Suggestion: Separate "Installed" directory support and other space-saving features.

[generalmx]

I was looking at ways I could save space on my 120GB SSD (which is also my system drive) as Skyrim currently takes up a combined ~30GB, such as unpacking and cleaning the official HD DLC, and realized it'd be so much easier if we didn't have to worry about storing every single file from an installed mod --- the separate "Installed" or "VFS" directory would contain only files that will actually be used with the VFS, thus allowing you to either compress the actual "mods" directory (which you may not want to do normally as it adds latency and takes up resources) and/or store it on a different volume, the trade-off being it would increase (even considerably increase) time to do certain actions. This could even go as far as to do BSA extraction, if the user enables it (mainly for the vanilla textures). The directory would only be for the current profile and game, meaning that switching could take a considerable amount of time if you're storing lots of other files on a different HDD. The main problem I see is when dealing with the new "mods" directory having only files unpacked but NOT installed in the current profile --- we could use symlinks, but then changes to filenames wouldn't propagate over.; but perhaps the VFS could be adapted to show the "mods" directory like it is now.

 

I bet there's a simpler way to support all this, so I'm going to try actually implementing something using batch files and stuff like symlinks and see how it goes.