(Note: This project has been started and programmed, and is still being maintained, by Hrnchamd. I'm just starting a new thread because the previous one has reached its post limit.)

This is a project to fix bugs in Morrowind that just aren't possible to do with scripting alone. It comes in the form of a patch to the Morrowind program.

The primary fix included is a large change to the savegame code to reduce corruption, missing objects and CTDs. It also makes the game properly respond to changes in your load list, making inserting and removing mods from your save a lot safer.

Version 1.2 is out now.
Files: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510

Version 1.2 is a minor update to addresses issues with the restore attributes fix.

Here is a summary of the current features:

- Month fix (missing Morning Star)
- Enchanted item display bug
- Mercantile bug
- Transparent clothes in the inventory
- Unarmored bug
- Spellmaking limits
- Enchanted item value increase
- Merchant equipping
- Restore attributes issue
- Stealing from knocked out NPCs
- Reflect fix
- NPC health bar change
- StreamMusic fix
- Calm spells fix
- Vampire stats fix
- ESP load order fix
- Damage fatigue change
- Map expansion
- Local ref bugfix

See the description on tesnexus for more details.

See the previous threads to see how this came about:
Repairing those Cogs #6
Repairing those Cogs #5
Repairing those Cogs #4
Repairing those Cogs #3
Repairing those Cogs #2
Repairing those Cogs #1

Note, if this crashes your Morrowind, please fill in this crash report and PM it to Hrnchamd:

Patch version (check the readme):
Detail what happens just before it crashes:
Detail any Morrowind error messages:

And most important, in the Windows crash dialog ("blabla has encountered an error and has stopped working"), click the more details link ("to see what data this error report contains", different wording for different Windows versions), then click "to view technical information", and copy and paste the first 20 lines.

(reserved)

I guess I'll spill my mind on the subject, aiming for a balanced solution to this issue. We are talking about the relations between intelligence and magicka here, but it also applies to all derived attributes such as fatigue, as it uses the same code.

Maximum magicka is derived from intelligence, and directly modified by the Foritfy Maximum Magicka spell effect. Adjusting intelligence immediately updates maximum magicka, but it also modifies your current magicka. The game tries to keep the same % available magicka from before the maximum was changed. e.g. Intelligence +50 = Magicka +50, starting at 20/100 Magicka, your stat would increase to 30/150 Magicka.

As you know when intelligence is drained to zero, maximum magicka is drained to zero too. 20/100 -> 0/0. It's not possible to recover the original % available magicka since it's been overwritten. The game has to pick an arbitrary result. It chooses to restore the stat fully. It is essentially exploitable to get full mana, but it may also happen during normal play, if an enemy casts a drain intelligence spell at you.

Digression: Fortify attributes spells. These work by increasing the current stat by the spell magnitude for the duration of the spell. It can increase the current stat above the maximum temporarily. It never increases the maximum capacity of a capped attribute. This may be debated, but I doubt fortify spells are meant to be an alternative to restoration spells; things like increased magicka and health should fade as the spell expires.

What can we do about the drain intelligence situation? It somewhat makes sense as a spell mechanic, that a drain intelligence spell would impact your magicka supplies. Let us consider the converse. Fortify intelligence. As described before, not only the maximum magicka, but the current magicka level increases when you receive the fortify intelligence effect. To me, it's not as realistic to gain magicka from this intelligence buff, just for being more intelligent. The player should have to draw magicka from a source, or something like that.

I could make a patch such that current magicka levels are never affected by changes in the maximum. But what about the drain intelligence spells? Those would become very useless. I am looking for a better solution that accomodates a wide breadth of gameplay. What does drain intelligence do at the moment? It can restrict casting by reducing available magicka. but proportionately. Unless intelligence is reduced to zero, there is always a fraction of usuable magicka left.

One idea may be to have excess health, magicka, or fatigue above the maximum drain away towards the maximum over time. This could be accomplished using a script for customizability. However, this may interfere with foritfy health, magicka or fatigue effects.

We could also decouple drain intelligence from gameplay, by moving spells over from using drain intelligence to drain magicka.

If you have some suggestion, please go ahead and discuss them.

Well, as I've said before, it should be up to the end user to exploit or not exploit. Considering I play Warriors, I will very rarely, if at all, use magicka. While I understand very little about the glitch per se, I do understand how many possible ways to solve it. I really don't have much more to say on this...

Other than, it should be up to the end user. Especially since in a way, it's designed into the game. After all, 0 divided by 0 is a bad number.

Does this work with MWSE?

Just to let you know... Updated the mod with the companion on wander and also created a replacer with Mash (just to be safe): no doubling this time.

Great. Small request: If you have the time, could you also try the Mash updater on its own (with the companion not on wander), and the companion on wander alone (without the Mash updater)? I'm curious what's exactly causing the issues, and your setup looks like a good opportunity to test it.

It seems to work just fine with MGE, so it should be fine with MWSE.


What type of replacer did you use? I just used the update function - click on the saved game, the the window on the lower right, then the save button.

Done
Wander by itself didn't work, updater by itself did work.

Jac:
*Normally* what I do is just set the time of the new esp to match the old, activate the new one and deactivate the old, then in the saves tab right-click the old esp in the masters list and "change to", select the new one and save. This usually works for me, but usually I'm only using it with changed script code and this time I changed the local vars as well.

To use the Mash updater (the one that worked): leave the old esp with the same name, give the new esp a different filename and in Wrye Mash, right-click the new esp and choose "updaters", and add the old esp to the list (which should normally consist of only that one esp). Then go to the saves tab, choose "update" and replace the master in your save the same way as my normal method (above).

Thanks, Melian, I'll try that out the next time I update.

As far as I can see, a fortify maximum magicka or intelligence shouldn't increase your current reserves of magic.
As to when intelligence is drained to 0 and then restored, your current magicka should stay at zero. You've lost your magicka reserves.

I can see why, but honestly, that would make them worthless. If you're fully charged, and you drink a fortify magicka potion, you should stay fully charged...

For my two penny-worth, I think this project should fix clear bugs and implement broken or missing features. Plugging exploits strikes me as more trouble than it is worth. The major issue of course is 'how' to plug them. Honestly, if people don't want to use an exploit (such as myself), they won't. If they do, they won't want to apply that element of the patch. In short, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem.

Yes, you're absoultely correct, Symon69. (How did you get that name? )

I'm said many times, and failed to get my point across easily but, yes, fix the bugs, not the exploits, leave it to the end user. Or, you know, code a message that pops up and says. "Cheater!" a lot.

Never lose sight of what is important, fixing bugs, not broken features that are exploitable and were designed to prevent LSD style divide by zero errors...

If Hrnchamd had rigidly said he'd only fix bugs, then we wouldn't have the the map expansion, yet it is one of the most popular features of the patch.

So, obviously, it's not as clear-cut. There are bugs which are well-known, but which don't bother anyone and might be very difficult to fix. There are tweaks or additions which would be welcome by many people and might be relatively easy to do. Implementing "bugs always first" as a strict rule would mean that Hrnchamd would occupy himself with minute (but hard to fix) bugs that nobody cares about before he could even start to do other things which would be very welcome by a large group of users. It wouldn't make sense.

The past threads have shown that there are at least four factors which play a role in the decision whether something becomes part of the patch:

1. Severity of the problem. Obviously, bugs that reduce the enjoyability of the game have a greater chance of being fixed. This was one of the reasons why we tackled the savegame corruption issues - they caused lots of problems for many players, and were hard (sometimes even impossible) to pevent.

2. Popularity of the suggested change. That's why Hrnchamd expanded the enlarged map scale, although this was one of the most difficult and time consuming features to implement. The map size of Morrowind was not a bug, but increasing it was also a feature that was repeatedly requested by many people.

3. Difficulty of implementation. Obviously, with other factors being equal, a fix that can be done in an hour will have greater chances of being implemented than one which requires two weeks of work.

4. Hrnchamd's personal preference. Since he's the one who's doing the work, this is a legit and valid factor too.

The discussion in the previous threads has clearly shown that all these factors are taken into account, and I think that this is a good procedure. If anybody wants to make a case that some of these factors should *not* be taken into account (which you basically do when you're reducing the criteria to "bugs always first!"), then you'd have to argue why exactly those other factors should be irrelvant (something that might be quite hard to do). If you find it hard to make such a case, then please accept the existence of several factors and the fact that factors can outweigh each other (e.g., a popular feature like the map expansion might get implemented, while a hard-to-fix bug that doesn't bother anyone might not get fixed).

Please note, I don't want to bash people who are saying "bugs should have priority over tweaks". Actually I'm saying the same thing and I think it's a maxime that makes sense. However, it's not the *only* factor in the process, nor do I think it should be, and therefore I'd like to encourage people to broaden their horizons a bit and not think about only one of the aforementioned factors. Thanks.

Really, I find it astonishing that people spend so much time arguing what Hrnchamd *shouldn't* do instead of specifying what exactly they'd *like* him to do, and how.

And the fact that the patches are designed to be modular, so no one is forced to implement a patch if they do not wish it so.

One thing that I was thinking of proposing was to gather the collective wisdom of modders on what sort of things are known to cause CTDs in mods (some things such as are pointed out in MSFD9), and see if we can write some test cases that reliably reproduce the CTD. If we can, then maybe they would be something Hrnchamd could debug, and it might lead to a more stable executable. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?

Question for Hrnchamd! ^^

He mentioned awhile back when I PMed him to ask if he could add more weather types to the engine that he could rip out the whole function and give it to MWSE. I declined at the time, but since I've seen MWSE to be a simple and powerful tool that is used by a great deal of people. I'm wondering about the weather-to-MWSE thing. How difficult would this be? It would make mods a LOT more versatile. I can see more people than myself using it. If it's relatively simple to do, consider this a request. ^^ It might be nice if it required a seperate ESP with the MWSE scripts to work properly (or at all), so that the weather stuff could be directly tinkered with instead of requiring someone to go back through raw code.. ^^

EDIT: john.moonsugar, you have a really nice idea there. It might also make scripting more flexible, since things that normally would cause CTDs would now be usable.

Another idea hit me, why not add a really small script function that does nothing in hrnpatched MW but will cause an error in normal MW? This way people whose mods RELY on stuff added/altered by his patch can make sure the users won't give false bug reports. ^^

Sounds like a very good idea to me. Such a list of CTD-causing issues would make it easier to prevent them. Further, trying to make them reproducible would be a great method to analyze potential causes, and to weed out false assumptions about them, and this better understanding will help the community too. Finally, if the results can be used by Hrnchamd to fix some of them, all the better, although even without that final step a list of reproducible CTD causes would be a very helpful resource (imho). Do you want to start collecting? You're certainly qualified.

Sure. Well, I have sort of started, but I don't know if I'm the best candidate. I would at least need someone to doublecheck results, as I do not have a Windows machine to test on. I would not want to introduce Linux problems into the equation.

Is it not possible to store a separate value yourself, not overwrite it when intelligence is zero, and maintain the percentage after intelligence again becomes non-zero? This is certainly scriptable, though I don't think it's possible to cope ideally with fortify magicka effects in a script.

This depends on how you view maximum magicka supply modifications. There are (at least) two ways to look at things:
(1) Magicka is a quantity which the PC directly holds, and increases to maximum magicka allow him to hold more of it. When his maximum magicka drops, he's losing some of this storage ability, so it's natural that he should lose the magicka which is stored there. E.g. dropping to zero storage would leave him with zero supplies, even after gaining more storage.

(2) Magicka is a derived quantity representing a PC's 'magical stamina' (i.e. current magicka ratio), combined with his innate abilities to use that energy (i.e. intelligence, magicka multiplier...). When a PC uses a spell or similar, he's losing magical stamina while maintaining the same ability to use his remaining energy; when he loses intelligence or similar, he's losing his ability to make use of his magical stamina without any drop in his magical stamina. Therefore, when he gets his intelligence restored, it makes perfect sense for him to regain the proportion of magicka he possessed before losing his intelligence.

Note that (1) is not at all consistent with the way the game works, whereas (2) is entirely consistent, apart from the unfortunate int==0 special case. I think case (2) is the only way to make sense of the way magicka works in Morrowind. It also happens to be the way of looking at things which makes the most intuitive sense to me - having some tangible 'magicka store' seems a bit daft, compared to the much more down-to-earth idea of having magical stamina and an ability to use that stamina to good effect.

That might not be a horrible idea, but it does mean a large switch in the way magicka works in Morrowind. Even if much of the in-world explanation follows case (1) above, case (2) is how that world works. Personally I don't see any great reason to change that (I'd be more inclined to change descriptions to fit the facts, than facts to fit the descriptions).

Quite apart from good-sense considerations, I'd also say that the second option probably plays better. It doesn't require changes to make sure that magical supplies can't be easily sabotaged, and keeps drain intelligence reasonably balanced - as a drain on the ability to make good use of magical energy. If the int==0 case can be fixed, I don't see much of a problem.


That argument doesn't work in general for two reasons:
(a.) This situation doesn't only happen through intentional exploitation, but can also occur by accident.
(b.) The presence of exploits destroys the coherence of the game world whenever they come to a player's attention. While not using them solves the game balance issues, it does nothing for the "I'm not living another life in another world - I'm purposely avoiding game balance flaws." issues. If most characters had the opportunity to get free money/health/magicka..., they'd jump at the chance. Forcing the player to choose between shocking game balance, and making out-of-character choices, is not good design. If such situations can be patched out of existence, that's a good thing.

Whether exploit elimination should be a high priority is another question - but it's certainly of benefit to the game.

It's not designed into the game; it's coded into the game.
The way magicka works in the game world (i.e. case (2)) means that magicka ratio is an important quantity in itself. Treating it as a quantity derived from magicka and maximum magicka, rather than magicka as a quantity derived from maximum and 'magical stamina' (i.e. ratio), is an error / bug / piece-of-shoddy-thinking / lack-of-communication.
The int==0 special case is a direct consequence of this error. Store the maximum magicka and magical stamina as fundamental quantities (which they are) and you have no problem. Store an essentially derived quantity (magicka) as fundamental, and rely on deriving a fundamental property (stamina), and you get problems.



For mine, this is a bug leading to a broken feature.


That doesn't put across the major problem. The balance issues can easily be avoided by the player. What I want is to be able to play a game freely in-character, without needing to tip-toe around bad design at every turn. This is by no means the worst exploit for such considerations (broken trading is much more in-your-face), but that doesn't make it a non-issue.

I'm going to be honest here, Galsiah,

I don't know what that means at all. I think I just saw Assembly language! Ow, My head!
Sorry, but I have no idea where to begin with all this.
Can't you just say that I'm wrong, and you're right? Really, I deserve that at times...

Also, to Psyringe, sorry, didn't really mean to be annoying again. I don't try it on purpose! It truly is up to Hranchand, and hey, unless he's willing to clone himself, I'm not complaining over anything.

Back to Gal, okay, uh, you really know your stuff, so, I'll fold my hand here. It is a bug. I just don't know how in the world Hranchand would fix it without breaking somethnig down the line.

THen again, I know only one thing about programming. "99 bugs in the code, recompile, 105,055,313 bugs in the code."
I'm not trying to be annoying, I just don't know enough about what you said earlier to even begin to agree or disagree.


Ah, well, I learn something new everyday...

Also, what's the literal difference between coding and designed? If I design a program to add 2 + 2 and make it 695 or something, and the coding does it perfectly, then isn't that by design? Keep in mind, I can't make Hello world in anything but Qbasic.

Agree somewhat on the 1st part, but the 2nd ...
Then why, oh why, should a drain/damage Int cut your Magicka.

I'm strongly in favor of proportionality, e.g., if you fortify Int by 100, then Magicka to be raised by 100 * multiplier * fraction (remaining from base)
Thus, game-intended advantagees from certain spell-effects are not dismantled, neither will unintended gains be achieved.

One way, to penalise these tricks in a fair and balanced manner could be, to apply expiration of fortified Int for 100% * multiplier on Magicka, so that it can land far into the negative, thus its Restoration will take more potions, resting ...

Edit: and the restoration of Magicka by 1s drain of Int, I never use, being a strong advocate of using the Mage guild chests to full potential and then being reduced to the need of DIY, for the Atronach.
What the heck is a powerful Mage doing, replenishing Mana or anything else at Temples or Shrines, anyway?
Right ... admission of failure to be a free and independent Psijic

David, I just want to say one thing. >>

I pity your lack of programming expertise. I'm not a programmer either, but I have a specific interest in languages that Hrn and Galsiah and Psyringe probably don't even know about.

Languages like Malebolge. ^^

Uh, that's not what was suggested:-

Which covers the map expansion as a missing feature.

Honestly, plugging exploits strikes me as something of minimum importance when compared to Axel's request for extra bones. (I'm hoping that the engine merely culls bones not on it's list, as the 4.0.0.2 engine doesn't appear to have problems with arbitrary names).

I am and I know of Malebolge! You are too cruel. No-one should be exposed to such Horror!

I actually like Malebolge. It's an interesting language. There's also Brain[censored] and.. uh, I think it's Train, where the logic is built around "train tracks"? Those are neat languages because they're more like puzzles. ^^

The central point is pretty simple - here's an example:

Say a character has 100 intelligence, 100 maximum magicka, and 50 current magicka.
There are at least two ways to store the two magicka values, either:

(1):
Maximum magicka = 100;
current magicka = 50;

Or (2):
Maximum magicka = 100;
current magicka ratio = 0.5;

In the first case you don't know the magicka ratio directly, but you can usually work it out: magicka ratio = maximum/current = 100/50 = 0.5.
In the second case, you don't know magicka directly, but you can always work it out: magicka = maximum*ratio = 100*0.5 = 50.

When maximum magicka is zero, you get problems with the first method - since you can't work out the ratio if you need it. You get no problems with the second method, since you already know the ratio - it just happens to be multiplied by zero to give the current magicka of zero.


My point is that this problem arises because the code fails to reflect the design. The designer doesn't see any problem with the int==0 case, since he's thinking of things with the second representation. The programmer uses the first representation for whatever reason - perhaps because 'magicka' is mentioned a great deal more than 'magical stamina' (or equivalent) -, and you have problems. The problem here is the lack of communication.

That's what I mean when I say that it wasn't designed into the game - it just got there through some unfortunate combination of errors/miscommunications.


I'm not sure on that either - perhaps it might be very difficult. If it is possible to stick in another variable, and get it stored reliably, it ought to be easy, but perhaps that isn't trivial.


See above on this. I tend to avoid saying 'coding' for anything that's not entirely mechanical. Mostly I say 'programming' since coding seems to imply a lack of design considerations - and I'm not sure when that's ever desirable. The reason I said 'coded' above was exactly for this reason: that the programmer was seemingly not clear on the design considerations. The design was almost certainly vague on the issue, so the programmer made a decision which turned out to be wrong.

Obviously if you are both the designer and the programmer, miscommunication/vagueness shouldn't be as much of a problem - but it still can be if you make a lot of non-trivial coding decisions without considering the design motivations.

Personally, I believe it's counterproductive to waste time fixing exploits that could simply be avoided and/or ignored as opposed to fixing bugs that cannot be avoided or addressing broken or missing features that cannot be modded out (or in). That's my personal opinion, and I'm entitled to it. Please don't flame me or insult me if you disagree with it. However, if wasting a small amount of time fixing the exploit is counterproductive, then wasting a huge amount of time arguing about it is even MORE counterproductive. Since this seems to be an issue of great significance to a number of members of the community, I'd like to offer a (hopefully) simpler solution so the debate can be laid to rest more easily.

Right now, all attributes are handled by the game engine as floating point values and stored within the save game as integers. This issue only becomes a problem or useable as an exploit when your intelligence attribute is EXACTLY zero. However, it seems to me that if the lower attribute cap was raised from 0 to 0.0001 this issue would become a non-issue. The ratio could ALWAYS be exactly calculated on-the-fly, and would never run the risk of creating a division by zero error, eliminating the need for any special exception coding. This would, in turn, eliminate the exploit by removing the situation which causes it. Because of the precision of the floating point values, the ratio calculated even with such a tremendously small intelligence would still be accurate with at worst only minor rounding errors. The difference between an attribute of 0 and 0.0001 is invisible to the player except via the console. It's also insignificant in virtually every other respect except that it eliminates the possibility of division by zero.

In addition to changing the game engine to cap the attributes at a different value, the restore game code would also have to be modified so that attribute values loaded from previous saves don't fall below the new cap. i.e. since the save game stores these attributes as integers, any attribute stored as 0.0001 would restore as 0 and would need to be returned to 0.0001 before play begins.

This *should* have the effect of eliminating the exploit without substantially altering the way magicka works, and without the need for additional variables to store magicka ratios for every single actor in the game. Hopefully, except for the difficulty in tracking down the exact location to patch, it should also be substantially easier to implement.

You make an interesting case, but this isn't really consistent either.

Let's look at what it means in practice. Suppose you have 50 int and no magicka multiplier. You have enough "Magicka Stamina" to Fireball 10 times before your reserves are exhausted. Lets say you do that, and are now looking for a way to recharge. You drink a Cheap Restore Magicka potion. This replenishes your Magicka Stamina enough to cast Fireball two more times (10 points). But what if you drank a bottle of Mazte (-20 Int) first? The Cheap Restore Magicka potion would still give you enough Magical Stamina to cast Fireball two more times. But if you wait until your head clears you would then have enough Magicka Stamina to cast Fireball three more times with a little to spare (17 points). That doesn't make sense.

It may not be a big deal, but it's not logical or consistent with either interpretation.

Right enough - I'd agree that this ought not to be the highest priority. However, it's not something that can always be avoided, so perhaps it deserves some attention on an unavoidable-bug basis.

If that's at all directed at my post the other day, you have my apologies. My tone was probably less than helpful - I was finding the universe to be somewhat vexing at the time.

Sure - but it's not the same time that's going into the arguing that would be going into the fixing. If Hrnchamd were spending vast amounts of time on this discussion, it'd be counterproductive, but he doesn't seem to be (yet). For my part, I find the discussion of such issues interesting/productive on its own merits.

That's a very good idea in principle - hopefully in practice too. Of course it might have unforeseen side effects, but it's certainly worth a shot. Well thought.


You're right of course. [It's those same issues with absolute-rather-than-relative restoration which prevent D&D hit points from making any sense to me.]

I guess it could be that restore potions work more efficiently on characters with lower magical ability, but that's hardly a satisfying explanation. I'd personally prefer that restore magicka potions worked by restoring magicka stamina - i.e. they restored e.g. 20% of current maximum -, but that's clearly not "how the world works" at present (N.B. this isn't a suggestion for this mod - just something I'd prefer).

Hrnchamd,

Just as an aside and only if you ever feel like doing it, I thought it would be a great asset if you could post some of the formulas used by the game since you seem to be able to decode a lot of them. I'm asking because I believe some of the "not really a fix" issues could be solved by adjusting GMSTs through mods. For example, what is the formula behind the bartering system - PC vs Merchant. How do Mercantile, Disposition, and some of the GMSTs work to come up with an item's selling/buying price?

I know that the MW Scripting For Dummies describes a lot of GMST and even gives some of the formulas, but all in all there seems to very little info about this. I believe things like weapon damage and chance to hit are fairly well known, but there seems to be so much more that could be looked at.

As another example, just by looking at how weapon damage + your PC's strength are used to calculate final damage will show why MW is so easy in the mid-late stages if you're using a fighter type. Basically you get a +50% bonus to damage for every 50 points of strength over 50, so if you're using Sword X that does 60 damage:

PC STR=50, damage done = 60
PC STR=100, damage done = 90
PC STR=150, damage done = 120
PC STR=200, damage done = 150
PC STR=250, damage done = 180
PC STR=300, damage done = 210

Considering that the max hit points of Vanilla MW creatures seems to be around 300 and it's fairly easy to get your STR to 300+, no wonder the "high-level" enemies go down in 1 to 2 hits. I'm fairly sure this bonus is set through a GMST and it would be great to know the full damage formula.

Anyway, just a thought. I would be more than happy to supply a list of the various formulas I'd like to see if you have any interest in doing this.

pzr, most of the formulas are implicitly stated in MW SFD 9. That is, the document assumes you take the time to figure out a good deal of them. VERY few formulas are stated explicitly, assuming you just want the numbers right there, right now. This is less than ideal, and I would LOVE to see a "formula reference page" that lists all the formulas explicitly and explains them. ^^ But we do know (to my knowledge) the vast majority of the calculations the engine uses to determine things.

Really? Ok, so can you give me the formula MW uses to calculate an item's selling/buying price based on PC vs Merchant mercantile, disposition, and which GMSTs are used? Or at least point me to the page number in SFD9 or a web link?

It's not that anyone's opposed to putting this kind of info in SfD, it's just that no-one's volunteered to write it (yet).

One thing I would love to know - and which definitely isn't in SfD - is how NPC health is calculated (meaning max health using auto calc stats). A lot of people have tried to work that out but nobody's really succeeded AFAIK.

Exactly. I would love to see a true compilation of MW formulas.

Problem with the 'Heal Companion' spell for me. I wanted to test the Morrowind Code Patch, so I made a clean install of Morrowind+Tribunal+Bloodmoon, installed the latest patch and then the Morrowind Code Patch. I made a Nord barbarian, went into the 'hall of bug fixes' (something like that). When I tried to heal the High Elf vendor, I saw her health bar going slowly to its max as I was casting the spell. But when her health should be at its max, it suddenly dropped to the amount she had just before I start to cast the spell... So was this intended or not?

Certainly not, Ferital. Psyringe should be with you soon.. >>

pzr, the thing is there is no one page number. There's a little bit of the formula in the GMST list, some of it over there, some of it there and there. That's implicit, it requires you to pick up the pieces, and that's no fun at all. Especially not when you want just a QUICK reference, glance at this and type in your ideal replacement.

So basically you're saying the formula is not available anywhere and I have to figure it out myself from some place over here and over there, yes? I really don't understand why you're arguing the point. As someone who is interested in MW mods/modding wouldn't you like to have a precise compilation of these formulas? You must be aware that MW uses a lot of overly complicated formulas, and by complicated I don't mean you need to be a quantum physicist, but complicated because they use a lot of arbitrary literals that are very hard to figure out by trial and error.

For example, I've found that the magicka cost of a spell is:

(BASE_COST * DURATION/20 * MAGNITUDE *1.5) + AREA * 0.1875

Now imagine you didn't see this and had to figure it out yourself. How would you come up with the 0.1875? It's just some random literal that Bethesda decided would work well.

I'm not disputing your point. I'm saying the issue isn't availability, it's accessibility. I'd like to have a reference list of formulas too. ^^ Basically, I'm saying we HAVE the formulas, we just need to find them. ^^

Intended for the test. Pick up the Guidebook off the chest and do a little bit of reading:

7. NPC health bar
You cannot see it, but the merchant is wounded. She has a script active that severely reduces her health every time she's nearly fully healed. You can heal her with the "Heal Companion" spell you bought from her, but in RM you cannot actually see the effect on her health. (Note: Wear the magical ring if you need a bit of help for the casting.)

With MCP, when you heal an NPC or creature, the yellow health bar will be displayed to show you the effect of your healing.

In regular play NPCs can be healed to max.


Sounds like it's time to create a new thread where people can post the formulas.

I'ld like to throw an opinion in on the magika/fortify intelligence bit. The way I see it is that the player's magika rating is like the size of a container. The current magika score is like a measure of liquid in that container. Fortify Intelligence would increase the size of the container. But it does not stand to reason that raising intelligence would increase the current magika. For that you'ld need to drink a restore magika potion or rest (and then the restore intelligence would usualy wear off). Reducing intellegence would reduce the capacity of the character to store magika. The results would be like trying to pour a gallon of ale into a pint stien. You'ld fill the container to capacity and the rest would spill & be lost.

So by this line of reasoning when you reduce Intelligence you reduce the maximum magika and then new curent magika would be set to the lesser of the original current magika or the new magika rating. When you raise Intelligence the current magika would not change because the lesser of current magika and the new magika rating would always the the current magika.


edit: Will this project be uploaded to a reputable site. I would prefer not to download from a site as untrustworth as TESNexus.

Making the fortify int/magicka effects quite useless.

Oh really sorry, I read too quickly...

Yes, this is intended. As you already found out, whenever her health is nearly full, it gets reduced to (I think) 50%. There are two reasons for that: One, I wanted to give people a way to test the NPC health bar fix as long as they like. Two, it's not possible to place wounded NPCs in the construction set, so I had to make a script for her anyway, and making one that reduced her health whenever it was full (or nearly full) was an easy way to solve both problems. This is mentioned in the guide (as quoted by tetchy), but rather implicitly - I'll make it a bit clearer in the next version.

Thanks for using the showcase mod - if you see another problem or have an idea to improve the mod, just post it.

One of us definitely misunderstood Nicholiathan. I didn't think his argument touched at all on the fortify magicka effect so there's no way his argument makes it useless. Also, fortify intelligence would still aid your character greatly in the creation of enchantments and potions, making it VERY far from useless to me!

Nicholiathan's explanation is quite logical and sensible.

It would seem that his request for an alternate download site is being consistently ignored, I believe that this is the second time he has made it, since no one even comments on it.

Perhaps, the intent is to wait until a final version is done, but I would also like to see an alternate site made available.

sieboldii

I'd like to second this request. Although not fond of TESNexus to start, I did attempt to register an account there so I could download this patch, since it was starting to seem like it would never be uploaded anywhere else. End result? Two account creations later (using separate e-mail accounts) and repeated attempts to "re-send" my validation e-mail, I still haven't received any sort of validation e-mail from them. Which means the site won't let me download the patch still. Now I think my unfondness of TESNexus has increased to active dislike.

I know there was some talk in one of the earlier threads of the patch being uploaded to PES, or Fliggerty's site...any news on that front? I'd love to use the patch, but since it's only available at TESNexus...no can do at the moment, it seems.

I have accounts at PES, Fliggerty's site, ElricM and Wolflore. I would be willing to upload this to any or all of them should Hrn give his blessings. In the meantime, I don't mind uploading this to Rapidshare for those that can't access TESNexues. PM me if you want a copy. Note that I'll remove it if Hrn requests it.

Hello, I have started collecting a list of Morrowind engine bugs. Initially, I was going to collect every one I could find. But with recent discussion, I have focused more on trying to find bugs that cause CTD's (crash to desktop). The list is currently unordered, and only vaguely formatted. On some of them I put an "Analysis" field, which is my subjective opinion, feel free to ignore it or criticize it.

There are a couple bugs mentioned in the MSFD9 that relate CTD's being caused by deleting objects. I call the 2 bugs: "deleting object of targeted script CTD", and "deleting object after cell change CTD". From these 2 bugs, I strongly suspect that analysis and overhaul of the engine's memory management especially with respect to the deletion of objects might be play a large part in improving the stability of the engine. Feel free to suggest or offer test cases, and I'll see what I can do with my (very) meager CS skills.

P.S. I'd be happy to move this list to a wiki site so anyone can contribute. Or do whatever you like with it.

Hey john, I noticed the 'Red Damage Ring Bug' on your list. You say it can't be solved with a mod, so have you seen this?

Yes. That was actually the mod that caused me to find the cellchanged problem, (also see original thread). But if I made any mistakes in my analysis of that problem, please let me know.

Basically, the VampireDoors Bug Fix seems to cause the cellchanged problem, and it also does not fully fix the problem, as the problem can happen to non-vampires, and it can happen after dark .... any time your player takes damage while going through an interior/exterior boundary.

That is definitely one valid way to look at it (although it isn't the way the game-world currently works). But it's not the only way. What you describe is treating magicka as a tangible quantity with intelligence only defining the maximum allowed. But you can also look at magicka more abstractly. You can think of magicka as a representation of your ability to tap into your magical energy with your intelligence determining how efficient you are at that task. So not only does your intelligence effect the maximum amount of magicka, but it is also more directly related in that it is the actual source of your magicka. Which means that fortify intelligence should also proportionally increase the amount of magicka you have.

Collision Detection Bug Seems a Bit More Relevant than Fortify Effects.

On dark nights, I've been known to mutter I'd rather program in Malebolge than in FORTRAN or COBOL again.
People accuse me of exaggerating, but then again, they've never programmed FORTRAN on punched cards!!

Perhaps we can advance this slightly vexed topic by creating a list of features we'd like to see addressed, Then it can be assessed if it's possible (and not merely an ESM/ESP bug).
Finally, we could address desirable.

Yes, this has already been suggested, and I think it would be a good idea. The reason why the second post in this thread is "reserved" is that I wanted to leave room for such a list of suggested features. I'm just waiting for Hrnchamd's stance on the matter since I wouldn't want to push such things without his consent.

Dirges, I'm sure that someone, somewhere has them stowed away in a basement box, but basically the do not exist. Yes, there are pieces here and there. I've spent some time a few months back looking for them and found that a lot of them are incomplete or basically best guess estimates. I posted a request for them on these forums and got maybe 4 responses. I realize the game is sort of old so maybe a lot of info has been lost, but the truth is that we really don't have them. I would love to compile a list, so besides reaching out to Hrnchamd or reverse engineering the game myself, what would you suggest?

I'm probably belaboring the obvious, but a nice concise list of formulas used by the game will probably also be of great benefit to the OpenMW project. Now, if someone started a wiki page for keeping the list ...

Has anybody had any issues with Hulyeea dissapearing during his escort quest? I tried with both a heavily modded game and a game that I created before I started with the patches and he dissapears in both. If I teleport him to me using cdc's teleporting script, he'll come and he'll follow me through the door to Jobasha's, but he won't follow out of the club. I've had similiar problems with a modded companion - she would dissapear after going through an interior door in Vivic, but never had any problems with any other interior doors. I'm using MGE, but never had this problem before the patch.

Funny you should mention this. I just had the problem yesterday. I had Julan with me, I don't use MGE, and I had problems all day long getting Julan to follow me through doors, and then when it came time to escort Huleeya, he also wouldn't follow through the door from the club. I removed the Julan mod, then eventually got Huleeya to follow me, and I didn't investigate further and I haven't a clue what's up.

Yeah, I had to resort to using my companion teleport mod to make sure mine kept up with me. I'm guessing Hrn changed something with the 1.2 patch that somehow affected the Vivic doors.

For me, it happened on quite a few doors, not just in Vivec.

As far as I know, the only change between v1.1 and v1.2 was a change to the restore attributes fix. It's highly unlikely that that would affect Vivec doors. Actually, it would be quite hard to implement something that only affected Vivec doors on the code patch level; such things are esm/esp-specific.

You can revert to the non-patched exe and then check whether the problem reliably occurs with the code-patched exe, and reliably doesn't occur with the unpatched exe, under otherwise identical conditions. But I currently don't see how it could be caused by the code patch.

What about this one, quoted from UESP:

If you have an attribute that is close to 100, and you increase your skills sufficiently that the multiplier would push that attribute above 100, you will lose that multiplier. Example: if your strength is at 96, and you increase your skills sufficiently to get x5 to strength, you will not get a multiplier on strength at level up, as 96 + 5 = 101. In at least one release version of Morrowind, an earned multiplier of 5 at 95 skill leads to the +5 to attribute option being unselectable and not displayed, even though the attribute itself is displayed on the screen (attributes unselectable by virtue of being at 100 are removed from display on the levelup screen). It is possible to get to 99 with a +4 multiplier, and then to 100 with a +1.

I have had it happen to me in both cases. I ended up using the console to get my correct stats. It's certainly an option, but it really detracts from the experience.

Heh, I go away for a day, and there's two more pages to read.

Okay, first off, I think the things to fix should be up to Hrachand, yes, we can all suggest things, but still, he has the final say.
Secondly, I never really noticed that current magicka increases based on the full at all, because I have a constant restore magicka. I also stab things a lot instead of cast spells.

So, yeah, I didn't know half of the issues.
Also, I think the soul trap bug needs to be fixed too, I mean, it can break the game, so yeah...

And Arsuru, I think it's a capping issue. Maybe Hranchand can force it to go to 99 or 100 from 96?
Hey, why doesn't he remove the upper limits on stat caps anyway? It will be just like GCD and Madd Leveler, and other, except it would put them all out of buisness?

Hey, he could technically do it better because unlike those two, he has the source code. Though, to be honest, I'd more than likely use something that reacts well with Big Mod 2 and others. Like Fligg's Morrowind Decap?
I know, it's something he'd work on only after he completely finished the code patch, but still, I can dream.

Also, what's wrong with Tesnexus, despite some e-mail servers eating their messages? What's with the hate? I never saw anything bad with it.

I've never had Hulyeea dissapear before the patch that I know of, but I'll see if I can reproduce it without the patch.

David brings up one point I agree with. Why doesn't anyone like TESNexus? I don't put my mods up there but some people ONLY put their mods up there. I don't know why it's bad, perhaps someone could provide some background? >>

Hrnchamd (get it right people ) does not have the source code; IIRC he has disassembled the exe to look at things, which isn't as easy to hunt down problems as looking directly at the source code.


TEXNexus requires a user account to download files larger than a certain size (5MB that I remember). Anyone here who also uses Wrye Mash and is having problems getting the larger sized MCP should just dl the python version - it's a lot smaller and won't require an account to dl.

Python version does not work on my machine.

sieboldii

It would help to have some specific details: your OS, and version of Python/wxPython, and any errors or terminal output if you start it from a terminal window. Also, if you run Wrye Mash, do you have any problems with it?

PES also requires a user account (on FilePlanet / Gamespy) for downloading anything at all, so that can't be the reason.

I've got a half-complete reference here that was started way back when I posted about changing GMSTs in-game. Sadly MWSE hasn't had a new release since then. It may be worth releasing on the UESP wiki, and it's something I can do after work, you should see it soon.

This patch should not affect AI behaviour, cell changes or any kind of movement code at all. I will investigate Huleeya and Julan on my setup.

MCP is going to be uploaded to Fliggerty's as soon as I can.

Is this patch/mod stable? I have quite a number of mods installed, and have progressed quite far into the game, and since this is a patch, dealing with errors and bugs, I want to know if it's stable

Thanks.

I have gone through all of that previously.

sieboldii

Not publicly. I don't know if you have Wrye Mash already. wxPython is a separate download from Python. It could be any of those, or something else.

Sorry about messing up your name, Hrnchamd! Can i just stick with Hrnch or somethng, because I really can't really remember your name otherwise.

I know it's not just the account issue with TesNexus.
Also, apologies for the source code line, but if you dissassemble an exe don't you get just about the same thing?
Keep in mind, I know nothing.

also, Sieboldii, why don't you get the full version instead of the python? If you can't get it becasue of the size, and some account issues, then why not ask someone to host it for you to download? Because if you did that, you wouldn't have to worry about the python, and make your hair turn gray.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll tell you why I don't like it. For one, I find it awkward to navigate and use but the main reason is it simply refuses to let me register. Either it rejects my email, won't send a confirmation email, says I'm banned (too many attempts?)... just one stupid thing after another. I'm sure I'm not the only person with this problems because they bothered to put it in their FAQ, with the claim that it's because my ISP is blocking their email. I don't really believe that, but whatever the case, a large number of people have serious trouble registering for that site.

Already in process.

sieboldii

To throw a monkey wrench into the works: On my computer, this issue only seems to affect strength, intelligence, willpower, and agility. The other attributes (speed, endurance, personality, and luck) have no problem getting a x5 multiplier even when they're already at 95. I can't think of any reason why the first four would have this issue and the last four wouldn't.

I figured it could go here.

I'm happy with that as its new home. Thanks.
I'll update there from now on. And anyone else who feels like contributing should feel free to chip in.

I think it may be the same for me. I had no problem with some attributes but I did with the others. I don't remember which ones, though. I have the game of the year edition, if that would matter at all.

Strange, my registration was as easy as cake.

I'll admit navigation is a little odd. Additionally, searching by tags doesn't always turn up expected results, since it is up to the mod author and users to submit tags. In other words, some mods might have no tags, so searching by the tag "New Armor" might not yield an armor mod if the mod isn't tagged. I enjoy the search features - I can search for mod names, or I can search the details. TESNexus is great for managing your files, I like that aspect much better than the PES system. I especially like how you can call a user out on inappropriate votes/comments (for the mod), and the site admins will investigate and take action swiftly. The forums are nice - slower than the Beth forums, but people are generally friendly and like to help others, be it bug issues or mod recommendations. So, all in all, my experience with TESNexus has been a positive one. ElricM and Elderscrolls Filefront are the only two sites that come to mind where you don't have to sign up at all to download mods. The downside to ElricM is the inability to upload screenshots, the limited amount of space one is allowed to post a mod description, and the one-file-per-mod policy (which means I have to create a new page for multiple versions of the mod -- versions for compatibility -- or I have to bundle the mod and inflate the file size, which is a problem when it comes to hi-res texture packs). I haven't uploaded any mods the the Elderscrolls Filefront, so I don't know what file management is like. I do very much like their navigation system, and the search function is interesting (it works while you are still typing into the search bar).

So, I haven't been following all the threads for this project, how are things going? Have all the cogs been repaired, or are there still some bugs that need squashing?

And, Kudos to everyone who has been working on this, you guys/gals are fantastic! I eagerly await the release version of this undertaking!

The reason for not liking TESNexus is due to a matter of trust. TESNexus has been known to upload mods without the modder's permission.

There have been complaints about how TesNexus is ignoring these issues, but they're not entirely true. One look in the moderators forum there shows that they're definitely trying to solve the problems. If someone files a report, they don't ignore it.

^

IMHO, yes.

I think I'll get it then.

Also,



So I should get Unofficial Morrowind Patch too? I've only got the latest official patch installed i.e. the one from about 2-3 years ago.

It's highly recommended, so yes.

It's difficult to navigate, full of popups (some with spyware/malware), and there's no checking of files prior to upload. Morrowind modders usually prefer to use ElricM or PES.
On the other hand, because there is no checking of files, you can upload instantly, which is why it is preferred by Oblivion modders, and most upload there now because everyone else is on there so it's normally the first place people look for Oblivion mods.


I have a pretty simple view of patches: if they're there, I'll use them. I didn't notice any problems with Morrowind before I installed the unofficial patch (after playing for 2-3 years) but it doesn't cost anything to use so you may as well have it while it's there - and if you might have encountered some irritating bug somewhere along the line, it's good to know it's been dealt with before you get to it.

Well I downloaded and installed, my save file loaded up just fine.

Thanks for your help

Please report pop up ads to Dark0ne when you see them, he doesn't want those on the site either and he usually removes them when found.

Sorry for the offtopic talk.

Ah, he didn't respond when I did, so I didn't think he reacted to reports. Thanks for the clarification.

We return you to your regularly scheduled topic ...

For some reason I can't see anything but blue and torches in Arvs-Drelen. Could this be because of MCP?

More likely the fog density bug or an issue with MGE+FPS optimizer. I highly suggest making a new topic so people more knowledgable than myself can help you.

All I know is it's most certainly nothing to do with the Cogs patch.

Try to use different fog modes in MGE.

Just for the record: For the last two days I've been fighting to make the mod "Lothavor's Legacy" work in my 300+ mods installation. At first I thought it might be incompatible with the MCP because of its script li_AdjustDate, which advances the time by two days (and then tries to correct the global variables for day, month, and year, if necessary). I had reliable crashes when trying to travel to the island and tracked those crashes to this script. However, it turned out that the MCP was not involved, instead the script simply has a bug. When checking whether the 2-day advance has advanced the year, it checks for the condition ( Month > 12 ) instead of (Month > 11). Since I happened to try to travel on the last day of the year, the script set my Month variable to 12, which the engine couldn't handle.

The script does have a slight mismatch when used in conjunction with the MCP because it uses month lengths which are now (with the month fix active) wrong. I don't think this will lead to crashes though, the result is probably just an inaccuracy in time calculation, and it will only occur when the quest is started on the last day of a month. I haven't tested that though. I also haven't tested whether the presence of NoM (which I had active) played a role in the crashes, this is a possibility since NoM keeps track of the time to determine whether the player gets hungry / thirsty / tired.

I'm not sure this hasn't been brought up before, but how about the inconsistency in the way the engine handles rotation?

When an object is loaded from a plug-in or save game, the rotations are done in Z-Y-X order, but when you rotate an object with SetAngle, the rotations are re-done in X-Y-Z order. And of course the next time you load it will go back to Z-Y-X. In both cases the object will end up with an unexpected orientation if it has been rotated on more than one axis. This is why you sometimes see Dwemer cranks sticking out at a weird angle if you've used them and reloaded since.

...It took me a while to figure this out, let me know if I need to explain it better.

Just to followup, I've changed my load order a bit, re-tried this quest, and now I have no problem with Huleeya following me out of the Corner Club in Vivec. So for me, it was probably some mod interaction problem.

I'm pretty new to all of this, I did follow the directions and installed the fix, and everything works great! How easy is it to update if there are newer versions?

Very easy, it will most probably be the same procedure as what you already did.

It did the same thing to me in a completely unmodded game, but I've started a new one so I'll see if that fixes anything.

I noticed that you can't remove the map expansion from an exsisting save. Attemting to do so keeps the smaller scale map, and moves it North. Redrawing the map with Wyre Mash doesn't fix it either. It fixes the size, but the smaller city location marking squares are still present, and it moves the explored area graphics North. I guess it's to be expected, but I just wanted to let people know.

Also, a suggestion. Make the NPCs able to catch diseases if possible. I'm just going by what UESP says about NPCs not being able to catch diseases, as I have never been able to tell if my summoed Bonewalkes gave them diseases or not.

NPCs can already catch diseases. They just don't tell you about it if they do (and if you'd like them to tell you, that's for a mod to do, not the patch). If you want to check via console, use "GetBlightDisease" and "GetCommonDisease": if either returns 1, the NPC is diseased. It will affect their stats and so on just like it does for the player.

Sent you a PM Hrnchamd, please read.

Sorry for the double post, but this is important, I loaded up the patch, and it was working great, but then I discovered Morrowind no longer used dynamic quadrodic lighting (added by TLM) the map expansion feature was not compatible with FPS opt's world map fix, and the game used none of the texture/mesh replacers I had installed! I'm using the original Morrowind exe for now, until at least the lighting and replacers are fixed.

...Wait, what? What texture replacers are you using? Mine (both pluginless and .esps) are working fine since I installed the patch, and I assume everyone else's are, too, or it surely would have been reported here already. Given how many people use texture/mesh replacers and all.

Do you have multiple MW installs? If so, start MW from the exe, not the launcher, and see if that works.

AFAIK the MCP didn't change anything with regard to lighting. As Melian already asked, do you have multiple installs? If yes, then try to start Morrowind.exe directly, then see if the problem persists. One possible cause of confusion is that the FPS Optimizer (which you're apparently using) starts the Morrowind.exe that the registry points to, not the one in the local folder.


Humm, what did you expect? FPS Optimizer 2.0 hooks into the code that the MCP tweaks, and both programs try to achieve different (albeit similar) things - I haven't tested it myself, but I'd be a bit surprised if the two features were compatible. But why do you want to use two tools to expand your map when one is sufficient? Just decide which of the two solutions you like more, and deactivate the other.

Personally, I'm using FPS Optimizer 1.96, which is perfectly compatible with the MCP. It doesn't have a map expansion but I don't need one since the MCP provides it already.


You either confused multiple installs or borked your Morrowind.ini. The MCP does not change the way replacers are handled.


The "fix" will probably have to be done on your machine. Check the two possibilities I mentioned above. report back, and I'll se whether I can help you.

Psyringe knows what he's talking about. That man really sounds like me over on the hardware forum when my keyboard was causing my char to not move in Morrowind.

Starwarsguy, don't worry, it's probably a simple error. We all make them.

Nope, I'm not using multiple installs, and starting up from the exe itself didn't help. Umm, did I mention I was using MWE, FPS opt, MGE, and MGE's internal MWSE (allthough no MWSE mods yet). That may have something to do with it. Oh, the game uses plugined replacers, but non plugined ones don't work, Morrowind looked UGLY.

Strange, I'm using non-plugined replacers with MCP and I don't see any problems. I'm also using TLM (modular) and it seems ok too.

If you could try running MCP without any other extender program first, maybe that would help narrow down the problem.

Also, what is the value you have for TryArchiveFirst in your Morrowind.ini?

I got the lighting working by changing the usequadrodic line in my ini.

My saves wouldn't be compatible without extenders, and I'd have to uncheck a ton of mods, it would be a pretty big hassle, but I might try it anyways.

My TryAcrchiveFirst is set to 0, should I set it to -1 or something?

I think "0" is recommended. This means that if you install a pluginless replacer, it will use those individual files before the files in the .bsa (well, newest file by date, actually). The problem you were having kind of sounded like it might have been accidentally set to "1", which would ignore replacers and just use the archive.

Are you using Vista? If so where is Morrowind installed?

To me it sounds like Morrowind's running with the wrong starting directory.

Yeah, I'm on Vista, I luckily dodged the console bug with MGE, and my directory is "C:/Bethesda/Morrowind/" as recommended in one of the stickys.

After playing with the Patch, I come to realize that this is the longest period of "smooth" playing I've ever had in Morrowind!
This baby works like a charm!

Kudos!

Aaargh! What's going on?? I uninstalled the patch and Morrowind is still not using any of my pluginless texture/mesh replacers I had installed. I want them back, Morrowind scares me without them!

Edit: And none of the MGE features are working either!

Now, calm down, take a deep breath, and help us figure this out, because it seems like there's something wrong on your end.
First step, and it's a doozy. Remove Morrowind, reinstall it where ever you want, then reinstall the esp less textureless patches and see if that works. Then move to the esp added texture mods.

Finally, add the Morrowind Code Patch, and see if everything still malfunctions. It's beginning to look like Vista broke Morrowind for you. You do obviously have admin rights, and you turned off the UAC?

Installed it and it works great!

The problem lost likely lies in Vista's filesystem. When Morrowind looks for textures, meshes, or the d3d8.dll that MGE needs to work, it apparently doesn't look for these files in the directory where you installed them, but somewhere else. Unfortunately I have no experience with Vista, so I can't help you there. I know that some features of Vista's filesystem lead to compatibility issues with older software, but I don't know how to overcome them. So the only advice I can give you (unfortunately) is to find someone who knows more about these Vista issues.

I recently installed this and am experiencing an odd issue, occasionally, mostly in interior cells, the mouse look and stuff like tab and activate and readying spells and weapons stops responding or does it slowly in the case of the mouse, after pushing buttons 10 or so times I can make it function but past that nothing, I'm not entirely sure that is this patch but it's really the only thing I have changed about this install, and it worked before, I thought it might have been my mouse and keyboard at first but after much messing around with other programs I can confirm it's this game alone.

This happened down in Tel Fyr's dungeons the first time, but I have also had it happen outside, on a different save game, due to another odd thing where after saving down there I crashed every load, no clue why, going to reinstall morrowind and see if this still happens with just the code patch and nothing else.


Edit: On reinstalling and retrying I have found it must just have been some conflict somewhere, game works perfectly now, thanks a ton for the awesome patch.

Glad you got it working.

Regarding the issue itself: Did you switch the music off by pulling the slider to the rightmost position? For unknown reasons, this makes mouse movement "stutter" in some cells. This is a known bug (which the MCP does not fix). The usual remedy is to move the music volume slider one notch to the right. You still won't hear the music and the movement stutter will be gone.

Even after patching, when wearing the Fists of Randagulf and getting strength and agility temporarily drained, these values did NOT return correctly. When the drain wears off, strength and agility return to their normal (unfortified) values. If the gauntlets are then removed, both strength and agility are 20 points too low - exactly the amount of the enchantment.

Perhaps I misunderstood the nature of the fix. I thought that magically fortified values would be preserved after magical draining. Does this fix only affect how the restore attribute magical effect works?

It only affects the restore attribute spell, yes.

If there are other bugs you'd like fixing, post a way to reproduce the bug in Morrowind and I'll consider it in the next release.

Excellent. The "absorb attribute" and "drain attribute" effects don't correctly return fortified attributes to their starting values. When the effects wear off, points are not returned unless the modified attribute falls below its unfortified level. In that case, the attribute returns to the base value even while the fortification effect remains - resulting in an attribute permanently damaged by the amount of the fortification.

To reproduce the problem with "drain attribute", fortify your strength with a potion or enchanted item (like the Fist of Randagulf Rt Gauntlet) then get into a fight with a lesser bonewalker. When it casts the grave-curse on you that drains your strength and the spell wears off, the attribute reduction remains.

You can reproduce a similar error with "absorb attribute" by using the same fist of randagulf while fighting Dagoth Vemyn. He uses a spell which absorbs strength. When his spell wears off, your fortified strength won't return to normal either.

You could also reproduce the error with a custom absorb or drain attribute on self spell, but I wanted to show how it could happen to the player in-game without being intentionally self-induced.

A similar situation can happen twice a day to all Necessities of Morrowind players with fortification enchantments. Whenever hunger kicks in at the wrong moment, due to you having a weapon drawn or a spell readied, you get a penalty to two Attributes for hunger, and/or two for thirst. Lack of sleep also causes an Attribute penalty. Sheathing the weapon or dropping out of casting mode within a couple of seconds allows the character to eat or drink from inventory on the second attempt. If successful, it removes the hunger penalty, UNLESS you had an item which fortified any of those affected Attributes, in which case it would leave you with up to 5 points of Attribute damage. That's about as reproducible as it gets.

I've been looking into ways to modify the NoM scripts, or to write a compatible alternative mod (yeah, like I'm going to find enough time somewhere), just to deal with the damaged Attribute issue. Fixing the problem at the root cause, rather than rewriting the mod that triggers it, would be wonderful. Thanks for doing all this.

Er, I knew NOM had issues, but having a weapon drawn or a spell readied makes you hungry or thirsty faster? Now that's not even that realistic!

I"m sorry, I don't mean to insult Wrye, but still maybe I read that wrong, and I'm a bigger idiot then I thought...

I'm confused about the restoration thing. It seems to work well for me, of course that may be because I created a CS spell that restores all attributes for about 1400 seconds.

IIRC, what happens with NoM is that, if you have a weapon drawn or spell readied when the eat/drink scripts activate (twice or, IIRC, three times a day, depending on how you have NoM set up), you will not be able to eat/drink, and you'll take stat penalties for hunger/thirst even though you have edible food and water in your inventory. It doesn't cause you to get hungrier or thirsty any faster.

It can be an annoying "feature" sometimes, but then, I suppose it's not very realistic to be able to eat soup while wielding a two-handed broadsword, either.

Ah, well, that makes plenty of sense! Here I thought it was really broken! Hehehe.
Yes, it's true, you can't eat soup while wielding a two handed sword. Unless you have four hands. : ) Goro could do it...

Also, no one on Earth could wield a Daedric Dai-katana.
Also, Broadswords are one handed. I hope. It goes like this.
Dagger -> Tanto -> Shortsword -> Longsword ->Broadsword ->Hand and a half sword(Bastard Sword, may be censored) -> Claymore.
A Katana actually is considered a longsword class weapon. I think.
Yes, I'm a nerd..

As to your confusion about the restoration thing... The problem lies in the absorb and drain functions, NOT the restore function. Hrnchamd's patch already fixes that quite well.

Patching Restore Attribute was necessary as it's needed to restore the effects of Damage Attribute which (as far as I know) has always worked correctly. It also can cure the permanent damage caused by Drain Attribute and Absorb Attribute which is supposed to be temporary. However, patching Absorb Attribute and Drain Attribute as well would prevent the temporary damage from incorrectly becoming permanent. And as the old saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

Dear author of Morrowind Code Patch.

I don't know what exactly you did to Morrowind's code... but from the day I use MCP1.2 (from release day on) I never encountered a CTD again.
Big mods like The Underground 2 or Mourhnghold expanded work flawlessly without CTDs now.

I can only get a CTD if I provoke one.. like the conjuration glitch

When you use the Conjuration glitch to acquire items off of a summoned creature do not dispose of its corpse. If you do, the game registers the spell effect still there and if you summon the creature again the game will crash.

A BIG THANK YOU!!

Thank you, Tolcotta.

Um, Deyle, if I recall correctly the 72 hour bug wouldn't be fixed by this patch, but I could be wrong...

Regardless, the conjuration bug is caused because you hit remove corpse instead of take all. Apparently Morrowind doesn't like it when you delete something twice like that.

In essences, I agree it's a bug, but it also falls under. "Don't do that!"

You mean the morrowind 72 hour clean up? You know it really isn't a bug. Its a feature to remove garbage data. Like non disposed corpses you left behind after you stuffed them with petty soul gems and common pants...
"Fixing" that would make savegames masive in MB over time. Not mentioning the load times. gosh.

Er, no, the real 72 hour bug, the one that causes The Underground 2 to CTD randomly after you visit a certain area.

That's the one I'm talking about. A search though the forums might be able to find more info than I am able to give.

Same thing.

But that doesn't make any sense?! How does the bug that crashes The Underground be the clean up bug? That means either A. The Underground is more buggy than a cockroach farm, or B. The 72 hours thing causes bugs and crashes? Which is it, because I am really confused now.
By buggy, I mean unable to run reliably at all, even before that place. Also, couldn't you delay the bug by setting timescale to 1? For real time?

I have a fix for that in the next update to the UUMPP, it's as simple as setting the summons' corpse to persist.

Morrowind's TESIII editor was experimental. Bethesda never imagined it would be such a huge success. And so has the Morrowind engine its limits.
I'm not 100% sure what data the underground 2 creates.. but one or more data( referrences ) are considered by morrowind as temporal data.
Temporal data is cleaned up after 72 hours after the player has no direct contact with it.

Temporal data are spawned npc/creatures ... targets refferd by scripts... dead bodies... npc behavior .. etc.

The underground 2 CTDs are one or more scripts that uses temporal data .. which is cleaned up after 72h .. resulting a crash.

I have NO idea how Morrowind Code Patch fixes this.. but it does..
Maybe some data are no longer flagged as garbage/temporal .. or are no more cleaned up by game loading after MCP is installed.

I assume:
Global script attached to object in game world
Object Cleaned
Script tries to access data on now deleted object
Bang. CTD

Bingo!

That's a problem in the mod itself, I think. All the patching in the world couldn't fix that one.

Opinion about fortify int / magicka


Fortify Intelligence (FI)
- Should NOT raise CURRENT magicka
- Should raise MAX magicka

( current int 50 / magicka current&max 50 -> fortify int 20 -> current int 70 / magicka current 50, magicka max 70 )

- When effect expired -> Preserve CURRENT magicka, restore MAX magicka
- Most important.. Shoud raise destruction spell damage. ( As strength raises physical damage )


Fortify Magicka (FM)
- should raise CURRENT magicka
- should be able to INCREASE MAX magicka ( current 90 / max 100 -> fortify magicka 20 -> current 110 / max 110 )
- When effect expired -> Preserve CURRENT magicka, restore MAX magicka ( current 110 / max 110 -> expire -> current 110 / max 100 )

MCP does clean up targetted global scripts that no longer point to a valid reference. That would fix problems with spawned objects which have scripts run on them.

So thats the reason why underground 2 never crashes for me

Thank you Hrnchamd.

Well, I guess you can teach an old dog like me new tricks after all.
Glad to know that Hrnchamd fixed the CTD spawning of The Underground. : ) Now you're even more famous!
Seriously, it's amazing to know that.

Also, I'm still not entirely sure how Fortify Intelligence does work, so maybe it should remain the way it is. Also, what would your fix do for Fortify maximum Magicka, Deyl?
Also, there is no logical reason behind making Mages even more stronger than they are currently. No need to cause them to break Morrowind by attacking with 10000 intelligence and doing more than 65535 damage. Which would make Morrowind explode.

Thanks for the information about TU2. I never played it myself and didn't know what's causing the crashes in the bug. Now I have one more reason to advice players of TU2 to use the MCP. (The other reason is that a door in TU2 is apparently vanishing due to a local ref bug, this gets fixed by the MCP too.)

One thing can be said for sure! Because of the local ref bug fix people who had unexplained or strange problem due the usage of many mods or usage of 2 or more big mods will have no or far less problems.

With MPC Morrowind has become a far more enjoyable, stable and mod friendly game.

edit:

I'm not sure if Morrowind's fortify functions can be managed seperately. Some tweaks are good on spell functions but make no sense on enchantments and vice versa.

So if tweak the fortify magicka to not lose magicka on expiration, then you make the duration factor useles, cause it would not matter if if you have fortified magicka for 1 or 50 second, you would gain X magicka anyway and not losing it..
furthermore you could exploid it on enchantments... not losing magicka on expiredment would mean that you could equip and unequip en enchantet item and repeat the proces to gain magicka indefinely.

So not removing the gained magicka on expiredment was a bad idea from me.

I just wanted to say thank you for this amazing accomplishment. My game is benefiting from the added stability as I come across more Mods.

One concern I do have is, is this done by reverse-engineering the game executable? If so, isn't that normally illegal, and do you have permission from Bethsoft to do such a thing? I just want to make sure this project's going to be around for awhile because it is, in my view, very important.

This is the 7th thread for this fix and the developers already know about it. I think Gstaff even gave his blessings awhile back, so I doubt this will up and disappear any time soon.

The processes that were required to make make the MCP a reality were not different from the processes that were required for developing the FPS Optimizer, MWE, MWSE, or MGE, all of which are respected utilities that continue to stay around (not all of them still active though). Bethesda's usual policy for such projects is that they obviously cannot endorse them, but allow them to be discussed here.

Imho that's a policy that both sides profit from. This summer, the most popular non-hardcore computer gaming magazine in Germany put Morrowind GotY on its DVD, so apparently Bethesda is still making well-deserved money with the product. And I think that's partly due to the fact that mods and programs like the ones mentioned above lengthen its lifecycle considerably, up to the point that even more than six years after its release, Europe's biggest gaming magazine considers it popular enough to put it on its DVD (and give it main focus on the title page).

I don't expect the situation to change unless we did something really stupid - for example, a while back there was a request for including a no-CD "fix" in the MCP, which of course was denied for very obvious reasons. We have no intention to bite the hand that feeded us this amazing game.

Well-put. It's important to bear in mind though, that when dealing with a company on shaky ground such as this, the moment it no longer benefits them, you can be sure that the Cease & Desist Hammers will fall. I've seen it happen. I'll not mention it again since this is obviously something that shouldn't have too much light put on it; I just want to say that if you're part of this project, take care to remember that although this presently also benefits them, ultimately it's about benefiting the fans, and in the long-term that's the only gratitude that will really endure.

I'm grateful for the work you guys have done, so now I'll zip my lip.

Rather than crashing innocent players games, he can add an esp to the patch so modders can make it required.

Just curious, is it intended that merchants pay more than 100% with the mercantile fix? I have mercantile at ~60 and when I sell items I get about 110-120% now, which makes NPC merchants more generous than creeper and mudcrab.

I don't know if this has been mentioned or even fixable but can anything be done to stop flying and swimming creature corpses to have no collision against meshes?

Kill a Cliffracer on that Dwemer bridge near Balmora and it falls straight through. I've added new flying things to a mod that has island meshes, and again, they fall straight through.
It seems to me a collision flag/variable isn't being triggered for those creatures of that movement type.

It's a known side-effect of the mercantile fix. The bug was that the price a merchant was willing to pay was capped at the value he would sell it to you - as a result, they paid you less money as your mercantile increased, because the cap kept going down. The fix removes the cap. Hrnchamd asked for suggestions on how to balance it, but none have been made yet.

110% of the base value at 60 mercantile sounds a bit off though. Do you have very high personality and/or disposition? Are you using any mods that decrease the merchants' mercantile skill?

If you want to experiment with the values, you can start an (otherwise unmodded) new game with the Morrowind Code Patch Showcase mod. It features a merchant who's disposition and mercantile can be changed via dialogue, so you can play around with the values and see if they are okay.

ooo, where's that post? I'll get my thinking head on and see if I can work out a solution and understand the problem.

I am using PTE, but this merchant was from the Cult of Clouds - I do not know her skill, but I can take a look at her. Disposition has been maxed to 100.

I suppose you mean Skygem, her mercantile is at 6. Not a good value for a merchant.

Lots of merchants in the game have rather low mercantile skills though, so she won't be the only one having this problem, just one of the first mechants to do so.

Kudos

You're right there, the fortify functions are mostly unified, changing one will change all the others that behave the same way.


Bartering is affected far too much by disposition in my opinion, which causes the sell price to go over 100%, specially with the low mercantile skill some traders have.


Wish I could, but it seems to be a problem with the whole collision system. Levitating or flying things seem to have a smaller collision box than normal, at least that's what it seems to me. It's very hard to track the collision data without some kind of visual tool, you can't read off the mesh coordinates easily and imagine it intersecting.

Finally, if the Underground mod CTD is caused by the 72 hour issue, MCP cleans scripts on loading.. so make sure you save and reload at least that often to keep it working.

Right, it was Skygem. It's beginning to add up!

6!?!?! That's just plain stupid. That's like trading a wooden spoon for a daedric claymore and the trader feeling like they got a good deal :S

I think she mustn't be set as a trader class. In PTE I adjusted all the trader classes to ensure that Personality, Speechcraft and Mercantile are all primary skills/attributes so that those on auto-calc get a boost. This then has a bonus of affecting other mods with auto-calced traders.

She's a mage (but not set to auto-calc anyway). The NPCs in that mod are supposed to be powerful mages, so the modder probably decided to make her a mage who also buys and sells things instead of making her a merchant who's also member of a magical cult. He still could've set her mercantile higher though. Might have been a simple oversight, or perhaps he worked on the (false, but common) assumption that mercantile had an inverted effect.

Good to know that you raised the mercantile values of the trader classes; this is also good news for DWS, who is using PTE and therefore shouldn't see this problem as often as with vanilla merchants.

Hrnchamd: I agree that disposition is overvalued in merchant transactions. It's realistic to have *some* effect, especially in an economy like Morrowind's, where fixed prices are only an abstraction known to the player which doesn't really exist in the game world. But it's hard to believe that a merchant would sell me anything for a fraction of the price he'd usually ask for just because I made some compliments.

Hmn.. I have a daedric weapon with 5000 value. A merchant with 100 disposition towards me gives me exactly 5035 GP for it. With my mercantile skill 80.
I would prefer :
( player mercantile == 100 ) && ( merchant disposition towards you == 100 ) ---> you get 120% of item value
( player mercantile == 80 ) && ( merchant disposition towards you == 100 ) ---> you get 100% of item value
( player mercantile == 100 ) && ( merchant disposition towards you == 80 ) ---> you get 100% of item value

or simple ... ( PLAYER MERCANTILE + MERCHANT DISPOSITION ) / 2 + 20 == % OF GP OF ITEM VALUE

but then you would ignore the merchants merchantile....

Idea....

( PLAYER MERCANTILE + MERCHANT DISPOSITION ) / 2 + 20 == % OF GP OF ITEM VALUE ----- THIS IS NOW CALLED "X"
and now .. 20 + MERCHANT MERCHANTILE/2 = Y ( Y is now the percetage you lose from X )
and now .. FINAL X == X - ( (X/100 ) * Y )

So if you have a item vorth 1000 GP and your merchantile is 100 with merchant disposition 100
The "X" is now at 120%
Y is 20+100/2 ( 70%)
FINAL X = 120%-70% = 50%

And now the merchant is a real shark with 100 merchantile .. you get 50% of item value ( 500 GP ).
And the above percentages for ignoring mercantile would apply if the merchants mercantile would be 0.

For what it's worth, if you're a really good haggler, I.E. you have 100 mercantile, your Personality is 100, etc, then you should be getting great deals from everyone. Because at that point, you're a living God of Merchants. It makes sense that Mercantile needs to be balanced, but if you really are good at it, you should always get the better deal.

Think of car salesmen in real life, they're really good at talking you into paying more than you should.
At 100 personality and 100 mercantile, you should be even better than those car salesmen at getting a good deal.
I mean, call me crazy, but I was a merchant, and I was bartering with another merchant who's slightly worse than me, I should be getting the better deal.

high personality and high mercantile lets you become a shyster, a con artist, if you choose. you can sell a 100 gold item for 120 gold, because you convinced the merchant it really is worth 120 gold.

it should be up to the player whether to be a shyster, after all, once you get to that point, the ethical thing to do is just sell at face value regardless if you can hawk a better deal.

It says I'm using a modified 'Morrowind.exe' file and make sure that the executable isn't a patched no-cd or other type of modified file. I do of course have the game (and all expansions). I cannot locate the original Morroiwnd.exe file on any of the CDs. I'm using the "Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition" collection 3-pack.

I don't know but if someone with a mercantile skill of 100, personality at 100 and disposition at 100 would buy an item from a merchant and then resell it to the merchant, wouldn't it then be possible to get a profit out of it with those settings?

First, chec your Morrowind install folder for files that havethe same size as your Morrowind.exe. Some tools which patch the exe (like Exe Optimizer) make a backup of te original file, but the filenames vary.

If all else fails, then rename your Morrowind folder, and install Morrowind (and the expansions) again to the same path where you had installed it already. Then patch new installation to 1.6.1820. This will give you the Morrowind.exe you need. Copy it over to your previous installation, then rename or delete the new installation, and rename the previous installation to the name it had before. This should give you the exe you need without messing up any files or registry paths.

I agree with you two, povu, and Abysmmal Terror. Actually to be honest, you two agreed with me.

Also, Hermit, Psyringe makes a good point. The exe optimizer will cause issues with this mod. Mostly if you tried to modify the exe optimizer modified file.

Not really. Depenst on the mercantile skill of the merchant.

Now that's something I must disagree with! At 100 everything, you should be able to sell something at 105% value at the very least to anyone reguardless of their mercantile being 100 or not.
Like my car dealer analogy, someone like that could talk any merchant in Morrowind into giving him more than an objects worth.

Seriously, if you're a grand-master(i.e Everything at 100 + fame) at haggling, no matter how good your opponent is, you will win. Alibet at like 105-110% payout, but still.
I debated calling you crazy, but that's not very nice.

1. How much merchants have a merchantile skill past 60 in MW ? Not many.
2. Excluding the master trainer I know no NPC with mercantile 100.

So with 100 mercantile and 100 disposition you would get always more than 100% value.. because the mercantile skill of the merchant is below 50.

Besides it's just an idea and ideas are there to discuss so I appreciate your opinions.

Ah, okay, sorry, I kind of misunderstood you. I thought you wanted to make it so no one could get good deals unless they had it above 100. My bad.

Yes, with the exception of the master trainer, no one has a really high mercantile. So, yeah, off the top of my head, you're right, it's really unbalanced.. Not as bad as alchemy abuse...though.
Edit: Yeah, I have 506 posts, I annoy people on here too much.

In vanilla MW you can haggle with the merchants (your approval rating will temporarily drop, just exit and re-initiate dialog and it will be back to normal) to get better deals. You can then sell it for a profit by haggling again.

This will improve your mercantile and personality abilities.

sieboldii

First.. I'm sorry to say that I haven't read all the posts. So if this has been talked about before just tell me to shut up.

Would it be possible to change the strange way that mw handles the inventory and all that? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would think it's a good idea to have it as it's normally done in a rpg, press m for the map, i for inventory and so on instead of everything cluttering up in one screen. Especially since my stuff in there often change places or size of the different windows, making me have to move it around every now and then..

Soo.. It is possible? And could it be in the scope of this project? I think so, but sorry to say, I'm not the one who decides that sort of thing.

It could, but the focus of this right now is to fix bugs, although new stuff has been added. I just think that there would have to be enough people wanting that before it becomes included in the patch.

PS Everyone: I fixed my Morrowind! Now let's see if i can get the code patch to work right...

Oh starwarsguy! The code patch is easy to install. Its truly a blessing by Hrnchamd .. Big mods are like 70% more stable. Players with many small mods have less problems too because of the local ref bug fix.

Truly a essential patch.

I think this is unlikely to be implemented, for two reasons:

1. It would be a *lot* of work for Hrnchamd. The UI code is perhaps the part which is the most difficult to understand in the whole program. From what Hrnchamd has said so far, my guess is that implementing such a feature (if it can be made working, of which there is no guarantee) would require weeks of continuous hard work.

2. Hrnchamd *has* spent weeks on previous features if either the bug was very serious (like the local ref bug), or if a feature was very popular (like the map expansion). I don't think either is the case for the feature you describe: the original UI behavior is not buggy, and although there probably will be some people who'd appreciate such a change, I think most just wouldn't care either way.

Since the feature you suggest is very hard to implement, not a serious bug, and not very popular (as far as I can tell), I don't think there's a realistic chance that it will be implemented.

However, thanks for taking the time to make a suggestion, and I'm glad you're enjoying the patch.

Yepp. It was kind of what I feared. I had a little hope that it could be the other way around but if it's hard to do then just forget that I mentioned anything. It was also really a bigger problem before when I had my old computer with the smaller screen. But thank's anyway for listening to little me.

Ohh.. By the way. I also have another question. About the reflect "bug". I have never felt that was a bug. If I look in a mirror, I see myself in the mirror, it's not the mirror who sees me.. If you understand what I mean. Even if a spell is reflected, it's still me who casts it, not the other guy.. It's not a problem for me right now but it can be a major problem for various characters. I guess that can't be easily changed? Or if there perhaps is a workaround that I myself could do if I ever get in that tight spot?

I find nothing wrong with the MW inventory and map interface. Since in MW the game is paused while in those screens, it has no affect on game play apart from having windows in the way if you are decorating your home.

Other games usually don't pause the gameplay, so you only want the player to show the windows they actually want to avoid cluttering up the display so they can see what they are being attacked by or where they are walking.


What's the reflect bug? I know you can be killed by reflected spells while in god mode, which is about the only bug I'm aware off, not that it should be fixed really, being that god mode is in effect a cheat.

From the describe.txt in the patch:
10 Reflected spells fix
When you cast an absorb spell and it's reflected, you absorb from yourself and the enemy gets nothing. Apparently not as intended. Now the enemy will absorb from you instead.

That was what I meant. I can't see this as a fix as the original felt a lot more logical. If reflect somehow works as if it's the other guy who casts the spell, then I guess it's his magicka that should be used also.. Compare it to a normal mirror. If you look in the mirror, you see yourself from your own eyes. Your vision hasn't in some magical way been transfered to the mirror. It's not the mirror who sees you... Or in another way. If you are a cowboy and throw your lasso, the lasso somehow bounces back to you, that doesn't mean that the cow all of a sudden is holding the end of the rope and is catching you..

I'm a fan of bugmenot, and since the bugmenot account has been banned from tesnexus for whatever reason, my IP has now been blocked. Could someone please upload this to a reasonable file host? I'd suggest one aimed at software, but there are hundreds that would be better.

If you're using Wrye Mash, get the python version of MCP which won't require a user account to dl.

MCP is now available on Fliggerty's. Pretty sure I posted this a few days ago but the comment isn't there... forum ate it, hyup.

I like your cowboy analogy, but one could also say that what is changed by Reflect is not the target, but the effect, which is to transfer health from one side to the other, so I could see a logical argument for both ways . Perhaps we could say that in magical terms "Reflect" is not like a mirror, it's more like an inverter where the source and target are swapped.

Anyway, the way I see it, in terms of gameplay, Absorb Health made it too easy to defeat enemies that reflect, and the fix makes playing a mage a little more challenging now. Now before I go up against reflecting enemies, I have to make sure my Resistance to Magicka is up.

Of course, MCP also makes it easy to turn the option off if you don't like it. And Hrnchamd added a nice little touch that the patch istaller remembers which patches you have on and off, so if you reinstall the patch, you won't forget which options you've previously selected.

Yep. You could see it that way also but as I said before, then you should actually use the magicka of your opponent, not your own. If you transfer one effect you should also transfer the other. At least that's how I feel. And since the spell effect is called reflect, not invert, and do reflect spells it seems to me that my first view was the intended one. The phrase "Apparently not as intended." is apparently not correct at least.

I agree with the absorb health making it to easy but that doesn't make the reflect thingy a bug, just some poor balancing. I think we all can agree that's not the only place where that happens in mw. Doubling the casting cost or something would help balancing it.

But nice that it lets you turn it off. Customization is always good. That way we can all have the right opinion.

Or, it could be that Bethesda chose the word "reflect" instead of "invert" because they felt it sounded more natural and would be more easily understood by the average player.

I still feel that the purpose of Reflect is to make the ill effects of a spell happen to the source instead of the target. In this sense, "apparently not as intended" is correct. At least, that's the way I see it!

The problem here is that Beth both gave it the wrong name AND the wrong effect that just happened to be exactly the effect that the name implies... If we make those assumptions we could call everything a bug. The chrysamere should really be an axe. They took the wrong graphic and out of pure accident they happened to press the sword button instead of the axe button. Is there anyone who have made a mod to correct that bug?

And in fact, the ill effect does happen to the source, but since it's both a good effect and a bad effect they cancel eachother out.. And "apparently" is definately wrong. Otherwise we wouldn't have this discussion.

The best solution would perhaps be to only transfer half the health? That way you would suffer half the effect if it gets reflected. Take away 50, gain 25. Not a bad idea I think. Also easily modded I would presume.

Well, I guess that's our fundamental disagreement, I feel that neither the name nor the effect are incorrect.

Here's how I see it. Absorb Health is an effect that does "transfer health from enemy to me". If I cast it at an enemy, I absorb their health. If the enemy reflects it, it's as if the enemy cast the spell at me, and the health transfers from me to the enemy. I.e. with reflection, both source and target switch. In this scenario, I think the patch makes sense, and I think the name makes sense, and I think it's the simplest logical interpretation of how the effect is supposed to work. And it seems to me to make the most sense in terms of gameplay. But it's just an opinion, so I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree, as the saying goes.

I tend to agree, for what it is worth.

Hmm.. That was how you said it was. I just phrased it like that. You say that the na 37c0 me is wrong since it really is a reverse spell, not a reflect spell. And you say that the effect is wrong because it should really be a reverse effect and not a reflect effect..

Something reflected is not the same thing as something reversed. And the spell reflect works as a reflection in original mw. I agree that it's not working quite as good as I feel it should, but to call it a bug just becasue of that is a really long stretch.. The reflect spell has a perfect reflect function. How could that be called a bug? Bad design perhaps but that's far from a bug.. MW is full of bad designs, this is just another one..

Sorry if there was miscommunication. But I think it is okay to use either reflect or reverse as they both make sense. What I'm saying is that it is the spell effect that is reflected, not the simply changing the target back to the caster. My mental model for it goes like this: assume Absorb Health effect is like a particle that does "transfer health from me to the other guy". If I cast it at an enemy, and the particle hits him, then the spell effect happens on the enemy and health is transferred to me. But if this magical spell effect particle is bounced back at me and hits me, the effect "transfer health from me to the other guy" happens on me, and my health gets damaged because it's sent to the other guy.

(Edit: maybe it's clearer if I say that what is reflected is the spell effect and what is reversed is the source and target).

All I can say is that it's really just a matter of opinion how it should work. The wiki page on Absorb Health indicates that in vanilla Morrowind, that it is reflected when combined with other spells that are on target. And I believe that Absorb Health in Oblivion damages the caster when reflected too. So in terms of how it appears to be intended to work and general TES lore, it seems to me to make the most sense that's the way it should be.

My personal view agrees with King_Nothing. I don't see this as "transfer health from enemy to me."; I see it as "transfer health from TARGET to CASTER." In fact, the Morrowind instruction manual even describes it in those terms: "Temporarily transfers a portion of the target's attribute, Health, Magicka, Fatigue, or skill to the caster" (emphasis mine). The reflect spell changes the target to the caster but not the caster to the target. As King_Nothing has pointed out, if the spell is still using my magicka, I'm still the caster. If the reflect effect somehow makes me NOT the caster, then it doesn't use my magicka either.

The very concept of a reflection is that the target is modified. Light reflects off a mirror and the direction of its travel is changed; The source of the light is not. If I throw a rock at you and it "bounces" off of you (which is how I envision a reflect effect), the rock comes back and hits me. That doesn't mean that suddenly YOU threw the rock at me... I just hit myself with the rock instead of hitting you with it when it reflected off of you. Likewise, if I cast an absorb health spell at you, instead of hitting YOU with the spell, I just hit myself... and absorb from myself.

But then again, the bug fixes in this patch are all modular so that someone who doesn't agree with the validity of certain "fixes" isn't forced to apply them. I applaud the way that Hrnchamd has set up the patch and wish that software companies would take note. In my opinion, it's a much better way of implementing patches to single-player games. Obviously, in a multi-user game, all players need to be using the same patches, but for a single-player game, it just makes more sense (in my opinion) to allow the players to tailor their games to maximize their own enjoyment. That is, after all, the primary purpose of any game... to entertain the customer.

To be honest, I never could figure out what was wrong with Absorb Health in the first place, John.

King Nothing, I'm just like you.
You're right in the aspect that it reflects the spell, not inverts. Invert/reverse doesn't even come close to equaling Reflect.



A good point indeed. MW is full of bad designs, but hey, at least with the code patch fix, monsters that cast absorb health kill themselves on your reflect.

Edit: Tocatta, excellent explaination. Far better than anything I could come up with.
Also, why don't people understand the difference between a bug and a slightly flawed feature...

if it's optional, what's the debate? i personally don't use it, myself, but so what?

As abyssmal terror says, the beauty of this is that on the whole you can choose exactly which features you want patched into your executable!

A better solution I would say is to let half of the health get "lost" in the process. That way, the reflect would still be a reflect and if you hit yourself you would get hurt, although not as much. So. Everyone's happy and all the bugs have crept back under their stones.

Exactly. That was the point. It's not a bug even if it could be (mis)interpreted as such.

I think my analogy with the cowboy and lasso was funnier.

Yep. I didn't know that from the beginning, that's how the question arose in the first place. But as it is now, it's not a problem even for die hard absorbers.

Exactly. Therefore not "apparently" and very questionable if it's a bug or not.

And to end all this. Thank you so very much Hrcm... Hnchhh.. Uhmm.. creator, for the patch. It will make my game much more enjoyable and as we all agree. Thats the point.

Would it be possible to have the auto-run key work even when pressed before the other movement keys were released? As it is now, if one is pressing forward, then they press the auto-run key, then they let go of forward while still holding the auto-run key, they stop.

New Thread: Repairing those Cogs #8