Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post about your mods, learn about OpenMW mod compatibility, check for problematic mods, discuss issues, and give us feedback about your experience with modded OpenMW.
Post Reply
Danjb
Posts: 16
Joined: 04 Dec 2014, 10:09

Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post by Danjb »

I am currently getting ready for my first OpenMW playthrough, and updating my guide, Morrowind Today, in the process.

Installing mods in OpenMW is a breeze thanks to each mod residing in its own folder, but there are still several problems that I haven't managed to find a good solution for. How do you typically solve these problems?

---

Load Order

In vanilla Morrowind I would use mlox to sort mods and identify conflicts / problems, but as far as I can tell this does not currently support OpenMW.

I know that mods can be manually re-ordered but I want the benefit of mlox's extensive rule database and automated sorting.

Merged Objects

In vanilla Morrowind I would use TESTool to generate a Merged Objects plugin which would combine the changes of any mods that modified the same records. However, I believe this expects all plugin files to be in the same folder, which is not the case with OpenMW.

Merged Levelled Lists

As I understand it, this is solved by OMWLLF.

Mod Cleaning

Again, the tools I would have used in the past (e.g. escog) expect all mods to be in a single directory for bulk GMST-detection and cleaning.

---

It seems to me that many of these problems would be solved with a simple script that finds all active plugins for an OpenMW installation and copies them to a temporary folder. But before I start messing around with scripts, I would be interested to know how others are tackling these problems.

I have just stumbled upon this section of the documentation which is useful, but the best approach to deal with mods in bulk is still unclear to me.
User avatar
AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post by AnyOldName3 »

If you're installing your mods through MO2 and using its OpenMW Export plugin to make OpenMW see MO2's VFS, you can run older tools like MLOX through MO2 to trick them into thinking all the plugins are in the game folder.
Danjb
Posts: 16
Joined: 04 Dec 2014, 10:09

Re: Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post by Danjb »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 15 Sep 2020, 15:09 If you're installing your mods through MO2 and using its OpenMW Export plugin to make OpenMW see MO2's VFS, you can run older tools like MLOX through MO2 to trick them into thinking all the plugins are in the game folder.
Hello again :)

It sounds like I'll definitely need to get MO2 set up then. For anyone else arriving at this thread, there have been some discussion about MO2 already here.
Danjb
Posts: 16
Joined: 04 Dec 2014, 10:09

Re: Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post by Danjb »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 15 Sep 2020, 15:09 If you're installing your mods through MO2 and using its OpenMW Export plugin to make OpenMW see MO2's VFS, you can run older tools like MLOX through MO2 to trick them into thinking all the plugins are in the game folder.
Could you please provide some guidance on this? I have MO2 set up with all my mods now, but when I launch mlox through MO2 it doesn't detect any mods.

EDIT: I figured it out! Had to set the "Start In" parameter to my Morrowind directory in the mlox executable configuration. Works a treat.
1Mac
Posts: 62
Joined: 20 Feb 2019, 19:50

Re: Questions about mod management (load order, merged objects, etc.)

Post by 1Mac »

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47923

This is a good tool for getting mlox support for OpenMW without bothering with Mod Organizer. It transfers the load order found in your OpenMW.cfg file to your Morrowind.ini file and vice versa. So you can do the following steps:

1.) Run ConvertToMW.exe. This copies your load order from your cfg file to Morrowind.ini with proper formatting.
2,) Run mlox. This will sort your load order in Morrowind.ini.
3.) Run ConvertToOMW.exe. This will copy the sorted load order from Morrowind.ini to your cfg file, again with proper formatting.

I’m on a Mac, and step 2 didn’t quite work as intended. I had to copy the new load order from mlox and paste it into my cfg file, then use some find-and-replace with Grep to format it properly. Even so, it works pretty well, and hopefully it’s a lot smoother for Windows users.
Post Reply