Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
In 1996, Bethesda Softworks published the second in their nascent Elder Scrolls series of fantasy role-playing computer games, Daggerfall (see FCM137’s Everyday Ubuntu column for details on the game and how to run it in Linux). It came in a now highly-collectible gold holofoil box (I actually have TWO of those boxes), and was advertised as “Your Newest Obsession”, which was a pretty apt claim. The world of Daggerfall, Tamriel, was stunning at the time, if for nothing else, for its sheer scope. As far as I know, it’s still the largest computer game world ever created, with over 60,000 square miles and more than 15,000 towns to explore.
First person perspective gaming was still pretty new at the time, and probably fairly low resolution and cartoony looking to modern sensibilities, but it was (and still is) a very entertaining and engaging game. It was also very popular, so Bethesda soon announced a sequel, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Due originally in 2001, Morrowind was repeatedly delayed and rescheduled until it finally came out in 2003.
An Amazing Upgrade
When Morrowind did finally come out, the wide consensus was that it was WELL worth the wait. The graphics were a phenomenal upgrade over the original, the gameplay was much improved, Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack was fantastic, and the game soon became a much-lauded instant classic. The backgrounds and landscapes are particularly great, in my opinion, and hold up pretty well even today.
You start out your adventures in a seaside village called Seyda Neen, which has somewhat swampy forests shrouded in fog, pretty realistic looking ground, water, and flora, and human or humanoid figures that are a bit lacking in polygon count, but still look pretty okay in my humble opinion, especially for the time. The voice acting is also on point. It’s actually surprisingly entertaining to simply walk around the town and its environs and just soak up the atmosphere, checking out the fantastic plants and animals, looking at the memorable silt striders, and just virtually living in a compelling and believable fantasy world.
Morrowind had such lasting popularity that there are still active online communities modifying it to this day, particularly upgrading the graphics even more, in order to conform to modern standards. You can play a thoroughly modified Morrowind today and easily believe it’s a fairly current game, rather than a 20-year old one. The game was popular enough to give birth to the also critically-acclaimed Oblivion and Skyrim chapters in the Elder Scrolls series.
Getting Started with OpenMW
Fortunately, it’s a pretty simple task to play Morrowind on a modern Linux computer, thanks to the existence of OpenMW. OpenMW is an open-source Morrowind implementation that encourages continued modifications and upgrades to the existing Morrowind base. In order to play Morrowind, though, you will need to have the data files, as they are not public domain and cannot be included with OpenMW.
Fortunately, Morrowind is a very inexpensive purchase on GOG.COM, $14.99 at the time of this column’s publishing (it’s actually on sale for only $4.49 as I write, but that will be over long before you see this, dear readers). I have the fully digital GOG version of Morrowind installed on a Windows 10 computer, so I can get the data files needed for OpenMW from that location. Simply drag your Morrowind folder from your Windows PC hard drive to a portable drive (I used a thumb drive, but an external hard drive or an SD/MicroSD card would also work). Once you have the game folder transferred to a folder on your Linux computer’s drive, you’ll be ready to install OpenMW and import the Morrowind data.
Installing OpenMW
Hit the key combination CTRL-ALT-T on your keyboard. That key combination will start a Terminal command line session. In Terminal, type:
sudo apt-get install openmw
and hit Enter. Answer any prompts appropriately and OpenMW will be installed.
Launching OpenMW
Now that OpenMW is installed, click the App Drawer (9 white boxes in a grid, bottom left of your screen).
Type OpenMW at the top of the screen in the search box. There will be two icons found. Click OpenMW Launcher and the application will launch:
Importing the Game Data
Click the Run Installation Wizard button, and the data import process will begin:
Click Next to continue:
Click browse to find the folder where you placed the Morrowind files. Once you’ve found the folder, navigate into the Data Files subfolder:
Within the Data Files folder, you should see an .ESM file. Select the one you want to load (we’ll start with the main Morrowind.esm file here):
Once you double-click the .ESM file, the wizard will continue:
Click Next. We’ll go with the default of English, with all due respect to our friends in non-English speaking countries (my French is nowhere near good enough for playing this game: Vraiment, je parle francais comme une vache espagnole!)
Click Next again. We’ll continue with the default setting and click Next once more:
And we’re done! Click Finish and we’ll be transported to the very doorstep of our upcoming adventure in Tamriel!
Next month: Finally, running and playing Morrowind!