Mods That Respect Morrowind

[RounIcarus]

Hey everybody, I havent been around for a really long time. I dont really know what the state of Open MW is. For about the last ten years I have been wanting to make a modded out Morrowind that feels like a natural extension of the original. I have done this so many times that I am just emotionally bruised by the number of times I just go so frustrated that I needed to quit and come back a year later.

I still believe that the elder scrolls world is a creature all its own. The depth of lore and rich history are something to marvel at. Back in the day I loved Morrowind Comes Alive (MCA) but what I kept finding was huge amounts of things that were out of place. Styles, expressions, behaviors, too many things were made from a modern perspective. I dont want modern perspective. I want morrowind... Frankly there are just a lot of mods that are too clean... To stylized, to fantasy. The look and feel and atmosphere of the game is totally disregarded. Then the answer is 'its just not your taste' Morrowind isnt a taste, its a living creature that you have mutilated...

I came here to say all this because I just need help. I am too emotionally drained from past experiences of digging through piles of mods, not exactly clear what they do and how, never sure of what I was getting or how to refine it. Then i kept having this stupid problem of doubling where there were two of everything... I would get so distressed from everything being so totally wrong for seemingly no reason that I just give up because I cant handle the mental strain of never ending unanswered questions...

I have seen a lot of expansive mods that look really good, like huge expansions and world overhauls. Things that totally change everything but still look and feel like something that should really exist. The way I see it the game itself is a micro expression of the real thing. Vastly expanding everything is totally acceptable because in all the lore these places are expressed as full cities, huge countrysides, whole nations and regions. So taking a given settlement and making it several times better then it was is totally in keeping with the lore. It just needs to be considerate of what should be there and all the elements that make up the world if it were a real place.

I am not asking for people to do everything for me. I am just so sick and browbeaten that I know I just wont be able to do this on my own. I just need help...

I guess the best place to start is something like Tamrial Rebuilt (TR) Because its kind of the end all be all for expansions. I dont know the current state of it but I would hope that a great deal of it is finished and ready to go... In skyrim I was huge on realism and the whole camping in the cold wilderness thing. I remember seeing mods of that nature years ago but again, they would always add plastic modern supermarket looking stuff that just doesnt fit. Making exotic foods that dont belong in morrowind highly common. Its fine to have some imports in some places, especially when there are ports or imperial posts, something that rationally expects 'comforts from home' and stuff like that.

At some point ill find the wherewithall to start looking at the nexus again but at the same time will all those mods be compatible with Open MW? Its confounding things like that, that keep me from being successful... 99% of everything is just not made to work together... Thats the problem with 'taste' everybody just does their own thing therefore nothing is compatible... What a waste of effort...

Anyhow... I really want to succeed this time. Can people please help me find good mods that fill in well and just have a respect for the lore and atmosphere of what Morrowind is supposed to be...

[RounIcarus]

Ok, so I found a folder of mods I was trying to figure out the last time I did something like this. The problem at the time was that everything was doubling. Like Two of the same building on top of each other, double wind blowing banners, double npcs... I dont know how to fix that stuff. I really hope that someone does...

Animated Rebirth

Frostwind

Morrowind Code Patch

MWSE

NCGDMW I have no idea what this is but its in the folder, so I must have wanted it back when xD

The Bare Necessities

Apel Rain Replacer

Better Dialogue Font

Better Heads

MGE

MGSO

Morrowind Comes Alive (not sure if they fixed the modernized stuff or not)

Morrowind Enhanced Textures

Morrowind Optimization Patch

Morrowind Rebirth

Real Signposts

Tamriel Rebuilt

Windows Glow

Im sure there are conflicts in here. If I recall correctly MGE and MGSO dont work together, dont remember which I wanted to use. The thing that stresses me a bit is not knowing what these massive mods like Morrowind Rebirth is going to do when I start adding other things. It might be totally fine and all that I need for Vvardenfell but I have no real idea for sure. Thats why I need help. I mean just looking at this gives me anxiety from just how many times I have tried then and had to quit because there was just too much I dont know how to deal with. Each question prompts a few dozen new ones... I wish this was more simple...

[AnyOldName3]

Firstly, MGE, MCP and MWSE all edit the vanilla engine's executable, and so won't work at all with OpenMW as it's a whole different engine. You're also going to have issues with mods that rely on those.

MGSO has fallen out of favour in recent years as lots of people don't like some of the changes it makes.

Rebirth is your best bet for the thing that's causing problems. It conflicts with pretty much everything, so unless a mod explicitly says it's Rebirth compatible, or has a Rebirth patch that you've installed, assume that they're not going to work together.

[RounIcarus]

Firstly, MGE, MCP and MWSE all edit the vanilla engine's executable, and so won't work at all with OpenMW as it's a whole different engine. You're also going to have issues with mods that rely on those.

MGSO has fallen out of favour in recent years as lots of people don't like some of the changes it makes.

Rebirth is your best bet for the thing that's causing problems. It conflicts with pretty much everything, so unless a mod explicitly says it's Rebirth compatible, or has a Rebirth patch that you've installed, assume that they're not going to work together.

That all sucks... That all really sucks... So is it basically like Open MW ruined all the old school mods? Ouch...

Its like I said in the original post... I dont know what anything is anymore, and Open MW throwing this curve-ball I have absolutely no idea what im supposed to do here... Its like saying I need to get a programming degree just to play a game... Is there a list somewhere of things that I can us?

And again, why do I see doubling? Thats the thing that no one has ever explained.

So far people have only told me what doesnt work...

[AnyOldName3]

Things like MGE, MCP and MWSE were hacks to try and get an old, not particularly good game engine to have fewer restrictions. They let it do things it previously couldn't, but they don't make it a good game engine, and they don't make it easy to make arbitrary improvements. OpenMW is a new engine that's supposed to suck less from the start and make things like script extenders obsolete. Many of the bug fixes that MCP applies are built into OpenMW, and so are some of the graphical improvements from MGE XE, so you're not missing much by not having them. MWSE-only mods will be recreatable when we finish our new scripting system.

A good analogy for things like MWSE is a silt strider. If you want to get around Morrowind, you can catch a silt strider, cut a hole in the top of its shell, fit a saddle, and steer it by directly manipulating its organs. Maybe the first few times this is tried, the silt strider dies, and then over time, people get better at this to the point where you can rock up to any major settlement and pay someone to drive you to somewhere else, but as an amateur, it's not something particularly feasible. These tools are like the hole in the top of the silt strider. OpenMW is like deciding this is a stupid idea and building a 4x4 truck. Until the truck is finished, it's not able to move you around as well as the silt strider, but once it's done, it works much better, and it's easier for someone to come along with no knowledge of trucks and make it go. However, if a silt strider driver comes along, opens the bonnet and tries directly manipulating parts of the truck in the same way as a silt strider, it's not going to work as the inside of an internal combustion engine is pretty different to the inside of a silt strider. That means it's not really possible to make MWSE mods work out-of-the-box with OpenMW.

As for things doubling, that's just what a mod conflict looks like. Rebirth will say something like that crate is gone, and also there's a new one in this location, and another mod might say that crate exists in its original location and has five gold in it. If you load the second mod after Rebirth, the exists in its original location part overrides the that crate is gone part of Rebirth, so you still see the original crate, and you also see the new replacement crate Rebirth added. It would be just like this in the original engine.


The reason why people are telling you what doesn't work is that everything else should work exactly the same as the original engine. Most of the time, you can find out how and why a mod might not be working by reading its webpage, and, except for maybe Minecraft, modding has always required that you're willing to actually read stuff to know what you're doing.

[psi29a]

That all sucks... That all really sucks... So is it basically like Open MW ruined all the old school mods? Ouch...

Its like I said in the original post... I dont know what anything is anymore, and Open MW throwing this curve-ball I have absolutely no idea what im supposed to do here... Its like saying I need to get a programming degree just to play a game... Is there a list somewhere of things that I can us?

And again, why do I see doubling? Thats the thing that no one has ever explained.

So far people have only told me what doesn't work...

There have been many others, here and on reddit who don't have a programming degree and enjoy OpenMW with Morrowind just fine. Though I and others can relate to being thrown a curve-ball on something new you think should "just-work" with all existing mods. I just hope it's frustration and you give it a bit of time and try it out. We're still working on it and improving it.

That being said, nothing is preventing you from playing Morrowind on windows with hacks, without OpenMW. No one is pushing you to do so, it's cool. OpenMW is probably not something everyone wants to use to play Morrowind.

OpenMW's goal is to re-implement the gamebryo/netimmerse engine starting with Morrowind, making things like MGE/MCP/MWSE unnecessary. (You can't use those for example with Oblivion or Skyrim).

Any mods that don't make use of hacks, should work fine with OpenMW. If not, then feel free to let us know what doesn't work. If you can limit it down to a particular mod, likely a NIF, then we can have a look at it. We're all about improve support for NIFs, including supporting NIFS from games other than Morrowind. Being able to use the latest tools, and not those bound to Morrowind, should really give modders more freedom in creating new content.

AnyOldName3's explanation on doubling seems to answer your question.

[RounIcarus]

Things like MGE, MCP and MWSE were hacks to try and get an old, not particularly good game engine to have fewer restrictions. They let it do things it previously couldn't, but they don't make it a good game engine, and they don't make it easy to make arbitrary improvements. OpenMW is a new engine that's supposed to suck less from the start and make things like script extenders obsolete. Many of the bug fixes that MCP applies are built into OpenMW, and so are some of the graphical improvements from MGE XE, so you're not missing much by not having them. MWSE-only mods will be recreatable when we finish our new scripting system.

A good analogy for things like MWSE is a silt strider. If you want to get around Morrowind, you can catch a silt strider, cut a hole in the top of its shell, fit a saddle, and steer it by directly manipulating its organs. Maybe the first few times this is tried, the silt strider dies, and then over time, people get better at this to the point where you can rock up to any major settlement and pay someone to drive you to somewhere else, but as an amateur, it's not something particularly feasible. These tools are like the hole in the top of the silt strider. OpenMW is like deciding this is a stupid idea and building a 4x4 truck. Until the truck is finished, it's not able to move you around as well as the silt strider, but once it's done, it works much better, and it's easier for someone to come along with no knowledge of trucks and make it go. However, if a silt strider driver comes along, opens the bonnet and tries directly manipulating parts of the truck in the same way as a silt strider, it's not going to work as the inside of an internal combustion engine is pretty different to the inside of a silt strider. That means it's not really possible to make MWSE mods work out-of-the-box with OpenMW.

As for things doubling, that's just what a mod conflict looks like. Rebirth will say something like that crate is gone, and also there's a new one in this location, and another mod might say that crate exists in its original location and has five gold in it. If you load the second mod after Rebirth, the exists in its original location part overrides the [/i]that crate is gone[/i] part of Rebirth, so you still see the original crate, and you also see the new replacement crate Rebirth added. It would be just like this in the original engine.


The reason why people are telling you what doesn't work is that everything else should work exactly the same as the original engine. Most of the time, you can find out how and why a mod might not be working by reading its webpage, and, except for maybe Minecraft, modding has always required that you're willing to actually read stuff to know what you're doing.

I guess what im trying to say with this thread is that im just demoralized by how much information there is... I have done a LOT of reading in the past, the problem is that I cant comprehend half of what im looking at. There are lots of 'change logs' but no context for what a lot of it actually means. The thing I am most horrified of is having to do a solid play through for a few days only to find something horribly game breaking for me, and having no comprehension of what did it or how to fix it. I just dont want to invest heavy amounts of time wasted on character development and repetitive restarts that will suck the desire to play right out of me.

What I mean when I say "People only tell me what doesnt work" is that I would just like people to tell me what mods are good within the context of what I said in the original post. You cant invent a new recipe by only disqualifying the things that dont work... I would just like to play the game... I dont want to go a whole play through and realize, oh yeah, that one thing there, that would have been so good to have had for the last month and realize that the experience I had wasnt all that it could have been.

Im just sick and depressed, I want to have some fun for once... And I know the answer is always 'well you dont really need these things' well we can all be homeless under a bridge and life can go on, that doesnt mean its a life worth living... Pretty much, people have been doing this for the last ten years straight, I dont think its too hard to ask from this vast ocean of prior experiences what is good and what isnt. I just want a good game experience that follows the lore, respects the original intent of the game, and improves everything as much as reasonably possible.

Im not lazy... Im heart broken, and after trying so many times and never getting there, I would just like for once if someone else can help me get through this...

[CMAugust]

My advice is to visit https://modding-openmw.com/, peruse from the sections Expanded Vanilla or I Heart Vanilla, and if the mod description says it's fully working, you can be confident in using it for your playthrough. Mod conflicts (if there are any) are usually listed on their download page, and some can be fixed merely by rearranging the mod load order, something OpenMW launcher makes it very easy to do.

[AnyOldName3]

What I mean when I say "People only tell me what doesnt work" is that I would just like people to tell me what mods are good within the context of what I said in the original post.

I'm not sure anyone's actually read all of the original post. It was really long and didn't really have a simple specific question we could answer. We're all volunteers here, and it's much easier to point out a specific combination of things known not to work together than understand what someone else's opinion of a bunch of mods is going to be, especially when opinions are so varied. We've had many multi-page arguments in the past between people who disagree whether very specific behaviours are intentional and should be preserved as a masterpiece of game design, or they're bugs born of Bethesda's legendarily slap-dash software engineering that need to be purged before anyone else is exposed. I don't think there's a single mod out there that everyone would agree stays true to Bethesda's vision for the game. Different staff members had different visions for the game. Some wanted Daggerfall 2, some wanted D&D on the computer, some wanted what would now be called an action game, and at least one wanted to imagine hollowing out all the things that had ever scared him and building houses inside them.

[Loriel]

You may find the report at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pRL ... 8iHVU/edit useful - it is one person's suggestions of mods that he finds immersive and lore-friendly, with a description of the effects of each mod, and also whether they are OpenMW-friendly.

Loriel