Herding Cats: Some Common Varieties of Diametrically Opposed Best Practices for Modding Morrowind

[Cl3v3rP0tat0]

So, during my recent and intensive return to Morrowind Modding, so much has changed in 20+ years, new and better ways have replaced the older ways, technology has given us miraculous improvements....etc. BUT I have discovered some discrepancies in what's to be considered "quasi-universal" best practice:

 

 

Fixing Landscape ie. tears/seams in terrain:

Terrain Fixes ( like this one and associated fixes )

 

The advice I decided to go with - don't use these - they create more problems/incompatibility than they resolve. The first guide I used when I returned to Morrowind advised me to install all 3 or so Terrain fixes (not all were easy to find!) BUT, Modders, who I have come to respect (quality of work and sheer experience) state that such massive fixes are bad news down the line.

 

Cell Buffer, Interior/Exterior Morrowind.ini :

 

Advice is all over the proverbial map here... Ultimately, on my potato PC, I zeroed out exterior and interior buffers - I'd rather have the RAM and my PC, potato that it is, can still deliver data up fast enough for game engine.

 

DontThreadLoad and ThreadPriority Morrowind.ini :

 

Again,varied advice, spanning decades with technology changing things up, etc. Through trial and many errors - I decided for my setup to keep DontThreadLoad = 0 and ThreadPriority = -1. (I have a small SSD where my Windows 10 is installed and the Game runs off a 16GB USB stick.)

 

TES3Merge Wrye Mash, TES3CMD mashed multipatched objects, oh my! - et al :

 

TES3Merge is a miraculous utility but many contradictory instructions are floating around - even on the mod's own GITHubWiki and Nexus Page - not counting the various guides floating around. Time changes things but old advice lingers on - how is a Cl3v3rP0tat0 supposed to figure this stuff out?

 

What I am doing, my best guess: With TES3Merge I do not need any other patching for objects or level lists - so no more TES3cmd multipatch or Wrye Mash mashed...so far my Morrowind hasn't imploded.

 

MLOX is hard, LOOT easy but terribad.:

 

Most people agree with MLOX being the best - but it is a bit of a dumpster fire and might be challenging for some peeps to get up and running. Running MLOX without the right stuff is likely way worse than just letting MO2's Loot decide your load order.

 

Those are all I got off the top at the moment, those little things that keep me up all night - until I just say "F*ck it!" and live dangerously.

 

:geek:

---

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

---

~ Terence, This is Stupid Stuff
Alfred Edward Housman
1859 – 1936

[Dragon32]

I'm not currently using anything for seams. Still trying it out, but this seems to help with landscape tears: https://github.com/DavidVonDerau/merged_lands

 

Cell buffer advice used to be to crank it up. Now I'm at 0, 0 trying to preserve that 32bit address space. Same value for DontThreadLoad. I use Process Lasso for process priority

 

I thought TES3Merge was pretty clear that it deprecated all the other such plugins going back to Horatio's Leveled List Merger

 

Is mlox really that tricky? I am biased mind. Download and run the actively managed version and it just works . Does LOOT have any Morrowind-specific rules in it? I'd be wary of it, nothing I've seen recommends it for Morrowind

[Cl3v3rP0tat0]

Well, sorry for late reply - Nexus doesn't give me notice like it does on mod pages, weird.

 

Since I posted this I have "taken the OpenMW pill: and must say I am amazed at how stable and performance friendly it runs the game on my potato pc. But the downside is that a lot my modding tools are not as useful - and on top of that I moved evicted a bloated Windows 10 install off my hardware and install a lean, green Linux Mint Linux. No regrets despite further limitations on mod management tools. (Delta-plugin appears to be doing a good job. but MLOX which I had started to use and like on Windows 10 - I can't get to work on Linux + OpenMW.)

 

As for TES3Merge - it's lingering "old advice" that eclipses the new, current advice out there. Many modding guides - which I have stopped following still say to merge objects with TES3Merge - but do level list with another tool, etc. But, I came to the conclusion such advice was dated/wrong and started using Wrye Mash only for master ordering and cleaning.

 

But there were other aspects I did find confusing and raise in order to pave the way for future player modders.

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Cl3v3rP0tat0