7 ms·

The Modern Gamer's Guide to Running Morrowind

70 points by Alekhine 4y ago

etataetaet 4y ago
Love OpenMW! Got my old disk to work on my Linux system and it was super easy. If you want to play Morrowind I would highly recommend it.
wly_cdgr 4y ago
Pass, vanilla is just fine
kqr 4y ago
Every now and then I feel like playing Morrowind, but to get the most out of it, I would like to sit in long sessions with a notebook just to immerse myself in that world, read the in-game books, talk to the people, etc. With small children, full time work, etc, I haven't found a way to make that happen. Do I wait until retirement or is there some other trick to it?
- 1MachineElf 4y ago
  I'm thinking the Steam Deck's portability would make it convenient enough to play in many unconventional settings, even on the couch together with your kids.
  - NinoScript 4y ago
    Keep a Steam Deck next to your toilet.
accrual 4y ago
I'm a couple hours into my first "real" playthrough and highly recommend this vanilla modding guide: https://github.com/Sigourn/nerevarrising https://github.com/Sigourn/nerevarrising It's basically vanilla plus. Not only did I have a fun following the guide, I feel like I'm getting a very authentic experience. One day I'll experiment more with OpenMW (especially once it reaches modding parity), but for today I'm enjoying the real thing.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  > One day I'll experiment more with OpenMW (especially once it reaches modding parity) If you want to keep vanilla mechanics (mostly), then OpenMW has already had modding parity for at least several years. In fact, OpenMW is already mostly working on enhancements and performance improvements rather than stability and feature parity with the original engine. AFAIK, they have their own modding guide, which is pretty extensive, and the minority of mods that aren't compatible are just those which are obsolete (not updated since 2004-5) or superceded by other, better mods, anyways.
assbuttbuttass 4y ago
OpenMW is amazing. I can play Morrowind in 4k on my Linux machine.
edapiieaway 4y ago
Ahh, Morrowind. A conworld so good that the community effort put into modernizing it may have eclipsed the amount of work put into creating it in the first place. The OpenMW project is extremely impressive. I was going to say something like, "you owe it to yourself to play this game." But my parent's generation said the same thing to me about CRPGs like Planescape: Torment, and as a working adult, I never had the time to figure out their convoluted gameplay systems. So more realistically, give Morrowind to your children. Figure out how to install it, get a character to Balmora to make sure it doesn't crash every 5 minutes, and let them go nuts. Vvardenfell is a strange land which rewards curiosity, and it doesn't have any ads.
- jbay808 4y ago
  > But my parent's generation said the same thing to me about CRPGs like Planescape: Torment Wasn't that released just three years prior? How old are your parents?
  - morsch 4y ago
    Three years makes a big difference if he was, say, 12 when Morrowind was released. And while I wouldn't call it convoluted, Planescape: Torment is much more cerebral and much less experiential than an open world first person RPG.
    - nwiswell 4y ago
      Yeah I'm guessing that's what he meant. PS:T is less accessible to the general gaming public in that regard.
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        The problem is that the "game" parts are not very good; even outright shit, especially if you compare it to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. It more than makes up for that in atmosphere and writing, but many players are expecting to, well, play a game, not read a novel, which is entirely fair. Tides of Numeria suffered from the same issue.
NinoScript 4y ago
I love reimplementations. I’ve recently been playing Julius, a reimplementation of Caesar III; and Augustus, a form with extra features: https://github.com/bvschaik/julius https://github.com/bvschaik/julius https://github.com/Keriew/augustus https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
- chevill 4y ago
  How complete is this? I loved Caesar II. Didn't have a chance to play the third.
  - azalemeth 4y ago
    They're both fully functional and amazing games. Ceaser 3 is a really fun, "modern" strategy game and one thing I (and my parents) liked at the time it came out is that all the military stuff is optional. You can get just as much glory for building a grown with a huge economy and large number of exports as defeating Hannibal's elephants. Both of those open reimplementations require the base game, which is very very cheap on gog.com. I'd really recommend it.
dimitar 4y ago
Maybe its my teenage nostalgia but Morrowind has one of the best settings I've seen. You got Ashlands yurts, Vivec city with its canals and ziggurats, a city inside a crab mushroom towers, and other architectures. Medieval Europe is still there, but it looks intentionally out of place as required by the story. I feel only Dune and Star Wars have been so visually distinctive for me.
- wsc981 4y ago
  When I visited Morrowind in Elder Scrolls Online it just felt like a drab, sad place. Based on the screenshots in the article, it seems the original Morrowind game has a similar style for this area. However, I read many good thing on the original Morrowind game so I do intend to play it some time.
  - dimitar 4y ago
    In the original game it is a peculiar nation that is occupied, colonised and their religion (called the Temple or the Tribunal) humiliated. The natives are in bad mood and hate the player for being an outlander (at least in the beginning). The country is ruled by a puppet king, kind of how Herod was a client of Rome and long for a messianic figure called the Nerevarine. So it was both pretty sad, but also quite diverse and exciting graphically. It is setup to start with a lot of hardship and an unfriendly population, which gradually changes as you learn more about them and establish your place in Dunmer society (if you choose to - you can become a vampire). Having played Skyrim and Oblivion, I don't think they come close to the deep lore there is Morrowind and they do seem to recycle the same books. Morrowind is much more about exploring the setting than an action RPG like the following titles.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  What I loved was when I was out thieving, found a Telvanni mage tower, which I was eager to plunder, but found out very quickly that wizards who can levitate don't need stairs, so I'd need to come back with some levitation potions to get up to where the good stealing was.
bsnal 4y ago
Openmw is unfortunately so much slower than the vanilla executable.
- Alekhine 4y ago
  Is that right? I haven't done any testing.
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    It seems to run over OpenGL. On high render distances, it's very sluggish.
    - josefx 4y ago
      Is it using up GPU time or just maxing out CPU? It uses OpenSceneGraph, which has some very slow state management (std::map and atomic reference counting all over the place) in its render thread so I wouldn't be surprised if you are stuck with a single core at 100%.
  - bsnal 4y ago
    I have a computer with an Intel 620 and openmw is unplayable while the original game is able to maintain 60 fps even with MGE XE
iammjm 4y ago
Morrowind is amazing. One of the most unique game worlds i have ever experienced. I used to just wander around and explore without purpose, and always ended up finding some cool spot or an npc. I doubt i will ever get so immersed in a game again
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  oh and the music is just phenomenal.
  - infinitezest 4y ago
    If only there were more of it! Even the awesome score gets pretty old after you've heard it for the 1 millionth time.
JimTheMan 4y ago
Do the mods deal with reducing the amount of pterodactyls that swoop you?
shultays 4y ago
For those that are not aware, there is also a vr port for openmw.
ricardobayes 4y ago
Which version of the game is best for modding? Can I grab it off steam and use openmw without issues?
ogurechny 4y ago
> Greatly improved graphics and draw distance BOO! BOO! Speaking of “introductory guides for modern gamers”, there definitely should be one that lists most common ways they unwittingly mutilate the old games. Mistake #1 is, without doubt, using high resolution uncommon at the production period for rendering. So they start the game, then feel it looks a bit shitty (it really is, now when you set it that way), then turn to mods, HD skins, NN-upscaled textures, and other craptastic “enchancements”. If step 0 was wrong, don't try to fix it with further wrong steps. Screen resolution, texture resolution, model complexity, artistic style, etc. should all be in balance. If you want a game that looks good in FullHD, you need to gather a new team that remakes the whole thing from scratch (and that production is going to cost more than the original one). Mistake #2 is increasing view distance for the sole reason that hardware allows you to do it. Virtual horizon is really important to set scale for the game world. If it's too far, the exciting travel to the unknown place turns into moving to a next stand in theme park, or the wide plane turns into the small crossroad with NPCs standing here and there who don't even need to shout to hear each other. These changes are as drastic as giving rocket launcher to the player, but everyone is so used to them that they don't realize what is wrong. Some people even make “retro” games assuming this is how games looked like originally.
- m1gu3l 4y ago
  Ok. we will be sure to consult with you before actualizing any nostalgia or imagined nostalgia to make sure we are getting it just right. Lol.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    The gp is calling out augmentations / enhancements. The point is you don't need to add anything or do anything extra. They're not suggesting doing something complex, they're suggesting leaving things be.
- Alekhine 4y ago
  I'm the author. I'll add this in a minute, but all those enhancements can be turned off. According to a developer on the Discord I just spoke to, there's a set of options that makes the game very closely resemble vanilla morrowind.

70 points by Alekhine 4y ago

Love OpenMW! Got my old disk to work on my Linux system and it was super easy. If you want to play Morrowind I would highly recommend it.

wly_cdgr 4y ago

Pass, vanilla is just fine

kqr 4y ago

Every now and then I feel like playing Morrowind, but to get the most out of it, I would like to sit in long sessions with a notebook just to immerse myself in that world, read the in-game books, talk to the people, etc. With small children, full time work, etc, I haven't found a way to make that happen. Do I wait until retirement or is there some other trick to it?

1MachineElf 4y ago
I'm thinking the Steam Deck's portability would make it convenient enough to play in many unconventional settings, even on the couch together with your kids.
- NinoScript 4y ago
  Keep a Steam Deck next to your toilet.

accrual 4y ago

I'm a couple hours into my first "real" playthrough and highly recommend this vanilla modding guide: https://github.com/Sigourn/nerevarrising https://github.com/Sigourn/nerevarrising It's basically vanilla plus. Not only did I have a fun following the guide, I feel like I'm getting a very authentic experience. One day I'll experiment more with OpenMW (especially once it reaches modding parity), but for today I'm enjoying the real thing.

antisthenes 4y ago
> One day I'll experiment more with OpenMW (especially once it reaches modding parity) If you want to keep vanilla mechanics (mostly), then OpenMW has already had modding parity for at least several years. In fact, OpenMW is already mostly working on enhancements and performance improvements rather than stability and feature parity with the original engine. AFAIK, they have their own modding guide, which is pretty extensive, and the minority of mods that aren't compatible are just those which are obsolete (not updated since 2004-5) or superceded by other, better mods, anyways.

assbuttbuttass 4y ago

OpenMW is amazing. I can play Morrowind in 4k on my Linux machine.

edapiieaway 4y ago

Ahh, Morrowind. A conworld so good that the community effort put into modernizing it may have eclipsed the amount of work put into creating it in the first place. The OpenMW project is extremely impressive. I was going to say something like, "you owe it to yourself to play this game." But my parent's generation said the same thing to me about CRPGs like Planescape: Torment, and as a working adult, I never had the time to figure out their convoluted gameplay systems. So more realistically, give Morrowind to your children. Figure out how to install it, get a character to Balmora to make sure it doesn't crash every 5 minutes, and let them go nuts. Vvardenfell is a strange land which rewards curiosity, and it doesn't have any ads.

jbay808 4y ago
> But my parent's generation said the same thing to me about CRPGs like Planescape: Torment Wasn't that released just three years prior? How old are your parents?
- morsch 4y ago
  Three years makes a big difference if he was, say, 12 when Morrowind was released. And while I wouldn't call it convoluted, Planescape: Torment is much more cerebral and much less experiential than an open world first person RPG.
  - nwiswell 4y ago
    Yeah I'm guessing that's what he meant. PS:T is less accessible to the general gaming public in that regard.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      The problem is that the "game" parts are not very good; even outright shit, especially if you compare it to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. It more than makes up for that in atmosphere and writing, but many players are expecting to, well, play a game, not read a novel, which is entirely fair. Tides of Numeria suffered from the same issue.

NinoScript 4y ago

I love reimplementations. I’ve recently been playing Julius, a reimplementation of Caesar III; and Augustus, a form with extra features: https://github.com/bvschaik/julius https://github.com/bvschaik/julius https://github.com/Keriew/augustus https://github.com/Keriew/augustus

chevill 4y ago
How complete is this? I loved Caesar II. Didn't have a chance to play the third.
- azalemeth 4y ago
  They're both fully functional and amazing games. Ceaser 3 is a really fun, "modern" strategy game and one thing I (and my parents) liked at the time it came out is that all the military stuff is optional. You can get just as much glory for building a grown with a huge economy and large number of exports as defeating Hannibal's elephants. Both of those open reimplementations require the base game, which is very very cheap on gog.com. I'd really recommend it.

dimitar 4y ago

Maybe its my teenage nostalgia but Morrowind has one of the best settings I've seen. You got Ashlands yurts, Vivec city with its canals and ziggurats, a city inside a crab mushroom towers, and other architectures. Medieval Europe is still there, but it looks intentionally out of place as required by the story. I feel only Dune and Star Wars have been so visually distinctive for me.

wsc981 4y ago
When I visited Morrowind in Elder Scrolls Online it just felt like a drab, sad place. Based on the screenshots in the article, it seems the original Morrowind game has a similar style for this area. However, I read many good thing on the original Morrowind game so I do intend to play it some time.
- dimitar 4y ago
  In the original game it is a peculiar nation that is occupied, colonised and their religion (called the Temple or the Tribunal) humiliated. The natives are in bad mood and hate the player for being an outlander (at least in the beginning). The country is ruled by a puppet king, kind of how Herod was a client of Rome and long for a messianic figure called the Nerevarine. So it was both pretty sad, but also quite diverse and exciting graphically. It is setup to start with a lot of hardship and an unfriendly population, which gradually changes as you learn more about them and establish your place in Dunmer society (if you choose to - you can become a vampire). Having played Skyrim and Oblivion, I don't think they come close to the deep lore there is Morrowind and they do seem to recycle the same books. Morrowind is much more about exploring the setting than an action RPG like the following titles.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
What I loved was when I was out thieving, found a Telvanni mage tower, which I was eager to plunder, but found out very quickly that wizards who can levitate don't need stairs, so I'd need to come back with some levitation potions to get up to where the good stealing was.

bsnal 4y ago

Openmw is unfortunately so much slower than the vanilla executable.

Alekhine 4y ago
Is that right? I haven't done any testing.
- Bancakes 4y ago
  It seems to run over OpenGL. On high render distances, it's very sluggish.
  - josefx 4y ago
    Is it using up GPU time or just maxing out CPU? It uses OpenSceneGraph, which has some very slow state management (std::map and atomic reference counting all over the place) in its render thread so I wouldn't be surprised if you are stuck with a single core at 100%.
- bsnal 4y ago
  I have a computer with an Intel 620 and openmw is unplayable while the original game is able to maintain 60 fps even with MGE XE

iammjm 4y ago

Morrowind is amazing. One of the most unique game worlds i have ever experienced. I used to just wander around and explore without purpose, and always ended up finding some cool spot or an npc. I doubt i will ever get so immersed in a game again

ricardobayes 4y ago
oh and the music is just phenomenal.
- infinitezest 4y ago
  If only there were more of it! Even the awesome score gets pretty old after you've heard it for the 1 millionth time.

JimTheMan 4y ago

Do the mods deal with reducing the amount of pterodactyls that swoop you?

shultays 4y ago

For those that are not aware, there is also a vr port for openmw.

ricardobayes 4y ago

Which version of the game is best for modding? Can I grab it off steam and use openmw without issues?

ogurechny 4y ago

> Greatly improved graphics and draw distance BOO! BOO! Speaking of “introductory guides for modern gamers”, there definitely should be one that lists most common ways they unwittingly mutilate the old games. Mistake #1 is, without doubt, using high resolution uncommon at the production period for rendering. So they start the game, then feel it looks a bit shitty (it really is, now when you set it that way), then turn to mods, HD skins, NN-upscaled textures, and other craptastic “enchancements”. If step 0 was wrong, don't try to fix it with further wrong steps. Screen resolution, texture resolution, model complexity, artistic style, etc. should all be in balance. If you want a game that looks good in FullHD, you need to gather a new team that remakes the whole thing from scratch (and that production is going to cost more than the original one). Mistake #2 is increasing view distance for the sole reason that hardware allows you to do it. Virtual horizon is really important to set scale for the game world. If it's too far, the exciting travel to the unknown place turns into moving to a next stand in theme park, or the wide plane turns into the small crossroad with NPCs standing here and there who don't even need to shout to hear each other. These changes are as drastic as giving rocket launcher to the player, but everyone is so used to them that they don't realize what is wrong. Some people even make “retro” games assuming this is how games looked like originally.

m1gu3l 4y ago
Ok. we will be sure to consult with you before actualizing any nostalgia or imagined nostalgia to make sure we are getting it just right. Lol.
- lucideer 4y ago
  The gp is calling out augmentations / enhancements. The point is you don't need to add anything or do anything extra. They're not suggesting doing something complex, they're suggesting leaving things be.
Alekhine 4y ago
I'm the author. I'll add this in a minute, but all those enhancements can be turned off. According to a developer on the Discord I just spoke to, there's a set of options that makes the game very closely resemble vanilla morrowind.