Hello there. I have been working on a mod pack to make modding Morrowind more "Newbie friendly" (and have got permission from plenty of fantastic modders to include their work in the pack). My question is about releasing pre-made distant lands items generated in MGE and a pre-made Morrowind .ini file to auto-enable the mods installed and optimise their ini file. Now, I understand that I probably can't redistribute files as-is from Bethesda, but in both cases, they will have been either changed, or had something derived from them - which, as I understand it, is the essence of what modding is. Therefore, could I release both of them in a mod, or would I need to create a programme to make changes to the .ini file and get them to create their own distant lands?

I was just thinking that for people who want an "install and play" option, it would be very nice if they could be bundled with the pack. If not, then obviously they won't.

I don't think Bethesda would care at all over either of those. Yacoby, I think, keeps a copy of the default .ini and it's been there awhile.

Thanks for the quick reply.

pre-made inis are some out there, i don't think that's a prob. there is even a prog to "merge" inis, it's named mini i think.


and you should not have only "plenty" permissions, but all you need - means of all modders whose work you use (adding this just in case)

While you can't really ask for legal help here, we can all weigh in with our opinions (some of which are more educated than others). Still, don't consider it actual legal advice.

Premade INIs, especially if they are pre-tweaked, don't really count as a problem. You're fine including that, plenty of people put their tweaked INIs up.

Including distant land doesn't seem like an issue to me, it's MGE's data in a format that is unique to that system. Yes, it was derived at some point from Bethesda's stuff, but it only runs with Morrowind and isn't their data redistributed (it has been heavily changed). It would either be allowed or fall under the reskin exception, so you should be fine there.

Just be careful about what mods you pick to include, too many modders are quite rude about packs and such. Good luck.

If he has permission for each mod put in the pack, then no modders are not 'rude' about packs. Modders are only distressed when they expressly don't want their work included in a mod pack and it is put in regardless of their wishes. It is not 'rudeness', they are totally justified to be upset when their wishes with their own work are completely ignored. To ignore someone's wishes regarding their own hard work is rudeness.

Edit...forum just went wacky.

Thanks for the replies. I won't be releasing the mod pack until I have confirmation from everyone whose mods I wish to include. There are many mods that have permissions given in their readmes, and while my policy has been to still contact them just in case, some have been unreachable. It should still be fine to use because of permission in the original file's readme, right?

Yes.

MGE needs to be configured properly for each user's system - everyone else is not going to have the same system performance that you do, so it would be best to just have each user step through the MGE setup themselves using the default settings to start. MGE really needs the user's attention given it's many options, they'll probably end up having to adjust things themselves regardless of including pre-generated data.

Oh I understand that, but it can be so daunting, that I planned on having it set up so it would run on most systems with shaders disabled, with a hotkey to enable a pre-set list of shaders. The forum it's designed for is called "Overclock.net", and as I'm sure you can guess from the name of the forum, performance often isn't an issue with the computers there. Since it can be though, distant lands will come by default off, with a quick explanation of just having to turn them on, and then a much longer one if people care to read further. That way they get it as if it were the default game, but MGE makes the game run faster, and with the ability to just turn distant lands on and play before coming back to look at it later.


At least, that's what I thought would be the best balance of usability and utility. I could be wrong? I'm trialling the performance across three systems - two medium/low end laptops and a medium-high (but not very high) end desktop. I might even dig out my old original Athlon running an old Nvidia 5200 GT and see what kind of performance it gets with Distant Lands off for comparison. Current benchmarks are looking good, but I'm still trying to optimize the shaders.

My main problems have been getting hold of the person who wrote the FPS Optimizer and the Code Patch (which I'm going to guess giving out pre-patched exes is not going to be fine to use, so it's just going to be the code patch, sadly). While I've got approval to use the older version of the Unofficial Patch from Thepal, I've also not been able to get hold of Quorn to use the newer one. Other than that... Oh, and I've not been able to get hold of NoLiv. Everything else is coming along smoothly.

Does anyone know where I could get hold of any of those people? Oh, and one more has been problematic - Keldyn who made http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=3088. His email doesn't work and I can't find heads nor tails of him anywhere but there.

No, pre-patched EXEs are bad. That's why the code patch and such come as patchers. You may be able to rig a script to install some of those automatically, if they have a command-line mode.

I'm not sure if NioLiv is still around, you might look up her site (if she has/had one).


Oh, you haven't seen some of the ones that used to hang around here. Even so much as ask and they'd flip out, screaming bloody copyright violation and that everyone hated them (and it got to be a daily thing, too, they just liked throwing their little fits). Luckily, they're mostly gone now, cooler heads and thicker skins have prevailed (we still get the occasional "where did they go?" thread, but that's it).

Hey there everyone. I figured I'd post it here rather than starting a new thread...

I've been looking pretty hard to find the person who created http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=3088, but I've had no luck trying to track him down. While I'd hate not to include it in the mod pack (as it's a wonderful version of Balmora with all of the feel of the original), I have no clue how to get hold of him. The e-mail in his readme doesn't work and I can't find a forum account to PM anywhere.


Can anybody help?

I don't know where to find him, but if you want another Hlaalu texture pack that has the feel of the original, you could try http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5834. If anything it's even closer to the original than Kel's.

Thanks. I'll try them out properly over the next day or so. For some reason, I'd never come across these before, and I thought I'd seen/used most texture replacers like this.

Well, first off - thanks for all the help, everybody. It's been useful.


Secondly, the mod pack is nearing the point where it can be released to the public, and I was trying to think of a name. A quick search on Google suggests to me that the name isn't already taken, so would the name: "The Better Vvardenfell Mod Pack" be suitable? I've been thinking about it, and it's fairly memorable. I know "Better" gets used a lot in Morrowind for strict (or near-strict) replacers of things, and that's what I've been trying to do here, so I thought it would fit.

It should be fine, right?


Edit:

Oh, and two or three more legal questions:

Having read the licence behind the exe optimizer and MGE, both should be free to include with few stipulations, providing original documentation/licensing is included, as both are open source projects, correct?

My second question is: I'd like to include the FPS Optimizer. Having tried to find the author, I gave up, but I did manage to find someone professing to know him and be a close friend. I contacted him, but received no reply.
My assumption was that it has largely been uploaded on other sites by other people, with, as far as I know, no outcry by the original author. All the downloads I have found include very little in the way of a readme. My understanding is that the author is a native Russian speaker, and so I have no clue as to how permissions stand. Can it be included, or can it not?

Finally, I have been unable to get hold of Quorn, who has been spear-heading the latest updates to the Morrowind Patch Project. I have permission to include the earlier version by Thepal, but cannot find Quorn to okay the later versions. Does anyone know where to get hold of him, if he'll be back, or how he feels about such things? He has included in the readme the original readme by Thepal suggesting to contact him (and not Quorn), so I would suggest that having okay'd it by Thepal, it should be fine, but I can find nothing of Quorn to double-check.
Is that sufficient?


If I can fix these problems, and hear back from a few more people about some other mods I'd like to include, the release looks like it ought to be in the next few days, but those are some fairly major problems I'd like to surpass before packaging it and uploading it.