Is there a limit to the number of mods Morrowind can hold. Either in size or physical number, without the game crashign or having other problems? I dont belive there is but I would like to make sure first.

I believe 255 is the hard limit, but you can combine/merge mods.

I'm putting together a new Morrowind install with literally about 600 .esp based mods (some of those were already combined mods to begin with) and tons of pluginless texture replacers as well.

I've merged them in 14 files based upon the type of mods (such as quests, dungeons, race, etc)

255 in the maximum number of acive mods. If you want more, you need to start merging them.

But there is no size limit saying that a mod could be 4.6 gb doubful but it would still count as one mod correct?

I doub anyone is able to make a 4.6 GB .esp/.esm file. Summarized size of resources (models, textures etc) don't matter, as far as I know.

I know but hypotheically there is no mod size limit. Just wanted to make sure.

I imagine there is a size limit of some sorts. The CS would probably have a seizure if it tried to load one that gigantic.
But so far I don't think there has been a esp that has been made anywhere near that big... I mean, even the Morrowind esm itself is only around 75 MB

But if you had to guess what would be the maximum size the file could handle per mod?

You are not going to get a file that is gb's in size(excluding custom meshes etc, but those dont count towards esp/esm file size). You would have to mod the entire planet and both moons plus more if you wanted to do that. TR, Province: Cyrodiil, and Skyrim: Home of the Nords plus a few total conversions each deal with whole continents and provinces and they work fine. Its not a matter of max size, its a matter that you are 99% unlikely to hit it.

hammerfell, skyrim and highrock altogether in one ESP is only 90mb. (SGmonkey once teased me with it on skype.... )
not sure f he opened them all in the CS, but he could get that and more running ingame (without MGE, only those 3 at a time due to distant land).

i might have some facts wrong, but you're not gonna get a 4.6gb ESM/P anyway. But obviously a gig works fine.

With regard to the file format: It's not bounded, at least not strongly. There is a record count, which has a maximum of 4 billion records (IIRC), and each record must be under 4GB + 8 bytes, but that allows for a significant amoutn of data.
With regard to memory: With LAA (the "4-gig patch"), slightly under 4GB. Without, slightly under 2. The game would not be playable with the file loaded, due to memory use. This is a hard limit, with no workaround.

As noted by a few people, the only way to get a data file that large is a huge amount of landscape, far more than currently exists. It's very unlikely you'll ever hit either limit.

The CS is a 32-bit application. It might not open a file larger than 4 GB if you want to talk absolute limits.

I'm wondering myself if I've hit such a limit. I don't have mods that large, but if I have all 14 of my merged mods active, I can't save and then load a game. If I disable one of the last (and largest) I can. I have nothing in my Warnings.txt file that suggests a problem with any of the mods, save for the normal Better Clothing errors.

Thanks this is what I was looking for thank you.

OK, so the discussion is actually about plugin size. But...IIRC, it's 256 active plugins and save games that's the limit. So, 255 mods and one save slot = 256. :nerd:

I plan on doing some testing tonight to see if I can find a problem mod that is part of my last/largest chunk of mods, or if it really is an absolute limit I'm hitting with memory. I'll post my results.

Jesus you guys, he's asking if there is a limit on size, answer his question, not saying "I doubt there is any mod that size" it's annoying as our generation.

Except that is also the point. The largest mod anyone can remember creating is about 1gb and that didn't slow the editor down. No one's ever managed a bigger mod, so no one has any real idea how much bigger a mod would need to be in order to be too big.

I've got 617 mods merged into 14 files. Some of those are fairly large expansion mods. All of those masters and plugins together is still only about 500 megs.

Wow. Thought itd be bigger.

Morrowind.esm is only 76 MB and that is the entire vanilla game.

Yeah I know.

After programming in SmartMerger and understanding how the FRMR's subrecord works. It happens to be 32bits bit big; any one cell can have 16 Million objects (2²⁴), the 4th/last byte is what plugin it was attached to (0 being new/current/savegame).