Integrate OpenMW with Steam (the better way)

This guide will demonstrate how you can integrate OpenMW into Morrowind on Steam without the unnecessary step of replacing files in the original Steam installation of Morrowind, and without adding it as a non-Steam game in your library. Steam will still track your playtime, and you can still use the overlay in-game.

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There is a fairly popular guide already by Hamod9041 showing how to integrate OpenMW with Steam. I would like to emphasize that it is not a bad guide by any means, but in my opinion this way is much bettter, and requires no replacing of files in Steam's Morrowind directory. Feel free to show that guide some support for their fine work, and this one if you found mine helpful.

Also, the instructions below are for Windows only. I believe it is possible to do all of this on MacOS or Linux distributions, but you will definitely need to make alterations to at least part 4 "Set launch options" to suit your operating system.

There is a guide here by The Chiefu - チーフ which describes a method for Linux using a script.

1. Install Morrowind

Pretty straightforward. Just install Morrowind through Steam as you would normally. Since we wont be editing any of the files in the game directory that Steam downloads, you can use it as your data directory when setting up the game's data with OpenMW later.

2. Install OpenMW

Go to the downloads page on OpenMW's website here[openmw.org] and use one of the links near the top to download OpenMW either from Github (after clicking the Github link, scroll to the bottom, past the changelog and look under "Assets") or from the official site's file repo.

Run the installer exe for the latest version, and install OpenMW in any location you choose. It does not have to be in your Morrowind directory, or even anywhere in Steam's directories.

If you are on Mac OSX, there is a .dmg file in either of those locations. I don't use Mac and haven't in many years, so you're on your own from there.

If you are on a Debian, Arch, Fedora, or Gentoo based Linux distribution (maybe some others too), you may be able to find the latest version of OpenMW in their respective package repositories, in which case you can install it using your distro's package manager.

i.e on Arch
sudo pacman -S openmw
or Debian
sudo apt-get install openmw
Obviously if you aren't using sudo, replace it with whatever privilege escalation tool you use, like doas.

3. Setup OpenMW with Morrowind's data

Once you have installed OpenMW, you will need to set it up with Morrowind's data files, otherwise you will not be able to use it to play the game.

Unless you are an advanced user, most people will use the openmw-wizard.exe to help with this. The wizard may detect your Morrowind directory automatically, but if it does not you will be able to define one manually. Select the file Morrowind.esm in the Data Files folder when doing this.

At the end of the wizard you may be shown options to import settings from Morrowind.ini and to import your add-on and plugin selection. The first option will pull in-game (and other ini-only settings) from the Morrowind.ini file located in the data directory you specified in the wizard. The other option will import enabled/disabled selections for plugins i.e any mods you may have installed. If you're starting from a clean install of Morrowind, neither of these options are necessary.

On Mac OSX and Linux distributions, there should be an equivalent wizard for you to use, though I have not tested OpenMW on either.

Once you're done setting up Morrowind with OpenMW, you can test to make sure it works by running either openmw.exe to run the game directly, skipping the launcher, or by running openmw-launcher.exe to start the launcher first. Starting the launcher first may be wise if you need to change any options or enable any plugin files,

4. Set launch options

Reminder: As I said before, this section will require editing depending on your operating system if you're using anything besides Windows.

In order to make Steam run OpenMW when pressing Play, you can right click on Morrowind in your library and select Properties. In the general tab, type the following into the "Launch Options" text box

"path\to\openmw\directory\openmw.exe" %command%

Edit the "path\to\openmw\directory\openmw.exe" part to the location of the openmw.exe file you use to run the game. For example, mine is "F:\Program Files\OpenMW 0.47.0\openmw.exe", but this may differ from yours depending on where you chose to install OpenMW earlier. The quotation marks must remain.

If you would rather start the launcher first before running the game, replace openmw.exe with openmw-launcher.exe.

5. Launch through Steam and test

At this point you should be finished, and you can try it now by pressing Play on Morrowind in your Steam library. You can check that it is running OpenMW by looking for the version information in the bottom right corner when on the game's title screen.

If the game launches as you would expect, then huzzah, you are finished. Enjoy playing Morrowind on a much better engine :)

Conclusion

If you made it this far, I'd like to say thank you for reading all this and following along. This is the first guide I cared enough to write on Steam and I hope it helped you. Feel free to rate or leave a comment. Personally I think it is too long, but I wanted to be at least somewhat thorough.

If you are on a non-Windows OS and you can't get this to work, please keep in mind that I have only tested and played OpenMW on Windows, and although I occasionally use Linux, my help there is expected to be limited.

That's all folks. Drink water and have a great day.

[rora]

If you want to run OpenMW on Steam Deck, still be able to track the game's playtime from Steam and have a normal Steam integration, I was able to do it this way:

1) Download a generic tar.gz build from their official site [openmw.org], in this case I downloaded the latest one at the moment.

2) Extract the file:

tar -xvf openmw-Linux-64Bit.tar.gz

3) Move the folder to somewhere you would like, in my case I moved it to "/home/deck/OpenMW":

mv openmw-Linux-64Bit /home/deck/OpenMW

4) Execute OpenMW's launcher (outside of Steam) for your first setup, it will ask for your Morrowind master file, it is usually located at "/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Morrowind/Data Files/".

5) Set Morrowind's launch options in Steam, in my case:
/home/deck/OpenMW/openmw %command%

Or start the launcher:
/home/deck/OpenMW/openmw-launcher %command%


That's it. Hopefully this helps anyone with a Deck out there

[I eat, John. it's what I do]

Excellent guide, thanks

[Lil Lumby]

@Vans Von Kieselstein
Should be plenty of ways to do it, just haven't covered it here
you could try
"/usr/bin/openmw-launcher" %command%
(after installing openmw from your package manager)
or use a script like in The Chiefu's guide which is linked near the beginning.
or use Luxtorpeda as has been suggested many times in the comments. I couldn't tell you if it works but could be worth a try.

[Vans Von Kieselstein]

LInux?

[Atropos]

thanks!

[Chopsteak]

Thanks for the guide, it was helpful and easy to follow.

[Aedin Belmont]

Thanks for the clear guide; works like a charm :)

[Lil Lumby]

np :)

[TheQuestion]

I did without the dot but for some reason I focused and skipped to the paragraph after the %command% and missed it sorry but it worked thanks.

[Lil Lumby]

@TheQuestion
There should not be a period after openmw-launcher.exe
You also need to follow up the launch option with %command% as in the guide, if you haven't done that already.