Should I keep my vanilla vanilla Morrowind around?

[raevol]

Hello Devs-

We recently discovered some issues with my Morrowind install, because I'm running a straight-from CD, no expansions, no patches vanilla Morrowind.

I've also recently been doing a playthrough (and having a ton of fun with it btw) and have been itching to install the expansions, official mods, and MPP.

Do you guys want me to keep my vanilla vanilla install around? Do you want me to keep doing my playthrough on it? I feel like I might be the only person ever to do this with OpenMW, which means I'll find bugs no one else will, but conversely means I'll be reporting bugs no one else will ever see...

Thoughts?

[Sslaxx]

Hello Devs-

We recently discovered some issues with my Morrowind install, because I'm running a straight-from CD, no expansions, no patches vanilla Morrowind.

I've also recently been doing a playthrough (and having a ton of fun with it btw) and have been itching to install the expansions, official mods, and MPP.

Do you guys want me to keep my vanilla vanilla install around? Do you want me to keep doing my playthrough on it? I feel like I might be the only person ever to do this with OpenMW, which means I'll find bugs no one else will, but conversely means I'll be reporting bugs no one else will ever see...

Thoughts?

I'm not a dev, but I think this sounds a useful thing to do.

[SquireNed]

Bugs nobody else will ever see are still bugs.

Plus, it may be easier to diagnose some on a vanilla Morrowind install than it would be on a fully expanded install.

[Chris]

We recently discovered some issues with my Morrowind install, because I'm running a straight-from CD, no expansions, no patches vanilla Morrowind.

Personally, I don't see very much use in using an unpatched < v1.6 Morrowind.Those older versions have many (some game-breaking) bugs in the data files, and are missing not only records an up-to-date engine needs, but also some models, textures, and other media files. And the unofficial patches that fix more bugs that Bethesda left tend to require a fully updated 1.6 install.

[rab]

I don't think I ever installed any patches on my copy, didn't occured to me when installed it again (just for the data files, hadn't played the original in many years). Can I clarify the correct procedure to obtain the latest patched data for openmw:
1) install morrowind (do not apply any patches)
2) install tribunal (do not apply any patches)
3) install bloodmoon
4) install latest bloodmoon patch (v1.6.1820.zip)

The official patch instructions do clearly say not to install the latest morrowind patch if you've already installed tribunal, but the tribunal patch doesn't say not to install it if you've already installed bloodmoon.

[raevol]

Does the latest bloodmoon patch have any changes to the data files? If it's changes to the binary only, it can be skipped.

[rab]

I don't know, that's really the question. But if you don't install the bloodmoon patch do you need to install something else (e.g. tribunal patch? or just tribunal itself and that patches the morrowind data?)

edit: and what happens on linux if you've used the openmw installer to extract the morrowind data files, I assume if you have an original version (rather than a later edition with the update already in) then there is no way to patch the data files