Mod Organizer for Morrowind

Post » Sat Aug 24, 2013 3:12 am

So everyone,
after falling in love with this magical tool called "Mod Organizer" and playing around with it and my Skyrim and Oblivion installations for a few weeks I've finally tried it on Morrowind. It's not officially available for Morrowind (yet, I hope). But doing a few workarounds you can use it on Morrowind, as well. It has it's flaws with this game and I certainly haven't played with it long enough, but it's quite functionally already.
What MO does is to maintain every single mod in its own folder and keep a clean Data Files folder. And a lot of other things. Great things.
INSTALLATION
1. Get the archive. Since I can't post links yet, search any search machine of your liking for "Mod Organizer" and follow the result to Skyrim Nexus. I used the 0.99.1 beta for this workaround, but I think any version will work for now.
Extract it where you want it to stay, or else you'll have to rename a few things in the settings, which is easy, though.
2. You'll need files named "Oblivion.exe", "OblivionLauncher.exe" and "Oblivion_default.ini" or "Skyrim.exe", "SkyrimLauncher.exe" and "Skyrim_default.ini" in your Morrowind directory to let MO recognize it as a directory as one of the supported games. Actually it should work with the ones form Fallout 3/NV, too, but I didn't test that out. These files might actually be simple empty text documents coincidentally named like that, so you don't need any of these games. ;D
3. Next, run ModOrganizer.exe. If it doesn't detect it automatically, browse to your Morrowind folder. It should detect the exes of Oblivion/Skyrim/whatever.
You'll notice, that not even Morrowind.esm will be visible in the right window. We'll fix that in the next step.
4. Hit your windows button and search for "cmd". Click on the cmd.exe.
Now write:
cmd c/ mklink /J "Your Morrowind directory\Data" "Your Morrowind Directory\Data Files"
Hit the enter button.
It doesn't work? Do not worry, here's an alternative:
mklink /J "Your Morrowind directory\Data" "Your Morrowind directory\Data Files"
You'll notice a link called "Data" in your Morrowind directory, if succeeded.
5. Open up MO again. You'll see (I hope), that all your Esps/esms are listed there. Now first thing is to cry or dance out of happiness, because this great tool is working for you.
6. There's a big button right above named "Oblivion" or "Skyrim". Or "Fallout" or something. Hit it, click "Edit...". For the binary, just surf for "Morrowind.exe", give it a title and click "Add", not Ok. Happens to me all the time. ;( Next do the same for the Launcher (you're gonna need it), TES CS, Mlox, Mrye Mash, MGE (XE), Enchanted Editor, practically every program which uses the Data Files folder and you think you'll need.
6.5 Maybe you want to try your luck and start the Launcher to proof the sorcery right. And then the game. (Okay, this is just for the case I forgot something. So tell me if it works.) Don't forget to start through MO.
7. There's a tutorial somewhere out in the nexus for installing mods. It's pretty much the same with Morrowind.
So let the sorcery begin!
8. You still need to install bsa files and fonts manually. They're kinda shielded against MOs dark magic. I also have issues with sounds. Didn't figure them out, yet.
9. Unfortunately, you mustn't remove those fake binaries and ini of Oblivion/whatever inside of your Morrowind directory. MO needs them to start.
What doesn't work and its workarounds:
- MO doesn't access the Morrowind.ini, so you can't manage your load order with it. Make sure to start the vanilla Morrowind Launcher, click on "Data Files" and "OK" to update your ini. You can still manage whether a particular esp/esm gets loaded, but MO won't recognize it. At least not with me.
- bsa files won't get read because of their somewhat different structure and must go to Data Files manually. You still need to register them in the ini.
- fonts must be installed manually as well
- if a mod only contains folders named "Splash", "MWSE", "book art", "icons" or "distant land", it won't get recognized as a mod, since MO scans every mod directory for its validity but doesn't recognize these folder names. As a workaround, you need to create an empty dummy folder for example called "meshes" and the mod will get recognized.
- I'm not so sure about "sound" and the trillion other ones I don't have tested out. It's easy to see if a mod doesn't get recognized, as its title turns grey and italic in the left column of the MO Window
- Profile managing, a great feature of MO, doesn't work. The saves and inis are at completely different places compared to the ones in Oblivion and Skyrim. There might be a workaround using the command line tool.
What works:
- it works with the Steam version, as well
- MGE XE works fine
- Mlox reads and saves load order
- pretty much every program should work as well, if one remembers to refresh the plugin list using the vanilla launcher and start the program through MO :tongue:
English isn't my first language, so if I was unclear somewhere, I will gladly explain it further. 8)
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Krista Belle Davis
 
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