Terra Laboratories

The word “Manual” installation may sound scary, but actually to install mods in OpenMW is fairly straightforward once one knows the kinds of mods it may stumble upon.

To install mods requires to edit a configuration file (i.e., ~/.config/openmw/openmw.cfg), so you may want to keep different versions ready to use via a version control program or making backup copies.

The file openmw.cfg file is a sequence of assignments like key=value, key can be repeated. Initially the keys will be in alphabetical order, but I suggest to sort like:

fallback=...
fallback=...

fallback-archive=...
fallback-archive=...

data=...
data=...

content=...
content=...

groundcover=...
groundcover=...

If you have other key values, (e.g., encoding=) just put them in the top of the file.

The mods can be categorized in:

• esp-file mods
  • groundcover mods
• esp-less mods
• ini-edit mods

Example: Patch for Purists (PfP for short)

This is, by far, the most common kind of mods. They are easy to recognize for they do have .esp / .esm / .owaddon files inside the archive.

To install a esp-file mod you need to unpack it somewhere and edit the file ~/.config/openmw/openmw.cfg and add at least two lines.

• a data= line containing the full path to where are the .esX files between quotes,
• a content= line containing the .esp filenames.

As example, let's unpack the PfP in the directory mods/PfP:

$ pwd
/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/PfP
$ ls
BookArt   Docs   Icons   Meshes  'Patch for Purists - Book Typos.ESP'  'Patch for Purists - Semi-Purist Fixes.ESP'  'Patch for Purists.esm'   Textures

So the .esX files are: Patch for Purists - Book Typos.ESP, Patch for Purists - Semi-Purist Fixes.ESP, and Patch for Purists.esm.

We then edit the openmw.cfg we have to add the following lines:

data="/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/PfP"
content=Patch for Purists.esm
content=Patch for Purists - Book Typos.ESP
content=Patch for Purists - Semi-Purist Fixes.ESP

In what order?

In general what is after in the list overrides what is before so if two mods change the same texture, the second will be shown in-game.

The order of the esp files hardly matters, but .esm files should be before esp files. To have a rule of thumb, if a mod is big it should be on top, if it specific it should be on the bottom.

.bsa files are archives, if the mod has bsa files in addition to the data= line you will need to add a fallback-archive= line to have the game read its contents.

Example: Ozzy's Grass

Groundcover mods have their own .esp files, but they must be loaded differently because the game needs to distinguish between groundcover objects and normal ones. In other words, groundcover mods work as esp-file mods, but instead of content= lines you have to add groundcover= lines.

Let us install Ozzy's grass, first we unpack in the mods/Ozzy_Grass directory.

$ pwd
/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/Ozzy_Grass
$ ls
'Data Files'  'Original readmes'   ReadMe.htm   files
$ ls Data\ Files
"Ozzy's Grass - Ascadian Isles.esp"  "Ozzy's Grass - Bitter Coast.esp"  "Ozzy's Grass - Grazelands.esp" "Ozzy's Grass - Solstheim.esp"  "Ozzy's Grass - West Gash.esp"  "Ozzy's Grass.bsa"

The esp files are Ozzy's Grass - Ascadian Isles.esp, Ozzy's Grass - Bitter Coast.esp, Ozzy's Grass - Grazelands.esp, Ozzy's Grass - Solstheim.esp, and Ozzy's Grass - West Gash.esp. There is also bsa archive Ozzy's Grass.bsa.

So we need to add the following lines, note how the data= line points where the other files are.

fallback-archive=Ozzy's Grass.bsa

data="/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/Ozzy_Grass/Data Files"

groundcover=Ozzy's Grass - Ascadian Isles.esp
groundcover=Ozzy's Grass - Bitter Coast.esp
groundcover=Ozzy's Grass - Grazelands.esp
groundcover=Ozzy's Grass - Solstheim.esp
groundcover=Ozzy's Grass - West Gash.esp

Example: Swiveller's Ashland and Molag Amur

Esp-less mods are installed very similarly to esp-file mods, but they have no `content=` or `groundcover=` lines.

The lack of esp files means the mod normally can only alter existing game assets, like textures, meshes, or sounds. But it cannot add anything. So, the main point to keep in mind is that order is usually more important in esp-less mods, while adding the data= lines you have to be careful: whatever is lower in the order will appear in game.

Let us install Swiveller's Ashland and Molag Amur textures, first we unpack in the mods/Swiv_barren directory.

$ pwd
/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/Swiv_barren
$ ls
Swiveller_barren
$ ls Swiveller_barren/
readme.txt  swiveller_readmes  textures

As we can see, there is no esX files. We just need to add the data= line. Here I kept the directory name as-is, but you may want to move Swiveller_barren to avoid the double.

data="/home/username/games/tes_morrowind/mods/Swiv_barren/Swiveller_barren"

If some other mod changes the Ashlands or the Molag Amur textures which one will appear in game depends on the order. Once again the rule of thumb is that the more general a mod is the higher it should go, the more specific the lower.

Post-process shaders mods are an exception that what we said. Since those, being specific to OpenMW, even without esp files are able to add new shaders to the game. In the game you can access the shader menu pressing F2. Example: Glassman's Shaders.