OpenMW: Porting Morrowind to an open source engine

[theSavant]

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

 

[villain of the story]

Personally I agree that it would be faster and more efficient to port Morrowind to another moddable game engine (like Skyrim's or CryEngine - and that is indeed happening)

A hundred such new projects pop up every time a new game with mod tools come out. They never ever go anywhere. They just fuck around, wanking to their useless shit art or creating shitty level geometry mimicking the original game for an exhibit of masturbation and then they just disappear. And anyone with the proper skill-set to see through such a project actually have the sense to go in a completely different direction, like OpenMW or DaggerXL or completely different stuff. Adapting an existing game into a newer existing game is a dead end within a dead end 99 out of 100 times. Complete and utter waste of time. Unless it's something fairly simple and straightforward, like remaking Doom in Doom 3.

 

[IDtenT]

Seriously, you seem to be the most retarded person and obviously haven't worked yourself with game engines yet. This project is even double work: first - get the mess of game engine together, and second - port everything from Morrowind in a way it works. If everything was so easy as you claim, why then is the project 2008-2012 still at version 0.23 ? Oh, maybe because it's not so easy after all. Clever boy... now think about it how long it will take so that the game engine is stable, everything is ported, toolsets are ready and tested, documentation and tutorials are made so that it's actually usable by others?

With the speed of "every month a new release version", incrementing by 0.01 (the development speed is at least realistic) it's more than 6 years for version 1.0. Yeah...do you really think any modder or developer in ~2020 cares about this anymore? Upcoming developers care about a good, stable, well-tested engines, which they can use to base their products on, not about some silly port of the utmost boring RPG of the century.

Tell me. What would their objective be without Morrowind? Seriously. Their entire effort is driven by reverse engineering. Again, no original though required. That's a huge load off of your shoulders. And yes, the containers for Morrowind might not be great, but there are tools to work with them. It's not like there are containers that are trivial to implement. An no, it's not double work. The mission has always been Morrowind. The engine reconfigurability is a long forgotten second.

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

 

[DraQ]

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

- more like.

 

[Overboard]

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

- more like.

Also

 

[DraQ]

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

- more like.

Also

Indeed.

 

[IDtenT]

Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release

Learn to read. I specifically mentioned Morrowind and its utmost boring gameplay, not any other game.

- more like.

Also

Indeed.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Personally I agree that it would be faster and more efficient to port Morrowind to another moddable game engine (like Skyrim's or CryEngine - and that is indeed happening), but I guess it's anyway mostly a "because we can" project than anything else.
A pet project of some guys that like to code an engine.

While an interesting idea, Morrowind in Skyrim's engine would be fairly pointless as the game is already very moddable as is, and it wouldn't really be Morrowind (like Ultima Lazarus isn't really Ultima V). It would be a pet project of some guys who'd like to play Skyrim while they play Morrowind.

Spoiler

 

[Gragt]

What about porting Skyrim to Morrowind's engine?

Oh wait, that's just retail Skyrim.

 

[Turjan]

What about porting Skyrim to Morrowind's engine?

Oh wait, that's just retail Skyrim.

Now you are being unfair. Don't forget that they streamlined the game by cutting all those features all those modern gamers will learn to live without.

 

[villain of the story]

What about porting Skyrim to Morrowind's engine?

CLIFF DRAGONS!

 

[IDtenT]

What about porting Skyrim to Morrowind's engine?

CLIFF DRAGONS!

Morrowind would probably have been honest and called them wyvern though.

 

[Gord]

While an interesting idea, Morrowind in Skyrim's engine would be fairly pointless as the game is already very moddable as is, and it wouldn't really be Morrowind (like Ultima Lazarus isn't really Ultima V). It would be

Depends on what your exact goals are, I guess.
The gain as opposed to using a heavily modded Morrowind (like when using MGE) could be a "pretty" but more stable and better perfoming version of Morrowind.
With a dedicated team it could be done more quickly then rebuilding the engine, I guess.
They would have to finish before TES VII comes out and everyone wants to port Morrowind to that engine, though...

On the other hand, the advantage of the engine project is clearly having full compatibility with most (if not all) of the old Morrowind mods, while still potentially gaining a better performing, more modern engine. Eventually at least.

 

[villain of the story]

They would have to finish before TES VII comes out and everyone wants to port Morrowind to that engine, though...

I have yet to see that part happen with any such project, shit or not. There is also the problem that even if you port a game into another game to the best of your ability, you still end up changing the core of that game. It's a cheap mimicry that costs a lot of time and effort.

 

[SCO]

The funny part about 'porting' projects, is that to do them 'right' (not manually like a retard or a artist) requires even more stringent programming skills than most reverse engineering projects.

They 'should' use a compiler/transformer to output game data from the original game to the target game.
That requires information about the dataformats of both games that often requires reversing.
And it requires skill in making parsers/lexers
And finally it requires some further adjustments for things that can't be converted directly (that often changes the very core of the game, like combat systems, or GUIs)

even 'ideal' projects like that one that wanted to port Bloodlines to a new source version (a _very_ similar engine and data formats) floundered because of lack of programmers because that's what they needed anyway

 

[Dr. West]

Not to forget that Bethsoft objects to mixing game contents, they don't want you to put MW content into OB or Skyrim. I'm sure they'd even cease and desist automatic tools (IF you manage to pull that off). Semi-automatic conversions are out of the question anyway, as you'd need to redistribute the ported content. Which would be derived from the original assets and therefore be a copyright infringement. You'd need to rebuild all assets, good luck with that. So from a legal perspective, this is a non-option.

Congrats to the team for what they managed to pull of so far. Don't forget that the original incarnation was written in D and this is a rewrite. The project has a lead who seems to make reasonable decisions and keeps it focused. I'm kinda hopeful that it will succeed and I might even help out a little (have a 3D level editor written in Qt from which I could recycle some parts for the new CS). I wasted countless hours in MW (hike, hike) and need some alternation to my boring day job (fuck that).

And for the whiners: it's not your time that gets invested, it's not up to you to judge if this effort makes sense, as there will be people who benefit from it and last but not least, it's a great learning experience and reference (that was mentioned in the thread already). Stop whining and shut up, or better: do something productive for a change.

 

[Broseph]

Added theSavant to my ignore list.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

theSavant

You just don't get it.

The point of any such project, be it OpenMW, DaggerfallXL, D3DFFE, Doomsday, zDoom and so on, isn't creating an independent development platform.
It's assuring longevity and extended modding support for the game in question.

And you don't get reality. Morrowind is dead. No one is interested in this game anymore. A game that is boring as fuck. The longevity you speak of has reached its zenith more than half a decade ago. Now it's just a corpse.

As proven by the Morrowind Overhaul mod, the latest version of which alone has had over 100,000 downloads in about six months, right?

 

[Turjan]

And you don't get reality. Morrowind is dead. No one is interested in this game anymore. A game that is boring as fuck. The longevity you speak of has reached its zenith more than half a decade ago. Now it's just a corpse.

As proven by the Morrowind Overhaul mod, the latest version of which alone has had over 100,000 downloads in about six months, right?

Indeed. The game has a remarkable staying power. This may be due to the game having the most interesting setting of all Bethesda games, but it's also the most mod-friendly. A good trait combination to keep a game alive.

 

[octavius]

And you don't get reality. Morrowind is dead. No one is interested in this game anymore. A game that is boring as fuck. The longevity you speak of has reached its zenith more than half a decade ago. Now it's just a corpse.

As proven by the Morrowind Overhaul mod, the latest version of which alone has had over 100,000 downloads in about six months, right?

Indeed. The game has a remarkable staying power. This may be due to the game having the most interesting setting of all Bethesda games, but it's also the most mod-friendly. A good trait combination to keep a game alive.

How is it more mod friendly than Oblivion?
It's been many years since I played Morrowind and some 3-4 years since I played Oblivion, but my experience was that it was easier to avoid mod conflicts with Oblivion. But of course, that may be due to newer and superior 3rd party modding tools for Oblivion.

 

[Turjan]

How is it more mod friendly than Oblivion?
It's been many years since I played Morrowind and some 3-4 years since I played Oblivion, but my experience was that it was easier to avoid mod conflicts with Oblivion. But of course, that may be due to newer and superior 3rd party modding tools for Oblivion.

You are correct with less conflicts in Oblivion, but quest mods were more easily done for Morrowind.

 

[octavius]

How is it more mod friendly than Oblivion?
It's been many years since I played Morrowind and some 3-4 years since I played Oblivion, but my experience was that it was easier to avoid mod conflicts with Oblivion. But of course, that may be due to newer and superior 3rd party modding tools for Oblivion.

You are correct with less conflicts in Oblivion, but quest mods were more easily done for Morrowind.

Ah yes, that accursed full voice acting.
I guess from a modder's POV Morrowind mods are easier to work with, but from a player's POV it's Oblivion mods.

 

[DraQ]

How is it more mod friendly than Oblivion?
It's been many years since I played Morrowind and some 3-4 years since I played Oblivion, but my experience was that it was easier to avoid mod conflicts with Oblivion. But of course, that may be due to newer and superior 3rd party modding tools for Oblivion.

You are correct with less conflicts in Oblivion, but quest mods were more easily done for Morrowind.

Ah yes, that accursed full voice acting.
I guess from a modder's POV Morrowind mods are easier to work with, but from a player's POV it's Oblivion mods.

The number, quality and complexity of mods is, fortunately or not, dictated by modder's convenience, not player's.

 

[Turjan]

Ah yes, that accursed full voice acting.
I guess from a modder's POV Morrowind mods are easier to work with, but from a player's POV it's Oblivion mods.

The number, quality and complexity of mods is, fortunately or not, dictated by modder's convenience, not player's.

Indeed. My memory is a bit hazy, as it has been many years that I modded Morrowind, and I never modded Oblivion myself (lack of interest), but I think I remember heavy complaints about loss of functionality in the Oblivion mod editor compared to the Morrowind one. No idea whether that was improved at some point, as I didn't pay that much attention to Oblivion after the honeymoon was cruelly cut short.

 

[Guar]

The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.24.0! Mosey on over to our newfangled Downloads Page to find releases for all operating systems. This release brings the much-anticipated animation layering feature, Athletics, Security, Night-Eye and Blind, along with a plethora of other fixes and changes. Oh, and openable doors! GO OPEN SOME DOORS!!

Known Issues:

• Extreme shaking may occur during cell transitions for some users (enable anti-aliasing as a possible workaround)
• Launcher crash on OS X < 10.8
• Polish version of Morrowind.esm makes OpenMW crash

Check out the release video by the unstoppable WeirdSexy.

Changelog:

• Implemented Athletics
• Implemented Security
• Implemented opening non-load doors
• Implemented AI Escort and EscortCell packages
• Implemented Advanced Journal UI, some features still in progress
• Implemented several trade features
• Implemented New Game in the menu
• Implemented highlighting dialogue topic links
• Implemented animation layering
• Implemented Night Eye/Blind magic effects
• Implemented Move and MoveWorld script instructions
• Implemented non-removable corpses
• Implemented weapon and shield rendering for 3rd person
• Implemented OnDeath script instruction for explicit references
• Various fixes for text display in books
• Various fixes for wait/rest
• Various code cleanup
• Various fixes for script parsing/compiling
• Various fixes for issues having to do with binding keys in the settings menu
• Fixed an issue where the camera would clip below the floor/terrain
• Fixed a seam in the terrain on Red Mountain
• Fixed an issue with journal buttons
• Fixed arrow buttons in the settings menu
• Fixed unclickable dialogue topics
• Fixed changeweather console command
• Fixed not being able to un-select objects while in the console
• Fixed duplicate spawning of AddItem message boxes
• Fixed moddisposition to be able to alter NPCs in a different cell
• Fixed Launcher writing duplicate lines into settings.cfg
• Fixed second quest in Mage's Guild
• Fixed enchantment cast cost
• Fixed display of Take and Close buttons on scroll UI
• Fixed AIWander not being sent values correctly
• Fixed journal being accessible while in character generation
• Fixed Divayth Fyr starting dead
• Fixed detailed FPS display
• Fixed chargen scroll display