Elder Scrolls Let's fix Morrowind

[luj1]

Then what are those YouTube videos showing people playing OpenMW with 200+ mods, huh?

You see, this is why you are a moron and dont deserve to be helped

This literally isnt a measure of anything

because there is 10.000+ mods

I think what you wrote is fake news as it's already compatible with all non-Lua mods, isn't it?

Pffff no

I wish

you dont understand that Mw and OpenMW are 2 engines, 2 games

15+ years ago when OpenMW started it split the community in half and OpenMW lost the race (was obvious a long time ago)

The once Lua support will be implemented (and it will be)

It already has Lua

but its a different Lua

you dont read what has been said 5 times

all mods will work.

Ahahahahaha

no they wont

because its a different kind of Lua

All Lua mods would need to be ported manually which will never happen

No one cares because OpenMW users are like 5-10% of the community

half of the mods on Nexus explicitly mention OpenMW support?

Half of the mods on Nexus have people crying in comments for OpenMW port

 

[Rincewind]

Then what are those YouTube videos showing people playing OpenMW with 200+ mods, huh?

You see, this is why you are a moron and dont deserve to be helped

This literally isnt a measure of anything

because there is 30.000 or 50.000 mods

I think what you wrote is fake news as it's already compatible with all non-Lua mods, isn't it?

Pffff no

I wish

you dont understand that Mw and OpenMW are 2 engines, 2 games

15+ years ago when OpenMW started it split the community in half and OpenMW lost the race (was obvious a long time ago)

The once Lua support will be implemented (and it will be)

It already has Lua

but its a different Lua

you dont read what has been said 5 times

all mods will work.

Ahahahahaha

no they wont

because its a different kind of Lua

All Lua mods would need to be ported manually which will never happen

No one cares because OpenMW users are like 5-10% of the community

half of the mods on Nexus explicitly mention OpenMW support?

Half of the mods on Nexus have people crying in comments for OpenMW port

Well, if you're the kind of person who wants to mod a game to fuck and back, yes, then you can do that with the original engine because of the several kilotonnes worth of mods, I'll give you that.

But for a person who doesn't give a shit (anymore) about all those mods, OpenMW is a clear winner. So apart from access to MWSE Lua mods, all your points are fake news — OpenMW wins in all other areas as clearly explained in this excellent overview I just found:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/l8d3cm/openmw_vs_vanilla_a_comprehensive_guide_to_the/

Personally I'll go with a moderate amount of gfx improvement next time, and most likely zero gameplay mods, and I value stability, so OpenMW is the clear choice. Oh, and the volumetric fog will be nice too.

 

[luj1]

that is a PR piece mate

who gives a fuck if OpenMw can load 5 million mods at once

they are bragging about things which vanilla doesnt have NATIVE support for, which is a bogus argument

go to the Mw discord and ask people who have been in modding for 15 years and u will see

it is the only place with credibility

 

[Rincewind]

that is a PR piece mate

who gives a fuck if OpenMw can load 5 million mods at once

they are bragging about things which vanilla doesnt have native support for, which is a bogus argument cuz its all possible with engine extesions that have been a staple for decades anyway

go to the Mw discord and ask people who have been in modding for 15 years and u will see

it is the only place with credibility

The truth is in this comment from the linked article. That is the only real differentiator right now as you said it yourself.

The moment OpenMW supports MWSE, people will make the switch. I'm not too familiar with OpenMW development, but I think this should be a strategic priority for the developers. OpenMW would likely become the default, especially for people returning/new to Morrowind modding.

 

[luj1]

The moment OpenMW supports MWSE, people will make the switch

only a person who knows nothing can say that

MWSE is an engine extension for vanilla engine

OpenMW is a different engine and cannot use MWSE

its complete nonsense

 

[Rincewind]

The moment OpenMW supports MWSE, people will make the switch

only a person who knows nothing can say that

MWSE is an engine extension for vanilla engine

OpenMW is a different engine and cannot use MWSE

its complete nonsense

How can those DOS games run in DOSBox???!!
DOSBox and a physical PC running MS-DOS 6.2 are completely different things.
It's complete nonsense!

 

[luj1]

DOSBox is an emulator u noob

OpenMW and MWSE arent compatible

and will never be

For MWSE mods and Lua mods, u need to make them from scratch one by one

no one is going to do it, because it would take 50 years

meanwhile there will be a ton of new mods, so OpenMW will never catch up

this has been happening for a decade already

you simply dont want to understand

 

[ADL]

OpenMW in the ways that actually matter (performance, functionality, modding potential and stability) is vastly superior to the old engine and anything worthwhile that is incompatible with OpenMW has already or will be reimplemented in the new engine in a better way. That's assuming there won't be a MWSE/OpenMW compatibility layer developed eventually, which I hope doesn't happen. OpenMW modders tend to be better about their mods' license and not throwing tantrums so redeveloping that stuff is worth it for that reason alone.

I haven't touched Morrowindbryo since 2016 and don't feel like I'm missing out on much.

 

[luj1]

OpenMW in the ways that actually matter (performance, functionality, modding potential and stability) is vastly superior to the old engine

Not really

performance

slightly worse overall, actually

functionality

inferior to MSWE scripting functionality

in fact there are non-MWSE vanilla features that OpenMW still lacks

modding potential

yes

you can have things like better AI/pathfinding/physics/VR/multiplayer and native PBR

but when?

meanwhile it stays behind in everything else, so its not worth it

and physics/PBR already implemented for vanilla via MWSE/MGE XE

stability

used to but not anymore

atm there is no significant difference in stability

 

[Jarmaro]

As far I understand MWSE cannot be in any reasonable way ported to OpenMW, but I don't think that's a problem. Let's be real here, what kind of mods people lack if they go to OpenMW? Just look at Morrowind's Nexus page, basically all of the most popular mods don't require MWSE, Tamriel Rebuilt especially doesn't. Nor does Morrowind Rebirth. If you are looking for some ultra niche mod to suit your playstyle, yeah, you might need something with MWSE. But for 90% of people OpenMW is objectively a superior choice. How many people go full-autist with camping and tea brewing mods like this:

Tea brewing

Ashfall camping

Does this look nice and impressive on Morrowind engine? Obviously. Will more than few people think to themselves, "Damn, I would absolutely change to OpenMW if not for the tea brewing mod!"
There are few mods that an average Morrowind player would need, fewer still require MWSE. And what happens when there's one popular list on Nexus or Wabbajack? There will be just a few little mods to port and nothing else.

Can someone give a solid example of a MWSE mod that people need to play, or that they can't imagine themselves to be playing without?

 

[luj1]

Can someone give a solid example of a MWSE mod that people need to play, or that they can't imagine themselves to be playing without?

https://github.com/Lucevar/mw-immersion-mods/blob/master/mwse.md

bunch of them should have been in the game

 

[luj1]

also openmw still lacks 99% of shaders (but has a few really cool ones)

overall its uglier than modded vanilla

 

[Funposter]

I think what you wrote is fake news as it's already compatible with all non-Lua mods, isn't it?

I might be wrong here, but I believe a very small segment of even non-lua mods are incompatible with OpenMW. A quick look at the website shows that abot's Water Life doesn't work, and his Boats mod isn't either, due to whatever scripting magic he used but also due to how OpenMW handles meshes. There's quite a few mods out there that require you to rename meshes or texture paths, so this seems to be a consistent issue.

The once Lua support will be implemented (and it will be), all mods will work.

Not necessarily, because it's not a 1:1 implementation, if you understand my meaning. All of those mods will need to be re-written for the OpenMW implementation of lua, which relies either on the original mod authors doing it, or other modders going out of their way to port someone else's work. This gets even trickier with how Nexus handles mod permissions, as there's likely a lot of stuff that could be "ported" but will never be allowed to be uploaded to their website as an OpenMW version, since it relies upon the code of the original mod author and permissions were never granted. Just look at what a clusterfuck it was moving from Skyrim LE to SE - it got sorted out within a year or two, but even today there are mods that never got ported from the LE version despite their popularity. The Morrowind community is even smaller, so despite it being extremely dedicated, there's less people available to handle all of this.

What kind of "complete vacuum" are you even talking about when half of the mods on Nexus explicitly mention OpenMW support? Where are you getting these claims and ideas of yours from?

Nexus isn't the only source for Morrowind mods, and there's a lot of older, but still quality and/or popular mods that can only be found at MW Modding History, Great House Fliggerty, people's personal pages etc.

People can do all sorts of engine-level optimisations and multi-core support that's just next to impossible to do with the old binary, having no access to the source code. So even if OpenMW cannot do some things yet, it's the future. I wish something like that existed for PB games.

Right, but it's still a question of whether or not the future is "now". Most people who are fanatical about modding Morrowind still stick with the vanilla engine.

 

[Funposter]

also openmw still lacks 99% of shaders (but has a few really cool ones)

overall its uglier than modded vanilla

People who mod OpenMW seem to overload it with disgusting bumpmapping which takes me back to the bad old days of Darknut's shitty texture overhauls.

 

[Rincewind]

Right, but it's still a question of whether or not the future is "now". Most people who are fanatical about modding Morrowind still stick with the vanilla engine.

Hence he said, OpenMW is recommended for 90% of users. Probably 99% in reality, then luj1 and his ilk falls in the 1%.

This gets even trickier with how Nexus handles mod permissions, as there's likely a lot of stuff that could be "ported" but will never be allowed to be uploaded to their website as an OpenMW version, since it relies upon the code of the original mod author and permissions were never granted.

I've read about all that drama, that's some special kind of brain damage among these modder types. I don't get it why they give a fuck who does what with their stuff, e.g include it in mod compilations or "fork" it and make changes to it, etc. No one gives a fuck or remembers who did what mod anyway; I just installed them based on some lists and never even checked the author's names... They should learn a thing or two about permissive open-source licenses like BSD.

 

[Jarmaro]

I forgot to add that you can not only play OpenMW on Linux, but also straight up boot it on your phone or anything with Linux (as far as I know).
Not to mention you can just straight up play OpenMW in VR. As for the shaders...I admit I don't know much about them or use them because I'm not sure my 2GB VRAM graphic card could bear them, but from the videos I've seen there not that good. Maybe it's just my taste, but I would have to see some comparisons between vanilla and shaders to see if it's worth it, for aesthetical reasons. I prefer AI upscalled look so far.

 

[Rincewind]

I admit I don't know much about them or use them because I'm not sure my 2GB VRAM graphic card could bear them, but from the videos I've seen there not that good.

Last time I checked I think ambient-occlusion was the only major thing missing, the rest that people normally use with the graphics extender seemed to be covered. Well, and I don't care about DOF, so maybe that's missing either, dunno...

 

[luj1]

OpenMW is recommended for 90% of users. Probably 99% in reality, then luj1 and his ilk falls in the 1%.

OpenMW is recommended for 100% of braindead imbecilic cretins that dont want to be helped

such as yourself

Probably this 100% is also 100% in reality

 

[Rincewind]

OpenMW is recommended for 90% of users. Probably 99% in reality, then luj1 and his ilk falls in the 1%.

OpenMW is recommended for 100% of braindead imbecilic cretins that dont want to be helped

such as yourself

Probably this 100% is also 100% in reality

Amazing, people can get emotionally attached to anything. Even buggy game engines.

 

[Valdetiosi]

I just want to play the game while running it fine, OpenMW does that.
What's with huge hate on OpenMW to play Morrowind? Not modded Morrowind, The Morrowind.
If the issue is solely on mods and mod support, then I guess you might be bit snob all about it.

 

[Sonic Titan]

Some serious Morrowboomer talk in this thread. Just use OpenMW and be done with it. Shit never crashes and looks fantastic.

 

[Arvennios]

The graphics mods all end up looking like ass IMO - there are definitely impressive elements in that video but there's also the weird ultra-bright grass that sticks out bizarrely on the landscape, major mismatch in art styles between different textures (from different packs, perhaps), and the usual oddness of modern shaders being used on low-poly-ish models.

The really big problem I had last time I tried various graphical packs was the faces. The vanilla Morrowind faces are excellent, especially for Mer, but disappointingly low res. Everyone recommends Better Heads and the like. Let's take a look at some comparisons:

The incredible talent of the Morrowind modding community

I chose the worst ones but they're all bad. Check it out: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_Mod:The_Comparison_of_NPC_Head_Replacers

These are awful and dated as hell, I don't think people are using them anymore, unless they don't know any better or purely for the sake of nostalgia.

We have much better and vanilla-friendly alternatives :

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47481 (Makom)
https://www.moddb.com/games/morrowind/addons/westlys-pluginless-head-replacer (Westly)
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50093
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/51214

It should be noted that all mods above are pluginless replacers and only replace existing faces and hairs, they don't address the issue of clones (several NPCs sharing the same faces).

 

[Dr1f7]

UPDATE

It's finished, guys. 153 active plugins, and 133 active esps working seamlessly

Spoiler

for now

This list has managed to overhaul gameplay, cities, region landscapes, immersion, roughly 10% of dungeons, added 10 or so large scale quests/dungeons, and many many small quests
The frankenstein morrowind monster is alive and running smoothly!

I'll be creating a character and playing for a while, to see if the game is mechanically playable, as I've stacked many many difficulty-increasing mods on top of one another to create a truly grueling experience, as is deserved of Morrowind
I don't want to post the list quite yet but once I'm confident in it, the list will follow

P.S

One source of great joy for me, when installing mods, was going to the comment sections of many many mods and seeing "WHY ISNT THIS WORK WITH OPENMW?!?!?!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Lemming42]

This is the most exciting moment in Codex history.

Interested to see the quest mods in particular.

 

[Sonic Titan]

Currently sitting at 329 active mods. Not a single crash yet (OpenMW).

Can't figure out how to do get the following mods to work though:

Atmospheric South Wall Corner Club
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49229?tab=files

Beautiful Cities of Morrowind
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49231?tab=posts