Morrowind_ob.esm Project Planning

There are four areas I had initially identified as Glaring Flaws, that I did not bring upon myself

1. The Armor Value and Costs of Morrowind Armor is totally out of whack
2. Significant numbers of NPC's in Morrowind are totally unarmed.
3. Morrowind Spells did not make it through the conversion.
4. I updated the AI of about half the merchants in Morrowind.

Eloth has addresse a good portion of this, but his mod requires an ESM Master file that I have been unable to locate, so have not had a chance to check them out and see what remains to be done.

I am asking for volunteers on these:

* Crime. Currently, if you pick up something that you're not supposed to, the Legion hauls you to Anvil to pay the fine. Please, somebody take this, because I will only fix it as far as necessary to prevent being hauld off to Anvil. I find the whole thing a little distaseful, and will not spend nearly enough time on it. But I will obviously do it if nobody else volunteers.

* The Arena

* Spellcasting NPC's. It is not just spells that didn't make it through conversion, but the AI necessary for spellcasters to actually cast spells. Having a spell that actually does something is atually not much of an improvement if the NPC doesn't actually cast any spells...

* Missing meshes. Every conversion seems to be slightly different. The Queen of the Ashlands actually replaced the Dwemer Puzzle Box in her mod because the original did not make it through conversion for her. So, she had a yellow diamond instead of a puzzle box. I have a half-dozen missing Dwemer items in that same room.

The trouble is, that these are not just missing meshes in the classic sense. That is, the objects do not refer to meshes that do not exist. Rather, the objects refer to \morro\default.nif... a yellow diamond.

And, if using the new cleaned version of Morrowind_ob.esm, a reconversion really isn't possible because that would overwrite everything else that comes with it.

So, a collection of missing objects needs to be maintained so that everybody can have all the meshes.

* AI Packages. As far as I can determine, EVERYONE that has attempted to address the lack of AI packages has started in Sedya Neen. Therefore, Sedya Neen has been done over several times while most of the rest of the island has been wanting. Could somebody please identify different sectors that have and need AI packages, and do different ones for a change, rather than doing the same ones over and over again...?

* Yoshimo and I plan to start working towards repopulating Vvardenfell with all the wonderful creatures Hashmi, Eloth, and others have been working on so far.

I have never done anything with a creature except whack on it with sharp pointed objects, so if somebody could write up a quckie guide on everything there is to know about adding creatures from scratch to Oblivion in one easy lesson, that would be much appreciated...

* If somebody could assemble a list of all Morrowind Creatures, along with the Mod/Resource that addresss them, that would also be a huge time and research saver.

i can do the eat and sleep packages for NPC's but i won't be creating any new cells( should be quicker since i got some more RAM installed on my computer

I can provide various ressource I've collecting during the last almost two years, also my own works from scratch (textures, art work, sounds, music, etc...)
And my help as a general level designer, I think you have been able to see my skills in the redecoration of balmora, seyda need and pelagiad thanks to the beta release of my unclean *sigh* mod.
But I'm going to do that when you finish this, since it's meaningless to do it without the cleaned ESM, right? In the meantime I have the tools to retexture meshes, repack them and ready to add them to the CS and Morroblivion.

I hope it helps.

"If somebody could assemble a list of all Morrowind Creatures, along with the Mod/Resource that addresss them, that would also be a huge time and research saver."

I will do that

Ho and btw! This is a short intro that I did (my voice is not perfect for this sorry) back then, I was going to remake the intro video with something like this:

If someone has a better voice acting skills, we should do it at some point.

^ For some reason it reminds me of LOTR ... its very very nice, but can't we re-use morrowind's original intro movie?

Actually we can't xD You know why ... Bethesda, they will have a good reason to sue us, if we use the audio of the intro and outro (after the final fight with Dagoth Ur)
I have done videos in the past I know how to use After Effects and Premiere Pro, that was the idea, to use some cool ingame footage (all setting to the max) with some cool video filters (using OBGE will be nice) and make an epic intro, the one Bethesda did is unique, but we don't want to give them reasons to turn their eye on us.

Again, I'm not the best voice actor, there's a lot of people that can do better than me, so it's just an idea, to add to the project

Ho and yes, the background music is from LOTR Soundtrack. It was a just test, it can be improved.

The path forward will be slower than I had intended.

David, unfortunately I cannot watch any video that does not use Windows Media Player. I tear Flash Player out of any computer that I work on...

I believe my basic plan moving forward is going to be the following...

1. Merge in Morrowind Rebuilt from the Queen of the Ashlands
2. Fix whatever I had previously updated that this step whacks
3. Separate future mods/updates into two basic parts

Part One of any future merg attempts will be anything that does NOT include:
> NPC's, Dialog, AI.

Part two would be the NPC's, Dialog, and AI. This piece, once separated, could be merged without whacking things, assuming of course, that everybody hasn't decided to fix the same things every time. Care will still be needed to check for potential conflicts.

I would then go back to NPC, Dialog, and AI, and copy/paste one piece of information at a time to add extra changes while preserving previous changes.

Dialog is daunting. Every indifidual piece of information must be copied one at a time, including the text, qualifiers, reactions, choices, added topics, and result scripts must be copied/pasted separately.

Oh yeah, and any mistake with any of these, since they are so important, could potentially break the quest...

The Queen of the Ashlands has finished the Thieves' Guild Questline and will be sending me an updated file for inclusion in Morrowind_ob.esm.

Yoshimo has also been hard at work fixing various issues as he finds them, including adding Ash Monsters and possibly some other Morrowind creatures. Mergind a portion of his work so far will probably be done before applying the Queen's mod.

I will probably apply a few other minor updates that do not involve NPC's, such as Improved Map Markers.

-------

Double-checking that the merges took properly, and that it did not cause problems of its own will be a large task that will probably take all three of us quite a while.

If anybody is interested in playtesting this version before public release please contact me directly.

My plan had been to merge Cool Shady & Nick-V's CNME into the Master.

Then I started looking at it to see what would need to be done.

CNME edits Hundreds of vanilla Oblivion scripts; the list of what it has edited that it has no business touching is extensive. Even cleaning this mod would take some doing.

Silt-Strider Transport was not "Fixed" as such in this mod, but rather started over again from scratch with completely new dialog. From what I understand, Silt-Strider Transport was part of the original Morrowind game. I do not understand why the existing resources were not debugged and updated to get them working.

I am no longer planning on using this mod. Nor can I recommend its continued use by others.

I found another project if anybody is interested in helping.

It appears as if a good portion of the "TreeBlackLocust" are improperly placed in the wilderness. These trees are the ones that often have fungus growth on them, Bungler's Bane and Hypha Facia. These growths are often hanging out in mid air, several feet from the tree.

I also found many that did not have growth, but that were still improperly placed.

Does anybody know how the map grid in Oblivion corresponds to Morrowind? I was going to compare the two because I found a good example in Wilderness Cell -5, -19 in the Oblivion CS.

But, there is no -5, -19 in the Morrowind CS.

Would anybody care to go tree-fixing?

I think that the problem occurs because morroblivion replaces these bitter coast trees with oblivion alternatives. You can modify the conversion process to convert the original trees and then they should be properly aligned with the fungi.

To modify the conversion you need to edit the file statics.ini file in the OblivionReplace folder of the converter.

There should be some lines like

flora_bc_tree_01=0x22C57 (0.0,0.0,-520. 0.7 tree
flora_bc_tree_02=0x3CED0 (0.0,0.0,-490. 0.8 tree

Delete these lines and then save the file. Delete morrowind_ob.esm and then reconvert.

Thank you Hashmi. It's the "Delete morrowind_ob.esm" that makes it difficult.

However, if I did do that, I could stop Legion, Steel, Dwarven, Ebony and Iron armor from being replaced by Oblivion items.

I would then just need to completely redo my armor and clothing fixes. This might actually be less time consuming that tracking down all the individual pieces in NPC inventories and replacing them one at a time (again).

Vvardenfell Imports has a set of armor called "Netch Adamantium" that does not look like it is a conversion of existing Morrowind armor, but rather is new content. I could replace Morrowind Iron armor with this rather than his one-piece "VVardenfell Iron Armor" set that looks like a Tank.

The time consuming part of the clothing was actually figuring out which ones to do, and which equivalents to use, not the actual replacements themselves.

So, I am leaing towards a reconversion...

If I do a reconversion as Hasmi suggested, after editing my INI file, then I am thinking this will cause problems with missing meshes for anybody that uses this ESM that did not also make the same switch.

My version of Morrowind would be pointing to meshes that do not exist for people tha use the default conversion.

I had mentioned as one of my suggested areas that somebody start a collection of meshes/textures. If I do this reconversion, then this collection is going to start to be required for anybody using the cleaned ESM.

This is probably the only way to unify the project anyway, because it does seem like everybody's conversion is slightly different, and that some items do not convert properly for some people on some computers.

Netch Admantium is =\= iron

Can't you like break down the iron mesh into separate pieces using nifscope or blender? (if you can upload the mesh I will try it in my spare time ~ ps: not on mediafire ... I can't seem to open it from here).

Otherwise Oblivion Iron can also do ... but netch admantium is something totally different :S

Regarding the missing meshes with trees ... you could include them with the upload ... or do like the object replacer does and distribute the conversion ini files. We guy's originally had this plan to make a modified "new" version of the converter files ... something of an unofficial update.

Anyways, manually fixing the fungi will be too much work ... there are 370 pieces of Bungler's bane and 443 pieces of Hypa Facia. (link 1 , link 2)

I am leaning toward doing a new conversion, but have not been able to check that out with Yoshimo to get his thoughts.

The problem with only sending the INI files is if something simply does not make it through the conversion, then these will not help. Two things need to happen at the same time: The mesh/texture needs to exist, and, the EMS needs to know where it is.

So, my intention would be to make the INI, Meshes, Textures, and Icons all avaiable as separate downloads for anybody that needed them.

I am thinking I would apply some Morrowind Mods before I do this. If this is what we do, I'll put up a post asking for input and suggestions.

Thank you for the clarification on Iron Armor, and please excuse my ignorace of basic Morrowind.

I'll send you the mesh when I get home, but if there was ever anything that did NOT lend itself to being separate meshes, this is it.

The set looks like a Tank when worn, or maybe like the first versions of Iron Man before Stark got back home...

Iron Armor is OK I guess; maybe I'll just leave that, or if anybody has any other suggestions, please speak up.

i can edit the Vvardenfell Imports Meshes and get the iron,wolf,orcish, armor seperated

Thank you! That is way beyond my ability. I'm not really a "modeler" but more of a "tinkerer."

There are 5 single piece sets that should be multiple meshes: Iron, Wolf, Snow Wolf, Oricish, and Dark Brotherhood. Snow Wolf was not actually used by any NPC's, or was anywher in game that I could see, so that would be the least necessary of the five.

Snow wolf wasn't part of the original game.

I believe there are several items in Vvardenfell Imports that are extra content like the Snow Wolf armor, including about a dozen "6th House" pieces of armor.

Originally I was not going to include these, but I'm now thinking maybe I should just add them to the Master but not place them anywhere. That way they would be available for any future mods that wanted to use them.

What does anybody think about that?

Also, there are several pieces that look to me like they are additional upgrades, but unfortunately I do not know enough about where they would go to place them properly. There are items like Redoran Champion, Vivic Battle Armor, Duke's Royal Guard, etc.

Would somebody go through Vvardenfell Imports and tell me if these should be included, and if so, to which NPC's I should add them?

"Redoran Champion, Vivic Battle Armor, Duke's Royal Guard, etc."

Duke's Guard is the only one here that was present in Morrowind. I believe that it was worn by the Guards of the Duke in Ebonheart Grand Council chamber.

You should be able to find its morrowind id ... something like 0silverUdukesguardUcuirass or something.

This is a list of all generic armor that was found in Morrowind Vanilla.

This is a list of artifact (unique meshes) armor that was found in Morrowind Vanilla.

This is a list of generic armor that was included in the Tribunal expansion pack.

Here is a list of generic armor that was included in the Bloodmoon expansion.

Anything else is community made content ... and not part of Morrowind Original.

Thank you. I basically know what is part of vanilla by looking through the CS. Except for a couple of oddballs, such as "Her Hand Armor." I don't know if any of the VI has good equivalents or not.

My main thought was that maybe some of the unique armor from vanilla point to regular armor meshes when they could be using one of the beautiful new items in VI.

I had kind of figured that few if any besides me would be interested in any non-lore items, but figured I would ask since the items are there and available.

These extra pieces can be part of future add-on armor mods, as is typically done with any other nonstandard items.

The main post of this thread has been updated 9/26/2010.

Once Yoshimo is finished with his pre-merge, I can then merge his mod into the Master.

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After addressing the most glaring game-breaking shortcomings of Morroblivion, I will now move on to what, in any other circumstance would be considered "Glaring Game-Breaking Shortcomings."

A significant number of NPC's are totally unarmed.

In Addition, -ALL- NPC's are lacking any combat style. This means that even after replacing Morrowind Arrows with Oblivion Arrows, and updating some of the spell effects so that spells actually do something, all NPC's will still simply draw their sword or dagger and charge the player anyway.

So, there are two big things to be done next:
1) Arm NPC's, ideally, with something appropriate to their class/type/level
2) Apply some combat style to NPC's that need them (Merchants, etc., are fine with the default)

There are a LOT of NPC's in Morrowind.

Going through every one of them to suppress rumors, nothing else, going as fast as I could, took me Seven Hours!

Applying any intelligence to all the NPC's in Morrowind will take me weeks, maybe months.

I have not decided whether I will attempt to do the above two things at the same time, or do one, then go back and do the other, but am leaning toward a combined approach.

In any case, I will be busy for a while...

Woo! Go Mr. Budreck!

The main post of this thread has been updated 9/30/2010.

Eloth's Ghostfence and Lights are included in this release.

The Ghostfence is truly Spectacular! And his lights are beautiful as well!

Apparently my Hlaalu Guards are wearing Redoran Helmets. Unfortunately, I don't know a Redoran Helm when I see one, nor do I know a Hlaalu Guard when I see one...

If somebody will tell me which piece I should switch with which NPC I will be happy to change them. If I have made any other similar errors, I apologize for my lack of Morrowind knowledge. Just let me know...

David Budreck,

sorry for posting twice in one hour but i switched the oblivion main menu title with the morrowind main menu title for the legendary theme of Morrowind and the other "special" tracks in the music folder.and because you made the new game to start where the Morrowind new game starts it still plays the oblivion new game video and im sure you are aware of that and im not at all complaining i was just gonna replace it with the Morrowind new game intro myself for personal preference but looked in the Morrowind directory in the video folder and i cannot find it anywhere.do you know where the Morrowind new game intro video is?

nevermind.i put the Morrowind game cd in and found all the main quest video files on it.replacing the oblivion one now.

The Redoran helm has an off-white cloth covering the back whereas the Hlaalu Helm is pure golden bonemold.

The Redoran Helm is called Gah Julan and would have an id something like 0bonemoldUgah-julanUhelm

The Hlaalu Helm is called Armun An and would have an id something like 0bonemoldUarmun-anUhelm

Hlaalu Helm:

Redoran Helm:

Thank you Hashmi. That is Perfect! I am off to fix this...

There was a problem with one of the bonemold helms from Vvardenfell Imports I had used, which is how this happened in the first place. The Hlaalu Helm appeared at a 90 degree angle sideways on NPC heads.

I have run into this before, and posted a topic on the Nexus Forums about it, but never go a fix. I can rotate the helms 90 degrees in Nifscope and provide an alternate mesh for those that have problems. This is what I will probably do, but first I need to take another look at all the helms again. It might be just as simple as the Morrowind helms using the head slot instead of the hair slot.

In any case, I will probably NOT make a new release just for this. I've just done three back to back to back because of the Dialog Fiasco, so will probably save up some changes for a v003-C or v004.

David Budreck,
if you could tell me how to disable the new game intro popups right after character generation,i have replaced the oblivion intro movie with the intro from Morrowind.i also replaced Jiub's text in greeting to the voice files from morrowind too and created .lip files to go along with it.

also good folks,enlighten me if i am wrong but i read somewhere above that using the original video from Morrowind is illegal and a "good reason to sue us",but videos like everything else from Morrowind is an asset.the esp converter sends most of the Morrowind assets to oblivion unaltered(though i understand work is being done to recreate them) so why are videos any different?bethesda meshes and textures are just as much property to bethesda as videos are so why is it that much different?forgive me if i come off as ignorant but please do tell me why its worse to use their videos than anything else they made?

Yoshimo spent a good deal of time putting the popups IN to make the intro feel like Morrowind

You would need a mod to disable them.

I do not believe Videos are not the issue Bethesda has with this project. From what I understand it is that they have a contractual agreement with a vendor for the Textures to be used in One Game. Morrobivion adds Morrowind Textures to Oblivion, making it two games = Liability.

forgive me if i seem ungrateful,the effort that has gone into the project is certainly admirable! its just a preference of mine i guess.im also trying to learn whats needed to recreate the Morrowind style character gen quest. when Jiub asks the player for player's name and a textbox comes up and playername is stored to a template somewhere and when all information the player has picked,the template is called to charactergeneration and it is finished.unlike oblivion style where you have an interface and most stuff is picked at once. again,personal preference there.

keep up the great work and effort!

Some stuff is modable; some stuff is hard-coded into the game. In theory anything is possible, but in practice the amount of time it would take to figure that out would probably be better spent on fixing other things. Any more time spent on the opening sequence would mean time we could not be spending on something else...

I ran into the problem with the 90 degree helmet as well. After checking it out in the editor I saw that the helm was set to cover up the head and hair when it should just have been the hair checked. After I unchecked the head it was normal and I had no problems with it . It was the helmet the Hlaalu guards wore.

Thank you all for your patience and Bug Reports.

I am currently plucking back Dialog Responses one at a time. There are a LOT of Dialog Responses. I do not know whether I am going to be able to finish this today, but I am certainly going to try.

Eloth sent me the missing Dwemer machinery, but I do not know whether they will make it into the next release. I also still need to go through the items & Leveled Lists he sent me, so these may form the basis for v004.

Currently on my list are these:
* Obviously, finish Resurrecting Dialog
* Hlaalu Helms (Thank you for the update; I was suspecting the Head/Hair thing myself)
* Caius is reported not to accept the package, but the player needs to be level 2, so I need to investigate
* Temporarily disable Cliffracers

I am pretty sure Cliffracers are going to become rats to preserve their place in Leveled Lists that took quite a while to build and place...

After v003-C I will need to reevaluate reports of the Cyrodiil Mages' Guild Quests being broken, but I believe that issue will be resolved with return of the missing Dialog.

Also, let me clarify what I was referring to about v003 "Suppressing Oblivion Rumors."

When talking to an NPC there is an option for "Rumors" in Oblivon, "Latest Rumors" in Morrowind. "Rumors" are totally a Cyrodiil thing, and have to do with the Anvil Chapel Attacks, Geography of Colovia, etc.

This does NOT have any bearing on the NPC's chattering to each other about the Great Houses of Morrowind having renounced the Slave Trade...

The upside of what I am doing with Dialog, is that I will be able to eventually suppress these while in Morrowind as well, as I presume EVERY Morrowind player would prefer. But, that is a project for the future...

On the release thread the Morroblivion_ob.esm link was not there under the download section. Is it because what you are making is just updates (thats what the download below the main file would be) or is the link just not there.

Sorry, the link is down because I found a Very Serious error in v003-B. Morrowind is fine, but a good deal of the dialog from Vanilla Oblivion was ommitted during the merge. I am fixing it as quickly as I can, but there is an overwhelming amount of Dialog in Vanilla Oblivion.

I have discovered that Dialog is handled differently than other objects. And, you can't tell by looking at exactly what it is going to do, which is what I was doing. Instead, you have to look for what it is NOT going to do...

Im in the process of equipping all npcs, and i was wondering what
i should do with npcs that originally were equipped with throwing stars
and crossbows?

Does a mod that add throwing stars or crossbows exist for oblivion?

edit:

i found this: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7822

This mod looks like exactly what we need! However, you need to contact the author and get permission before relying on it. Or, it could be required as a separate download like Vvardenfell Imports & Vivic Race.

Aside from that, my inclination was to just leave the throwing weapons as useless junk in NPC inventories, then give them something useful in addition, like bows. However, that mod may change everything!

My only question with it would be, will it work for NPC's? Or is it really designed solely for the Player?

For crossbows my opinion is to delete them and replace them with bows.

EDIT:

It just occurred to me that we can't just require the mod as a separate download because we would need to use more than jus the resources; we would also need to include things from the mod, like Scripts. This means we would definitely need permission before using it.

after a close inspection of the mod i can guarantee that this will never
work with npcs,

closest thing i can get working, is that the npc is holding a throwing star
in his hand and beat you senseless with it instead of throwing it hehe.

in the future someone else can add crossbows and throwing stars
if they wish.
To be honest i dont think i will ever miss those weapons, very few
players used them.

That was exactly what I was afraid of.

My own opinion is to replace throwing Start with Miscellaneous Items and place the Miscellaneous Items in NPC Inventories. That way, if we ever DO find an alternative, it will be much easier to go back and fix them up, and won't have them trying to use their existing throwind stars as mele weapons...

Then, as I had first thougt, give the NPC's real bows and arrows that they can actually use.

one more thing, all the slaves in morrowind is wearing slave bracelets, and when you talk to them
you can set them free, so that the bracelets go off.
This will need some scripting to make this work.

Yoshimo has already addressed this in at least some places, although I do not know how far he has gotten with it. Take a look in v003-B to see what he has done.

I know that in the few places I have been the scripting works perfectly! It's Great!

in regards to crossbows, here's a mod I like to use in my game.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14723
works very well, there's a bit of clipping in the models, but still, they look good and they're reasonably balanced. Also, NPCs equipped with crossbows with this mod will use them properly.

This is great. There certainly are a lot of great mods out there!

Since this requires OBSE, my inclination would be to NOT use this as part of our base Morrowind project, but to make a patch for it that equipped Morrowind NPC's with them. This would need to be done later.

We are already requiring Vvardenfell Imports, Vivic Race, Shivering Isles, and bunch of support files that is growing daily.

Does anybody else have any thoughts on this?

the crossbows mod works by randomly selecting npcs and replacing non-enchanted (i think) bows and arrows within their inventories with crossbows and bolts.

so if you were to just replace all crossbows and bolts with bows and arrows within Morrowind, then this mod will randomly add them back in through scripts. So there's no need to make it mandatory

that's as I understand it. I haven't seen a crossbow in an npcs hand in morrowind yet though.

It's not quite like that. Something like a "random" replacer isn't really random, but uses Leveled Lists to tell it where to look for bows. Once it "knows" where to look for them, then the randomness kicks in.

If Eloth uses Leveled lists that are compatible with this it would work exactly as you say.

However, Morrowind by itself is not like that. Each NPC has their own specific weapons, armor, clothing, and stuff, and they will each be wearing exactly the same things and using exactly the same weapons EVERY time you play the game.

ah, I wasn't aware that NPCs in Morrowind were not using leveled lists.