morrowind Replaying Morrowind!

[oldladyonthemoon]

   I've reinstalled the game and created a character: Aphithea, Argonian, Healer, born under the Serpent sign.

   The beginning was a little bumpy because of the Dark Brotherhood attacking the player although she hadn't even made a name for herself. Not logical, so I deactivated both Tribunal and Bloodmoon and restarted from scratch. I'll reactivate Tribunal when she reaches level 20 and Bloodmoon when she reaches level 30.

   The mods I use are:

- Better Bodies,

- A Room in Town, v. 2  (I made this one; it adds an abandoned shack in Seyda Neen where the player can settle while finding their bearings and a room for the player in Caius Cosades' house underground in Balmora),

and that's it. I don't think this game needs better graphics.

   I tweaked the Morrowind.ini and added:

- High Detail Shadows=1, so that the shadows are a little more realistic,

- Allowyestoall=1, in order  to get a "yes to all" button when load errors occur,

and set "Screen Shot Enable= to 1" so that I can take screenshots.

   I owned the game on Steam but it is so unstable that I bought it again on GoG. The Steam version comes without the Construction Set and without the small add-ons created by Bethesda Game Studios; the GoG version comes with all of them!

   So, right now Aphithea is in Seyda Neen, waiting for me to start her adventure.

Edited Friday at 03:53 PM by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

   Note to self: if for some reason you need to reload a save, RELOAD IT TWICE!

   This game has a filthy bug where, when you reload a save, anything you had killed before saving would come back from the dead when you reload. Reloading a second time fixes that.

Edited April 30 by oldladyonthemoon

[HeyYou]

4 hours ago, oldladyonthemoon said:

   Note to self: if for some reason you need to reload a save, RELOAD IT TWICE!

   This game has a filthy bug where, when you reload a save, anything you had killed before saving would come back from the dead when you reload. Reloading a second time fixes that.

Ok, that's a weird one, is that a product of the code patch? I don't recall ever having that problem back when I was playin' Morrowind..

[oldladyonthemoon]

2 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

Ok, that's a weird one, is that a product of the code patch? I don't recall ever having that problem back when I was playin' Morrowind..

Not a byproduct of the code patch, I had it before installing it.

It's an insidious bug, you may have never noticed it.

[HeyYou]

It HAS been some time since I played MW.....

[oldladyonthemoon]

   Time to get back to it then!  

Edited April 30 by oldladyonthemoon

[HeyYou]

I still have the original discs.

[oldladyonthemoon]

You'd have to look for all the updates then. 

Edited May 1 by oldladyonthemoon

[HeyYou]

There is that..... They *should* be out there somewhere though.

[oldladyonthemoon]

7 hours ago, HeyYou said:

There is that..... They *should* be out there somewhere though.

Here they are! 

   I also have the original discs, the French version, but it's bugged. I see there is patches for it on that page though. 

Edited May 2 by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

   Okay, I'm installing the French version. I'm going to play both versions in parallel. 

[HeyYou]

Four disks???? What's on the fourth disk?

[oldladyonthemoon]

18 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

Four disks???? What's on the fourth disk?

Stuff related to the Construction Set. 

[HeyYou]

Ah. Ok. Shoulda guessed.

[oldladyonthemoon]

   GOTY French version installed, complete with the Construction Set. Installing the patches was a bit messy, with error messages and the installer crashing but the game seems to work fine. Future will tell.

   I deactivated Tribunal and Bloodmoon as usual, installed Better Bodies and updated my room in town mod to the French version. I didn't install the Code Patch.

   The first thing that stroke me on starting the game was the quality of the French audio, they managed and find French speaking voice actors with voices that sound very much like the original.

   But, the French speaking players were robbed of the coded package for Cosades; the people in charge didn't bother translating the deciphered text and then coding it. Plus, they kept only the first paragraph. 

   Oh well...

P.S.: I had forgotten that you couldn't play without the disc... 

[HeyYou]

There is a no-cd patch out there in the world. Back in the day, even the devs used it.

[oldladyonthemoon]

On 5/2/2024 at 6:48 PM, oldladyonthemoon said:

Installing the patches was a bit messy, with error messages and the installer crashing but the game seems to work fine. Future will tell.

   Future is saying: "no go!". The game crashes as soon as I enable Tribunal and Bloodmoon.

   Now, the GoG version is supposed to have both French audio and text. I don't remember seeing a way to choose the language during the installation though. 

Edit: I must download a separate installer for the French version... 

Edited May 4 by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

   So, GoG French version installed and both mods Better Bodies and A Room in Town v. 1 and 2 ported to that version, which was easy for Better Bodies but took more time for A Room in Town.

   Better Bodies needed to be updated to the French version because it had been created with a different version of  Morrowind.esm and the game spat error messages each time I started it. 

   Now I have a new player, Demethys, a Dunmer woman, archer, born under the sign of the Atronach.

Edited Thursday at 01:52 PM by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

   So, now that I have two characters, seeing them evolve during the game will be interesting and fun, I'm sure of that. 

   They will have common behaviour; none of them will be Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild material for example but it doesn't mean that they will be all goodie-goodie either!

   To make things even, since using Morrowind Code Patch with the French version will probably be problematic, I've removed it from the English version. Both characters will use the same mods:

- Better Bodies,

- A Room in Town, v. 2 (I made this one; it adds an abandoned shack in Seyda Neen where the player can settle while finding their bearings and a room for the player in Caius Cosades' house underground in Balmora).

Note: talking about my room in town mod, I opened it in the CS and noticed that the piece of code that makes a key to be given to the player is simply missing. It's missing, so the result should be that the player doesn't get the key, shouldn't it? Well, they do... And no, it's not a "the script is burned into your save" case. If you download it from the link and open it in the CS and then look into the SpyMasterScript, you'll see that it's unchanged, no code about a key there. If you explore the list of all the scripts existing in the game, you'll see that none of them have been modified. Weird... 

Edited Friday at 05:09 AM by oldladyonthemoon

[HeyYou]

Is it part of a quest script??

[oldladyonthemoon]

5 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

Is it part of a quest script??

   No, no quest. The code has just vanished. Since it works though, I guess it's been burned somewhere inaccessible even by the CS.

   Or, the CS is broken.

[oldladyonthemoon]

On 4/30/2024 at 8:38 PM, HeyYou said:

Ok, that's a weird one, is that a product of the code patch?

   At the time I answered that it wasn't but now that I'm no longer using the code patch, I'll be really able to see if the bug still happens. 

   It happens mainly with creatures, not npc.

Edited Friday at 05:08 AM by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

22 hours ago, oldladyonthemoon said:

Note: talking about my room in town mod, I opened it in the CS and noticed that the piece of code that makes a key to be given to the player is simply missing. It's missing, so the result should be that the player doesn't get the key, shouldn't it? Well, they do...

   I'm going to try and fix this. What I intend to do is create an empty esp and then merge the old esp with the new one. This should get rid of this weird behaviour.

   The thing is, I'd never had noticed it if I hadn't wanted to remove the need for that key for the player to use the room at Caius' place... If my small fix works, I'll be able to do it.

Edited Friday at 05:26 AM by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

8 hours ago, oldladyonthemoon said:

I'm going to try and fix this. What I intend to do is create an empty esp and then merge the old esp with the new one. This should get rid of this weird behaviour.

   Nope, doesn't work. 

   I'll have to remake it then... Oh well. 

Edit: no need! I found how to fix the problem; all I had to do was restoring the modified line of dialogue with Caius Cosades. Now I just remodified it and everything is fine. 

@HeyYou, you were probably on the right track when you mentioned a quest; the dialogue is linked to the journal indexes. 

Edited Friday at 02:24 PM by oldladyonthemoon

[oldladyonthemoon]

   So, what's happened to Aphithea the Argonian? She spent already six days in Seyda Neen but time doesn't count for Argonian.

   She made friends with Fargoth, giving him back the ring the guards took from him and refused to help Hrisskar the bully. Aphithea doesn't like bullies.

   Exploring Seyda Neen she found hidden treasures; why do people hide stuff in tree trunks? So easy to find!

   She trained her skills at the expense of the local mudcrabs and slaughterfish and cleaned Addamasartus, the nearby cave where slavers had found refuge. She killed them and freed the slaves. She made good money out of the stuff she looted there.

   Aphithea found the body the the tax collector; she gave back the money she found on him and investigated his murder. She decided not to punish the perpetrator though she disapproves of murder. This should be done properly by the authorities.

   She witnessed the fall of a weird guy who had created some magic formula that would make people travel far in one jump. She tried one of them and survived! She landed in the water near a place called Ebonheart. In one jump, she went from Seyda Neen to Ebonheart! Wow! But too dangerous, what would have happened if she had passed by a cliff racer huh?

   She found Vivec impressive but she took the silt strider to Seyda Neen right away.

   Now, she's ready to go to Balmora.