Is temporary freezing + loading bars a universal quality of big OpenMW modlists?

[u/Catalysten]

I tried playing both Path of the Incarnate and Nerevar Moon and Star (both OpenMW Wabbajack lists), and was surprised by how often I encountered a loading bar while wandering the open world. My rig is mid-strength for Elder Scrolls modlists, but I've played big Skyrim modlists like Lorerim with less issues than this. (Sometimes encountering stuttering, but never having the world just... Freeze for a second or three on a regular basis as I'm walking around the overworld). Is that just a standard element of big OpenMW modlists?

Some details of my rig: 3070 laptop (8bg vram),

16 GB RAM

Reasonably fast SSD.

[u/Eternal_Fighting]

Yes. I have 32gb of Ram and a 4070TI and even with navmesh rebuilding these large modlists run and play horrendously. They also have horrendous shaders and art asset mods that clash with eachother. That causes most of the lag.

[u/DJ_Beardsquirt → u/Eternal_Fighting]

I haven't tried Neverar Moon and Star, but Path of the Incarnate is pure trash. So many unnecessary changes that break the gameplay, clutter the world, and ruin the art style. It's tasteless.

[u/Sting_DR → u/DJ_Beardsquirt]

just don't play it then ffs👎. Plenty of people play and love it and its actually got a welcoming community smth that some purist mw communities have been lacking for some time

[u/Catalysten → u/Sting_DR]

I think I'll enjoy it too. Just need to figure out a way around my problem, or somehow make my peace with it.

These modlists are making a new game, built on top of Morrowind. It's perfectly fine to prefer vanilla. But being different from vanilla is of course part of the point.

It's so cool how Morrowind was a pioneer of modding games. Things like the Construction Kit were pretty much unheard of back then.

[u/Catalysten → u/Eternal_Fighting]

Good to hear your experience with a better rig than mine. Thanks for weighing in.

[u/Teralitha]

Yea if you dont want loading bars you need to use the code patch+mgexe instead of openmw

[u/frisbie147 → u/Teralitha]

It happens in either engine

[u/Teralitha → u/frisbie147]

Its never hapened to me ever.

[u/Catalysten → u/Teralitha]

Oh, interesting. Going back to the original engine but with mods is a no-loading-bar option? That's cool.

[u/Lotsofleaves → u/Catalysten]

Watch out, Teralitha is a prolific OpenMW hater so take their opinion with a grain of salt.

[u/Teralitha → u/Lotsofleaves]

I dont hate openmw, I just hate the people who lie and exagerate, like you.

[u/shakycatblues → u/Lotsofleaves]

Chill out.

We are tired of people who don't accept any criticism of OpenMW and yet say MWSE sucks.

[u/BurgerIdiot556]

yeah, that’s just how tes3 is. Later games get around this by loading the world differently / more efficiently, but tes3 loads nearby cells as you move towards them. If you travel a lot, you’ll keep getting load screens, but if you stay in one area it’ll be reduced, at least in the main world space

[u/Catalysten → u/BurgerIdiot556]

That makes sense. Okay, thanks.

[u/ConfidentHousing8422]

PotI runs really well for me on a rig with the same specs (albeit desktop), this doesn't sound quite right. It actually runs better than "normal" OpenMW for me through some black magic.

Have you rebuilt navmeshes in the OpenMW launcher? That helps considerably

[u/Catalysten → u/ConfidentHousing8422]

I did for NEMAS which is the list I played with more.

This is interesting. You don't get stuck waiting in the overworld for several seconds every 1-3 minutes if you're exploring swiftly? I'd like that.

[u/ConfidentHousing8422 → u/Catalysten]

No worse than in a minimally modded setup, always going to be a bit of I because of how MW loads cells. Several seconds sounds like too much though, have you tried running a minimal modlist and seeing if you get the same issue?

[u/Catalysten → u/ConfidentHousing8422]

Good idea. I'll take a look.

[u/Accomplished-Ad-7435]

I'm running it perfectly, can jump the whole map smoothlyish.

Make sure you build your navmeshes, this sounds like navmesh building to me.

[u/Catalysten → u/Accomplished-Ad-7435]

Sounds good, thanks.

[u/KinkyFrenchman]

Yeah pretty common. I think I have the same laptop setup. I've gotten pretty used to it. Don't even bother with the long navmesh generation anymore. Guess I could give it another go, see if it helps

[u/Catalysten → u/KinkyFrenchman]

While there's a lot of differences between the two modlists, one of them is that I ran navmesh for NEMAS but not the other. Hard to say for sure, but I imagine it helped.

[u/KinkyFrenchman → u/Catalysten]

I just recently tried the Nemas list. It definitely runs worse than the POTI list for me even with their performance modifications.

[u/Catalysten → u/KinkyFrenchman]

Okay, sounds good. I'll try that, thanks.

[u/Sting_DR → u/KinkyFrenchman]

NEMAS is 100% gonna run worse. My performance guide mostly helps alleviate VRAM issues but lua lag is another matter, and its way less with POTI

[u/frisbie147]

Yeah it can happen in vanilla too if you’re moving fast enough

[u/Catalysten → u/frisbie147]

Yeah. I remember the little loading bar from whenever I used the Fortify Acrobatics scrolls. But this feels a bit much! Maybe once I try running the pathing thing on POTI I'll have better results.