TES Construction Set
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Elder Scrolls (TES) Construction Set is editing software for the video game TESIII: Morrowind, which was shipped with the game. It gives full and complete control of the game's content to anyone willing to spend some time figuring it out. In fact, it is the very tool that Bethesda Softworks, the developers of Morrowind, used to create the game world.
The Construction Set allows fans to edit the game world directly and save their own alterations as .esp (Elder Scrolls plugin) files, the proprietary filetype for Morrowind plugins.
Fans exchange these plugins (or 'mods') freely online and, through them, they can change anything about the game from creating new character abilities to adding huge mansions into the side of a cliff overlooking a city. The overall file sizes of plugins can be as small as a few kilobytes because they may just edit basic game settings, such as the amount of gravity, though they can also be much larger (100 megabytes or more).
Most larger plugins also provide additional files that were not included with the game, such as textures and 3D models (or 'meshes') which provide brand new artwork within the game. Often these must be manually moved to the proper place within the game folder structure to become useful. However, the most well constructed plugins are packaged in archives which can easily be uncompressed directly to the correct game folders with no need for manual placement.
External links
Morrowind Summit (http://www.rpgplanet.com/morrowind/) offers news, articles and free downloads of plugins for TESIII: Morrowind.
