OpenMW 0.52 for iPad and iPhone (build 149)

An unofficial port of OpenMW 0.52 to iPad and iPhone, not supported by the OpenMW team. It runs Morrowind with your own PC game files.

What's new

• missing.log: if game files are missing at launch, missing.log in the app's documents lists where each one is expected, for example ./Data/Morrowind.bsa. On a first launch without Morrowind.ini it lists the ini and the Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon files. The "Game files needed" alert points to it.

Download

OpenMW-0.52.0-149-unsigned.ipa: version 0.52.0, build 149, unsigned. Sign it with your own Apple ID or team. Requirements, installation and adding the game files: see v0.52-144 and the blog post.

Source: tag v0.52-149. FFmpeg, OpenAL Soft and OpenSceneGraph are unchanged since v0.52-144, whose release notes link their sources.

OpenMW 0.52 for iPad and iPhone (build 144)

An unofficial port of OpenMW 0.52 to iPad and iPhone. It runs the original Morrowind game for the PC, including Tribunal and Bloodmoon, with your own game files.

📖 Read the blog post: joedev42.link/posts/play-morrowind

Unofficial port. This is not an official OpenMW release, and the OpenMW team doesn't support it, so please don't ask about it on the OpenMW forums. The app contains no game data. You need your own copy of Morrowind for the PC (for example from GOG or Steam).

Download

File	What it is
OpenMW-0.52.0-144-unsigned.ipa	The app (version 0.52.0, build 144), unsigned

Requirements

• An iPad or iPhone with iOS/iPadOS 18.0 or later. The app is made for the iPad. On the iPhone it runs in landscape only, and the interface isn't adapted to the small screen.
• Your own Morrowind PC installation, which provides the Data Files folder and Morrowind.ini.
• A way to sign the IPA (see below).

Installation

The IPA is unsigned, so iOS won't install it as it is. Sign it with your own Apple ID or Apple Developer team and install it, for example with a sideloading tool, or build the app yourself (see Building from source below).

The app uses the Increased Memory Limit capability. Signing with a free Personal Team is untested.

Adding the game files

1. Launch the app. After a one-time notice that this is an unofficial port, it shows "Game files needed" and creates the folders Config and Data in its documents: Files app → On My iPad → OpenMW, or in Finder on a Mac: the device → Files.
2. From your PC installation of Morrowind, copy the contents of the Data Files folder into Data, keeping the folder structure (Morrowind.esm, Morrowind.bsa, Meshes/, Textures/, …). Copy Morrowind.ini into Config. If you copy the ini into Data along with the game files, the app moves it to Config.
3. Launch the app again. It imports Morrowind.ini once (content files, archives, game settings) into Config/openmw.cfg and starts the game.

The app's documents also hold Saves/, Screenshots/, Logs/openmw.log (attach it to bug reports) and Config/settings.cfg. To import the ini again, delete Config/openmw.cfg and relaunch. There is no launcher on iOS: you add mods with data= and content= lines in Config/openmw.cfg, with paths relative to Config/ (for example data="../Mods/MyMod").

Controls and options

• Keyboard with mouse or trackpad, game controllers, or on-screen touch controls when nothing is connected. A two-finger tap opens the game menu. Menus switch to the controller layout automatically.
• Options → Video has iOS settings: Render Scale (50 to 200 % of the display resolution), MetalFX Upscaling and MetalFX Sharpening, Frame Rate Limit (60 fps by default) and the Metal Performance HUD.

Known limitations

• There's no launcher, installation wizard, editor (OpenMW-CS) or command-line tools.
• LuaJIT runs as an interpreter only, because iOS doesn't allow code generation at runtime.
• The ini import assumes Windows-1252 game data (English, German, French, …). Other encodings are untested.
• The app doesn't run in the iOS Simulator.

Building from source

git clone --branch openmw-ios https://github.com/joedemo42/OpenMW.git

The requirements, the device build with your own team and bundle ID, and all commands are in ios/README.md.

Source code and licenses

• Source of this build: tag v0.52-144 (branch openmw-ios, commit 7c1e5793fe; this is also the revision in the app's main menu). OpenMW is licensed under the GPLv3.

• LGPL libraries: the app is built from these upstream source archives (SHA-256 in brackets):

  • FFmpeg 9.0.2 (8c3850283eb25fa026482078a04051e0be17347b09ef81a0849bec15a96e002e), unmodified
  • OpenAL Soft 1.25.2 (1dbaac44e7579d5bc8847ca8db4b2e8b9fd3961041f35ee20def4958301e1089), unmodified
  • OpenSceneGraph, OpenMW fork, commit 01cc2b585c (3fe02f29906cf371ffc9e49d979c1b517669960f67a57269238bc40d58b651b7), with the two iOS patches in ios-deps/patches/osg/ at this tag

  The build scripts fetch the other dependencies from the pinned URLs in ios-deps/recipes/.

• License notices of OpenMW and all of its libraries ship inside the app, in its licenses folder.

Morrowind is a trademark of Bethesda Softworks LLC. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethesda Softworks or the OpenMW team.