So…Multiplayer Morrowind?

By Lo-Ping - Thu Jun 30, 7:56 pm

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Imagine this: You’re traversing the barrens of the West Gash when you get swarmed by a mob of cliff racers. Your mana and health are both low, and after using all the skills at your disposal, you’re still in a hopeless situation. Enter your non AI friend. With a few enchants here and there, he buffs you, heals you, and helps you take down this mob better than any AI buddy could. Mere fantasy? Apparently not.

A modder by the name of Dragongeo2 is working on “Project Aedra”, a Morrowind Engine re-write that not only adds better graphics and features into the game, but multiplayer as well. It has mod compatibility, and server customization where you can choose different “modes” for how you want your server to work. For example, your server could function like an MMO where quests could be repeated and dungeons respawn. You can also set the difficulty slider for your server and much more. When players quit, the server’s data will be saved and locked until at least one player joins later.

The way that mod compatibility works is like this:

There’s two types of mods that both Morrowind and Aedra support:
A) ESP/ESM mods or “A-mods”: these are things like body replacers, land replacers, total conversions, land adders, balancing patches, and official expansion packs
B) NIF/DXT/TGA replacers or “B-mods”: these are things like mesh upgraders, environment replacers, and texture upgraders

When you create an Aedra server, you get to pick from one of three server options:

1) Pure server only
– In this mode, the server’s A and B mods list MUST match the client’s A and B mods list. If the client does not have a required mod, then they cannot be allowed to join the server until they go get it. If the client has mods enabled that the server does not have enabled, then the client’s mods are disabled such that the enabled mod settings are *exactly the same* between the client and server

2) Wild mode
– In Wild mode, the client and server can have whichever A and B mods they want enabled, however, if the client uses an A or a B mod which the server does not have on, and that mod changes the gameplay significantly so the client and server desynchronize, then the client may be dropped from the server or the client may experience “snapping” – a networking glitch where the client needs to update its gamestate to match that of the server’s.

3) Hybrid mode
– The client and server must both have the same A-mods enabled (just like Pure mode) but the client and server are allowed to have different B-mods enabled. This will produce minimal network snapping (unless you’re using a mod that, for instance, lets you change the pathing on a bridge or something like that)

The game difficulty type is chosen by the server creator. There’s two kinds of game difficulty:

1) Flat difficulty – This is the usual -100 to +100 slider that you see in Morrowind, and it sets the game difficulty for everybody connected to that server. Only the server administrators may change the game difficulty once a server has been started.

2) Scaling difficulty – This is a sliding difficulty scale that gets harder as more players join the server. This mode is designed for co-operative LAN-play and it’s sort of like the Diablo-esque difficulty scaling. It is not possible to switch between difficulty modes after a server has been started, even if you are a server administrator. If you want to change modes, you need to stop the server, and start a different server with different settings.

More information along with a few demo vids can be found here.