Morrowind

About this mod

Morrowind Graphics Extender XE; allows Morrowind to render distant views, scenery shadows, high quality shaders and other features. Mods the vanilla engine, not usable with OpenMW.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
Morrowind Graphics Extender XE

A graphics improvement add-on to the Morrowind engine, for longer viewing distances, great sunsets, fine shaders and better lighting. Supports MWSE 2.1, included as part of the installer, so that the newest Lua gameplay mods work straight away. As an engine mod, this is not compatible with OpenMW.


Requirements

Morrowind GOTY or Bloodmoon fully patched.
Any graphics card made since 2009 or so.
Windows Vista SP2 or later (Windows XP is not supported since MGE XE 0.11.2).
Morrowind Code Patch, if you want to use MWSE.


Major features

MGE XE provides:

- Resolution and FoV configuration.
- Distant world rendering. As long or short a viewing distance as you want, with spectacular atmospheric colourations.
- New water rendering, with simulated ripples from the player and from raindrops.
- Solar shadows, that smoothly update with the time of day.
- Shaders like SSAO, Sunshafts, and HDR.
- Per-pixel lighting. For better performing graphics cards, it improves
the rendering of lights and and fixes colour shifts caused by the old
engine.
- MWSE 2.1 support. Amazing new mods have full access to customize Morrowind's UI and gameplay mechanics.

The main feature is the distant world. The MGE XE program takes your mod
list, and builds a lower detail version that can be used to render the
distant world in-game. It's built by the "Distant land generator wizard"
on the Distant land tab. You'll need to re-run the generator if you add
or remove any mods that change the world, otherwise the distant world
will appear out of date compared to your mods.

The new water, shadows, and lighting are integrated into distant land. They are all
dependent on the distant world data to know about the world beyond the
area near the player. So, generate distant land and all these features
will be available.


Install Instructions


1. If you are interested in MWSE 2.1 and Lua mods, you must first install Morrowind Code Patch. The bugfixes it provides are required for MWSE. As a complement to the UI scaling option, you may also want to use Better Dialogue Font for sharper menu text.

2. Run the MGE XE installer. It will add a new configuration program, MGE XE, to your Morrowind directory and to the Morrowind section of your start menu. All Visual C++ and DirectX updates are now included in the installer.

You will be given the choice to update MWSE in the installer, which requires internet access. For a manual installation, extract the archive files to your Morrowind directory and run MWSE-Update.

3. Run the main MGE XE program, which sets all the graphics configuration. If you're using Mod Organizer 2, you need to run MGEXEgui from within MO2, as it generates files inside Morrowind's Data Files directory.

Configure your graphics setting in the 'Graphics' tab, and generate distant land in the 'Distant Land' tab. There is an instruction tab for further details. If later on you add world-changing mods to your mod list, you will need to re-run the generator to see the changes in the distant world.

(NEW) Many settings can be adjusted within the game, where you will be able to see the effect of your changes in real-time. This requires MWSE. Press Esc, click on 'Mod Options', then select MGE XE from the mods list. You can then open the settings window with the button, which will hide all other windows to show a full preview of the world. There are several tabs in the window, and the configuration can be loaded and saved.

4. If you use Steam, you should turn off the Steam overlay (in Steam, right click Morrowind > Properties). If you use Crossfire/SLI, turn off "Pause world rendering in menus" in the In-game tab, to avoid performance reductions, as this feature is SLI unfriendly.

5. There is an optional mod, 'XE Sky Variations', that will randomize the sky colour and sunrise/sunset every day. It requires high quality sky scattering enabled, and MWSE installed.

6. When using MWSE, which is highly recommended, you will know it's working when you see the 'Mod Options' button added to the main menu. MWSE mods are configured from there.


Upgrading

From a previous MGE XE:
Run the installer, or manually extract the archive to the Morrowind directory. Run MGEXEgui and regenerate distant land. Custom modded shaders you've installed may or may not be compatible, so you should check with the authors for an update or stick to the default shaders.


You might want to know

MGE XE includes an install option for MWSE 2.1 beta by NullCascade. ( https://github.com/MWSE/MWSE/ ) MWSE mods are therefore supported while you are using MGE XE; the MWSE launcher is not required. MWSE is receiving regular fixes and improves, and can be updated by running MWSE-Update.exe in the Morrowind directory. For MWSE mod support you should contact the mod author.

Many rendering settings can be changed in-game using the MGE XE mod options window, which is new in v0.14. A lot of settings are now dynamically adjustable.

Post-processing shaders now auto-sort into the correct order, when the file is tagged with a category. You will see the category when you add the shader to the active list. The standard shaders are already categorized, but other shaders will need an update. Further details on this system are in the readme in Data Files/shaders/XEshaders.

Shader core mods. It's possible to edit MGE XE rendering if you know HLSL. This mod system replaces the previous strategy of replacing the core shaders, that ensured problems on upgrade. If a shader mod does not compile, the game continues with standard shaders, and you get a visible warning.

To start modding, examine the shaders in Data Files/shaders/core/; any file that starts with "XE Mod" can be copied to the Data Files/shaders/core-mods/ directory. Shaders in core-mods will override the standard rendering when present. They can be distributed in your mods safely, and can be simply deleted once they are no longer needed.


Problems?

If you get a message in game "MGE XE serious error condition. Check mgeXE.log for details.", you can see the log file by clicking the "Show mgeXE.log" button in the Config tab of MGEXEgui. You may be able to discover what's wrong from the error message.

Questions and support thread at #troubleshooting channel on discord https://discord.me/mwmods

Reporting in game crashes: Open MGEXEgui, on the Config tab click "Show last mgeXE.log". Add it to your report.

Reporting distant land generator crashes: Open MGEXEgui, on the Config tab click "Show DL generator log". Add it to your report.


Credits
Many people have worked on MGE over the years, and the sum of their ideas and hard work implementing them has improved Morrowind by a huge amount. MGE XE is based on the MGE code.

MGE was written by Timeslip, LizTail, Krzymar, and Phal. MGE XE is currently being developed by Hrnchamd.
Thanks to the still active and vibrant Morrowind community for all the inspiration and feedback.