I don't know if this is fixed anywhere else, but how about a patch that prevents the game renderer from failing to render translucency properly while under water? This one bugs me a lot, because it makes screenshots of BB based NPC's a bit risque underwater...

On a practical note, it makes using translucent windows under water difficult as well.

Second to that is the rendering of objects at certain angles through translucent surfaces. For example, I often create a "fake" exterior to see out of translucent/transparent windows. At certain angles, the surface mesh just disappears - and surface doesn't have any alpha! The trick is to keep the view restricted to the angles where the engine doesn't cull the surface, but sometimes that's harder than it sounds.

Sorry to be a nuisance, but I was wondering if the rain/snow collision fix could be expanded to include activators? That would greatly simplify things like portable shelters that didn't involve interior cells.

I disagree with that one; for people who don't want to use Creeper or the Mudcrab merchant, this is one of the few ways to sell high-priced items without having to do a multi-day "making change" style of barter.

The AI is difficult to work with, it's unlikely I will find out what the cause is.


I can't do much more than fix bugs. Of all those, perhaps the last two are possible.


It can't be done properly without an engine redesign. Multiple transparent surfaces don't interact well when they clip through each other. Your second thing sounds more like an issue with the model than the engine. I can try and fix it if you package an example.


Activators aren't grouped tidily enough to test against, the collision category includes plants, npcs and creatures too. Animated things have only approximate collision boxes. It wouldn't work too well.

Well... dang! I suppose there wouldn't be a way to add scripts to statics?

Make a separate invisible activator, or maybe you can make just the tent hooks into an activator. It seems appropriate.


Just fixed these in the last hour. Expect another beta soon. While that's brewing, please test and document the soulgem pricing against some economy mods, like PirateLord's and BTB's. "I like it" isn't as helpful as comparison data. The spell deselection fix also needs checking on.

In the last hour?! Are you sure you're not Dumac in disguise? Blessed you are!

I'm really impressed by how far this has gone. A lot of these fixes are things that I would never have believed humanly possible without the source code.

Please test http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348.

Changes:

• Bound weapon expiry. When a bound item spell expires it no longer forces you into combat stance. Test with all bound weapons, armour, etc. for proper effect.
  
• Stable enchantment list. Enchantments in the spell menu always sort alphabetically instead of sometimes switching to sorting by inventory order.
  
• Spell deselection fix slightly modified, please test if it fixes spell deselection while you are wandering about.
  
• Larger windows now covers birthsign menu and race menu tooltip. Test with different birthsign mods that aren't BAMF.
  
• Enchant item value increase tweaked to match soul gem rebalance. Check price levels with economy mods.
  
• Soul gem rebalance still needs comparing with economy mods.
  
• Improved animation code. Should be stable and not glitch anymore. Please test during gameplay.

For animators:
The new animation loader has support for new bones, but they have to be named correctly. The engine has three bone groups, lower body (root bone, base spine and legs), upper body (spine1 and above, right arm), and left arm (left clavicle and arm bones). For animations to work together a bone has to belong to one of these groups. I changed the bone checks from strict match to substring match, so you have to append to your bone name, a bone from the group it will attach to.

Typical use would be, If you want a bone CustomBone to be part of the lower body group, name it "CustomBone (Bip01 Pelvis)", for upper body group "CustomBone (Bip01 Spine2)", for left arm group "CustomBone (Bip01 L UpperArm)".

A full list of acceptable non-conflicting bone names to add are (add Bip01 in front of them):
Lower body group - Pelvis, L Thigh, L Calf, L Foot, L Toe0, R Thigh, R Calf, R Foot, R Toe0, MRT, Tail
Upper body group - Spine1, Spine2, Neck, Head, R Clavicle, R UpperArm, R Forearm, R Hand, R Finger0, R Finger1, R Finger2, R Finger3, R Finger4, Weapon Bone
Left arm group - L Clavicle, L UpperArm, L Forearm, L Hand, L Finger0, L Finger1, L Finger2, L Finger3, L Finger4, Shield Bone

Try to name it to the closest available bone for clearness and future use.

The link points to "Morrowind Animation Replacer". Shouldn't it point to "http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348"?

Thank you for beta testing my comment.

I think I might have time to playtest at least this feature tonight, but it would be useful if someone posted filled soul gem values for some souls, e.g. for a Golden Saint soul.

@Hrnchamd
In the installer, the 'Spellmaker multiple effects' patch under - Game mechanic changes - should probably be renamed to 'Spellmaker / enchantment maker multiple effects' since it now includes the Enchantment maker as well.


Some minor Installer typos:

- Beta - section
Reduce camera clipping >> extra period ( . ) after etc.

- Game mechanic changes - section
Spellmaker area effect cost >> 3rd sentence >> 'area effect spells multiplier', should be possessive (i.e. spell's)

- Bug fixes - section
Unarmored fix >> use of 'unarmoured' and 'armour', should be 'unarmored' and 'armor' to stay consistent with description usage.

Loud armor / shield fix >> should be 'a calculation' instead of 'an calculation'

Spell magnitude fix >> 'achieve' misspelled

Creature armor damage fix >> use of 'armour', should be 'armor' for consistency with usage in other areas.

Inventory bugs fix >> 'occurred' misspelled in two places


I haven't yet had a chance to try testing the new beta features - I'll post separately regarding those after running it through its paces. B)

On a related note, I've found that for high power enchantments, this bug-fix can increase the enchantment cost by 1 point even with a spell radius of 0, causing it to make enchantments that exactly fit before the patch suddenly no longer fit. It does seem odd that there is any additional area effect cost for a spell without an area effect. This is more obvious with constant effect enchantments, since their high cost tends to push the limit of the enchant capacity on items.

I notice that a duration of 0 is treated as if it were a duration of 1 in the enchant/spell maker. Is it possible that they're treating a radius of 0 as if it were a radius of 1 as well? That would make the multiplier 1.0025 instead of 1.0 as it should be and that tiny fraction in the multiplier could result in an error at higher enchantment costs.

Even if there is some overriding reason why the game engine needs to treat a spell radius as a minimum of 1, it would be better if a radius of 0 were treated as 0 for the purposes of calculating the multiplier and/or enchantment cost. If there is some reason why the calculation code cannot detect a 0 radius, could the multiplier be hard-coded at 1.0000 for radius values of 1 so that spells which affect only the target without any area effect have no additional area effect cost?

Hrnchamd, I'm using your fix for splash screen color depth, and the splash screens look much better. Especially any involving the sky. No more blocky gradients! But I'm making a main menu replacer, and the patch doesn't seem to affect the main menu at all. The color issues are still there.

The texture looks like http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/1348/menuorig.png in Paint.NET and Photoshop and in the intro video, but looks like http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7961/menuingame.png in the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5tdQqgogM8, if that'll help see it.

I use the MGE toggle sneak mod, does this require MGE or is it stand alone?

It's stand alone. The sneak toggle is built into the patch and doesn't require an external plugin.

Uh my thats great Ill download it when I get home because i believe I have the 1.6 patch
Just one more question, I currently have the 1.6 version which patched my EXE and then I used Timeslips EXE Optimizer on that EXE. So using this new version what do I have to do use; an untouched exe or can I repatch the EXE I currently using

When you re-apply the MCP it first restores a back up exe that it created when you last patched it, and then applies the patches to that. So if you patch it again you'll lose the changes the EXE Optimizer made and have to use the EXE Optimizer again.

It's good you caught that, and your anolysis is correct. The decompiler broke that function into multiple chunks which makes variables hard to track; I didn't test it closely for edge cases back then. It's easy to fix, though, and will be in the next beta.


I think your problem is how you prepared the textures. Going by the screenshots, the original was already compressed, and the new splash screen is offset by one pixel and recompressed, which is near worst case for image compression algorithms. Go back to the original and save it as an uncompressed RGBA8 DDS, and check again.

Thanks for the response Ill check it out, one more thing is there anything to be done about the memory leak problem? its amazing that after 8 years we dont know anyhting on how to fix it...its by far the worst part of Morrowind

I've asked about this in the past, and it didn't seem like it ever got anywhere, but did anyone ever discover a way to fix the fog of war bug?

I don't seem to be seeing a leak when running under Wine on Linux. My resident set size stays pretty constant, or at least it does not seem to grow abnormally fast. What does it look like on Windows? And have you modified any settings in Morrowind.ini that might affect memory usage? (like Interior/Exterior Cell Buffer?)

One of the features of http://code.google.com/p/mlox/wiki/Tes3cmd generates a fogged cell bug patch. Is this what you mean?

I found the function that controls it a while working on 1.7, but its proper operation isn't clear at all and needs more research.