NCGDMW Lua Edition Frequently Asked Questions
- Q) When I use The Lady my stats aren’t the same as they used to be with the old version of this mod - this mod is broken!!
- Q) How does this compare/relate to the original version on Nexus Mods?
- Q) How can I make my mod compatible with NCGDMW Lua Edition?
- Q) My level progress isn’t increasing, when will I level up?
- Q) When will decay kick in? I’ve played for many hours/waited for hundreds of days and nothing happened!
- Q) Why can’t I raise attributes and skills past 100?
→ Q) When I use The Lady my stats aren’t the same as they used to be with the old version of this mod - this mod is broken!!
A) It’s the other way around actually; OpenMW’s handling of birthsigns used to be broken and now is not. By that I mean it didn’t match the behavior of Morrowind.exe, but now it does.
Background: with OpenMW 0.47 and prior, birthsigns such as The Lady had their buffs applied as a fortification on your skills. This meant that they were effectively ignored by NCGD’s stats calculations and you got the full buff.
In OpenMW 0.48 and newer: birthsigns are now correctly handled as they are in Morrowind.exe. This means that they are applied directly to your stat and are factored into NCGD’s initial stat crunching. This also means that you won’t get the full buff from The Lady for example because it will be reduced with NCGD does its initial stat crunching.
Right now it’s not possible to replicate the old behavior because I can’t know about birthsigns from Lua. When that’s possible I will add an optional feature to replicate this older behavior.
→ Q) How does this compare/relate to the original version on Nexus Mods?
A) This is a continuation of the original NCGDMW by Greywander, which is no longer supported and doesn’t work with modern versions of OpenMW.
That one was last updated in 2018, and since then changes were made to OpenMW which caused breakage in the mod since it unfortunately relied on “features” that were actually implementation inaccuracies (aka bugs).
Atahualpa and I kept the mod going in the face of breakage (you can find that version here), but during the development of OpenMW 0.48 it got to the point where there was no easy way to keep the mod working. Changes in that version make magic work more like Morrowind.exe, but unfortunately break assumptions made by this mod.
Thanks to the efforts of many individuals that worked on OpenMW-Lua, I was able to port the vast majority of the mod’s functionality over to a new version that’s written with Lua. This version lacks the mastery mechanic which allowed skills and attributes to level up past 100 (that will be implemented eventually, it’s simply not doable at the moment), but it sports all new features including:
- Level up and decay progress are now visible via a dedcated NCGD stats menu
- The mod itself is made with far fewer lines of code (thanks to Lua features)
- Works with OpenMW 0.48 (and the related changes to magic which make it more like Morrowind.exe) and will be supported for future versions
- A Lua interface is provided for other mods to interoperate with this one (see the next question below for more information)
- It will also work with any other mod or script that happens to alter attributes outside of this mod’s control (by applying those changes on top of our own calculations)
- … And more to be added in the future!
→ Q) How can I make my mod compatible with NCGDMW Lua Edition?
A) Generally speaking, NCGDMW Lua Edition is compatible with most things out of the box.
I have seen mods in the wild that modify base attributes and/or skills to provide buffs and etc, this will cause level ups/downs as those buffs are added/removed. This can be somewhat jarring for NCGDMW Lua Edition users.
One way to do this that is more friendly to NCGDMW Lua Edition is to use a “Curse” instead of an “Ability” for your spell type. A Curse affects stats as a modifier and will be ignored by NCGDMW Lua Edition’s calulations, whereas an Ability will modify the base stat.
If you’re writing a Lua mod, you can refer to the “Events & Interface” documentation (included with every NCGDMW Lua Edition zip file or on the website) for information about how to hook in from the Lua side of things.
→ Q) My level progress isn’t increasing, when will I level up?
A) At this time, mods can’t change the base game user interface, and NCGD zeroes out the vanilla level progress.
The NCGD Stats Menu will show your level and decay progress if that feature is enabled. To use the menu, set it to a key using the mod settings menu.
→ Q) When will decay kick in? I’ve played for many hours/waited for hundreds of days and nothing happened!
A) Even with the “fast” setting, decay takes a long time to kick in. Increasing your attributes (done by increasing skills) will significantly affect decay progress, which of course doesn’t happen while just standing there which means you could potentially wait for thousands of days before seeing a decay that way.
→ Q) Why can’t I raise attributes and skills past 100?
A) At this time, the OpenMW-Lua API simply doesn’t allow a way to do it. When that time comes, I will add the “mastery” feature.
NCGDMW Lua Edition does not try to limit any stat to 100, though. So it is possible to raise attributes past 100 through normal leveling.