Is openmw compatible with MGSO

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mkborregaard
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Joined: 30 Apr 2016, 11:22

Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by mkborregaard »

Hi, noob here (but I did search the forums),
I play openmw on my ubuntu 16.04 machine, I love it; but just curious whether it would be possible/make sense to use MGSO (Overhaul) with openmw (and is doable to install for noobs like me), or these are more competing efforts?

Thanks a bunch!
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lysol
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Location: Sweden

Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by lysol »

Hi there and welcome!

Yes, the mod should be compatible except for a few things: The Morrowind Code Patch (MCP) and Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE). Those are third party .exe-files that are modifying how Morrowind runs. Since OpenMW is a totally different engine with a totally different .exe file, you can't run these with OpenMW.

So basically: Yes, you can use the sounds, textures and 3d models from MGSO, but not the distant land, shadows and light effects provided by MGE, nor the bug fixes and features provided by MCP. The bug fixes by MCP are on the other hand unneccessary with OpenMW since the bugs aren't there from the start.

Oh, and don't mind my signature. :roll:
mkborregaard
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Joined: 30 Apr 2016, 11:22

Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by mkborregaard »

Ha ha, thanks a lot, I will try it out. Sounds, textures and 3d models were in fact what I was after. As far as I can tell openmw already has the other things covered absolutely fine for my uses!
mkborregaard
Posts: 25
Joined: 30 Apr 2016, 11:22

Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by mkborregaard »

Would you happen to know how to get MGSO working in practice, though? When I download it it comes as a series of exe files, rather than as a pack of data files. I assume those data files get created when the exe files are run. I cannot run them, though, as I am on linux. Is there a way to just get the textures and sounds as data files?
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Pop000100
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Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by Pop000100 »

MGSO, the data files are stored in data.7z(might be data.exe but you can force 7zip to unzip it) IIRC.
Whimby
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Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by Whimby »

I've been trying to get MGSO to work with openmw, however the rocks in the game are all reflective and shiny, it's a weird problem.
Nivim
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Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by Nivim »

@Whimby: That sounds like the fake bump-mapping vs. real bump mapping problem I've been hearing about (some mods did some clever/hacky things to get an effect like bump-mapping, but that relied on irregular properties of the original engine, so doesn't work here), although I'd need to see a screenshot to know for sure.

@lysol: Isn't the Distant Land something OpenMW also can do when you set view distance in settings.cfg? Or does MGE do something fancier than we do? (Note: my file also has a section labeled 'Viewing distance' as well as an option, but said section isn't on the wiki. New thing or discontinued thing?)
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lysol
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Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by lysol »

Whimby wrote:I've been trying to get MGSO to work with openmw, however the rocks in the game are all reflective and shiny, it's a weird problem.
As Nivim said, it's because of the fake bump-mapping. It was a hackish way of doing it before, but it is a poor way of doing it when you can do it the real way. Those old techniques don't work anymore, and, IMO, if scrawl would be re-implementing that "feature", then it would only result in people releasing new mods using this bad way of making bump maps.
Nivim wrote: @lysol: Isn't the Distant Land something OpenMW also can do when you set view distance in settings.cfg? Or does MGE do something fancier than we do? (Note: my file also has a section labeled 'Viewing distance' as well as an option, but said section isn't on the wiki. New thing or discontinued thing?)
In the Ogre-version, there was an early distant land implementation that indeed was turned on by modifying settings.cfg. I'm pretty sure that the distant land feature is not re-implemented yet, but there might be so that you can modify view distance and the number of loaded cells, I don't know. If that's the case, it will probably result in poor performance until real distant land gets reimplemented. But scrawl needs to confirm this.
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psi29a
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Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by psi29a »

There is distant land, but it is optimized right now as all statics are also rendered, even if you can't see them.
mkborregaard
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Joined: 30 Apr 2016, 11:22

Re: Is openmw compatible with MGSO

Post by mkborregaard »

Hi, these are great tips. I managed to extract the Data.exe file and add the mod as described in the wiki. Extracting the files gave me a number of mods I can disable or enable under Data Files in the OpenMW launcher.

The results were a little disappointing. I also get the 'shiny rocks' error, but otherwise cannot really tell the difference apart from a 25% drop in FPS (which is abysmal already on my system: from 20 to 15 fps outside on an i3 3.3Ghz with 8GB and a 2GB Nvidia GT 730 at 1680x1050). Notably, I had thought there would be grass and fancy tropical trees and better faces on NPCs, but that did not seem to be the case. Checking the Data Files folder I could not see the "Grass" or "Better faces" or any "trees" mod (I mean the .esm files) either.

I love the idea of the openMW engine, so it would be really cool to run it with the best of the graphical updates to MW as well!
Last edited by mkborregaard on 02 May 2016, 14:54, edited 1 time in total.
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