[Morrowind] Users Mod Tools

[Leonardo]

Last year I started a discussion about using BOSS in Morrowind and my intentions was to have the same system we have for both Oblivion, Skyrim, meaning the usage of bash tags with MW mods.

 

After a few posts I notice that the discussion won't be nice a least what I felt back then, so I decided to request a lock and skip such discussions in the future a least I are not interested to start a new discussion.

Perhaps I've misjudged everything, but so be it and I can lived with that.

 

The way I see it and to accomplish this is to have TES3Edit (derived from the source code of TES4Edit which TES5Edit is based on IIRC) available for mod users plus having a completely new version of Wrye Mash, because the development of Wrye Mash is minimal a least what I know of and I don't know if Melchor (haven't been around for 2½ years now) has made any progress at all.

 

I searched for "BOSS" on Morrowind.Nexus and this was the only thing I could find via searching of course and not via browsing through all mod pages.

 

 

What do you think is it possible to achieve this?

[Ysne58]

There is a tool called MLOX for Morrowind isn't there?

[Arthmoor]

You'd have to talk to Zilav about the possibility of porting TES5Edit over to Morrowind. I seem to recall he was interested but obviously needs someone who is willing to help test AND has the time do so. While I'm willing to help test, I don't have the time.

 

As far as BOSS support, the team decided some time ago to drop officially supporting Morrowind. We still have a masterlist for it, but nobody is maintaining it, and I'm pretty sure Wrinklyninja was going to remove support for it from the code. If you really want to keep BOSS alive for Morrowind, you'll need to speak up soon and see to it there's people who can properly maintain the list for it.

 

Getting someone to work on Wrye Mash is going to be a whole other thing. I don't know that there's going to be anyone who will, especially since we can't find many people willing to work on Bash for Skyrim either. Python is simply too difficult for folks to bother with, and Bash's code is like the Ultimate Python Challenge.

[Leonardo]

There is a tool called MLOX for Morrowind isn't there?

Yes there is but there is a runtime error if you're using Python 2.5 (perhaps there is a runtime error with Python 2.6 too) and having non-US Windows version.

 

It depends about something called mlox rule base and doesn't have anything to do with bash tags, instead it's based of the author's readme and we all know that people don't read a readme.

[Leonardo]

You'd have to talk to Zilav about the possibility of porting TES5Edit over to Morrowind. I seem to recall he was interested but obviously needs someone who is willing to help test AND has the time do so. While I'm willing to help test, I don't have the time.

I see.  Well perhaps I'll do just that.

 

As far as BOSS support, the team decided some time ago to drop officially supporting Morrowind. We still have a masterlist for it, but nobody is maintaining it, and I'm pretty sure Wrinklyninja was going to remove support for it from the code. If you really want to keep BOSS alive for Morrowind, you'll need to speak up soon and see to it there's people who can properly maintain the list for it.

The only person who offer help to get BOSS working in Morrowind was john.moonsugar 1½-2 years ago IIRC.

 

Getting someone to work on Wrye Mash is going to be a whole other thing. I don't know that there's going to be anyone who will, especially since we can't find many people willing to work on Bash for Skyrim either. Python is simply too difficult for folks to bother with, and Bash's code is like the Ultimate Python Challenge.

I posted this 2½ years ago and I haven't read anything about updating Wrye Mash during this time except for Melchor's and Yacoby's WMSA versions.

 

I've also read something about a possible update of Wrye Mash, but I don't know when or if that is gonna to happen.

 

 

In contrast to you I'm both willing to test it and use it my self, but the biggest problem a least what I know about programming is to implement bash tags in Wrye Mash.

[Arthmoor]

The only person who offer help to get BOSS working in Morrowind was john.moonsugar 1½-2 years ago IIRC.

Well if he's still willing to support it, I can grant him commit access to the repository so he can maintain the list if that offer is still open. Let me know one way or the other, because I'll need to get in touch with Wrinklyninja to make sure he doesn't yank support out of the executable.

 

In contrast to you I'm both willing to test it and use it my self, but the biggest problem a least what I know about programming is to implement bash tags in Wrye Mash.

Being willing to test it and use it are not enough. Finding someone who understands the records well enough to write patchers for Morrowind is required. The record formats would need to be decoded, logic generated for building patches, etc. This is the hardest part of the whole program and is why Skyrim support in Bash stalled out. Nobody knows enough about how things work to get it done other than Lojack, and he's gone MIA.

[Leonardo]

Well if he's still willing to support it, I can grant him commit access to the repository so he can maintain the list if that offer is still open. Let me know one way or the other, because I'll need to get in touch with Wrinklyninja to make sure he doesn't yank support out of the executable.

 

Being willing to test it and use it are not enough. Finding someone who understands the records well enough to write patchers for Morrowind is required. The record formats would need to be decoded, logic generated for building patches, etc. This is the hardest part of the whole program and is why Skyrim support in Bash stalled out. Nobody knows enough about how things work to get it done other than Lojack, and he's gone MIA.

Again it's john.moonsugar who might know that kind of stuff since he wrote the tes3cmd program to clean your mods, but I think you should know that some tools that john has written over the years is written in Perl if I'm not mistaken.

 

Another tool is the Enchanted Editor and that's the only tool I know of about who could give you some insights about the records there is in Morrowind except for Wrye Mash of course due to repairing a save.

 

Getting someone to work on Wrye Mash is going to be a whole other thing. I don't know that there's going to be anyone who will, especially since we can't find many people willing to work on Bash for Skyrim either. Python is simply too difficult for folks to bother with, and Bash's code is like the Ultimate Python Challenge.

This is what I think is necessary to do if the bash tags will work for Morrowind mods in Wrye Mash, because without a completely new Wrye Mash version with bash tags support there is no point to discuss this any further imo.

 

I also have a question about what more is there to be done in Wrye Bash except for fixing cosmetics in Wrye Bash for both WB-Oblivion and WB-Skyrim.

[SilentSpike]

As far as BOSS goes, I believe BOSS V3 is going to support morrowind (there was a discussion about supported games recently in the new thread), which should provide more help than the current iteration since it will be somewhat automated.

[Arthmoor]

Leo, if john.moonsugar is still willing to contribute to maintaining a Morrowind list, I'm sure we can get him added to the committers group easily enough.

[Leonardo]

Leo, if john.moonsugar is still willing to contribute to maintaining a Morrowind list, I'm sure we can get him added to the committers group easily enough.

I could contact him, but I think it's for the best if either you or wrinklyninja contacted him.  Because I'm not involved in any dev team.

 

 

Here is some linked posts that I think could interests you about using BOSS for Morrowind.

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1167004-relz-mlox-a-tool-for-analyzing-and-sorting-your-load-order/page-2#entry18194266

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1167004-relz-mlox-a-tool-for-analyzing-and-sorting-your-load-order/page-7#entry21251456

 

Also, in the same thread john.moonsugar reveal that he his is actually a Python programmer which I didn't know.

[Leonardo]

Nobody knows enough about how things work to get it done other than Lojack, and he's gone MIA.

He pop in the other day and said hi to everybody.

[Leonardo]

You'd have to talk to Zilav about the possibility of porting TES5Edit over to Morrowind. I seem to recall he was interested but obviously needs someone who is willing to help test AND has the time do so. While I'm willing to help test, I don't have the time.

Have already done that and he explain to me why Morrowind is different and I had no idea how different Morrowind were in comparison to both Oblivion and Skyrim, which is the reason why Morrowind have the Enchanted Editor.

 

I don't know if this information about the esm file format in Morrowind will be any help at all.

 

As far as BOSS support, the team decided some time ago to drop officially supporting Morrowind. We still have a masterlist for it, but nobody is maintaining it, and I'm pretty sure Wrinklyninja was going to remove support for it from the code. If you really want to keep BOSS alive for Morrowind, you'll need to speak up soon and see to it there's people who can properly maintain the list for it.

I think BOSS is out of question and that the reason is the release of LOOT.  Here is the latest discussion in which Wrinklyninja (a few posts below my post) replied with his suggestion(s).

 

Getting someone to work on Wrye Mash is going to be a whole other thing. I don't know that there's going to be anyone who will, especially since we can't find many people willing to work on Bash for Skyrim either. Python is simply too difficult for folks to bother with, and Bash's code is like the Ultimate Python Challenge.

I was too excited about having a BOSS version for Morrowind last year, but now I realize that is almost impossible since I don't know anyone who will and can do anything with the Wrye Mash source code in Python.

[Leonardo]

Does automatic updating exist for mlox?

 

Yes.  It does exist thanks to both abot and WH-Reaper, but Dragon32 also updated mlox 0.57 to mlox 0.59 (non-Python) and I test it briefly earlier today.

 

So automatic updating in mlox works with a few issues that needs to be fixed, but abot found a work around and that works with the integrated mlox/tes3cmd GUI in Yacoby's WMSA 86 a least what I can confirm.

 

 

If you're interested to find out more about automatic updating in mlox can read it in the mlox thread at the officials.

[Leonardo]

Sorry for the necro post, but I totally forgot about zilav's post at the official.

 

 

Reposted from BSF

 

And what do you want exactly from Wrye Mash? I personally don't feel myself limited with it now (and I'm using original 84 version).
Sure some nice features are missing, interface is somewhat clunky, random bugs are popping, but it supports BAIN, annealing, sorting, etc. Basically everything I need to handle mods are already implemented and working.
Bashed patch requires tags database which is impossible to create at this stage for Morrowind, and there are other tools that can achieve the same, not in one place and single click, but they do work.

You are asking someone to commit a great deal of time for... nothing? Maybe improved usability and bug fixing, but still that is not enough I think.

 

Like I said in that thread I didn't want to hijack it since the discussion was about MO and not about Wrye Mash, so that's why I didn't comment zilav's post back then.

 

 

As for bug fixing, I know there is one annoying bug in Yacoby's WMSA and that's about editing the file header in his Wrye Mash 86 Fork. 

 

It doesn't work and if you try to use it then you get an internal Python "wx<whatever>" error message, which is damn annoying for not being able to use an awesome feature in Yacoby's WMSA.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "mash\masher.pyo", line 1388, in OnSave
  File "mash\mosh.pyo", line 2611, in writeHedr
  File "mash\mosh.pyo", line 2007, in getSize
struct.error: argument for 's' must be a string
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "wx\_core.pyo", line 14669, in <lambda>
  File "mash\mash.pyo", line 14, in write
IOError: [Errno 0] Error

The same bug also exist in Sharlikran's Wrye Mash Fork for Python 2.7.8 since he created his fork based on Yacoby's WMSA.

 

 

The other Wrye Mash versions, Wrye Mash 84 (I don't remember much about Wrye Mash 84 nowdays) and Melchor's WMSA, doesn't have that editing a file header bug in Wrye Mash.

 

Another thing I would like to see is a better way to copy your loadorder from Wrye Mash instead of doing that in mlox.  I think a lot of people would like to have such a "copy your loadorder" feature in Wrye Mash.

 

 

 

Of course there are other improvements anyone would like to have in Wrye Mash.  This may sound promising and here is the latest BOSS discussion.

[godescalcus]

What's the best fork of Wrye Mash to use these days? I got sent to Yacoby's fork at some other page, but since the last file at github is from 2012, could some other fork have taken the lead?

And since there are also standalone and python versions, which would be better to use? Python has been my choice for skyrim but from what I read the standalone versions for morrowind are pretty recent and presented as an evolution (at least that seems to be the case for Melchor's WMSA). Sharlikran's (are you there?  ) apparently is the most recently updated only three weeks ago and isn't it also a standalone version?

Also sorry for resurrecting an old thread (maybe a new one could be created in the knowledge base for the game, like tools of the trade)...

[Leonardo]

I help Sharlikran with testing of the code and TBH I would say Wrye Mash Stand Alone 87 is the best version to this date.

I don't think Sharlikran would mind, here is the latest stable version of WMSA.

[deaths_soul]

I realize this thread hasn't been posted in in a few weeks shy of of exactly 7 years and six months but wanted to mention something.

I'll get a separate, more detailed thread up later but I've been working on modernizing Dave Humphrey's (of UESP) old MWEdit program, which is similar to the xEdit series but written in C++. The base code is from 2005 or so with some updates over the years by other authors but I'm aiming to fully bring it up to the times. One of my goals is to make it platform agnostic but there are several.

Still in the primary investigative phase (taking a while as I don't have the stamina I did ten years ago) but I'm about to move to the main code after going through its utility library so I wanted to at least make a post about it. Most of my note taking and ramblings are taking place here while the repository is here.

Once I've finished the initial investigation and reformatting, I'll start the heavier stuff. Help is more than welcome and appreciated, as well  In particular, release engineering, Windows development, and documentation writing are rather difficult for me.

[Arthmoor]

If I may suggest, you might want to get in contact with Elminster and see about bringing the Morrowind mode of xedit up to speed.

[deaths_soul]

Where is the best place to reach them these days? I've been out of the loop for almost a decade now. I know much of the community is slowly moving to Discrod but that's a service I'm not a big fan of.

[DayDreamer]

Nor am I a fan of Discord. So I ask again here:

Looking at it, seems more like another CS, not another xEdit, despite the name.

Also, searching found https://github.com/Open-CK.

What is the advantage of having multiple -CS and -CK development teams? Wouldn't it be best to merge efforts?

And I'd really hope nobody is duplicating the xEdit team efforts. That's not a CS/CK analogue, that's a diff/diff3 comparison and merging tool. Essential, but not the same tool as either MWEdit or OpenMW-CS.

[deaths_soul]

Even before I started, I knew there was going to be significant overlap with OpenMW but that's okay! They've been more than happy to help fill me in on things that I've had questions about so we're already working together I needed a code auditing project for personal reasons (not the best place to get into that) and MWEdit fit the bill nicely. Ultimately, I do intend for it to duplicate the xEdit efforts but that's far in the future. Why? There's no up-to-date Morrowind version, xEdit is written in Pascal, Windows only, and it has poor interop. There is no reason why a CS/CK replacement can't include similar features. It would be rather convenient, in fact.

You mentioned the fact that MWEdit only runs on Windows. That is correct. I'm still in the investigation stage and working on making the formatting consistent as I go, as well as improving readability. However, as I mentioned, a big goal is to make it work across platforms. I have never written code on Windows, only on *nix. Windows is only for entertainment purposes. To that end, I plan to overhaul the codebase. I've been making a lot of notes as I go through to help when I get to that stage. Ultimately, I hope to replace the Windows GUI code with gtkmm, a C++ binding for GTK. I'm much slower than I used to be, though.

Unable to comment on the OpenCK project but there hasn't been any activity on it since 2020.

Development in the TES community has been fragmented since before I took a leave of absence. A lot of it is due to differing philosophies. Would it be nice to have a big, organized project like GNOME or KDE? Absolutely. However, this is a gaming community as opposed to a community focused on providing a seamless working desktop environment so there are going to be a lot of groups doing similar things but differently. That said, it is quite possible I'll look at getting more involved with OpenMW in the future as I've been considering it since well before my leave of absence

[DayDreamer]

5 hours ago, deaths_soul said:

we're already working together

That is good news. Community is important. I've been involved in the open source community since the late '70s, long before it was termed "open source". My last paying gig was at Red Hat's Open Source and Standards group, before it was taken over by IBM.

I'd come to the Unofficial Skyrim Patch after starting my own project, as the previous maintainers had stopped working on their version 1.0 (their site was hacked and taken over by child pornography), agreeing with Arthmoor to work together for the good of the community.

 

5 hours ago, deaths_soul said:

I have never written code on Windows, only on *nix.

I've been involved with Unix since 1978, and worked on the Perkin-Elmer Interdata 7-16 and 7-32 (its first port from the PDP). But in the '80s and early '90s, I'd spent many years both professionally and in open source working with Turbo Pascal and C, including the then wildly popular KA9Q NOS. Pascal was also the top development choice for MacOS in the '80s. My C contributions are in nearly every OS other than Windows (such as Linux, *BSD, and OpenDarwin nee MacOS).

For 20+ years, I've been exclusively *nix based. In 2012, I'd bought my only Windows machine in more than a decade to play Skyrim (and run Turbo Tax, as they'd stopped supporting MacOS at the time).

 

5 hours ago, deaths_soul said:

I'm much slower than I used to be, though.

Same here. However, I've never really taken to C++. In its early days, it was crude, difficult, and slow. So it will be a learning curve for me.

Still, for a new'ish project, I'd expect Rust to be a better choice. Would you be interested?

 

5 hours ago, deaths_soul said:

I'll look at getting more involved with OpenMW in the future as I've been considering it since well before my leave of absence

OK, good. It seems to me that we are on nearly the same page. That is part of a larger group of projects, including Oblivion.

I've lived through the BSD386, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD splits, and it was not fun.

What makes the MWedit code base a better starting position than OpenMW-CS?

 

[deaths_soul]

I feel that Rust in this case is a solution looking for a problem. I have no experience with it as it came about during my absence so I'd need to learn a new language as well as port a bunch of C and C++ code to the new language on top of getting the FFI figured out. No idea how complicated that is but Java's was a pain in the butt to work with, on top of Java's other problems.

I'm starting with MWEdit mostly for personal reasons. At the simplest level, I needed a project that I could overhaul and liked the look of it. For more details, I'd rather discuss them in private.

I had other plans years back that never materialized but may get back to them depending on how MWEdit goes. In essence, it's a good way to get back into things.

Right now, I'm not sure the code is ready for contributions as there'd be way too many merge conflicts as the overhaul proceeds. I haven't looked at the main code (five files away) yet but it uses a custom library that largely reimplements the standard so that'll need to be removed in favor of standard features. I also need to add namespace prefixes, update the variable types to C++ style, and a lot more. The devlog I linked should provide a general idea of the situation. Granted, I'm not used to working as part of a group so I could be wrong.

That said, if anyone does want to chip in, the things that can be done now are a build script (leaning towards Meson as it's more readable than CMake), the VS compile log with the highest warn level, and a GUI mock-up in GTK's format. With Glade being discontinued, Cambalache is probably a good replacement but it doesn't have Windows support just yet. Another option is to manually draft it up but I never was able to find a good reference for the schema.

 

Edit:

Sorry, the emoticons puked due to the IPS 4 parser. Never did get the hang of it....

 

Er, fixed now.

Edited April 27 by deaths_soul