Earlier Pluto was saying that installing graphics mods the traditional way leads to a better understanding of how mods work. I was responding to his post saying that you can be an MGSO user and still learn how mods work because you will need that understanding to alter gameplay, quests, add new landmass, etc. so that was the point I referred to above. You pointed out conflict issues, which requires user knowledge of how mods work to resolve.


I agree with you that graphics and sound mods have the potential to conflict with gameplay altering mods, and an MGSO user needs to know how to deal with that or avoid it through mod selection, or they will run into trouble.


As to your earlier point about credits, I agree MGSO needs a good readme that is included in the download that includes a good credits section. There is a credits webpage somewhere with a list, but it's hard to find the page and the list does not contain enough information about who contributed what. It's just a list of names.


It would be better if MGSO promoted its contributors.

That's rich coming from the guy who just tried to pull a strawman on me like nobody's business, just because he disagrees with me. I know I'm playing in your hands just by taking a defensive position, but I still feel a need to stress that I hand no intention to belittle anyone whatsoever, if only because it wouldn't benefit me in any conceivable way.

I find MGSO pretty lacking for the kind of setup I prefer, that's all, and it wasn't very nice of you to just go and try to attach some hidden meaning to my words.

If you feel that there's something wrong with my post, you are free to contact the staff, but please keep the slander to yourself.

The polite thing to do if someone takes unintended offense at something you wrote is to say "sorry I didn't mean it that way." But instead you continue to attack me, while stating that you meant no offense.


I read your initial post as a thinly veiled slam against MGSO users that was designed to technically comply with forum rules.


If I misread your intent, I'm sorry for that but I genuinely felt some offense because I honestly took your intent as a slam against MGSO users because of the way you phrased your post.


Again, I'm sorry if I misunderstood your intent or inadvertently offended you with my response. Glad to hear you weren't trying to slam MGSO or its users.

I'm not sure what you mean by "slam" but MGSO does indeed have some objective flaws which would severely restrict the hands-on approach some people (me for example) prefer, even if it's only used as a base. There are no links to the original mods, not even their names or versions listed - you can't be sure if they were updated since the creation. There is no in-depth list of what texture comes from where, if it replaces the original one or is used together with a mesh replacer and so on and so on. Basically, you download the black box and won't even use most of its content, because all the options are already included and the ones you didn't like are just wasting your bandwidth and disc space.

I'm glad we cleared the misunderstanding. I admit I must've been too harsh, but I just hate it when people try to connect me with things or views I have nothing to do with.

It's all good. I don't disagree with the points you just made. You can use it as a base but you are right that it is trickier not only because of the "black box" but also because MGSO edits some of the plugins, so they are not the same as the originals, which means you have to be more careful when making changes.


There's also more than a couple of bugs in it and it can be a bit of work to fix them all, not to mention a bunch of stuff that needs to be updated. Guess that's why I took offense to "lazy" because I've put a lot of effort in getting my MGSO setup working well. Glad we cleared the air.

Ah, I see your point now. I guess if that's the case I can't really call it lazy, but if MGSO requires a lot of effort to even make it work properly, I think you would still be better off installing the mods separately. The whole point of this mod pack was to make modding the MW graphics more simple and accessible, right?

Yes, but...

Another point I didn't convey clear was that by using MGSO you will encounter problems with many mods.

Example...

- Install MGSO.

- Install some preferred mods over the files in MGSO.

- Change one little option in MGSO.

- Bam! All your preferred files have been overwritten and your load order has likely changed. Time to re-download all the files you lost, and pray you never need to change options again.


Any replacer mod that shares files with MGSO will always be at the mercy of MGSO reverting to default every time you change an option. Changing the options is a handy feature of the program, but it discourages refining your game to look how you want it to.


With a standard install, I know if and when any file is going to be overwritten, and I can pick and can choose what each individual file is doing.

I can have Connary's texture on my doors, and Mr. Swiveller's ground textures.... But MGSO would erase all of that if I ever dared change an option.


That's what I meant by "picky." MGSO is user-friendly, but only for certain people.

Yeah, I never ever ever rerun the Options for the precise reason you just stated. I actually deleted the Options.exe since I viewed it as an unnecessary piece of junk software.


I advise people against using the Options exe to make changes. If you want to make a change later, just do it manually. Back up your data folder before making changes so you can revert the changes manually.


Or use Wrye Mash if you want to change options. You can make a BAIN out of your data folder after you have your MGSO setup and before you start installing other mods and install it at the top of your install order. Now you can tinker away to your heart's content and Wrye Mash will automatically revert any changes when you uninstall a new mod if you change your mind about it.

I can't speak to what the point of MGSO is, since I didn't have a hand in its creation. If the point was accessibility, then it would need to be kept up to date and maintained (bug fixes) for it to achieve that goal. That obviously hasn't happened.


The reason I use it is because I tried it once and liked the way it looked. So I didn't feel a need to track a bunch of individual mods down to achieve the same result.


Depending on how you set it up, the look you get can be quite different, so for example, I picked all the "vanilla" options in the initial setup (no grass, no vurts trees, etc.), and the result was essentially a high resolution version of the vanilla game, which was what I wanted. I played vanilla for a long time and really could not tell the difference when I switched to MGSO other than it was higher resolution and the heads were different, but I rather like the heads. My MGSO setup looks nothing like the grassy jungles and conifer forests that so many screenshots and utube videos show.


The only graphical changes I've made since installing it are a few updates and such, including Starwarsgal's latest version of Skies (with her concept art moons), and the mesh improvement project by Stuporstar.

I used version 2 for a while. Finally did a clean install and didn't bother getting the newest version. I don't begrudge anyone using it and enjoying the changes it makes. My issue with MGSO is that the graphics in particular feel really disjointed- there are so many different styles used it doesn't all mesh together into a coherent whole. One asset will have glow and bump maps etc... While the asset right next to it uses no extra mapping effects. The resolution for various assets is all over the board. There are a lot of textures that are not made in the most professional manner. There are certainly some great mods bundled as well- the mismatch doesn't do it for me. For some people I'm sure it's fine to have such a convenient package- that's fine, personally I'm a control freak and like having things as coherent as possible. I also tend to like mods that stay stylistically closer to vanilla than not.

The problem is that not only will the giant BAIN archive be full of gigabytes of things you aren't going to use, but it also contains some really horrendous stuff that I honestly have no idea how to bypass from the installer. There's no good documentation, so you can't really be sure which component comes from where, but many of the mesh replacers included in MGSO are absolutely ridiculous. Threads pop up all the time on the MW reddit with complaints about MGSO FPS, but none of them probably realize how badly made the mesh replacers in the package are.


Just take a look at a simple http://i.imgur.com/y6UzaQu.png. Why in the world would we need nearly 10,000 polygons for such a simple object? Things like this aren't uncommon either, the package is loaded with really badly optimized meshes. Many of these are very small misc objects or tiny statics that will be duplicated countless times in the gameworld, so you end up rendering literally hundreds of thousands of extra polygons any time you load a new cell and butcher your game's performance.

The biggest offender is Detailed Armor, though. The iron cuirass alone has almost 6,000 polygons, the improvement over vanilla is virtually non-existent and the meshes are filled with errors. http://i.imgur.com/vzAlFth.jpg.

So, even if you are going to use MGSO, I would advise deleting this mod. Problem is, the mod's esps are merged into the equipment plugin which means that you can't just delete it without clearing the references to the armor from the esp...

The only problem I seem to be having lately, since using it following a new PC purchase (again, I just wanted something quick and fuss-free) is that I can't seem to take screenshots any more. I have checked my ini file and it does have Screen Shot Enable=1 so I'm not sure what the issue is. I've heard it's an MGE thing, but I can't seem to open MGE (?) and the thread where supposedly the question was resolved has since been deleted so I have noooo idea.

Yep, massive polycount increases with minimal visible improvement. Look at the https://i.imgur.com/byGkUaC.png.


MGSO could've really benefited from having some modellers on its quality control team. There's probably more geometry in the little rings around the top of a http://i.imgur.com/7Gonr1y.png than there are in an entire small town.

I know you can use the predefined screenshot button in the "In-Game" tab (if you use MGE-XE) like this.

1. Open MGEgui.exe or MGEXEgui.exe and find where the large "Macro editor" button is

2. Click on the "Macro editor" button then click a key on the keyboard and click on the save button (I use the F12 button)

That's all you need to do and now should you be able to take a screenshot by using the key you saved in the macro editor at least I can do it when pressing the F12 key in my game.

Just in case someone would be wondering, http://www.ornitocopter.net/mo_wiki/index.php?title=Credits is the credits page. I believe there are still some holes in it.

Space is not an issue on my hard drive but let me ask what "stuff you aren't going to use" you are referring to? I have replaced a few things from MGSO but not a gigabyte worth. Stuff from MGSO Options that weren't selected during installation does not get put in your data folder. I've got those files stored on an entirely different hard drive. I've also never had an FPS issue either, but I don't max out distant land. Prefer the fog.

Yeah, a lot of the meshes are not well optimized. But as I mentioned in a post above, Stuporstar has created and is working on improving a mesh replacement project to fix these issues. It's pluginless so easy to install.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1510729-rel-mesh-improvements-optimized/page-1

Any time you install another mod over top MGSO that would mean the things below it aren't being used. Normally you'd just delete the stuff you're no longer using, but if its all in one package that becomes cumbersome. With how bloated the file sizes are for some of MGSO's components you'd get into the gigabytes very quickly by upgrading to alternatives.


And yeah, I'm aware of Stuporstar's efforts, but there's just no way she will be able to cover all of the meshes in MGSO. As far as I know she's just doing misc items which is only a small portion of the meshes that MGSO trashes. By the time you sift through whats worth keeping and what isn't you may as well have just shopped around on Nexus and built a manual install.

You could always create your BAIN after you have replaced some of the worst offenders.


But hard drive space is not an issue for me.

Yeah, but as Remiros pointed out, those offenders have been merged together with other plugins. And since there's no documentation on what's been merged/what hasn't, you're looking at going through a ton of effort and therefore bypassing the point of the compilation in the first place.


The package claims to be a "Sound and Graphics Overhaul" that was "packed together with care for detail", but they apparently didn't even take a short glimpse at what the mods they were bundling together actually do. Well, either that or they didn't know enough about graphics to realize the problems they were introducing in the first place.

If you are replacing the modded meshes with meshes that have the same file name in the same folder, you don't need to change the plugins, do you?

You will if the mod in question alters more than just the meshes themselves. For armor mods, as an example, they often will add or alter which bodyparts are used. If you just uninstalled the meshes then you'd still have bodyparts pointing toward meshes that no longer exist.

I meant meshes that just optimize the existing meshes, like what Stuporstar is doing. I agree that if you are going to change styles you need to pay attention to the plugin. I actually mentioned this myself (challenges posed by MGSO's merged plugins) in one of my earlier posts above.

The problem is that Detailed Armor also edits the armor in the construction set for unknown reasons. Why the author didn't make it pluginless is beyond my comprehension. I'm not trying to bash anyone, but Detailed Armors is definitely a mod you should avoid. It's not well made, has a ridiculously high amount of polygons and breaks a lot of meshes. On top of that: it's not pluginless. This means you can't just delete it or overwrite it with a better alternative.

I am not saying it was properly made, but what changes does it make in the CS that would prevent you from simply swapping out an optimized mesh (assuming someone like Stoperstar or Pherim created one)?