Morrowind Modding Wiki

[wretchedfetcher]

Hello my friends,

For many years - a fair share of our life - we played Morrowind and learned that there hardly is a game of comparable depth and beauty, and a better creative outlet. Morrowind was the first game that allowed us to roam freely in astonishing, beautifully detailed world, so very detached from our earthly struggles. But more importantly - at least as I see it - it gave us the freedom and easy means of changing this world according to our desires, our vision of it, the freedom (and much incentive!) to expand on it, enlarge it and beautify it to perfection. Where the developers stopped, we continued, and we will hopefully never stop doing so.

Not in the least many of us continue to care about the game thanks to you, my dear community. Rarely do I see a company of so intelligent and friendly, and helpful, and talented people on the Internet.

But the time goes on, and with Morrowind being a game of such a venerable age, we are forced to deal with a set of problems. We saved our mods (thanks Nexus! Thanks MMH!), but there is more: as forums are purged and websites go dark, we are loosing valuable resources: modding guides, forum threads, which long served us as a reference to troubleshoot various problems, and tutorials, which helped to properly set up and enjoy the modded game. And the information that is available is so dispersed that it becomes a chore to find what you are looking for. No doubt that for the newer players and modders this proves especially difficult.

 

With this in mind, Brucoms and AndalayBay of The Assimilation Lab about a year ago started Morrowind Modding Wiki, dedicated to preserving, centralizing and expanding Morrowind modding knowledge. We are not that big yet, but have got all the basics covered and can be useful for new and experienced players, and for modders alike.

Things move pretty slow right now, but I wouldn't worry about it. New people will come and pick up the reigns (maybe you?). That's because the format of a wiki, for all ordinary uses, is the ultimate way of storing and verifying information (hundred editors > one editor) on a subject in one place, and keeping it up to date. And we NEED such a place, it is just obvious. And no, the UESP wiki is not enough. Why? Let me explain.

1. The UESP is large, way too large to navigate it easily. The UESP covers all entries of The Elder Scrolls series, including the newest popular MMO spin-off, ES Online. We restrict ourselves to Morrowind exclusively.
2. The main focus of the UESP is to provide gameplay information, lore, walkthroughs, to tell about a game world and its inhabitants, describe quests and storylines. It has a respectable modding section - unfortunately pretty well hidden - but it is apparently of secondary importance for the editors. Morrowind Modding Wiki has different objectives: to provide people with exhaustive information on mod-building and to give them educated advice on how to play modded Morrowind without problems.
3. Our wiki aims to gather and conserve all kind of technical information concerning modding, including articles, guides and forum threads. This is just out of scope for the UESP.

I would like to stress that I deeply respect writers and editors of the UESP as I would respect anyone who freely donates their time and energy to help others. The UESP is and always will be a number one general Morrowind reference resource, and Morrowind Modding Wiki is absolutely not intended to compete with it in any way. On the contrary, it exists to complement the UESP in the areas specified above.

Needless to say, the Morrowind Modding Wiki has nothing to do with money. It is a fan-driven project, by gamers for gamers, started for the sake of continuing prosperity of our fine community.

Now let's have a quick look at what we've got.

Players might be interested in:

• Beginners Guide, to get you started
• Wrye Mash, to learn how actually easy it is to remove and add mods on the fly, and how to tend the health of your saves
• Mod Loader Order Expert (Mlox), to sort your load order so the game wouldn't break.
• GMST Contamination, to know your enemy
• TES3cmd, to clean your mods of said contamination (and other nasty things) in a breeze (or use TESTool, which is easier to get into)
• Morrowind Graphics Extender XE, to bring your Morrowind to entirely new level of beauty
• Morrowind Code Patch, to get rid of those pesky bugs in the code, and get some great new features to boot
• 4GB Patch, to take advantage of your large RAM
• Creating a Compatibility Patch, to make those stubborn mods compatible
• Morrowind Patch Project, to take advantage of previous gamers' experience, who took their time to squash every one of them insects (kinda)

Modders may find useful the following:

• Morrowind Mod Maker's Manual
• Scripting for Dummies
• Morrowind Script Library
• Scripting with MWSE
• Bump and Reflection Mapping
• MWSE, featuring extensive documentation on the newer version of the extender made by Merzasphor recently (pretty unique development)
• Storing NPC related data
• Custom Faces
• Creating dialogue and Dialogue Window
• NifSkope Hints and Tips and MaterialProperty - a little piece of advice for NifSkope users
• Scripts from LofZ and Creation and Management of Factions - straight from Russia, with love (for once)

Additionally, we have these supplementary materials:

• Modder interviews - contains the old Bethesda Morrowind modder interviews, and DarkElfGuy's video interviews, some of which were transcribed by Brucoms.
• Morrowind Hyperlinks Compendium - our WIP internet links collection. if only everybody had just dropped a line about their Morrowind fansite - that would have been really great. We can hope...

If you want to participate, we'll be delighted! Here's the information to get you started:

First, give the Getting Started page a read. To edit and create pages you will need to sign up. This is necessary to keep unwanted bots out.

Have a look at the Stubs category for pages that need work, and to the Task List page for things other editors have flagged up as needing work. If you have an idea of an article, or a guide - you can create a new page right away and go ahead! Just be aware that your material may be edited or overwritten - because this is how wikis work and this is what makes them preferable for keeping data relevant and correct. If you're unsure as to how to format a page, give the Formatting and Style guides a read.

One of the main difficulties we face at the wiki is procuring the right to copy guides. Given the game's age, many authors are not available anymore, so it's not possible to get their assent for saving their work for the future, in case sites it is hosted at close. We implore everybody to always specify permissions you give (or don't) for modifying, copying and hosting your work, be it a guide, or a script, or a mod. Absence of such information means a 'no' to us, though I'm sure most people wouldn't care, they have just forgotten to write that last line. If you're an author, and wish that your article be copied to the wiki (rest assured that the authorship will be indicated), please write us a note. Maybe just right here.

Things are a lot easier with forum threads, because a forum administration is usually around. Right now we have a permission from Matt Grandstaff, the Bethesda community manager, to copy material from official Morrowind forum.

And lastly, here are the links to discussions of Morrowind Modding Wiki at various forums.

• The old thread at official forum
• The new thread at official forum
• The discussion at The Assimilation Lab
• The discussion at Reddit

We'd like to express our gratitude to AndalayBay for allowing the wiki to be hosted by The Assimilation Lab. Thank you so much Anda!

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

P.S. Morrowind Modding Wiki and OpenMW.

The much anticipated arrival of OpenMW 1.0, which is going to make Morrowind truly imperishable (yay!), will not make the Modding Wiki redundant. Here's why:

1. Scripting language of OpenMW will remain mostly the same, with some additions. The game will be more unforgiving to incorrect syntax in script, though, but for a good reason.
2. Most modding tools and some player aids will remain useful. Only those which address bugs will not (because old bugs will be non-existent).
3. All modelling and texturing techniques will still be relevant.
4. A large portion of players will stay on original game engine, because this is how things work in this world.

A lot of information about dealing with Morrowind bugs and quirks will become unnecessary, of course, but this can only be for the good.

OpenMW has its own wiki, and a very vibrant one, but right now people there are occupied with documentation of the new game's engine.

Whether there will be a modding section is the question for the future. If it proves to be a better place for our community's modding needs, I won't mind transferring useful for OpenMW materials from our wiki to theirs (speaking for myself now, though I don't think others would object).

Edited August 27, 2015 by wretchedfetcher

[Oubliette]

Sounds pretty good and thorough. Since you've already gotten permission to copy threads from the official forums I assume you're also posting there? A lot of Morrowind's modders still call those forums home and are more likely to contribute there than here or even at Fliggerty's site.

[wretchedfetcher]

Sounds pretty good and thorough. Since you've already gotten permission to copy threads from the official forums I assume you're also posting there? A lot of Morrowind's modders still call those forums home and are more likely to contribute there than here or even at Fliggerty's site.

 

Yes, of course we have covered official forums first. I have included links to the discussion, but here they are again: 1st thread, 2nd thread. Nobody posted there in a while though.