how to install mge xe

Last updated July 24, 2021.

Continued from Part 1.

All right, now that we have the unmodded game working, it's time to set up a few graphical improvements. At the very least, we need to fix our screen resolution. I highly recommend doing this early on, as it may influence your later decisions over which texture upgrades to use, if any.

Many of the tools and addons we use will be downloaded from Morrowind Nexus. You'll find the actual downloadable files on the Files tab (surprise, surprise) and usually with an option for "Mod Manager Download" and "Manual Download." Always choose "Manual Download." This guide was not written with mod managers in mind— I'll explain why in Part 4 (although I do plan to write instructions for using this guide in conjunction with one). If you are already familiar with Mod Organizer 2 (which I discuss in Part 4), you can easily adapt this guide to it by installing the needed utilities and mods through it whenever required. If you're interested in it but don't know how to use it yet, check out the information I've linked to in Part 4 and then come back to this entry to continue.

Before I go any further, I also want to make mention of the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul (MGSO). I am not going to use it, and neither should you. For the uninitiated, MGSO is a famous mod compilation that came with its own installer, and to its credit, it was built with true passion and helped get new players excited about Morrowind who might otherwise not have given an old game a chance. However, it has numerous problems that can be summed up as follows: it packs outdated versions of necessary tools, is known to cause errors, and makes it harder to customize your setup later. Even the original creator of MGSO says it shouldn't be used these days, and has gone so far as to take down his website and rename MGSO on the Nexus to label it as outdated.

Even without those problems, I still wouldn't use MGSO, because the purpose of this guide is to help you understand what all these individual components are, and what they do. I want to turn you into someone who feels confident modding Morrowind a piece at a time until you have it how you want it, even if you make different choices than I do. On a personal note, I'm not fond of some of the specific graphics mods utilized by the Overhaul and it's definitely not purist-friendly (and as I mentioned earlier, there are some annoyances involved in customizing it to your liking).

With that said, let's continue! Now would be a good time to back up your Morrowind folder. Just copy it somewhere so if you make a horrible mess of your installation, you can just start again from a clean, functioning version of the game. I make backups frequently, with different names such as "Morrowind – Clean Install" or "Morrowind – Step x done" (according to the steps outlined in this blog) and I even include a text file of what exactly I've done to them if I feel I'll be confused later. I wish it hadn't taken me 12 years to learn how to do this, but that's why I'm writing this for you, isn't it?

So! What are we going to do today? I am going to introduce you to the Morrowind Graphics Extender. MGE is a program that can improve Morrowind's graphics in a number of ways, from simply allowing you to play the game in any resolution, to increasing your view distance via its Distant Land feature, to more advanced enhancements like shaders (basically, lighting effects) and depth of field (like in photography, things get out of focus as they get farther away). These options can add an almost unbelievable amount of realism to Morrowind, but depending on your preferences, you're free to leave almost all of the enhancements turned off (and depending on your computer, certain settings may cause the game to slow down to an unplayable crawl). Later on we'll dig into the more advanced settings of MGE, but for now we are going to use it only for some very basic changes that will help us get the game up and running.

There are two versions of MGE available: MGE 3.8.0, and the newer, rewritten MGE XE. I used MGE 3.8.0 for many years, but I highly recommend using XE, and only trying the old MGE 3.8.0 if you can't get XE to work at all for some reason, like if you're using a very old computer. My reasoning for this is that MGE XE is much newer and has better support, as well as including some features you'd otherwise need to install separately if you used MGE 3.8.0. I've also noticed better performance with MGE XE— it really seems to be an all-around improvement over the older version, including both quality and performance. MGE XE should be considered the standard for Morrowind modding in 2020.

Because of the above reasons, I'm going to cover MGE XE first, and you should try it before resorting to MGE 3.8.0. I'll walk you through both to the best of my ability, but with MGE 3.8.0 aging as much as it is, I'm not able to provide much support. If MGE XE works for you, you can skip reading the MGE 3.8.0 part, but reading all of the below may help you better understand what we are doing and why.

MGE XE

First, download and install DirectX 9.0c June 2010 from here. You need this for MGE XE to work.

Next, download the MGE XE Installer version from the Nexus and run it to install MGE XE in your Morrowind folder (not Data Files— it has to be in the same folder as Morrowind.exe). One of the advantages of MGE XE is that it includes an updated version of the Morrowind Script Extender (MWSE) which at the time of this writing is 2.1. MWSE allows for more complicated and interesting mods that can do things impossible in the unmodded game, and is considered another staple of Morrowind modding. Even if you don't currently intend to use any mods with advanced scripting, go ahead and install it— it won't hurt anything, and you never know when you might want to try a mod that just happens to require MWSE. Plus, I'm definitely going to recommend a few later on that need it.

Once MGE XE and its built-in MWSE are installed, go to your Morrowind folder. Open up MGEXEgui.exe (run as admin), and you'll see a ton of options. Don't overdo it right now; all we are going to do is set your resolution and your field of view, and set up Distant Land so you can test whether your computer can handle the enhanced view distance. Later on, I'll give a much more detailed explanation and you can come back and tweak everything to your liking.

1. Click the Graphics tab if you're not on it.
2. In the section on the top labeled "Display," enter your screen resolution and aspect ratio (as of MGE XE 0.9.10, the aspect ratio is automatically calculated).
3. In the section below labeled "Renderer," click "Auto FOV" (refers to the width of horizontal degrees you can see).
4. Optionally, click the boxes to run Morrowind in a window and to use windowless fullscreen. This can reduce performance in some occasions, but can also let you alt-tab in and out of the game with less potential for error. Like everything else Morrowind, however, it doesn't work equally well for everyone. My advice is to try it if you're interested.
5. Click the Distant Land tab.
6. Click the button to the right that says "Distant Land Generator Wizard."
7. Check the box in the upper left corner, "Use Distant Land."
8. Click "Use Current Load Order" and then click Continue.
9. You're going to go through land textures, meshes, and statics. Continue through the rest of the Distant Land wizard and for now just leave everything at default.
10. When Distant Land creation is done, click Finish.
11. Click the In-Game tab if you want an option to skip the opening movies, i.e. the Bethesda loading screen and the animated Morrowind menu. This is good for getting into the game more quickly, especially if you anticipate quitting and restarting a lot (which may happen during your adventures with this guide). If you like the opening movies, we will eventually replace them with higher-resolution versions, so feel free to keep them on. Another note about this tab: leave "Allow screenshots" unchecked. This is for Morrowind's built-in screenshot functionality; with this box unchecked you can still use MGE XE to take the screenshots with the PrintScreen key, and you can configure how MGE XE screenshots work under the Graphics tab.
12. Exit MGEXEgui.exe (it shouldn't be open while Morrowind is running; it's just the settings. MGE XE itself starts and exits along with Morrowind) and check out your freshly updated game.

If everything is working, you're good to go! If not, you might try troubleshooting or downgrading to MGE 3.8.0. Also if you're using Steam, Evolve, or any other game tracker with an overlay, make sure all those overlays are turned off!

This is where you can stop reading this entry and skip to the next guide step if MGE XE is working how it's supposed to. Or, you can continue to learn bit about the legacy Morrowind graphics tools that MGE XE made obsolete. Just be aware that if MGE XE is working, you don't need to install anything else on this page of the guide.

MGE 3.8.0

As I mentioned earlier, you should try MGE XE first, as support for the older MGE 3.8.0 is fading, and related downloads are becoming harder to find— in fact, when updating this section for 2020, I had to find a new download for the 2005 version of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable as well as for the FPS Optimizer which I cover next, and then in 2021 I had to find a new download location for the 2008 redistributable. When longstanding tools like these are starting to return 404 Not Found errors (even on Microsoft's website!), it feels like a death knell, and I think we're in the age of MGE XE from now on. (However, if you're a reader of this guide and you'd like to contribute some information or corrections about the original MGE, please feel free to do so in the comments.)

MGE is available here (release version) and here (including the latest beta version, which is still quite old). Full documentation is available here (in the .zip file). If you have trouble with any of my instructions, those official links may help you solve your problem, but MGE's old home The Assimilation Lab has been taken down and many of the comments on the Nexus will direct you toward switching to MGE XE instead.

MGE requires some software on your computer in order to run. This includes Microsoft .NET 2.0 (the oldest available for download is 3.5 but that works too) which you can get here. You also need DirectX 9.0c from here.

Last, you need Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, the 2005 version if you're using an official release of MGE or the 2008 version if you're using an MGE beta. I recommend installing both Visual C++ packages in case you decide to change to a different version of MGE, so install this one (2005) and then this one (2008). It is perfectly fine to have them both on your computer; just make sure you install the older one first.

MGE comes as a compressed archive, not an installer. After you've installed the prerequisites, open the archive and drag everything into your Morrowind folder. MGE will run by itself when you run Morrowind, but to configure it, you will open MGEgui.exe. Open it now (you are running as admin, right?) and click the "Global graphics" tab at the top. Click "Change screen resolution" at the bottom to choose your resolution.

The main menu, stretched to widescreen.

Unlike MGE XE, MGE 3.8.0 doesn't have a FOV option, so if you're using a widescreen resolution, there will be some distortion (which we will fix momentarily). Basically, everything is stretched horizontally to accommodate the wider aspect ratio. Mr. Testdunmer doesn't look so bad, but once you get to the edges of the screen you'll see a difference. That guard in particular looks like he ate every pot roast in the Empire.

In order to fix this, we need to use an additional program called the Morrowind FPS Optimizer. This program includes several options for further tweaking Morrowind, but for now we are just going to use it to set the field of view. (On a computer that runs MGE XE, you probably don't need the FPS Optimizer at all, even for its other tweak functions.)

Install the FPS Optimizer into your Morrowind folder, run it (as admin), uncheck "Novice Mode," and click on the tab called "Misc/2." Near the bottom you will see the FOV and resolution settings; enter them here, choosing the same resolution you entered into MGE. As for FOV, 95-100 degrees seems to work well for widescreen monitors, but you can also calculate it here (for this calculator, Morrowind's old aspect ratio is 4:3 and old FOV is 75).

Now everyone has regained their proper proportions. This does emphasize that Dunmer are some pretty gangly bastards, though.

One final thing you should do with this initial use of MGE is set up the screenshot key (this step is not required for MGE XE). Morrowind has its own screenshot function, but MGE 3.8.0 overrides it. You will have to set up a macro in MGE. From what used to be the MGE wiki:

1. Open MGEgui.exe.
2. Click on the Input tab.
3. Click on Launch Macro Editor.
4. In the Macro Editor, click on the key you want to use. Obviously this should be a key that isn't already used in the game. Also, don't choose the PrintScreen key (doing so will work, but Morrowind will display an irritating error message every time you take a screenshot).
5. At the bottom left of the Macro Editor, open the upper drop-down menu labeled Macro type and select "Function".
6. Open the lower drop-down menu labeled Function and select "Take screenshot".
7. Click "Save". The key you selected should now be displayed in green.
8. Close MGEgui, start Morrowind, and see if the feature works. Sreenshots will be saved with the name "MGE screenshot" (plus a number) in the Morrowind directory.
Note: You can select the screen shot format in the Render State tab.

Like it says, don't use Print Screen since this will cause the "Screenshot not enabled blahblah" message to pop up, and if you're taking a lot of screenshots quickly, that message box will be visible in the subsequent ones.

Don't worry about things like Distant Land in MGE 3.8.0 at this time. Remember all we're trying to do is get everything to the right resolution and aspect ratio. Which, I have to say, is a LOT easier if you're using MGE XE.

Continue to Part 3, in which we patch the .exe to fix issues that addons can't touch.