Next problem: Does Morrowind crash if you use a lot of plugins?

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited July 12, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited July 12, 2004).]

As far as I know, the number of plugins used at once has not changed the stability in any way, at least for me. I believe the crashing is due to correlating bugs in the core source of both Morrowind and Windows... And yes, this problem shows up in both 9x versions and NT (XP) versions, in equal strength, though it also seems to be unrelated to the ammount of physical and virtual memory availible...

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"I know there's got to be some sort of mathematical equation for this sort of thing, but I prefer trial and error. It's one of the advantages of having a socialized health care system."

The engine itself is just nacently unstable. Bethesda licensed the NetImmerse engine or whatever its called (same engine that runs DAoC, though a different build) and modified a LOT of it. For some reason this equates to some fairly random crashing, which could be the cause of anything from a hardware conflict to scripting errors. The engine is just unfortunately unstable.

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http://www.jedilegacy.net/gonk/

Hmm I had noticably fewer crashes after upgrading from 256mb ram to 768mb. And although some plug-ins don't affect the crashing much, some of them can really add to it - such as that woodworking mod that alters the way every tree in the game functions.

Damn it. I guess I just need more ram.

I'm playing this for the first time on my Radeon 9200, and with better bodies + world of faces it looks amazing (especially the water). Morrowind has aged really well.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

One (or two) things that hurt the immersion for me is that the day is so short and the land is not to scale.

I think Fallout had the perfect way of handling time; it runs at real time. So you get 12 hours of light, then 12 hours of dark. If you don't want to hang around for 12 hours then you can "sleep" until the time you like. This makes you feel like you're not on a planet with a 20 minute day (which is what Morrowind feels like). Vampires might have an easier time of it, too. I mean, is there even any reason why the day is this short?

Also, despite Morrowind having a large landmass (for a game) it's certainly not very realistic; Vivec, a place one supposes should be a major city, has a population of, maybe, 500 at the most, and is tiny, sizewise. I'm unsure what a solution could be, though, since obviously building a realistic landmass of a thousand kilometers across is pretty much unfeasible (unless you built the important locations, then randomised the land in between. This wouldn't even have to be different each time. It could generate the land in between based on the same seed each time the game is run, so the land won't seem random to the player), and also would be quite annoying to travel across (unless given some sort of Fallout esque map to use). Alternately, the game could simply be set on a smaller island, though obviously such a place wouldn't have the diverse environments of Morrowind. It's just very distracting that Balmora is smaller a shopping centre, when it's supposed to be a bustling town.

Besides this, if Morrowind were also given some sort of random mission generator (ala Escape Velocity: Nova or Privateer) then it would be much easier to "live" in a certain location, without moving from location to location sapping the quests from each area like a leech...

Despite all this, though, I have the temptation to install Morrowind again and try and finish the main quest, and continue Tribunal (got stuck underneath the sewers, last time)... I've found a few mods that look like they'll improve the look of the game.

I think it's a pity that Morrowind's greatest flaws would have been fairly easily corrected (dialogue trees, random missions, realistic day length, realistic land size) compared to some of the really time consuming things (all those books!).

Well, I await Elder Scrolls 4...

Does anybody have any suggestions that don't involve upgrading my computer? Morrowind used to work slowly (but fine, otherwise) on my old Radeon LE. I've got a 9200 now, and messing with the options (pixer shaders on/off, lowering the resolution) doesn't seem to have any effect.

The game loads, I type in my name, and then it seems to hang loading Seyda Neen after I open the hatch. I get a black screen with the coastal sounds playing (so it's not totally frozen). Sometimes Seyda Neen does load, but after I make my character the game gets stuck transitioning between the census office and the building with that guy who gives me my release fee.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

Try mounting the disc on your hard drive. The copy protection for that game was awful, and it could be stalling your disc drive.

I'm using the crack, so that should dodge the problem...

Still doesn't work, though.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

It could be your card's memory overloading, in which case you should turn more options down.

Also, do you have the latest drivers?

I don't think that's possible. I went from a 32mb card to a 128mb card. And my drivers are all updated.

Also, there aren't really any options to turn down. There's just resolution and pixel shaders.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar