Morrowind Mods with Steam

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ilikecake

Gawd
Joined
Feb 20, 2006
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As part of the recent Steam sale, I got Morrowind for $5. Following the advise of some forum posters I went here and followed the instructions to install a BUNCH of mods that are supposed to make the game look better. For the most part, it worked. It required a few tweaks because Steam puts everything in different folders, but in the end it worked OK. That brings me to my question: I followed through step 12 in the above guide and set my resolution to 1920x1200 with ~100 FOV. However, when I am wandering around outside (getting my ass kicked :() The framerate dives into what appears to be the single digits sometimes. However, my video card doesn't seem to be trying too hard (the fan stays on low settings).

Is there something I am missing about this? It doesn't seem like a game from 2002 should be THAT taxing on my videocard, even with mods.
 
If you're using MGE, disable the Steam overlay if you haven't already done so. Don't expect great frame rates out of Morrowind though. As simple as it seems, the way its renderer works is pretty crude (it's done back-to-front, so there's absolutely no occlusion culling) and it's heavily CPU-dependent. Without a single blistering-fast core, its performance is going to be heavily limited, which explains why your GPU isn't even breaking a sweat.
 
Morrowind also has some pretty... meh engine limitations. Running Balmora Expanded with lanterns placed along the paths runs the exact same on this computer as it did on an A64 3500+ with an X1900XTX.

To effectively see your FPS go into console and type tdt - should pop framerate and some other crap to the top right if I remember correctly.
 
I had really bad luck with Morrowind with MGE and a few other mods on a 4870x2. It ran really well on my GTX280 though. Even if crossfire wasn't working it still didn't explain the massive drop in performance.

Sounds like drivers to me.
 
Thanks for the responses. I will disable the steam overlay when I play next (I didn't know you could do that :eek:). I will also note the framerate if I can. It seemed to take a dive whenever I was outside during the day. Other times it was okay.

Also, I am the proud owner of a 5870 with the GSOD problem :(, so I am currently using my 4870x2 until the card comes back from RMA. Maybe this odd card is causing the problem? No recent NVIDIA cards to test with, unfortunately.
 
I'm running Steam Morrowind with MGE and Morrowind Visual Pack at 5760x1200 on a Q6600 and HD5870. I've been playing this setup since Saturday and I've rarely seen it drop below 20 fps. There must be something going on with your mods setup.
 
From my experience, MGE was always really stable. It's morrowind script extender that made things less stable. MGE uses MWSE by default, if you tell it not to run it's internal MWSE, then the game should prove more stable.
 
Parmenides said:
From my experience, MGE was always really stable. It's morrowind script extender that made things less stable. MGE uses MWSE by default, if you tell it not to run it's internal MWSE, then the game should prove more stable.
Click to expand...

OP, when you followed the Morrowind Extended instructions, did you just stay with the MSWE 0.9.3 that's integrated into MGE, or did you use the latest version 0.9.4a from Sourceforge? This is important because the Sourceforge version is not compatible with the MGE mods. More info (too much info, really) about all that is here.

I also see the Morrowind Extended instructions are a bit dated in that it doesn't mention that the Unofficial Morrowind Patch was updated and renamed to the Morrowind Patch Project. You'd want to install the Morrowind Patch Project (currently version 1.6.4), and then the Morrowind Code Patch (currently version 1.8), and you do want both.

More info in a post I made awhile ago, here.
 
But we all know that if they created Morrowwind in Oblivion's engine, and add co-op, itd easily go down as one of the greatest games of all time.

I do say that in spite of Morrowind's obvious limitations, it's gameplay and story hold up rather well even after all these years.

It's like running into that old girlfriend you broke up with but you run into a few years later

you both still don't mind a little poke and grind.


errrr . . . .
 
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