Morrowind! An awsome mod compilation making the game worth playing again

[HydroSqueegee]

ho. le. shit.

i know exactly what im doing tonight.

 

[Martimus]

Sounds like they didn't include Better Bodies or Better Heads, or some of the other Character beautification Mods - that's a bit odd if that's true.


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Yeah, those two were missing from my mod list. I guess I can go find them and add them myself.

 

[Throckmorton]

Of course. DX10 and DX11 allow for things that couldn't be done before, but more in terms of efficiency and precision than whether or not you can make a good looking scene. There's a fair chance that Starcraft II might be able to be less of a CPU hog at a given FPS, were it DX11, instead of DX9, FI (or, maybe not--I don't know Blizzard's secret sauce--but it's plausible).

So how come every new generation just saps performance and doesn't provide any visual benefits?

 

[gothamhunter]

It proves that all this DX10 and DX11 stuff is a red herring. The technological gimmicks aren't what make a game look good.

I wouldn't say that's true lol. If they recreated Morrowind using an engine that can support Direct X 11 I'm sure it would easily blow something like this away.

 

[Cerb]

So how come every new generation just saps performance and doesn't provide any visual benefits?

Hmm?

Quake, Quake 2, and Unreal pushed serious limits back in the day.

We got gradual improvements, with games using extra resources freed up by things like HW T&L. Later, we got good looking (for the time) games like Serious Sam, and further Croteam and Q3 based games. Graphics most certainly improved.

As everybody got DX9.0C cards, and OpenGL extensions got fairly well settled to support those HW features, we finally got games like HL2 and Doom 3. HL2 looked very good, and definitely was on the cutting edge of making a fun FPS environment to play in. Doom 3's graphics at the time were jaw-dropping, and the pure-software audio processing was the death knell EAX needed (the Creative licensing irony was beautiful, too ).

Since then, most games have offered incremental improvements. In fact, Doom 3's engine (updated, of course) is still not only powering current games, but pushing current hardware pretty well.

The only game since that time to really wow us with graphics was Crysis, and Crytek realized with it that releasing a high-end tech demo might not be in their best interests. I think Metro 2033 is close to that detail level, though, and it certainly performs like it.

We have gotten generational improvements, but overall, most games fall short on all the little things. Why is there a visible gap between the polygons over here? Why is this lighting effect abruptly stopping, with no reflection or diffusing (many games being released now don't even have the same quality of lighting that Doom 3 had, despite all this time)? Why do faces have so much detail, yet the rest of the game not, even modles right next to the faces? And why do faces have all this detail, only to stretch textures in an abhorrent way, making me wish they'd just made it cartoony-looking to begin with? Also, why add so much detail to the entities in the game world that getting decent FPS is practically impossible?

 

[AFurryReptile]

I never played Morrowind because I couldn't get past the graphics, but this looks infinitely better than what I remember and I'll definitely be checking it out.

This mod is enormous. I shouldn't have any performance issues with an i7 and 470GTX, right?

 

[Martimus]

It runs 'OK' on my S939 X2, and HD3850, so you should be fine. Although I don't have it all maxed out, and I am running at 1280x1024, and it isn't perfectly smooth for me either, just playable for a RPG.

 

[simonizor]

So how come every new generation just saps performance and doesn't provide any visual benefits?

Go and google some comparisons. You'll see that the are obviously benefits to each new version. Stop whining about it and shaddap already.

 

[bcterps]

Is this different than the Morrowind 2011 mod pack that came out in January? It got shut down because mod creators complained about their mods being included without their permission.

 

[DaveSimmons]

One thing I'm curious about: if you need to install Tribunal for this, won't you have to deal with the assassins and side trip to deal with them right away?

It's been years, but I thought they will show up a game day or two after the expansion is installed.

Is this different than the Morrowind 2011 mod pack that came out in January? It got shut down because mod creators complained about their mods being included without their permission.

Completely separate, these people supposedly asked all of the original authors for permission.

 

[motsm]

Go and google some comparisons. You'll see that the are obviously benefits to each new version. Stop whining about it and shaddap already.

There were marked benefits up to DX9 for sure. DX10 did next to nothing however, and DX11 in it's current iteration is rather useless too, as both games and hardware aren't properly built for it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

This a community blessed alternative to the amazing Morrowind 2011 overhaul?

Wish that guy had gone through the proper channels, it was so cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs

 

[wanderer27]

One thing I'm curious about: if you need to install Tribunal for this, won't you have to deal with the assassins and side trip to deal with them right away?

It's been years, but I thought they will show up a game day or two after the expansion is installed.



Completely separate, these people supposedly asked all of the original authors for permission.

I think you can install the Expansion packs so you have the files/functionality, but you may be able to "deselect" the Tribunal ESM afterwords.


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[simonizor]

There were marked benefits up to DX9 for sure. DX10 did next to nothing however, and DX11 in it's current iteration is rather useless too, as both games and hardware aren't properly built for it.

You don't know what you're talking about. Are you just pissed because you bought a DX9 card right before DX10 came out? The differences are obvious.

DX9 vs DX10

 

[Markbnj]

Re-installed Morrowind and set everything up tonight. If you're going to try this out I suggest following the install guide (link on the download page) step by step. Note that it requires Bloodmoon. If you don't have that installed you'll get a compatibility error in the patch phase.

The game looks phenomenal for a nine year-old title. I never finished it the first time through, so I am looking forward to giving it another go. I'm running a GTS250 on Windows 7/64, and I had to crank the settings back pretty significantly to get above 30 FPS, but it still looks great. I also installed to program files and didn't have any issues. Ran the installer as admin and it sailed right through.

Definitely worth the effort, imo.

 

[Wuzup101]

I was just thinking about installing morrowind and some mods... guess this solves what I'm doing this weekend...

 

[CU]

Markbnj what cpu are running? Also what res? Just curious how my rig would handle it.

 

[gothamhunter]

When you get to the setting about the grass, be careful at about how dense you make it. the grass density can severly bog down your PC.

Also, don't enable the grass mods in the mod manager, otherwise they will make the grass impassable.

 

[Markbnj]

Markbnj what cpu are running? Also what res? Just curious how my rig would handle it.

Wolfie E8500, 8GB ram, GTS250 w/... I think 512MB. Running the game at 1680 x 1050. I tried it at 1920 x 1200 but I just couldn't get over 30 FPS. I had to disable texture filtering, crank AA back to 2x, reduce the texture sizes, fall back to simple trees, remove some water reflections, remove the light occlusion shader, bunch of other stuff. I must have restarted 10 or 15 times before I got it tuned.

Makes me want to get a new card.

 

[Cerb]

Observations:

PC: E6750 at 3.28GHz (410MHz FSB), 8GB DDR2, GTX 460 840MHz (it took a decade-old game to need to OC it ), 1TB Samsung F3, Windows 7 64-bit, 1680x1050 monitor.

The show-off shots are just that, and in practice, it still kinda looks like an old game with more details added to it. Very good, though, and it uses no more VRAM than my previous set of mods.

High quality shadows looked all wrong. Normal shadows could stand softening, but otherwise look good, and it may not be possible with the engine.

Anything on or under water has severe chromatic aberration, whether I use the added water shaders or not.

The ambient occlusion shader brings me form 30+ FPS down to 1-5FPS (I saw as low as 1.3 reported by Afterburner's OSD). Sadly, this effect makes a massive difference in lighting quality, so I'd love to know if there is a way to fix this (other than a new CPU ). Update: I won't claim to know what did it, but after much tinkering with MEGui, occlusion now works fine, with a minor FPS hit.

The mod applies the sun-design crosshair, whether I want it or not. So, i guess I'll have to go find that file and fix it myself (textures\target.dds or .tga).

Other than that, it's all good, and installation was relatively painless.

P.S. Fire up the construction set, and adjust iMaxActiveDist, if you find the NPCs fading out so close annoying. 192 is the default, and I've found 336 to be a nice value, that doesn't kill FPS in open areas.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I installed it and played for 20 minutes before giving up. Even with the updates the engine is just too dated. Good effort though.

 

[motsm]

You don't know what you're talking about. Are you just pissed because you bought a DX9 card right before DX10 came out? The differences are obvious.

DX9 vs DX10

I'm sorry to break it to you, but you are actually the one that has no idea what they are talking about. You are just gullible enough to be shown a few marketing screenshots and take them as unaltered fact. The truth is, DX10 did next to nothing to improve graphics, and all of those comparison screenshots were made by nerfing the DX9 renderer to make DX10 look good by comparison (or by simply fabricating the DX10 shots completely). Just look at Crysis, it locked out the very high settings if you were running on DX9, but simply changing a couple .CFG files allowed all of those "DX10 Only" features to be played on everyone's DX9 graphics cards.

Anyway, no debate needed here, because you need to do some research so you can prove yourself wrong.

 

[OCNewbie]

Hope this question isn't too much of a thread derailment. If I didn't care too much for Oblivion (the exploration/graphics kept it interesting for a bit, but I gradually got bored of it), is it likely that I'll feel the same way about Morrowind? From what I've read, it seems that if the games had identical graphics, that Morrowind, as a game, is generally considered better?

 

[Kalmah]

Hope this question isn't too much of a thread derailment. If I didn't care too much for Oblivion (the exploration/graphics kept it interesting for a bit, but I gradually got bored of it), is it likely that I'll feel the same way about Morrowind? From what I've read, it seems that if the games had identical graphics, that Morrowind, as a game, is generally considered better?

Yeah, the story is pretty epic. Probably one of the most epic fantasy rpgs I've played. It's not the short little cliche dinky thing that Oblivion was.

Keep in mind though, even with all of this stuff enabled the game still feels 10 years old. (animations are shabby, ai is as stupid as it gets.. etc)

 

[Kalmah]

I thought I would post my settings for reference.

My rig is:

Core2duo e8400
4gb 1066 ram
460gtx graphics
Windows 7 64

I'm getting 30-40 fps with these settings.

resolution: 1400x900
AA: 4x
Vsinc: 1 (with triple buffering enabled in drivers)
Anisotropic filtering: 16
MipMap LOD bias: -1

Keep fps constant enabled: desired fps 35 (other settings default)

Shaders:
HDRbloom
PlayableDepthofField
Godrays
Underwater Blur
Water Wobble
(ambient occlusion is big fps hit so I don't use this.)

Distant Land:
4096 world texture resolution
1024 world normalmap resolution
World mesh: high
Minimum static: 150
Grass density: 60
Mesh detail: full

Draw distance: 4 cells
Shader 3.0
Use distance statics checked

Water: Sky and Landscape reflections checked