How To Get Morrowind Running On Steam Streaming In Excruciating Detail

[Turgul]

[updated 23 Mar 2015: fixed various problems]

So this thread is here in the hopes it'll help other people trying to run old
games in the future.

My goal was to get Morrowind running on Steam In-Home Streaming. Both server
and client are Windos 7. I ended up having to do a *bunch* of different
things to get it all working. The actual list of things you have to do is
first, then the explanations later.

The Steps:

0. Install from the CDs. To do so, do *not* use the autorun. Browse to the
CDs, right-click on setup.exe, and run as Administrator.

1. Stop steam completely (use the "show hidden icons" down in the bottom
right near the clock) and run Steam as administrator. Steam *must* be running
as Administrator whenever you want to play Morrowind.

2. Set Morrowind.exe to not ask if it's allowed to run as administrator (that
popup is called the UAC; see http://meridian.ws/wordpress/?p=306 ; note that
the other method you'll see online for doing this, the task scheduler method,
*does not work*; you can also just disable UAC entirely, but don't do that)

3. Set Morrowind Launcher.exe to run as administrator by default (see
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff431742.aspx ) (not really
required, but helpful). Run the Morrowind launcher, and set morrowind to run
in windowed mode.

4. Point the Steam server at Morrowind.exe using Games -> Add A Non-Steam
Game, *not* Morrowind Launcher.exe; this means you'll have to be on the server
to do launcher changes. Although, since the launcher never crashes, you
*could* have a launcher entry and a regular Morrowind entry, just be aware
that if you launch morrowind from the launcher over Steam Streaming, it won't
work.

Specifically, you should be launching:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Morrowind\Morrowind.exe"

and the directory should be:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Morrowind\"

5. Before launch, you need to remove/disable GameOverlayRenderer.dll on the
Steam server. I do this by setting up two batch files, say
C:\Users\[you]\Desktop\morrowind-pre.bat
and
C:\Users\[you]\Desktop\morrowind-post.bat . Then in Steam, do the whole
Non-Steam Game dance, add *any* program, and change it to point at the pre
batch file, then the same for the post batch file; that way you can do it all
from the Steam client. The pre batch file contains:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam"
if exist GameOverlayRenderer.dll (
del GameOverlayRenderer.dll-NO
rename GameOverlayRenderer.dll GameOverlayRenderer.dll-NO
) else (
echo "No GOR"
)

and the post batch file contains:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam"
rename GameOverlayRenderer.dll-NO GameOverlayRenderer.dll

6. To actually launch, run the pre batch, then morrowind; run the post batch
when you're done.


The Explanation:

1. It's not possible to get something to run as Administrator without the UAC
popup (unless you turn UAC off). What *is* possible is to get something to
run with the same perms as its parent (which is what we do in step 2). Since
Morrowind's parent will be Steam, and Morrowind needs to run as admin, Steam
needs to run as admin so that Morrowind can copy it.

2. The UAC popup will totally break Steam Streaming. Since it *has* to run
as admin, we have to disable the popup. You *can* click "OK" to the popup on
the server, and then Morrowind will run, but you can't *control* it; mouse and
keyboard on the client do nothing.

3. When I ran in full screen, I got *bad* flickering and other visual
artifacts. Running in windowed mode fixed this.

4. If you point at the launcher (1) it doesn't work properly over streaming
nad (2) since we're running in windowed mode, everything gets wonky. If you
point at the Morrowind.exe in windowed mode, though, Steam Streaming
auto-scales so you only see the window, and it fills your whole screen. Good
stuff.

5. The dll has to be moved or Morrowind crashes. You want to put it back
when you're done because otherwise steam will go fix it every time steam
launches, and it takes a while (minutes). The relatively complicated first
batch file is so that even if you run the batch multiple times, nothing
breaks.

[Turgul]

A few more things:

- I'm using the CD versions here, not the Steam version.

- Set Morrowind Launcher to run as administrator, or force it to do so when you run it.

- When you install the expansion packs, browse to the CD, right-click on setup.exe, and install as administrator

[HunterZ]

Note that for the Steam version, there's no difference between pointing at the game executable versus the launcher executable, as it will always launch the launcher. This is problematic for me because the launcher seems to fail to appear (but still has a process running) about half of the time for some reason, which prevents both streaming and local play from working. When the launcher comes up, it does work fine with streaming.

I tried experimenting with a .BAT->.EXE converter to make a replacement launcher executable that just executes the game executable, but the game screen was all black. I may not have been in Windowed mode, so I'll have to try that.

[HunterZ]

Update: I finally got the Steam version working again. The ONLY way I could get it to work was as follows:

1. Configure MGE XE to run full-screen.
2. Start the official Morrowind launcher locally on the server (NOT via streaming). This was a huge pain for me because the launcher fails to appear at least 2/3 of the time and has to be killed via Task Manager.
3. Start the Planetside 2 launcher via streaming.
4. When the Planetside 2 launcher gets to the login prompt, minimize it to get to the desktop.
5. Change focus to the Morrowind launcher and then launch the game.

Things that do NOT work for me (resulted in a black screen or view of the desktop while hearing the main menu music):
- Running in windowed mode.
- Replacing the launcher with a custom one that launches the game.
- Renaming the Steam in-game overlay DLL.
- Starting the game via a Morrowind launcher that was itself launched directly as a streaming app.

Note that I disabled UAC on the server as well.

[Turgul]

Yowch, that sounds terrible. :(

[Turgul]

With non-Steam/CD version, note that you can make this all *WAY* easier by simply installing morrowind outside of the normal directories (like in C:\Morrowind\), because then Admin isn't required *at all*, but in that case MGE can't change the resolution to widescreen.

[HunterZ]

Got it working in fewer steps:
1. Open Morrowind Launcher locally or via VNC on streaming host.
2. Launch Morrowind as a streaming app on client.

Focus goes to the launcher, and clicking Play launches the game without problems. Note that it's still not possible to get an in-game Steam overlay for whatever reason.