Final Checklist: Expanded Vanilla
Now that you've gone through the entire mod list you may be eager to jump in and play - but there's still a few more final steps.
Go through each step as outlined below to make sure your setup is golden.
Back to the end of the "Expanded Vanilla" modlist.
Table Of Contents
- Cleaning
- CFG Generator
- Validate Your Configs
- Delta Plugin
- Groundcoverify
- Waza Lightfixes
- Generate a Navmesh Cache
- Run The Game
Cleaning
It can be tempting to skip cleaning, however dirty plugins can affect the game in unexpected ways.
As a reminder: this mod list has 3 plugins that need cleaning if you haven't already:
sm_golden_mask.ESP
Dark Brotherhood.ESP
Daedric_Maul.ESP
Download and extract tes3cmd to .
Next, find the plugin you need to clean and cut-and-paste it into that same directory.
Navigate to that folder and Shift+Right-click
the folder to bring up the context menu. Click Open Powershell window here
and type the following command, replacing the file name in quotes with the one you’re trying to clean:
.\tes3cmd clean “FileYouWantToClean.esp”
You will see some output about what tes3cmd has cleaned and that the Clean_
plugin was generated. Copy-and-paste the clean version to the file’s original location in your mods. You are welcome to remove the leftover .esp file in your vanilla Morrowind Data Files folder if you desire.
Please see this page for more information on cleaning plugins.
CFG Generator
The CFG Generator will provide you with personalized lines for your mod list that you will need to copy-and-paste into your openmw.cfg
and settings.cfg
files in order for the mod list to function properly.
- On Windows, these files are located in
Documents\My Games\OpenMW
- On Linux, these files are located in
~/.config/openmw
- On Mac, these files are located in
~/Library/Preferences/openmw
Ensure that your User Settings are set. With your User Settings set, on the CFG Generator page click on the Choose a preset
button that says EXPANDED VANILLA
. After a couple of seconds you will have your config files generated for you.
For the larger mod lists the sections you will copy-and-paste into your config files can be quite large, and so for your convenience you can click on the Copy to clipboard
button.
Paste the lines from the openmw.cfg
section accordingly:
- Paste the
fallback=
section below the lastfallback=
line in the file - Paste the
Data Paths
section, overwriting anydata=
lines already present - Paste the
BSAs
andPlugins
section, overwriting anyfallback-archive=
andcontent=
lines already present - Paste the
Groundcover
section, overwriting anygroundcover=
lines already present
data=
folder paths match your own files. If there is a mismatch here you may have set your User Settings incorrectly or deviated from the folder naming schemes provided by this website.
For the settings.cfg
section, if the header for a section already exists in your file (ie: [Shadows]
), make sure to only paste the corresponding lines and omit the duplicate header.
Note that the CFG Generator creates a complete list of plugins that you should have enabled once you are finished with the mod list. Once you finish copy-and-pasting you will have content=
lines for Delta Plugin, Groundcoverify, and Waza Lightfixes and a groundcover=
line for Groundcoverify despite not completing those steps, yet. It is important that you comment out these lines by placing a #
at the start of the line until you complete each of those three steps in turn.
Validate Your Configs
Once you're finished using the CFG Generator use the openmw-validator tool. This will report on various potential errors in your openmw.cfg
file, as well as report on specific data paths. This is completely optional, but highly recommended as it will let you know where you made any mistakes.
- Download openmw-validator
- Extract the files to any folder you would like. The
Tools
folder inis a fine spot to put it, but it could go anywhere you like.
- On Windows, navigate to that folder and
Shift+Right-click
the folder to open the context menu. ClickOpen Powershell window here
and use the following command:.\openmw-validator
- On Linux or macOS, open Terminal and
cd
into the folder you extracted openmw-validator and use the following command (but change the executable name for macOS):openmw-validator-linux-amd64
If all goes well it will report Validation completed, log written to: ...
. Examine that file for details about the validation.
Delta Plugin
With your config files set and your files validated it's time to make a merged plugin using Delta Plugin.
Do not skip this step! many mods require object merging in order to function as intended.- Download the latest release for Delta Plugin
- Extract the files to
C:\games\OpenMWMods\Tools\DeltaPluginandGroundcoverify
- On Windows, navigate to that folder and
Shift+Right-click
the folder to open the context menu. ClickOpen Powershell window here
and use the following command:.\delta_plugin merge --skip-cells delta-merged.omwaddon
- On Linux or macOS, open Terminal and
cd
into the folder you extracted Delta Plugin and use the following command:delta_plugin merge --skip-cells ./delta-merged.omwaddon
You will know this is successful if you get a message saying, Done!
You now must edit your openmw.cfg
file and remove the #
before content=delta-merged.omwaddon
before moving onto the next step.
It is normal to receive some warnings and errors. If you encounter any unexpected errors, however, the program will cease generating the merged plugin and give you an error message. Read the error carefully to determine the cause. Most errors are caused by a plugin not being present in your files or the corresponding data=
line in your openmw.cfg
file is incorrect. Correct that and attempt to run Delta Plugin again.
Groundcoverify
Groundcoverify is optional, and a little more involved than previous steps, but highly recommended as it greatly increases your performance. It accomplishes this by using Delta Plugin to convert flora and foliage objects into groundcover, and also creates a plugin to disable those objects that were converted to groundcover.
- Groundcoverify requires you to download and install Python. Click on the
Latest Python 3 Release
link and scroll down to theFiles
section - Windows users should download the
Windows installer (64-bit)
. In the installer, before clicking onCustomize installation
ensure that the checkbox labeledAdd python.exe to PATH
is checked. Continue installing and ensure that later on that the checkboxAdd Python to environment variables
is checked and customize the install location if you desire. - MacOS users should download the
macOS 64-bit universal2 installer
- Linux users can get python3 from their distro
- After installing Python, download Groundcoverify and extract it to
C:\games\OpenMWMods\Tools\DeltaPluginandGroundcoverify
- On Windows, navigate to that folder and
Shift+Right-click
the folder to open the context menu. ClickOpen Powershell window here
and use the following command:python .\groundcoverify.py --verbose --delta-plugin-exe .\delta_plugin.exe
- On Linux or macOS, open Terminal and
cd
into the folder you extracted Delta Plugin and use the following command:./groundcoverify.py --verbose --delta-plugin-exe delta_plugin
You will know this is successful if you don’t receive any errors. You now must edit your openmw.cfg
file and remove the #
before content=deleted_groundcover.omwaddon
in the plugins section and also remove the #
before groundcover=groundcover.omwaddon
in the groundcover section before moving onto the next step.
Waza Lightfixes
Download Waza Lightfixes and extract it to C:\games\OpenMWMods\Tools\wazalightfixes
. All you need to do is double-click the executable to run the program.
You will know the program was successful if it generated a LightFixes.esp
plugin in the mod folder. You now must edit your openmw.cfg
file and remove the #
before content=LightFixes.esp
in the plugins section before launching the game.
Generate a Navmesh Cache
The Navmeshtool program comes with OpenMW and can be used to pregenerate navmeshes, thus avoiding loading stutters in-game that might be caused by doing that on the fly. It's an easy, convenient way to eliminate one category of stuttering (while continuing to enjoy the benefits of what caused it: dynamically generated navigation meshes).
The easiest way to use it is via OpenMW-Launcher:
- Ensure your load order is fully setup and correct
- Run
OpenMW-Launcher
- Click the
Data Files
icon at the top - Click the
Navigation Mesh Cache
tab - Click the button labeled
Update
Depending on your hardware and which mod list you chose to install this could take a while to finish.
Run The Game
Last, but not least: run the game to see how it looks and all that.
OpenMW has a handy testing feature that's described here, be sure to use that to quickly spawn into various areas as desired. Maybe there's a texture you still want to replace, or a problem you found (please let us know if that's the case!), in any case it is definitely worthwhile to spend time testing before you take the deep plunge.
This is also a good time to nail down performance and quality settings. With a reasonably modern GPU, it should be possible to run Morrowind via OpenMW with high amount of visual detail. See the entire performance guide for more information.