Repairing the Cogs of Morrowind #16 : III - Morrowind

» Fri May 27, 2011 11:57 pm

I wonder if http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1043569 is something that perhaps could be addressed by the magic of the MCP? In short, most vanilla robes (at least for ATI users) seem to disable the alpha maps, causing the sunglare to disappear. The difference is quite noticeable: http://arkngt.googlepages.com/robe.jpg / http://arkngt.googlepages.com/no_robe.jpg

Not 100% sure on what is causing it and I have no idea if it's possible to fix somehow.

» Fri May 27, 2011 10:21 pm

There is a bug with the local maps. Anywhere in the game, local maps are accurate, and the relation to dimensions and locations of statics and landscape are to scale and correct, excepted for the Red Mountain, especially the part across the area inside the magical wall.

This whole area seems to be a rough assembly of cells, directly drawn from several part of the whole map. This makes statics appear to be cut or shifted to different parts, cells assembling poorly and producing differences in shapes and colours from several parts of a static. Furthermore, the display of borders with Tribunal does not match well in this area (which is not a problem for the players but confirm the assembly/joint problem).There are even joints where the pieces of the wall are not connected, as if there was a free passage.

It's not a very serious problem to play the game, apart a few visual glitches on the local map. But for modding it's different. Someone who would try to connect the map coordinates and the landscape will get headache, because the connection between map and landscape is working everywhere excepted in this area. The coordinates of free space on the map may match well with the location of a rock on the ground (i.e., it makes the teleportation and marks very aproximative). And this cannot be corrected by a mod.

Here is a screenshot:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/623/jointures.jpg

» Fri May 27, 2011 8:44 pm

Furthermore, the display of borders with Tribunal does not match well in this area (which is not a problem for the players but confirm the assembly/joint problem)

Hey Mordicus

When Elendell wrote this report on our french http://forum.wiwiland.net/index.php?showtopic=47709&hl=625145, his original post was "...Par ailleurs, l'affichage des bordures avec "TB" ne fonctionne pas dans cette zone...". TB has nothing to do with "Tribunal", it's the console command for displaying cell borders in-game

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:53 am

I just tried to apply this patch and got this error,

"anolyzing Morrowind.exe...
Backing up Morrowind.exe to Morrowind.Original.exe
There is no compatible patch for your version of Morrowind.exe. There may be more versions released in the future. If you should have a compatible version, please check you have not installed other patches such as Exe Optimizer, fpu2sse or no-CD patches. Check the readme for more details.
Patch failed to apply."

Any idea how to fix this?

» Fri May 27, 2011 11:37 pm

Make sure you haven't applied any of the mentioned patches, and that you have updated your Morrowind with the latest official patch.

» Fri May 27, 2011 6:46 pm

Make sure you haven't applied any of the mentioned patches, and that you have updated your Morrowind with the latest official patch.

I'm new to PC gaming and using mods as I'm a Mac and Xbox user. What is and where can I get the latest official patch?

» Sat May 28, 2011 4:28 am

Any idea how to fix this?

Assuming you're playing either Morrowind GotY version (or that you have both Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions) installed you should install the Bethesda http://static.gamesas.com/downloads/patches/Bloodmoon_v1.6.1820.exe and THEN the Morrowind Code Patch. Your code patch is failing because it's looking for your version of Morrowind to be 1.6.1820 -- which it will be once you've installed the Official Patch. So again, in short, install the official patch then the Code Patch. Joy!

» Sat May 28, 2011 3:12 am

Would it be possible to have decimal values for items? Like things costing only .10 of a septim or what have you? It would allow for more economic control, since I think its crazy that wickwheat costs as much as a clay pot, etc. etc.

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:06 am

Assuming you're playing either Morrowind GotY version (or that you have both Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions) installed you should install the Bethesda http://static.gamesas.com/downloads/patches/Bloodmoon_v1.6.1820.exe and THEN the Morrowind Code Patch. Your code patch is failing because it's looking for your version of Morrowind to be 1.6.1820 -- which it will be once you've installed the Official Patch. So again, in short, install the official patch then the Code Patch. Joy!

Used the patch you linked, nothing. So I decided to pull out my save files and keep them on my desktop while I uninstalled/reinstalled Morrowind, the expansions, patch and TR and MCP mods. Good news: it worked and the full TR map is now visible which is why I wanted the MCP. Bad news: it made my save files unusable, which is fine because my first PC character was only level 5. So now I have everything I want working and I'm going to enjoy it for a long time. Thanks for the help.

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:20 am

Would it be feasible to enable the game to recognise and use textures with the jpg file extension ? if so, it could give a quantum leap forward in game performance given the small size of jpg files compared to the horribly bloated .dds, . tga and .bmp that the game does recognise.

» Sat May 28, 2011 3:21 am

if so, it could give a quantum leap forward in game performance

I doubt it. I've never seen any FPS drop from using e.g vanilla textures (which are very small) to "huge" hi-quality 4-16MB textures. Bad performance is due to, i believe, all the scripts running.. even my laptop seems to handle larger textures just fine with no FPS drops at all.

» Sat May 28, 2011 3:00 am

So then that's a no to decimal value gold right?

» Sat May 28, 2011 5:43 am

I love the Fortify health effect. Couple questions though. Could the smae effect be applied to fatigue and magicka? And is there any way to get the effect to play nice with GCD?

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:42 am

So then that's a no to decimal value gold right?

I don't think that will be possible. You can't assign a decimal value to an item in the CS, so it would be useless to make decimals available in game. It may be possible if the CS gets patched, or when one of the new game engines are finished, but I don't see either of those happening for a while.

I love the Fortify health effect. Couple questions though. Could the smae effect be applied to fatigue and magicka? And is there any way to get the effect to play nice with GCD?

Hrnchamd said it would break when someone changes their Intelligence or Endurance, and that changing derived attributed would break even more stuff. So, unless he finds a way around that, I doubt it's getting the same treatment anytime soon.

» Sat May 28, 2011 10:03 am

I have an issue with all enchanted items turning black when I turn my menus off, while using a pluginless no-glow. It might be caused by the MCP because I haven't seen it before but I'll check it to be sure.

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:16 am

Darn... Guess I'll have to wait for OpenMW to be finished...

» Fri May 27, 2011 7:30 pm

Relaying this post from http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1041190&view=findpost&p=15196869:

During a discussion on another Forum topic I have been informed that the project team is working on a low code modification level. Being specifically interested in MW NPC/PC animation system I would like to ask to consider possibility of the following modifications/improvements (I am not a programmer):

1. MW has hardcoded bone names and numbers. BTW, Oblivion does not have this limitation. Bones' nodes like "Bip01 Spine" or "Bip01 R Hand" are used for animation of NPC/PC geometry (body, clothes, armor parts) and in-game "attachment" of weapons, shield, torches. Unfortunately, unlike creatures, NPC/PC skeletons have limited number/names (hardcoded) of bones. It is not that clear why this was done by MW developers: there is no game problem when kf file (x.kf) that contains less number of animated bones is used with a skeleton file (x.nif) that contains also other bones (the way around causes CTD). MW characters are assembled (body, clothes, armor parts are attached to animation nifs) based on body parts names and not on bones names ("Shield bone" and "Weapon bone" are exceptions). "Extra" (in addition to "must have" bones) bones can be used for numerous purposes: hair/clothes/armor animation; twisted bones for more natural rotation of arms and legs; animation of additional body parts like wings, second pair of arms, two necks, etc.; stimulation of muscle contraction (size/scale bone animation is supported in MW); probably, for body shaping sliders (like in many recent MMORPGs); as well as many others. Hence, is it possible to "remove" the check in MW/TESCS exes for NPC/PC bone names/number?
2. Another problem is more difficult even to explain: there is only one working NPC animation control scripting function: "AIWander" ("PlayGroup" and "LoopGroup" are not working for NPCs in many cases and MW installations ? result animations are "corrupted", and there are no direct animation control functions for PCs). "AIWander" allows to script seven idle sequences ("Idle3-9", "Idle" and "Idle2" are not supported to my knowledge/in my experiments). Moreover, all seven idle sequences should in one file that should be attached to an NPC in the TESCS. Oblivion has not a perfect by definitely more flexible animation control/scripting system (unlimited number of idles, etc.). In ideal case as it was once proposed would be a function like "Play Animation sequence from file such and such". Anyhow, do you think it might be possible to remove the check on the number of idle sequences and fix "PlayGroup"/"LoopGroup" malfunctioning for NPCs?
I understand that more tests should be performed in order to clarify why these functions are not working for NPCs. It seems that their call results in a conflict of a scripted idle with some animation sequence called by the game engine ? low body part displays correct animation but upper part is either paralyzed or displays some other animation. MW game engine is able to play animations separately for different body parts (I guess this feature is hardcoded, e.g. head rotation in the PC direction or mouth/eyes movements).

There are also other animation related problems like PC animation scripting support, but I would like to start with these two.

Thank you.

» Fri May 27, 2011 9:33 pm

Just thought I'd point out that the code patch fixes the fortified attributes bug, but people that play as vampires can suffer from the related "fortified SKILLS bug" if any of their permanently fortified vampire/clan skills get damaged or drained. As annoying as it was to have to remove CE attribute fortification items before casting a restore attribute spell, I imagine it's far worse for those whose skill fortifications cannot easily be removed and replaced.

Not making any requests or anything, mind you... just making sure that those who might care are aware of it.

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:54 am

I doubt it. I've never seen any FPS drop from using e.g vanilla textures (which are very small) to "huge" hi-quality 4-16MB textures. Bad performance is due to, i believe, all the scripts running.. even my laptop seems to handle larger textures just fine with no FPS drops at all.

I tend to get quite a bit of an fps drop when using higher quality textures. Morrowind, unmodded, runs at 20-30fps for me. With higher quality textures I normally lose about 5-10 fps. True that doesn't sound like much of a loss, but with the little FPS I have to work with it does slow it down quite a bit. ^^"

» Sat May 28, 2011 1:01 am

Not sure it's a good idea to add a request, but I am posting in case of further development:

Could it be possible to enlarge the icons of spell effects in the right corner?
http://i34.tinypic.com/fc7jic.png

Their size is 16x16 only, very small on large screen, and they are too small to have any meaning or give any useful info, excepted their colour... If they could use the same size as regular spell icon (used on the left corner, when selecting and casting, which are 32x32), they would be more meaningful and visible, and it would be possible to customize them (graphic mod), so their meaning would be much clearer.

» Sat May 28, 2011 9:45 am

Something that should work, but doesn't, is using the Equip function to make NPCs drink potions.
Is it possible to change this? To make NPCs/creatures drink potions using the Equip function?

» Sat May 28, 2011 8:32 am

It appears to be the "bump/reflect map local lighting" patch that causes enchanted items to display only the "magicitems" (which are totally black with a pluginless no-glow) textures when menus are toggled.

» Fri May 27, 2011 8:53 pm

It appears to be the "bump/reflect map local lighting" patch that causes enchanted items to display only the "magicitems" (which are totally black with a pluginless no-glow) textures when menus are toggled.

I can confirm this.

» Fri May 27, 2011 11:15 pm

Greetings Hrnchamd, I'd like to report a source of crashes that I think is very significant and would be really super if it could be fixed. Not sure if this has been reported before, but I do have a test case that exhibits the problem 100% of the time, so I do think it is worth bringing up.

The problem occurs when a spell is cast from a script attached to an object that is non-persistant, and the player leaves the cell while the spell is still active. 72 game hours later, the game will crash. Any savegame will be be polluted and will crash.

Here's a http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1055604 about this in the Construction Set forum. And a http://sites.google.com/site/johnmoonsugar/downloads/cast_test.7z?attredirects=0&d=1 that illustrates the problem.

The way I've found to work around it is to make the object (NPCs in the cases I've seen) that has the spell casting script on it to be persistent (for NPCs this is to set the "corpses persist" flag). Or you can go to your savegame and remove those object from their cells. Or you can attempt to find and remove the SPLM.SPDT (spell data) record in the savegame that records the active spell originated from this non-persistent object.

I suspect that this is also related to crashes that come from leaving cells where creatures have been summoned under certain circumstances. In the cases I've seen, if you equip a piece of clothing that's been enchanted with a CE spell to summon a critter, then equip it, summon the critter leave the critter in a cell while still wearing the item, then 72 hours later, perhaps depending on circumstances, if you unequip the enchanted item, the game crashes.

So, sorry to make yet another request, but I do believe that this is an important stability issue, and at least it's good to have it noted here.

Thanks.

(Edit: oops, I meant SPLM.SPDT, not SPEL.SPDT, very different!)

(Edit2: P.S. I've figured out a couple more fields in the savegame format (in SPLM in particular), if you need such information. Hopefully soon I'll check in a new version of my tes3cmd tool that can dump TES3 files as text).

» Fri May 27, 2011 10:28 pm

Here's a question...

Do any of the lighting fixes have any effect on quadratic lighting? From my experience, they don't seem to.

I just recently updated my mod list to describe what all of the fixes in version 1.6 do, and the lighting fixes are one of the few that have me totally stumped as to what they actually do.