Converting Morrowind mods to Morroblivion?

Submitted by Polemecist on Mon, 01/30/2012 - 14:48

Is this even possible?

I'm very interested in getting the Less Generic NPC project to work for Morroblivion. I remember hearing sometime in the past that someone had gotten the Tamriel Rebuilt maps 1 and 2 to work in Morroblivion. What about city expansions? New Suran Extended? Balmora Extended? Mournhold Extended? 

I'd love to get that stuff to work. Any tips?

The basic process

Submitted by thermador on Mon, 01/30/2012 - 18:49.

The basic process (hypothetically) would be:

Look at the MW Mod

  • Install Morrowind and the MW Mod that you want to convert
  • Open your Morrowind Mod in MW Enchanted Editor, a quick way to view everything in the Mod without opening it in the Morrowind Construction Set
  • Make a list of everything in the mod, or just keep the program open, so you know what things the MW Mod does
    - Create a copy of the file[s] that came with the original MW Mod as backup

Convert the MW Mod

  • Convert your MW Mod using the Converter, which is available on the download page here
    - Make sure to set up the Converter to convert your file using the INI as shown here
    - If you already have Morroblivion installed, you probably want to move Morrowind_ob.esm out of your /Oblivion/Data/ directory so it doesn't get overwritten by the converter or something.
  • The Converter produces one ESM file with ALL of the content from Morrowind AND all of the content from your Morrowind Mod, all in one ESM file (named Morrowind_ob.esm I think)
  • Create a backup copy and rename the ESM file to the name of your original MW Mod.

Convert the new ESM file to an ESP file

  • Open the ESM file in in Wrye Bash or TES4 Gecko or whatever, and convert it to an ESP.  In Wrye Bash, you right-click it and select "Copy to ESP".
  • Save this ESP with the new name (name of the original MW Mod for example).  This file is going to be your mod for Morroblivion.

Open the new ESP file in the Construction Set

Assign Morroblivion as the ESP's master

  • Open this new ESP file in Wrye Bash and assign its Master File to be Morrowind_ob.esm (that is, the Morroblivion master file from Morroblivion.com), so that when you load Oblivion, it knows that your converted MW Mod ESP file is a mod for the Morroblivion ESM file.
    - Good time to make a backup copy too

Clean the new ESP file

  • Open this new ESP in TES4Edit (or TES4 Gecko), and compare it to the original mod in MW Enchanted Editor, then edit the new ESP to make them the same (remove all of the unneeded converted content)
    - If you are using TES4Edit, delete everything that isn't part of the MW Mod ("like bugs bunny whittling a toothpick out of a log").  This is the step that probably takes the longest, as you are deleting everything in Morrowind from a file that contains all of Morrowind's content as well as the content of your MW Mod.
  • - If you are using TES4 Gecko, you can try using the Split Plugins function to separate the selected content (I have not used this program myself).  This may be much faster.
  • Be careful! Save often! Ctrl+S in TES4Edit, which automatically makes backup files each time you save.

Open the ESP in the Oblivion Construction Set and get to work

  • Finally, open this new ESP file in the Oblivion Construction Set, ideally with Construction Set Extender plugin for Oblivion Script Extender.   
  • Now comes the long process of:
    - Assigning new editor ID's, REF ID's etc.
    - Re-writing scripts to function with Oblivion's script engine
    - Fixing object placement issues (rotating and placing objects in the render window)
    - Fixing NPC dialogue that didn't get converted
    - Re-linking doors, etc.
    - Testing, testing, testing, testing in the game!
  • This final process is basically a microcosm of the whole Morroblivion Project, and how much work this is depends completely on what type of Morrowind Mod you originally converted and how complicated it was. You will want to have the original MW Mod open in the Morrowind Construction Set and the new one in the Oblivion Construction Set at the same time so you can compare the two. Likewise, when cleaning, having both open in TES4Edit and MW Enchanted Editor at the same time helps with this process as well.

Tools needed, at a minimum:

Helpful reading:

Anyone else feel free to jump in here, I would like to get a good guide set up because this question comes up a lot and having it in the FAQ would be a good idea.

Update 1/31/12: updated post to reflect additional steps.

Additionally, I think it's important to note that creating the Morrowing Mod from scratch just using the Oblivion construction set might take less time than converting (depending on what Morrowind Mod it is, obviously.)

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