What? A Year?

No one reads this, I know, but it's more for my own reference in the future. I word it like someone is reading it for two reasons: 1) I might forget this at some point in the future. Better it be written for someone who doesn't know much. 2) Someone might stumble upon this at some point. (Hello, if so.) Doubtful, but you never know.

Anyway, I kind of stopped with the Oblivion modding because I've put SO MUCH TIME into playing it, I've kind of had enough of the game, I think. Blasphemy, I know. Also, Skyrim is less than 4 months away. I know mod creation will probably start within hours of the game being released, but it's going to take 2-3 months for the mod scene to really be kicking. Since they're making a brand new engine, they can't port certain things (mainly mod managers) like they did for Morrowind to Oblivion, likely slowing the mod scene down a bit. But I'm going to be all about modding Skyrim, let me tell you.

But speaking of Morrowind, I've decided to give that a shot. Once, a long time ago, I modded the hell out of Morrowind and then never played it beyond 10-15 minutes of testing. So, I've decided to go back and do it again and actually play the game. I've forgotten virtually everything I knew about Morrowind modding (aside from Wrye Mash being the Morrowind equivalent to Oblivion's Wrye Bash. Same guy, btw.) So, here's what I have so far:

MGE - Morrowind Graphics Extender. Real similar to the Oblivion Extender. You need this. It lets you override in-game settings and do things the game won't let you do. (Such as run HDR with anti aliasing.)

CM Partners - Similar to Oblivion's CM Partners. Except they don't disappear on you like the ones in Oblivion do. (And that annoys the holy hell out of me in Oblivion.)

Wrye Mash - Set load order (just as important as in Oblivion) and do other things.

Unofficial Morrowind Patch - You need this.

Morrowind Code Patcher - On the fly patching for features you want. This actually creates a new morrowind.exe ... it's really cool. I'm assuming it actually does binary patching, but not sure.

And, finally, my first installed mod is the infamous Morrowind Graphical Project 2011. I can't link to anything here or I risk the Morrowind modding community descending on me and tearing me apart. (Just like happened to the guy who put it all together.) However, I found it (and installation instructions. They're long and complicated.) by Googling and you can too, if you so want. I will not send it to you. I will not tell you how to install it. Google it.

However, after installing it I decided not to use it. Why? Well, two reasons. When I loaded up Wrye Mash, it reported a ton of errors. I also didn't like that I did not truly know what mods were in there. I just blindly followed install instructions. They never told me what was in it. For instance, it looks like the unofficial Morrowind patch was maybe, possibly installed. Some other stuff was questionable as well. I just got the feeling it'd cause more problems than it solved down the line and I'd eventually dump it anyway. I will say, the game looks GREAT with it running. But all these mods are available on their own. I'd feel more comfortable downloading them on my own and installing them each manually. And, honestly, the package felt like it was held together with duct tape and adding anything into it would break something. Maybe this isn't the case, but I've modded this engine a lot and I know when something feels wrong. This felt very wrong.

So, while I played for about 10-15 minutes with Morrowind Graphical Project installed and thought it was wonderful looking, I decided I'd rather do this my own way so everything installed lives up to my standards and doesn't generate half a page of errors when loading Wrye Mash.

First 'real' post about modding in a day or so. Maybe even tonight if I get really into this.