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[grifter66]

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+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++

AS WITH ANY GUIDE/TUTORIAL I WRITE OF THIS NATURE
MY WARNING TO PEOPLE IS THIS:
ALWAYS MAKE A BACK UP OF EVERYTHING EVEN IF IT DOESN'T SEEM OR YOU DON'T HINK IT IS IMPORTANT.
IF YOU DON'T MAKE BACK UP AND SOMETHING HAPPENS THEN IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT.
YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE ON THIS......YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!

Now I want to explain that:
1. Anyone can follow this guide
2. Provided you follow exactly what is posted, you will have no problems
3. If you can't follow this guide or you do have problems, then
you either did something wrong or you're just plain stupid.
I know this guide is 100% accurate because I wrote it while I was editing
the Morrowind.xbe File. So I know this guide will and does work. Now it's up to you

One final note if something happens to you game then I will not be held responsible
for your actions. As I am not making or suggest you do anything.
This guide is simply being posted to explain in a very simple way, how to hex edit
The Morrowind.xbe file

GOOD LUCK and have fun.

+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++WARNING+++++++

Now rather than tell you what this guide won't cover, I'll make this really simple
to understand by telling you what the only thing this guide does cover (See below) This guide only covers how to hex edit the Morrwoind.xbe file. and nothing else.
if you come in here looking for anything else, you won't find it.

See this link for an awesome how to conversion method:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=369851

And see these links for stuff people got working:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=373883
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=328202
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=371735
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I'm going to get straight to the point now

First off I suggest you place and use on your desktop for easier finding (That's what I did,and that's the example I'm using for this tutorial as well.

Here Is what you are going to need:
1. Your Morrowind.xbe File on your computer
2. A hex editor.

The instructions I'm using revolve around this hex editor:

http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi...nload/xvi32.zip

Now if for some reason this link doesn't work or that the link eventually becomes inactive. Then give me you e-mail address and I will send you a copy of it.
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Now the first thing you will want to know is what is the point to hex editing your .xbe file
Well the answer is simple. All that hex editing the .xbe file does is make it so you
can put the PC mods directly into the game directory itself and allow them to work
rather than having to put them into the X, Y, or Z, catche. This in turn makes it so that
you don't have to keep installing the mods to the X, Y, or Z, catche, over and over.
This happens because when 3 games are loaded the X, Y, or Z, catche delete's what was in there.
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Ok here are the first 2 things that need to be done:

1. Download and install the hex editor on your desk top I have supplied in the link above
2. FTP your Morrowind.xbe file to your desk top and make a back up of it.

Ok once everything above is set then proceed to the steps below.
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How to edit the Morrowind.xbe file itself

Step 1. Press the insert and and Caps Lock keys on you keyboard (This just make it easier)
Step 2. Open the hex editor
Step 3. Click File in the upper right hand corner and click open
Step 4. Navigate to your desktop and open the Morrowind.xbe
Step 5. You will now see a bunch of jibberish
Step 6. Ignore that and click search and then click find
Step 7. A window will open up titled find with a search bar in it.
Step 8. The only thing you need to do in this window is make sure the text String box is checked off
Step 9. Copy and Paste this  Z:\  into the text search box making sure that there is no space after the \
Step 10. So now the only thing that is in the search bar is this:    Z:\
Step 11. Click Ok (Read the suggestion before proceeding to step 12)
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Suggestion:
From here on down you may want to delete the steps as you do them so you don't get
confused on where you are. I have also seperated the steps for so they are
easier to follow by not being clustered together.
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Step 12. You will now see a Z highlighted in blue on the right side of the hex editor
Step 13. Press the d on your keyboard you will see the Z change to a D

Step 14. Press the F3 key and it will come to another Z highlighted in blue, ignore that one and press F3 again

Step 15. You will now see a Z highlighted in blue on the right side of the hex editor
Step 16. Press the d on your keyboard you will see the Z change to a D

Step 17. Press the F3 key and it will come to another Z highlighted in blue, ignore that one and press F3 again

Step 18. You will now see a Z highlighted in blue on the right side of the hex editor
Step 19. Press the d on your keyboard you will see the Z change to a D

Step 20. Press the F3 key and it will come to another Z highlighted in blue, ignore that one and press F3 again

Step 21. You will now see a Z highlighted in blue on the right side of the hex editor
Step 22. Press the d on your keyboard you will see the Z change to a D

Step 23. Click file, highlight Save (NOT SAVE AS)
Step 24. Close the hex editor and now your all set
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Also to remember to undo insert and caps lock

Now the only thing you need to do is delete the original MNorrowind.xbe file on your
system and replace it with your newly hex edited Morrowind.xbe
Now you can place the mods directly into the game directory instaed of having to mess with
the X, Y, or Z, Catche
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Some side notes:
2 advantages of hex editing comapared to Merging are:

1. Anyone can hex edit or merge but you either need $20-$30 or know someone who can loan you
the disks in order to merge. Hex editing is free

2. Hex editing can do stuff the merging method can't do Such as play the mods from the game directory
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Well there it is I hope your hexing goes well. Also let me know with feedback (Here) how this tutorial was, is, or could be. As I explained it as basic as I could. and as I said follow me tutorial and you shouldn't have a problem.
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This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 22 2005, 07:49 PM

[little boy baka]

Thanks for the guide.
Unfortunately, I have adopted your former role on this forum and I can't get anything working. Can I ask a question, though: Why are all the Zs cchanged to "D?" My Morrowind files are in E. Or does D mean something else?

[grifter66]

Note to all you comp freaks:
please don't confuse people by adding in a bunch of tech explinations and things that are just going to confuse people. I have written this so that anyone reading this can get the gist of why you change the Z:\ To D:\. Because when you break it down the way I have written below, that's what it's doing in the.
Remember this is laymens terms not high tech C++ that only certain people can understand terms
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No you asked: Why are all the Zs cchanged to "D?" My Morrowind files are in E. Or does D mean something else?


That's a really good question and I should have added that in my tutorial. I thought the samething and asked the exact samething you just did.

I'll explain this in laymans terms:


D:\ Means something else.
My game is on the F:\ drive your's is on E:\

So why wouldn't I change the Z:\ To F:\ and you change all the Z:\ to E:\ instead right.
You can have the game in 18 places on your system but regardless of where it is
the system is checking the D:\ Drive for the game. and D gets re routed to be read from the other drives.

That's the reason for changing the Z:\ to D:\
After you learn more about this you can figure out exactly how this works but for now all you need to know is what I told you. You can't get any simpler than that.

If you really want to then go ahead and change all the Z:\ to E:\ and see what happens.


I told you just follow the instructions above and you won't have an problem.
I didn't say you shouldn't have a problem I said you wont have a problem.

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 22 2005, 11:46 PM

[little boy baka]

QUOTE(grifter66 @ Mar 22 2005, 11:38 PM)

If you really want to then go ahead and change all the Z:\ to E:\ and see what happens.
I told you just follow the instructions above and you won't have an problem.

Unfortunately, I've already tried that and have gotten a lovely DDE screen XD

Alright, so assuming your hex tutorial is right, I know I just have to put my mods in the Data Files folder. Can the mods still be in .esp format on the Xbox?

Also, grifter, since you've tried many mods on XBOX, have you had any illegal characters-in-filenames issues whilst transferring files?

This post has been edited by little boy baka: Mar 22 2005, 11:48 PM

[grifter66]

   
Unfortunately, I've already tried that and have gotten a lovely DDE screen XD
   

  Define what you mean by illeagal names

  What did I tell you would happen if you didn't follow what I have written in the tutorial. Do you think I post this stuff just because I think it looks nice?

  I don't get why you would go ahead and do soemthing that it specifically says if you do this ANY OTHER WAY YOU WILL HAVE PROBLEMS

___________________________________________________________________
Ok enough with this here is the answer to your question about the formats

The beauty of the hexed method is that once the Bloodmoon and Tribunal dependencies are removed and the mod is updated to the current version
They will work in either esp or esm format.

I haven't run into a mod yet that I haven't been able to use either format
But then again those are just the mods I have tested

I usually make 2 versions of the mod just in case I run into that specific problem. But as I said before as long as it's configured properly, so far both formats have worked for me on my system

Now do me a favor will you just follow the tutorial and you'll see.

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 23 2005, 12:04 AM

[little boy baka]

QUOTE(grifter66 @ Mar 22 2005, 11:53 PM)

Unfortunately, I've already tried that and have gotten a lovely DDE screen XD

  What did I tell you would happen if you didn't follow what I have written in the tutorial. Do you think I post this stuff just because I think it looks nice?

  I don't get why you would go ahead and do soemthing that it specifically says if you do this ANY OTHER WAY YOU WILL HAVE PROBLEMS

I tried it before I came across your tutorial. I want to test it out again now, but SOMEONE is busy playing Fable on my Xbox. Pffft. How could I ever imagine that I'd dump Morrowind in favour of that game. Morrowind is closer to what Fable was supposed to be than the actual thing.
Uh, anyway, I did try out your method EXACTLY earlier, but the Cutthroat Mods NPC Companion thing didn't work with it, even though it worked when I did the merge method. The actual Z:\ things you have to edit differs in like, EVERY THREAD. Follow your own tutorial and give me the actual directory names that each of the Z:\ entries correspond to, ie.
Z:\
Z:\DATA FILES\MESHES\
etc.

Because your guide takes me to a Z:\ entry with some .dat file in it.

[grifter66]

1. Ok look I wrote that tutorial right as I was doing it so I know it work.
2. Either give me the link to the cutthroat mod or e-mail me the mod iself
[email protected]
3. I never said all mods would work. I mearly said that all the mods that I used worked. If someone says a mod doesn't work then there is a 99% that I won't  bother with it because I was all ready informed that it wouldn't work.

I have no idea how to read the directory names all I know is what I did and this is what I did: Pay attention to teh alpha numeric code on the left side
And I only changed 4 Z's
The 1st Z is at: C4856
The 3rd Z is at: 35B713
The 5th Z is at: 35FD55
The 7th Z is at: 37145F
Thats' what I have done, that's were they are, this way works, and I'm not about to change it.
You can if you like but that's up to you.

Now someone posted that changing the 6th Z instead of the 7th will allow you to use textures.
All I have to say on that is maybe it will and maybe it won't.
But the fact remains that what allow you to use textures is the amount of RAM in your system. The more RAM the more and higher textures can be played Such as land masses. I have used a few extensive textured mods (Or at least I think they are extensive) I also don't try to push my system to the limit of what I may be able to get it to do or pull off. I keep it simple. I try a mod and if it doesn't work I triple check everything amd if it still doesn't show up I place it into a folded mods that not sure work and get back to it later.


You see I already know that using multiple mods with textures, landmasses will almost not wind up either working right or not working at all.
So I have a tendency to stay away from them.

All I can tell you is that if you follwo the tutorial and as long as it doesn't get placed into the Data files improperly then it should work.

And since I have hex edited my .xbe file I have not gotten one DDE since neither has my game froze on me in the middle of playing.
But I can assure you that every mod I have on my list works on it's own with no others active or in my Data Files Folder becuase to list which mods work with each other and which ones don't, you would never get to play teh game because there would be way too many combos to test and you would never get done even with 55 people helping you. So that's why i said keep it simple

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 23 2005, 12:37 AM

[grifter66]

I also want to add that it really doesn't matter what address they are at. If you follow the tutorial and when you press F3 when instructed and the right amount of times, then you will be right where you need to be. I don't see how a simple instruction turned into this mess.
How did you manage to screw up my instruction manual. I was very precise.

It seems to me like you are more hell bent on understanding hjow and why this stuff works and how it is reading off of the sytem. That's not what this is tutorial is for. I specifically said it the beginning of my tutorial that this will only explain how to hex edit the Morrowind.xbe file and if you come here looking for anything else you won't find it.

Dude either follow the tutorial or just give up. There is no tutorial that is written simpler than mine and you managed to screw that up and that is next to impossible to do becuase of how I write them. i never thought I would see the day that one of my tutorials would get Fucked up.
Just follow the tutorial will you.

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 23 2005, 12:46 AM

[Hopeful]

If the cutthroat mod includes heavy scripting it may require merging, but I don't know how that works.  I don't really play mods that have much if any scripting.  'little boy baka',  the instructions should work perfectly for you if you're using the same hex editor, the Game of The Year version of morrowind and the 'morrowind.xbe', not the 'default.xbe'.  Since everyone has the exact same xbe file, searching for Z:\ correctly will always take the same number of times. Change the first Z:\ Skip the Second, change the next Z:\, skip the next one, etc.  Do that until you've changed 4 Z:\ locations to D:\.  

You can see why you change it to a D:\, if you think about it quickly. I don't know anything about programming but I am pretty sure this is how it works.  The xbox is only supposed to run things off of a DVD (the D:\ drive) right? I'm pretty sure that a mod causes anything you try to run off the Hard Drive to be interpreted as if it were a DVD in the D:\ drive, so that it will run at all. Your morrowind is read as being a DVD loaded in the D:\ drive while you play it.

[grifter66]

Good explination Hopeful.
I also think that he was trying to re-edit the .xbe file not realizing that it may have been altered by accident

[Pyro0623]

This is some pretty good stuff, BTW.
But what about the plain old original Version.

In the xbe there are only five instances of Z:\ do i do the same as for GOTY except ignore the seventh one? or is there a competly different approach?

with my version you can just stuff the ESPs and ESMs in the cache, and all the meshes and textures in the Data files in the morrowind dir. saves a bunch of pissing around when an ESP is only a couple megs. But i still get DDEs for some reason, any clues?


This post has been edited by Pyro0623: Mar 30 2005, 05:24 PM

[grifter66]

QUOTE(Pyro)

This is some pretty good stuff, BTW.
But what about the plain old original Version.

I have No Idea. I only wrote out the fomula that someone else had figured out.

QUOTE(Pyro)

In the xbe there are only five instances of Z:\ do i do the same as for GOTY except ignore the seventh one? or is there a competly different approach?

But here is an idea, make a back up of the original .xbe and edit it ignoring the last Z:\ and saa what happens...If worst comes to worst jsut restore the original
Can't do any harm in checking it out right?

QUOTE(Pyro)

with my version you can just stuff the ESPs and ESMs in the cache, and all the meshes and textures in the Data files in the morrowind dir. saves a bunch of pissing around when an ESP is only a couple megs. But I still get DDEs for some reason, any clues?

I'm just guessing so don't take my word as fact here are my thoughts on that
1. The esp/esm and it's counterparts all nee to be in the same place
2. Even though you have removed the BM and TB dependencies the game is still trying to read them as being there
3. It's becuase those particular mods can't be placed into the catche
4. You need to update the mode to the current Morrowind.xbe

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 30 2005, 06:08 PM

[Pyro0623]

QUOTE(grifter66 @ Mar 30 2005, 09:01 AM)

4. You need to update the mode to the current Morrowind.xbe

 What do you mean by this?
Are you refeering to updateing the plugin version to the Xbox ESM with the "v.1.x" button in the DTK?

[grifter66]

I need to make a correction:
When I mentioned to update the Morrowind.xbe,

I meant to say The Morrowind.esm Not the Morrowind.xbe

I didn't realize that I said .xbe Sorry about that.
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And to answer your question about this

QUOTE(Pyro0623)

What do you mean by this?
Are you refeering to updateing the plugin version to the Xbox ESM with the "v.1.x" button in the DTK?

Yes I am!
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Why is there another way of updating this that I'm not aware of?

This post has been edited by grifter66: Mar 31 2005, 11:03 PM

[Pyro0623]

I have Aquired Morrownd GoTY for PC. Is there a Tut for merging the BM & TB ESMs into into into the xbox version, and also a way to decompress the BSA archive files to add tex packs to it?

QUOTE

I'm just guessing so don't take my word as fact here are my thoughts on that
1. The esp/esm and it's counterparts all nee to be in the same place
2. Even though you have removed the BM and TB dependencies the game is still trying to read them as being there
3. It's becuase those particular mods can't be placed into the catche
4. You need to update the mode to the current Morrowind.xbe

1.  I have had that method running for Better bodies and a bunch of weapon and head packs, worked flawlessly. only started doing it when more mods were added. methinks that it is a ram over-run error. thus my reason for wanting to merge mods right into the core ESM and BSA. or better yet, Unpack the archive, leave it unpacked like the PC version and set the .ini to use raw.

2. all the mods I am using had no BM & TB dependencies. were all compiled with the original.

3. they were placed in the cache and did run, but when taking the silt strider to a big town like Ald-ruhn or Vivec, it would DDE on me. and it's not a DVD fault as im running it off the hard drive.

4.  I did that.

QUOTE

Why is there another way of updating this that I'm not aware of?

No, just making sure we're on the same page here.