Newbie baffled by mod installation

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2ShortPlanks
Posts: 2
Joined: 23 Dec 2022, 00:35

Newbie baffled by mod installation

Post by 2ShortPlanks »

Sorry if this has been done to death, but I've hit a wall here.

I decided to drag out my old Morrowind GOTY disc and install Morrowind via OpenMW. That part went without a problem.

I've installed OpenMW 0.47 in Linux Mint 20.1 and I'd like to install the 'Graphics Overhaul' mods as listed at https://modding-openmw.com/lists/graphics-overhaul/ but I've spent a couple of hours reading online docs and I'm still no closer to understanding how to achieve it.

The page https://modding-openmw.com/getting-star ... ging-mods/ refers to installing mods with either OpenMW 0.48 (which I don't have) or using a mod manager or doing it manually (which is not recommended).

I installed portmod 2.4.2 via pip, after reading this line on the above page: "Portmod was built from the ground up for OpenMW, and has the capability to support easy installations for goups of mods such as the lists on this website." I've hunted for more information on how to install mods using the list, but I can't find anything. How exactly does one use the list of 'Graphics Overhaul' mods in portmod to install all of the mods in the list?

A post on this forum re portmod at viewtopic.php?p=65506#p65506 states: 'A simple way to check for this would be just to try running `omwmerge` in a terminal and see if the executable is found.' On my system portmod is installed in '.local/bin' and '.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/portmod', '.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/portmod-2.4.2.dist-info/' and '.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/portmodlib/'. There is no 'omwmerge' executable anywhere in the installation. Is my installation of portmod screwed up, or is that information out of date?

So far I'm getting the impression that, despite the 'not recommended' status of manual installation, it is the only way to install mods.

Could somebody PLEASE point me in the direction of some information on how to install the 'Graphics Overhaul' mods for Morrowind in OpenMW?
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Newbie baffled by mod installation

Post by AnyOldName3 »

The guide recommends using OpenMW's launcher before it suggests using an alternative mod manager, so you could try that. For Portmod-specific help, you'll need to look at Portmod's documentation.
2ShortPlanks
Posts: 2
Joined: 23 Dec 2022, 00:35

Re: Newbie baffled by mod installation

Post by 2ShortPlanks »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 24 Dec 2022, 03:11 The guide recommends using OpenMW's launcher before it suggests using an alternative mod manager, so you could try that. For Portmod-specific help, you'll need to look at Portmod's documentation.
Thanks for the response. When you say 'the guide' are you referring to https://modding-openmw.com/getting-star ... ging-mods/? That's the page that refers to OpenMW version 0.48, but the latest version I have is version 0.47. The options listed on that page are not in version 0.47.

For portmod, I did look at portmod's documentation but I could not find any instructions that even slightly resembled the description "Portmod has the capability to support easy installations for goups of mods such as the lists on this website."

I have looked at every bit of documentation I could find and it was not helpful. That is why I posted here, hoping someone could clarify the process for me. I get the impression that much of the required knowledge is undocumented, and perhaps it is assumed that people will already know much of it. Unfortunately I do not. Perhaps I have misunderstood how the installation process works. If every one of the hundreds of mods in the 'Graphics Overhaul' list must be individually downloaded, extracted, installed, configured and tweaked, then that seems to be the manual process that is 'not recommended'. I was expecting to simply download a file containing or pointing to all of the required mods, which would then be automatically downloaded, installed and configured. Apparently that is not how it works.
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Newbie baffled by mod installation

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Before it switched to recommending the new options in the launcher that will be available in the 0.48 release (and have been available in dev builds for months, which are discussed on that site's Install OpenMW page), the guide actually recommended manual installation of mods, and the individual instructions the site gives for each mod should be straightforward if you're doing things manually. It's never recommended Portmod as your first thing to try, and you need to ask Portmod questions somewhere specific to Portmod as most people here don't use it. Maybe most of its documentation is hard to find and you've not found it yet, or maybe it's got massive gaps and that's why you don't know how to use Portmod, but this isn't a particularly good place to find people who do know how to use it.

You're not going to find a single file containing all the mods in the list without resorting to crime as they're made by hundreds of different people who each hold the copyright to the part they made, and often haven't published them under a licence that allows the download to be repackaged or rehosted. As well as that, in the last two decades, lots of them have died or otherwise disappeared from the internet, so there's no way to contact them and ask them for additional permissions.
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