I've been thinking...

It took me a weak of non stop mod searching and mod installing and reinstalling and deleting and cursing and more searching and more cursing and frustration and finally joy to see my favorite game looking so awesome!

Better than oblivion but at what cost? Many many hours and a lot of frustration. Its not that I didn't enjoy it. But other people don't. Or won't. Or can't. Or they don't love this game enough to do it because they don't know it and never will because they will install it and see it looks like a 10 year old game and promptly uninstall it. But it can be so much more.

So I've been thinking someone should take all vurts mods and all the texture mods and all the eye candy mods and all the cewl ini tweaks and of course the mge with tweaks and shaders and hdr and whatnot and make them into an exe and call it morrowind modded edition or something.

I know mods are not supposed to be put in packs because thats the beauty of mods but we all like eye candy (as long as our machines can support it of course) and since there are a lot of gamers who find about morrowind after they have played oblivion or whatever my guess is their computers can play a fully modded morrowind.

So someone should do it. I would if I could but I can't so I won't

Anyway I don't know if this is even possible. My knowledge about this technical stuff is limited at best. But I am looking at my game and thinking OMG this is beautiful and I wish other people could see it too and rejoice in the glory which is Morrowind!!!

We don't all like the same eye candy. There are way to many different overlapping graphics mods out there to be able to make a proper one-download-fits-all compilation. And there are lots of different MGE releases.

And that's not even considerning that many people do not want their mods to be put into a compilation. And knowing Vurt, a mod compilation with his work would be outdated in a month...

I knew it that it would get flamed but I just had to say it.

About the mge release thats easy. You put in the last "stable" release not the "beta" ones.

About the people who don't want their work used in a compilation thats easy too. You don't use their work.

About the overlapping mods maybe the exe would let you chose? Maybe a short description or a screenshot. And come on there aren't that many mods. Like for textures there is 3 or 4 maybe major mods. For grass what? 2 or 3? And they don't completely overlap.

And for miscellaneous stuff there's like 1 or 2 mods. OK there's like 10 sign mods but other than that not so many bottle or skulls or book mods.
And for bodies come one. there's one. For heads ok there are a few.

And come one there are people who are MIA for many years so obviously can't use their mods. So the choices become even fewer.

Anyway I know it won't be done. Was a dumb idea really. Too difficult and too many issues and stuff but it would be really cool for new players. Because its a hard job finding all the mods and choosing and especially tweaking and stuff. I only realized today after I read a post in vurt tree thread that I had to tick EVERY mod in the MGE distant land creator. Up to now I thought I only had to tick the grass mods. Dumb I know but I am dumb and there are even dumber people and that was the point of this idea but nevermind I realize now it was a pretty dumb idea, but still it would be cool.

the power of morrowind is it's diversity. i love vurt to death but i don't use all of his trees. and they are updated more often than i take a bath.
i'm now - finally - able to use the mge. one of the first things i removed from my game was the animated grass. i just don't like it.

that's the way it ALL goes. one likes connarys textures and says he IS and STAYS state of the art. then the next one comes and brings masoxx textures with him. or basswalkers. or vurts. or anyones.

Let them choose? yeah! of course! there are so many many many many guides out (I released one in german myself) that help people to get the sharpest, crispiest, most beautiful, wonderful all-of-my-taste-morrowind they want. all they have to do, is to look at screenshots, choose and download the recommendations they like.

i don't flame you or want to hurt you. but beside the fact that the idea is not new, it can't be a mod of all taste, all work or all choices.

Lol, epic statement! :wink_smile:



But true, the tailoring of and Morrowind to ones own liking is the bumpy part of the way. But the end result will be pleasing.

It would be impossible to please most people in that regard.

I have to say that building up a morrowind install is as much fun as playing, at least for me. Days or even weeks of searching through mods, finding just the right combo that all fits together and works, making the game exactly how I want it. I get a great deal more satisfaction from playing the game when I've spent a lot of time putting it together. No other game I know of allows so much freedom and customization.

The only person who would really benefit from a huge compilation mod is the person who built it. It would be impossible to make one that everyone liked. There are simply too many choices.




KF

I totally agree with you about it being a lot of fun. Sometimes its so addictive I forget to play

oh. this is a part i know well

This idea has surfaced a few times that I can remember, but a comprehensive pack has never actually materialised. There are a few reasons for this (I think all these have already been mentioned) like ensuring permission from the appropriate modders is gained, keeping such a pack up to date with new releases and personal choice as to which mods to include.

I fully understand this but there's the other point of view: someone just wants to play the damn game.

A few posts in another thread on here got me thinking about Baldur's Gate and it looks like one can lay their hands on a combined box with the original, Baldur's Gate 2 and both expansions included. I only ever played BG 1 and it's one of the few games I actually finished but for some reason I never picked up BG2 and then Interplay went bellyup.com

So, I was looking into the this combined pack and also doing some initial research as to graphical updates. I found quite a few on different websites and I was in the position of thinking: "Just tell me what I need to download so I can play the damn game."

I don't want to spend weeks researching the various graphical updates, tweaks, additional quests and unofficial bugfix mods. I want to (at most) spend an afternoon on a few websites downloading the key updates that'll enable me to play the game at a decent resolution and with major bugs squashed. If I'm missing something then that's no big deal.

I see my situation with Baldur's Gate as anologous to someone looking to (re)install Morrowind who would find a pack like suggested in the OP a great help. They don't care if they're missing out on everything; they just want something that tarts the game up a bit (so texture packs and mesh replacers that follow Bethesda's originals designs as closely as possible) and fixes any major bugs (so MCP and MPP)

A lot of us who post on this Forum here (well, OK perhaps it's only me) spend an inordinate amount of time preparing the game the way we want it. I enjoy finding new mods, editing then together (if needed) and assembling them into something that fits what I'd like to see. I think there are lot of people who would be interested in playing Morrowind who aren't like that: they just want to play the damn game.

So, I think there is room for a beauty pack. It wouldn't be perfect for everyone, it wouldn't necessarily be how I (or probably anyone prepared to devote time to the research, set-up and configuration) would set-up my game but it'd be most of the way there.

Going back to my Baldur's Gate situation I'd be perfectly happy with something that improved the graphics in the original game (BG1Tutu allows me to play BG1 with BG2's engine) and a few bugfixes (Baldurdash and Dudleyfix look like the ones). I'd know I could do more but I don't think I would want to invest the time required to do it; the return I'd get on that extra time doesn't seem worth it to me: I will have improved both the looks of and number of errors in the game to a level I'd be happy with.

IMHO, something similar for Morrowind would be a godsend: "Get the beauty pack, get the MCP and MPP and you're good to go. Oh, and if you want more then have a look at all this other stuff."

I expect to be disagreed with here

I was gonna post something similar but power went off suddenly. So I agree 100%.

Even none of us would use it, there could be a huge other potion of gamers who might use a compilation. Are we gonna tell them there is only one way to play modded Morrowind? I don't see the freedom here. Even self inflicted limitation is part of freedom of choice. Besides, we can make it extremely modular. There are some user-friendly utilities to make things easier.

Just one.