Bain

Overview

Bain is a mod installer built into Wrye Bash. Bain is roughly similar to OBMM, but has some advantages (as well as some disadvantages). For general documentation of Bain, see Wrye Bash: Installers Tab.

Advantages

• No OMODS required.
  • Just drop existing zip, 7z and rar archives into the Oblivion\Installers directory, and Bain will immediately display them as an available installer.
  • Bain archives can readily be opened in regular archive viewers. Just choose "File:Open" from the archive's context menu.
• Ordered Install/Uninstall:
  • Bain assigns an install order to all archives (which players can easily change as desired). As with mods, later (higher order) archives trump earlier (lower order) archives.
  • When an archive is installed, then it will override files installed by lower order archives, but not files already installed by higher order archives.
  • Similarly when an archive is uninstalled, an "annealing" process will automatically reinstall files from lower level archives that were previously obscured.
• Multiple Install/Uninstall:
  • You can install/uninstall multiple mods at once.
• Useful Status Info:
  • The synchronization status of the mod is shown independently of the archive's installed status. E.g. a checkmark is used to indicate whether the mod is installed or not. But independent of that, the color of the checkmark box indicates the "health" of that install. E.g. an archive may be marked as "green" (fully synchronized) even if it's not installed. And vice versa, if a mod has been installed, but has then been overridden by another mod, then it will be marked yellow. Syncrhonization status colors will change as mods are installed/uninstalled, etc.
  • Other information such as lists of missing and overridden files is more readily available in Bain than in OBMM.
• Document Sweeping
  • Bain sweeps document type files (.txt, .rtf, etc.) into the Oblivion\Data\Docs directory. It will also rename "readme.txt" doc files during the sweep process to ensure that they have unique names and won't be overwritten by other mods.

Disadvantages

• No Scripting:
  • Bain does not support scripted installs. However, it does allow setting up subinstalls. See below.
• No BSA Archive Operations:
  • Bain does not provide viewing, packing or unpacking of BSA archives.

Archive Structure

Bain understands two types of archive directory structures. Both types of structures are easily understood by players and work well for those who prefer to install archives manually. Below are some guidelines for structuring mod archives.

Simple

For a mod that offers no options, then the best structure is to have the top level of the archive match the top level of the Oblivion\Data directory. E.g.

Cool Mod.esp
Cool Mod Readme.txt
Meshes\
Textures\

Notes:

• Bain will skip over the contents of any non-standard directories. (Standard directories are: Bash Patches, Distantlod, Docs, Facegen, Fonts, Menus, Meshes, Music, Shaders, Sound, Textures, Trees, Video.) Bain will also skip all archive files (7z, zip, etc.)
• Bain will skip over executable files (exe, dll, dlx, etc.) Separate installation methods should be used for such files. (Which should be very rare anyway.)

Complex/SubInstalls

If it's desired for a mod to have optional subinstalls (e.g. to install one of three variants of a mod, or to allows optional installation of patch mods), then the complex structure can be used. In this format, the top level of the archive corresponds to the options -- i.e. each top level directory of the archive is an optional subinstall, while the top level of each of these directories again matches to the Oblivion\Data directory.

In short the complex archive structure is essentially a collection of Simple archive structures. Example:

01 Main Install
   Main Mod.esm
   Main Mod Readme.txt
   Meshes\
   Textures\
   Sounds\
02 Alpha Extras
   Alpha 1.esp
   Alpha 2.esp
02 Beta Extras
   Beta 1.esp
   Textures\

Notes:

• After the user chooses which subinstallers to use, they will be applied in alphabetical order. So if there's a conflict between different options of the subinstaller (e.g. if the textures in "02 Beta Extras" override the default textures from "01 Main Install"), be sure to name the archives in a way that the override options will indeed override the earlier options. An easy way to do this is to preface names with numbers as above.