Tables

If you have launched OpenMW CS already and played around with it for a bit, you will have noticed that the interface is made entirely of tables. This does not mean it works just like a spreadsheet application though, it would be more accurate to think of databases instead. Due to the vast amounts of information involved with Morrowind tables made the most sense. You have to be able to spot information quickly and be able to change them on the fly.

Used Terms

Record
An entry in OpenMW CS representing an item, location, sound, NPC or anything else.
Instance, Object

When an item is placed in the world, it does not create a whole new record each time, but an instance of the object.

For example, the game world might contain a lot of exquisite belts on different NPCs and in many crates, but they all refer to one specific instance: the Exquisite Belt record. In this case, all those belts in crates and on NPCs are instances. The central Exquisite Belt instance is called an object. This allows modders to make changes to all items of the same type in one place.

If you wanted all exquisite belts to have 4000 enchantment points rather than 400, you would only need to change the object Exquisite Belt rather than all exquisite belt instances individually.

Some columns are recurring throughout OpenMW CS, they show up in (nearly) every table.

ID
Each item, location, sound, etc. gets the same unique identifier in both OpenMW CS and Morrowind. This is usually a very self-explanatory name. For example, the ID for the (unique) black pants of Caius Cosades is Caius_pants. This allows players to manipulate the game in many ways. For example, they could add these pants to their inventory by opening the console and entering: player- >addItem Caius_pants. In both Morrowind and OpenMW CS the ID is the primary way to identify all these different parts of the game.
Modified

This column shows what has happened (if anything) to this record. There are four possible states in which it can exist:

Base
The record is unmodified and from a content file other than the one currently being edited.
Added
This record has been added in the currently content file.
Modified
Similar to base, but has been changed in some way.
Deleted
Similar to base, but has been removed as an entry. This does not mean, however, that the occurrences in the game itself have been removed! For example, if you were to remove the CharGen_Bed entry from morrowind.esm, it does not mean the bedroll in the basement of the Census and Excise Office in Seyda Neen will be gone. You will have to delete that instance yourself or make sure that that object is replaced by something that still exists otherwise the player will get crashes in the worst case scenario.

World Screens

The contents of the game world can be changed by choosing one of the options in the appropriate menu at the top of the screen.

Regions

This describes the general areas of Vvardenfell. Each of these areas has different rules about things such as encounters and weather.

Name
This is how the game will show the player’s location in-game.
MapColour
This is a six-digit hexadecimal representation of the colour used to identify the region on the map available in WorldRegion Map.
Sleep Encounter
These are the rules for what kinds of enemies the player might encounter when sleeping outside in the wilderness.

Cells

Expansive worlds such as Vvardenfell, with all its items, NPCs, etc. have a lot going on simultaneously. But if the player is in Balmora, why would the computer need to keep track the exact locations of NPCs walking through the corridors in a Vivec canton? All that work would be quite useless and bring the player’s system down to its knees! So the world has been divided up into squares we call cells. Once your character enters a cell, the game will load everything that is going on in that cell so the player can interact with it.

In the original Morrowind this could be seen when a small loading bar would appear near the bottom of the screen while travelling; the player had just entered a new cell and the game had to load all the items and NPCs. The Cells screen in OpenMW CS provides you with a list of cells in the game, both the interior cells (houses, dungeons, mines, etc.) and the exterior cells (the outside world).

Sleep Forbidden
Can the player sleep on the floor? In most cities it is forbidden to sleep outside. Sleeping in the wilderness carries its own risks of attack, though, and this entry lets you decide if a player should be allowed to sleep on the floor in this cell or not.
Interior Water

Should water be rendered in this interior cell? The game world consists of an endless ocean at height 0, then the landscape is added. If part of the landscape goes below height 0, the player will see water.

Setting the cell’s Interior Water to true tells the game that this cell that there needs to be water at height 0. This is useful for dungeons or mines that have water in them.

Setting the cell’s Interior Water to false tells the game that the water at height 0 should not be used. This flag is useless for outside cells.

Interior Sky

Should this interior cell have a sky? This is a rather unique case. The Tribunal expansion took place in a city on the mainland. Normally this would require the city to be composed of exterior cells so it has a sky, weather and the like. But if the player is in an exterior cell and were to look at their in-game map, they would see Vvardenfell with an overview of all exterior cells. The player would have to see the city’s very own map, as if they were walking around in an interior cell.

So the developers decided to create a workaround and take a bit of both: The whole city would technically work exactly like an interior cell, but it would need a sky as if it was an exterior cell. That is what this is. This is why the vast majority of the cells you will find in this screen will have this option set to false: It is only meant for these “fake exteriors”.

Region
To which Region does this cell belong? This has an impact on the way the game handles weather and encounters in this area. It is also possible for a cell not to belong to any region.

Objects

This is a library of all the items, triggers, containers, NPCs, etc. in the game. There are several kinds of Record Types. Depending on which type a record is, it will need specific information to function. For example, an NPC needs a value attached to its aggression level. A chest, of course, does not. All Record Types contain at least a 3D model or else the player would not see them. Usually they also have a Name, which is what the players sees when they hover their reticle over the object during the game.

Please refer to the Record Types chapter for an overview of what each type of object does and what you can tell OpenMW CS about these objects.