Modding-OpenMW.com

Final Steps: Starwind: Modded

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 "Starwind: Modded" modlist.

Table Of Contents

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.

Important: Do not enable every plugin you have downloaded. Many mods come with alternate versions and patches which are incompatible with each other and will cause your game to break. Using these snippets from the CFG Generator enables every plugin that you need to in the correct load order.

Ensure that your Site Settings are set. With your Site Settings set, on the CFG Generator page click on the Choose a preset button that says STARWIND MODDED. 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:

Verify the data= folder paths match exactly to where the files are stored on your computer. If there is a mismatch here you may have set your Site 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.

Again, do not enable every plugin you have downloaded. Many mods come with alternate versions and patches which are incompatible with each other and will cause your game to break. Using these snippets from the CFG Generator enables every plugin that you need to in the correct load order.

Validate Your Configs

Once you're finished using the CFG Generator, download and run the openmw-validator tool. This will report on various potential errors in your openmw.cfg file. This step is essential to ensuring your mod list will work as it should.

It will report Validation completed, log written to: .... Navigate to that folder and open that log file. The end of the file contains a summary that lets you know about any issues the validator found. Make sure to fix any issues it reports on now, before moving forward.

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:

  1. Ensure your load order is fully setup and correct
  2. Run OpenMW-Launcher
  3. Click the Data Files icon at the top
  4. Click the Navigation Mesh Cache tab
  5. Click the button labeled Update

Alternatively, if you want to generate navmeshes for the interior cells you could also run the program from the command line.

  1. In your settings.cfg file insert the following: [Navigator] max navmeshdb file size = 8589935000
  2. Navigate to your OpenMW folder and Shift+Right-click the folder to open the context menu. Click Open Powershell window here and use the following command: .\openmw-navmeshtool --process-interior-cells 1

    3. Depending on your hardware and which mod list you chose to install this could take a while to finish.

    Gameplay Settings and Others

    The CFG Generator includes a list of setting values for both openmw.cfg and settings.cfg that are either required or heavily recommended to play the modlist. However, OpenMW allows for plenty of user customization and includes dozens of options, many of which are highly subjective, so it's hard to give a rundown of what you should or shouldn't use.

    We recommend to hover over each option in the Settings menu of the OpenMW-Launcher to view the tooltip and decide for yourself which options you want to toggle. You can also check out the official documentation for these settings, as well as the rest of the documentation on settings to get a more complete idea of what can be done. You can also visit our Getting Started: Tweak Settings page which highlights some of the options.

    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.