effect.

As for tools to do XWM conversion, I've used LazyAudio converter or Yakitori Audio Converter which have served me well. I think LE and SE understand the same audio format as long as they're on Windows or Xbox but hopefully someone can clarify. I've only done this for LE and SE on Windows.

If you wind up finding yourself still beyond the limit after compressing the hell out of your audio you could always use a dummy (empty) ESPFE-flagged plugin to load an additional BSA if needed.  The game engine sees asset paths relative to ./Data so anything you load from a BSA is going to be seen from that vantage point, (normally) no matter what BSA you load them from*. Keep that in mind when formulating your strategy.

So It would look something like:

MainModPluginName.esp

MainModPluginName.bsa - (Maybe compressed. See how it works in-game)

MainModPluginName - Textures.bsa (definitely compressed)

MainModDummySoundPlugin.esp (empty ESPFE)

MainModDummySoundPlugin.bsa (uncompressed)

and so on

I hope this is helpful!

 

*there are always exceptions and I am likely forgetting something. @Arthmoor will come along and correct me if so.

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