What are Plugins (or mods)?

Plugins, or Mods, are game modifications. There are tons of them out there, and 'most' of them are well worth downloading, and adding to your game! A mod for morrowind can be made by using TES III construction set. The construction set (cs) comes with your game when you buy it. You can make tons of different mods, weapon mods (by adding new weapons to morrowind), armor mods (by adding new armor meshes to morrowind). You can make house mods aswell, wich seems to be the most popular choice to make, also the easiest to start out with. And trust me, once you're started you can't stop again..!

What are meshes?

Meshes are the shape of all the stuff in morrowind. All the stuff (except landscape?) are made of meshes. The trees, weapons, armor, plates etc. all are meshes..! The meshes are mostly made in a program called 3D Studio Max. 3ds is a very expensive program, and the only ones of them wich can export to a file that morrowind can regonize is 3, 4(.2) and 5. Those are also the ones that Bethesda used to make all the meshes for morrowind. you can use 6 and 7 of max to make meshes too, although you would need someone with 3, 4 or 5 to export the file for you. Another program you can use (wich are far more cheaper) is Milkshape. Milkshape doesn't allow you to make armor (don't ask me why) Milkshape can be dl'ed (google up link) and tried for 30 days, before you decide if you want to buy it.

What are textures?

Textures are what gives the meshes color. If the mesh doesn't have a texture it'll just be white, plain boring white.. if you got a program such as photoshop, paint shop pro etc. you can manipulate these textures into your own taste, if you got the talent that it  Then you can either overwrite the texture (this will just make the mesh the texture is applied to look different) or you can save it under a new name and apply it to the mesh (wich have been copied renamed and pasted back into the meshes folder!) and you will have two different look weapons, using the same mesh.. if you however want to start making textures you'll need a 'painting' program, such as photoshop or paint shop pro. Those are the ones (I think!) are the best to use for making textures although I know that Phijama (wich makes amazing textures!) uses some other program, wich I think are free btw..)

How do I install my mods correctly?

 

How to install plug-ins manually (by lochnarus)

Just a fast guide to manually installing MOST mods:

Installing a Common Morrowind Mod Manually - a quick guide

FOR BEGINNER MOD USERS

1. FILE COMPRESSION

All morrowind mods are "compressed" into one easy to download file that is commonly referred to as a "zip" file. This makes the file smaller (in most cases- sound doesn't compress well) and keeps everything in one file. There are numerous types of these programs:

7zip
PowerArchiver
WinRAR
Winace
WinZip
Zipgenius

All of which can be found by doing a search on Google. Each one is different and only the first two will open all of the file formats from the rest of them. Use whichever opens the mod with these names:

.7z - opens with 7zip
.rar - opens with WinRAR
.ace - opens with Winace

...and so on.

2. UNZIPPING TO A TEMPORARY DIRECTORY (FOLDER)

Double click on your downloaded mod file. The program should open it, displaying the files inside. Depending on which mod you are unzipping, it should have an .esp file (looks like a swiss army knife), a "Meshes" folder, an Icons folder (if the mod adds items that can be picked up), a "Textures" folder, and lastly a README file. Sometimes mods will have all their files placed into mock directory folders, like so:

Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Morrowind\Data Files

this is for automatically unzipping the files in to Data Files, which I NEVER do. You're bound to come across a mod that will not unzip correctly and you'll have loose files cluttering up your folders. This is a MANUAL installation guide after all, so back to it:

Select ALL the files by highlighting them. Then select the program's "extract" feature and a new window should come up asking WHERE to unzip it to. You will now need to pick a folder to be a temporary folder, I choose "My Documents"...

Unzip the files to the temporary folder. Then open that folder and open any folders the mod was inside. You should see these folders:

"mod file".esp
Meshes
Textures
"mod file README".txt (or any text filetype)

POSSIBLY you will have these folders:

Icons
Sounds
Music
Splash
Book Art

Icons being the most frequent addition.

All you do for the mod's .esp file is copy it to the "Data Files" folder in your game. Now the other stuff....

3. MESHES

Now, look inside the mod's Meshes folder...

Are there more folders inside? Alot of mods will have other "subfolders" that contain the mods meshes, and are for the purpose of being easy to locate for troubleshooting or for uninstalling with ease.

Most mods have something like a letter, "A" or "W"" or the modder's name...I use "LOCH" for my meshes. Some mods do not do this and place their meshes loose in the 'Meshes" folder, which is all you have to do in that case.

Now take these "subfolders" and move them to the meshes folder.

*DO NOT take the game files out of the "subfolders" as they are indexed by the game engine as being in THAT FOLDER*

So if you have an "A" folder, place THAT folder into your "Meshes" folder. If you already have an "A" folder, THEN you must open the mod's "A" Folder and copy the files into the existing "A" folder already in your game's files. In short:

Meshes/A ----> Meshes

UNLESS you already have an "A" folder, then:

files inside Meshes/A ----> Meshes/A

Repeat this for all mesh "subfolders" from the mod.

4. ICONS

Do EXACTLY the same procedure as in the previous step (meshes) for icons.

5. TEXTURES

There are two ways this could go:

1 - the textures are loose in the mod's texture folder...easy. All you do is copy them all to the Textures folder in your game. You're done.

2 - "Subfolder" textures is the other way some modders set up their mods. THIS way has a "subfolder" inside the textures folder. You should copy that "subfolder" and paste it into the textures folder, much like you did for meshes and icons.
5. OTHER TYPES OF FILES

Most sound and music files need to be placed into the same name folder in your game where they are in the downloaded mod files. All other files are basically the same as the meshes, except splash screens, which are placed loosely in the "Splash Screens" folder.

6. PLAYING IT

All you do now is open Morrowind and check the new mod so that it is "x'ed" and start the game. If you did everything correctly, you should have no problems with your newly-installed mod. You're done...

Hopefully this will be bookmarked for future reference, so that no one will have to explain it time and time again. It may not be the one Miltiades made, but it's something. Cheers!

How do I make my plugin (mod), avaible for download for other people?

 

When you are done with making your first mod, you think are worthy of a public release, you need to upload it somewhere. But first there are a couple of things that are good to do...!

One thing you allways should do, no matter if it's a mod for yourself only, or a mod you want to release it to 'clean' it! you can clean it using testool. When you clean it make sure to delete all the gmst's that are present, unless you are editting them. Also, it's a good thing to mention that you have cleaned your mod, just to make people feel safe using it.

Now when the plugin is cleaned from all the evil gmst's you need to pack your mod, you can pack it by using this little handy program made by MentalElf, it's called Testfiles. Tesfiles will analyse your .esp file, and find automaticly pack a folder with the files your mod use. Tesfiles got an easy userfriendly interface, and is reliable! *NOTE* You will only have to use tesfiles on your .esp file if you have added custom stuff to your mod, that will be new meshes and textures etc.

Now you have it cleaned, and packed you would think you are ready to upload it, but no! not yet.. Now you will have to make a readme file for the mod. It's allways a good thing to make it in notepad since all users have that. In the readme you should have information about your mod, such as:

What does the mod add? It is allways a good idea telling people what they will get when they dl and install the mod. The description don't have to be long, but informative. Let's say your mod adds a new sword to the game in a little dungeon. Then you should write something like this: This mod adds a new sword to the game of morrowind. The sword is a completely new mesh, with new textures made by *****. You will find the sword in a new dungeon called ******.  ******* is located southwest of Seyda Neen, and is well guarded, so be aware. Something like that is what you can write in your mod description...

How to install the mod?  It is a good idea to tell people how to install your mod to. Telling them where the specific files are supposed to go, and where to unzip it. You can write it sorta like this: Meshes (the .nif files) goes to the meshes folder (morrowind/datafiles/meshes). All the textures (the .tga, .bmp and .dds files) goes to the textures directory (morrowind/datafiles/textures). Something like that..

Requirements for the mod:  Let people know if your mod requires any other mod, and wich of the expansions (if any) it requires. If  you have Morrowind and Bloodmoon loaded, you will have to inform people about it. Like writting: This mod Requires the main morrowind.esm, and the bloodmoon.esm to work.

Credits and usage: Credits is where you tell wich people that have done the stuff you have used in your mod (unless you did it yourself!). Allways remember to ask for permission to use the models and textures, unless the readme tells you that you're good to go using them! If the stuff in the mod are made by you, it's allways nice to know if  we are allowed to use new stuff in our mods.

Contact: It's also a good idea to leave a little contact info, just incase they want to ask you about usage of a model, or a bug report. You can leave a secondary email, or just your username on the elderscrolls forums.

Packing the mod:  Now, when you are done with all that you can start thinking of zipping it and uploading it. There are a good choice of Zipping program you can use to zip your mod with, some zip better than others though.

7zip
PowerArchiver
WinRAR
Winace
WinZip
Zipgenius

Can all be used to zip your mod with, though most people use winrar or winzip. 7zip is the program of those wich got the biggest size reduction. When you are zipping it remember to include the readme in it. When zipping the files that Tesfiles packed just mark the folders, right click your mouse and select zip. Now open the archive, and select add file. Go find your readme file, and add that to the archive. Now all you have left to do is to check that the files are there (just take a quick look). And renaming the archive.

Beta testing: Before releasing your mod it's allways a good idea to have some people beta test it. Just to check that every file is packed, and you haven't done any mistakes ingame that will look embarrasing when you have released the mod. Beta testing is allways a good idea to have, even if it's just a small mod. We all would hate to have any mistakes when releasing our mods, wouldn't we?

Uploading the mod: When you are done with having it beta tested you are ready for uploadign the mod. There are many sites you can upload them to, so I'll just post a few:

Summit
Tessource
Oblivionsource
ElricM
Thelys
 

When uploaded: When you have your mod uploaded you can go to The elderscrolls forums and post a "Release thread".  In a release thread I usually just paste in my Readme, and a couple of screenshots. You can upload screenshots to imageshack or photobucket.