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Personal notes about how to install and play the classic RPG game, Morrowind
You need:
The gog setup file setup_tes_morrowind_goty_2.0.0.7.exe
needs to unpacked. In a temp directory we use innoextract to do so:
$ ls setup_tes_morrowind_goty_2.0.0.7.exe $ mkdir morrsetup && cd morrsetup $ innoextract ../setup_tes_morrowind_goty_2.0.0.7.exe [...] long output omitted [...] $ ls app tmp
The directory app
contains all the game data we need. Move where you want to install the game. As example we want install in a games directory under the home
$ mv app ~/games/tes_morrowind $ cd .. $ rm -r morrsetup
In the installation directory (i.e., ~/games/tes_morrowind
) is the Data Files
directory. In the original morrowind.exe engine all mods had to be installed there; in OpenMW each mod is installed in a separate directory; so we create a copy that we will keep pristine for OpenMW and we keep the original Data Files
if we need to use programs like the Construction Set that expect all their data to be in that directory.
$ cp -r 'Data Files' 'Data Files OpenMW'
If we need to reset the Data Files
directory to its original content, we can just delete it and copy back the OpenMW one.
To make the old-way to install mods easier we convert all filenames to lowercase.
$ convmv --notest --lower -r 'Data Files/'*
We have to ensure to make all filenames lowercase before copying in the old Data Files
.
This step is simple, execute openmw-wizard
and using the GUI select “Existing Installation” and locate the morrowind.esm
file in the Data Files OpenMW
directory you created. The wizard will also convert the morrowind.ini
contents to the format of OpenMW in ~/.config/openmw/openmw.cfg
.
Once done start the game and give a look to the in-game options, you probably want to activate shaders and set up the water. Leave the game.
Now in ~/.config/openmw
are the configuration files:
openmw.cfg
where you configure mods.settings.cfg
where you configure the game.
Many useful settings do not appear in game itself. We need to edit the settings.cfg
file manually. The whole list is in the documentation. We cover some here too.
The file has a ini syntax, with sections (like [Water]
) and values (like shader = true
); as one naively expects: if a settings is there you can edit it, if it is not there but there is its section you can append to the section, if there is neither the section and the setting you have to add both.
Probably the most important is the “Distant Land,” it allows to see farther than was allowed in morrowind.exe. How much away you want to see is debatable as a mix of lore, taste, and hardware capabilities. To enable distant land start add the following to settings.cfg
:
[Terrain] distant terrain = true object paging = true object paging min size = 0.02
[Camera] viewing distance = 27300
27300 as viewing distance is 3.33 cells, just enough to cover Ebonhart from Seyda Neen. Feel free to change as you prefer. An in-game menu allows to select up to 10 cells, to edit the value manually allows arbitrary values.
Here is a rule of thumb based on my experience: 3~4 cells for playing, 8~10 cells for most screenshots, put 1000000 in the config file for screenshot of the whole landmass.