OpenMW: Porting Morrowind to an open source engine

[thesheeep]

I didn't specified because I already did several times before, but fair enough: What an opensource engine gives you is the security that you'll always be able to play morrowind. For ever. No matter the hardware or the OS, as long as you have the data files, you only need to have a port of that source code and you'll be able to play Morrowind.
For ever.

That and all the technical upgrades that come with a modern engine that simply aren't possible just by modding. Concerning everything from scripting to graphics and audio. Plus multi-platform support.
A "finished" OpenMW will only be the beginning of awesome things to come.

 

[luj1]

... the security that you'll always be able to play morrowind. For ever.

You are making that sound quite pompous, but it's really a non-issue. The real would-be issue is the Sisyphean task of porting a gazillion of mods to OpenMW.

A "finished" OpenMW will only be the beginning of awesome things to come.

Finished or not finished it makes little difference already. People can do whatever they want to with their time, but going by their developmental habits, I assume a "finished" OpenMW will come out in around a decade.

 

[Drax]

You are a sad, sad man.

 

[luj1]

Uh okay.

 

[Anomander Rake]

OpenMorrowind is for me a forbidden dream. I'll be honest, I would really love to play it because I hear so many good things about it. The issue is that I'm too keen on modding and as such, I can't really force myself to use it.

 

[Merlkir]

I'm a graphics whore, I'm waiting until OpenMW looks at least as good as MGE XE.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Just got an itch for morrowind and decided to give openmw a shot. Last time I played (I think in 2017?), I actually manually merged a shitton of mods into folders for easy installation. I'm talking like total texture/mesh overhauls for everything, tons of crazy mods that add weird shit to the game (malcath statues that come to life, all sorts of creatures mods, MW rebirth, balmora underground, ROHT, UL, epic boss battle vivec, animated morrowind, MCA, GCD, TR, landmass mods, all LGNPC, a bunch of quest mods, and lots of other crap).

Anyway point is that importing all of this stuff into OpenMW was INCREDIBLY easy, the game runs super smooth, no crashes, and as far as I know everything seems to work? I haven't started my character yet but I flew around on a test character with 10,000 speed and noticed no bugs or anything.

As someone who has modded morrowind, oblivion, skyrim, to crazy lengths and ALWAYS runs into problems (crashes immediately when starting the game etc...) the stability with OpenMW is fucking insane. I definitely wasn't expecting the installation to be this effortless, I really thought the game was just going to shit itself and break and I'd say 'fuck it' and uninstall. Oh also load times are way faster and there's none of that "this texture reference from this mod failed to load" warning message that comes up every fucking time you load a game on native morrowind. It's sooooo smooth I can't believe it.

Sooooooooo I think it's worth giving a shot, if only just to feel how smooth it runs. As far as I've noticed I think OpenMW offers all of the shit that MGE XE offers besides grass generation and maybe some enb things? And I haven't been locked out of any mods that I'm interested in

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Here are some images from my testing:

Spoiler

^^^^ that dude looks trippy af btw

 

[PrettyDeadman]

New Features:

• Non-actor objects display visual effects during spellcasting (#1645)
• Creatures without any collision box use auto-generated ones (#2787)
• Launcher: File paths of selected content files can be copied via context menu (#2847)
• Actors play casting animations during scripted spellcasting (#3083)
• As an option, barter deals permanently modify merchant disposition (#3103)
• Ranged weapons deal critical hits to unaware opponents (#3703)
• 360° screenshots of various kinds can be made (#4222)
• ‘ToggleBorders’ debug instruction (“tb”) available in console (#4256)
• Sound generator keys in activator animations are supported (#4285)
• On macOS, function key shortcuts can be used (#4324)
• Some of the debug settings previously available as command line arguments can be set up in the launcher (#4345)
• Support for per-group KF animation replacers has been added (#4444)
• Shader water is rougher during bad weather (#4488)
• The number of enchanted items in a stack is shown in the Spells window (#4509)
• The actual chance of hitting the target is used for AI weapon rating instead of just the skill (#4548)
• The real potential damage of a weapon is used for its rating (#4549, #4697)
• A bonus is applied to the rating of ranged weapons if the attacker is far enough from the target (#4550)
• As an option, the Strength attribute affects Fatigue and Health damage in hand-to-hand combat (#4579)
• The logging system has been heavily reworked (#4581)
• AI no longer uses magic effects that affect hit chance if the enemy has not taken the appropriate stance (#4624)
• AI uses the root mean square of melee-weapon damage for more precise weapon rating (#4625)
• AI accounts for weapon speed when rating a weapon (#4626)
• Various vanilla GMSTs regarding combat action rating are utilised (#4632)
• ‘sTo’ GMST (“to”) replaces hyphen in the Spellmaking menu (#4636)
• New count field in the Alchemy window allows you to brew multiple potions at the same time (#4642)
• To improve performance, actors outside of the AI processing range are no longer rendered but faded out (#4647)
• AI processing range can be configured via an in-game slider and a configuration option (#4647)
• If the animated creature model lacks a collision box, the non-animated model’s collision box is used as a fallback (#4682)
• Tooltips of thrown weapons show the actual in-game damage (twice the base-record damage) the projectiles have (#4697)

New Editor Features:

• All top-bar dropdown menu options and most context menu options have icons (#912, #4506)
• Actors are rendered in Scene view (#1221)
• Verifier functionality covers Enchantment records (#1617)
• Added a check box to execute a case-sensitive global search (#2606)
• Shift + C is default shortcut for viewing cells (#2845)
• Shift + V is default shortcut for previewing records (#2845)
• Global search has a status bar (#3276)
• Frame rate in Preview window can be limited (#3641)
• Log files are created in case of a crash (#4012)
• Previously sorted-by-ID lists, such as magic-effect lists, are now alphabetically sorted (#4404)
• As an option, base records are ignored in verifier runs (#4466)
• Already existing marker models for light sources and creature levelled lists are now used (#4512)

Bug Fixes:

Spoiler

• All actors (not only those in active cells) restore Health and Magicka during player character rest (#1875)
• Precise times of sunrise and sunset are now recovered from the imported Morrowind INI file (#1990)
• Actors now properly aim during scripted spellcasting (#2131)
• Skills and attributes that affect trading no longer cause low selling prices if they’re too high (#2222)
• Landing sound behaviour for NPCs and the player character has been reworked (#2256)
• Scripted movement of an object now adjusts the position of actors standing on top of that object (#2274)
• The last equipped item of a certain type is automatically re-equipped once a bound-item spell of the same type expires (#2326)
• Restore effects can restore drained stats (#2446)
• Attacks from unarmed, non-bipedal creatures no longer degrade armour (#2455)
• For the time being, actors are no longer allowed to activate teleport doors so that their abrupt cell change doesn’t cause a crash (#2562)
• Using ‘Resurrect’ instruction on a dead player character fully resumes the game (#2626)
• References to non-existent classes or factions no longer crash the game (#2772)
• Weapons are visually unequipped before the start of a spellcasting stance transition (#2835, #4327)
• The player character now gets a bounty when a player follower commits a murder (#2852)
• To prevent issues on macOS, SDL is only initialised for the Graphics tab of the launcher when Qt5 is used (#2862, #3911)
• Explicit reference calls no longer break [Tab] autocompletion in the console (#2872)
• Naked expressions starting with a member operator are no longer allowed outside of the console (#2971)
• The handling of Drain and Fortify effects for health, magicka, and fatigue has been reworked to match vanilla behaviour (#3049, #4231)
• Enemies are no longer immune to ranged attacks at very close range (#3059)
• Adding an item with a self-equipment script to an actor no longer causes a freeze (#3072)
• Actors who are placed above the ground are now snapped down at a significantly larger distance when a cell is loaded, preventing them from falling to their death (#3219)
• TrueType fonts are now properly rescaled (#3288)
• Targets are now much easier to hit with on-touch spells (#3374)
• The handling of scripted and death animations has been reworked to significantly improve mod compatibility (#3486, #4286, #4291, #4307)
• ‘GetSpellEffects’ scripting function can now detect zero-duration effects (#3533)
• Enemies are much easier to hit with low-reach weapons, since the intended start position of the attack raycast is now replicated (#3591)
• Scripted sleeping interruptions no longer prevent the spawning of random sleep encounters (#3629)
• Calling ‘AddSoulGem’ and ‘RemoveSpell’ scripting instructions with an extra argument no longer breaks script compilation (#3762)
• ‘GetPCInJail’ scripting function has been reworked to more closely match vanilla behaviour (#3788)
• Previous placeholder implementation of ‘GetPCTraveling’ scripting function has been replaced with a proper solution (#3788)
• Message boxes can now have newline characters in the text argument (#3836)
• Alignment of terrain texture painting has been corrected to match the vanilla look (#3876)
• Attenuation of magic light sources is now properly calculated (#3890)
• ‘Goodbye’ scripting function in dialogue results now makes any additional choices act like ‘Goodbye’ (#3897)
• ‘RemoveSpellEffects’ scripting instruction now also removes permanent effects (#3920)
• Movement prediction for spell aiming now uses the correct GMST to calculate the magic projectile’s speed (#3948)
• Animated collision shapes are no longer erroneously optimised (#3950)
• The terrain texture blending map is now upscaled to more closely match the vanilla look (#3993)
• Issues with actors not returning to their initial position in various situations have been fixed (#3997, #4251, #4393)
• AI packages with a non-unique target no longer choose a random target with the same ID (#4036)
• On macOS, version numbers are now properly displayed in the application properties (#4047)
• Text after the last end-of-line tag is no longer shown in books to match vanilla behaviour (#4215)
• ‘FixMe’ script instruction has been reworked to more closely match vanilla behaviour (#4217)
• Jumping on slopes is now less restrictive, preventing the player character from getting stuck in V-shaped terrain (#4221)
• Pathgrid nodes which lie between an actor and that actor’s destination are now ignored (#4230)
• Actors with an AiTravel package now stop near their target position if that position is blocked by another actor (#4230)
• [Activate] key can no longer be held down to spam Persuasion and other kinds of repeatable actions (#4260)
• Turning animations no longer reset idle animations (#4271)
• Death animations from pre-0.43.0 savegames are now forward-compatible (#4274)
• ‘CenterOnCell’ script instruction (“coc”) now teleports the player character to the accurate door marker or exterior position for interior and exterior cells respectively (#4292)
• Faction members are now aware of faction ownership during barter (#4293)
• AiWander packages which are placed before an AiFollow package in the AI package list no longer override vital functionality of that AiFollow package (#4304)
• Key focus in containers is now automatically (re)set to the [Close] button to prevent players from accidentally stealing items (#4333)
• Spellcasting stance transitions no longer interrupt movement animations (#4358)
• OK button in the Settings window has key focus by default (#4368)
• It’s no longer possible to cast an Absorb spell on oneself (#4378)
• Non-audio files no longer crash the game when the engine tries to play them (#4416)
• When there is a ‘NiStringExtraData’ node with MRK value in a NIF model node, only ‘NiTriShape’ meshes starting with “Tri EditorMarker” are ignored instead of the whole node (#4419)
• ‘RotateWorld’ scripting instruction now rotates objects around the correct axis, while keeping the objects’ initial rotation (#4426)
• Some issues with building OpenMW on Windows and macOS were fixed (#4429, #4613)
• Applying the console command “Lock 0” to a door or a container now creates an unbreakable lock, like in vanilla Morrowind (#4431)
• Actors without any AI packages now properly return to their initial position after combat or pursuit (#4432)
• Guards with AiAlarm = 0 no longer attempt to arrest the player character when they observe a crime but no one reports it (#4433)
• ‘Begin’ and ‘End’ script keywords can now be followed by a comma (#4451)
• The default terrain texture no longer shines through terrain texture blending transitions (#4452)
• Broken items are now ignored when trying to equip an item via quick key (#4453)
• Actors now open doors more quickly (#4454)
• Light sources which cannot be carried no longer prevent the AI from auto-equipping shields (#4457)
• The handling of idle chances in AiWander packages has been reworked to more closely match vanilla behaviour (#4458)
• ‘NotCell’ dialogue condition now supports partial name matches (#4459)
• Scripted equipment now bypasses most standard equipping restrictions, e.g., those for beast races (#4460)
• When a non-player object casts an Open spell, a player crime event is triggered if the player character is detected to ensure vanilla compatibility (#4461)
• General-number formatting (“%g”) now works like in vanilla Morrowind and properly handles the fractional part (#4463)
• Cancelled AI packages are now removed from the package cache (#4464)
• Non-ASCII strings are now properly handled in the content selector and in the ESM reader (#4467, #4653)
• Silt striders in abot’s “Silt Striders” mod are no longer rotated by 90 degrees (#4469)
• The behaviour of weapon-using non-bipedal creatures has been reworked to make them less helpless in certain situations (#4470)
• Actors who are vampires now display their regular record head when no vampire head is found (#4474)
• Scripted animations no longer move actors away from their initial position (#4475)
• Potential crashes in the quick-keys menu when an item is no longer available in the inventory no longer occur (#4480)
• ‘Goodbye’ dialogue scripting instruction now disables hyperlinks in dialogue topics (#4489)
• ‘PositionCell’ scripting instruction no longer tries to add local scripts to scripted items in the teleported player character’s inventory twice (#4490)
• Training cap is now limited by the trainer’s modified skill instead of their base skill (#4494)
• Crossbow reloading animations now only apply to the upper body (#4495)
• Crossbows now use animations for one-handed weapons as a fallback (#4495)
• Animations for turning in spellcasting stance are now used (#4496)
• Animated meshes without slashes in their full path are now properly classified as animations (#4497)
• Scripted spellcasting no longer increases the Alteration skill (#4503)
• A potential zero division in the Fatigue calculation has been removed (#4510)
• A knocked-down player character can no longer move or be moved in first-person view (#4519)
• Some issues with sun specularity in the water shader have been fixed (#4527)
• Movement animations without idle-animation fallback no longer trigger idle animations (#4531)
• The game now switches between distorted (underwater) and undistorted sound effects based on the camera position instead of the player character’s head position (#4532)
• The inventory paper doll is now affected by GUI scaling (#4539)
• Items with an ‘OnActivate’ command present in their script (such as “cursed” items) no longer visually disappear when they are picked up in menu mode (#4543)
• Creatures no longer incorrectly flee from werewolves (#4545)
• Minimum and maximum sound ranges with zero value are now separately reset to their default ranges (#4551)
• Non-actor objects can no longer have a dialogue window opened via script (#4553)
• Dialogue topics with reserved names, e.g., “Barter” or “Repair”, now behave the same as in vanilla Morrowind (#4557)
• Optimiser search for reserved node names is now case-insensitive (#4558)
• Pinned windows are now properly updated (#4560)
• Fast-travel logic now always depends on the type of the service NPC’s cell instead of the destination cell type (#4563)
• The underwater viewing distance limit is no longer broken (#4565)
• The player character no longer uses headtracking in first-person view (#4573, temporary workaround for another issue)
• The handling of player character turning animations has been improved (#4574)
• Several weapon animation inconsistencies during movement in first-person view have been fixed (#4575)
• Idle animations are no longer reset in certain situations where they should be continuous (#4576)
• If an innocent actor dies from the continuing effects of a player attack, the murder is now also reported if the player has already paid their fine (#4582)
• Attack strength is now 0 if the player spams the [Attack] button (#4591)
• The incorrect inequality operator “<>” is now interpreted as less-than operator “<” to ensure compatibility with certain mods (#4597)
• Picking a stack of gold up in menu mode now grabs the whole item stack (#4604)
• Scaling for animated collision shapes is no longer erroneously applied twice (#4607)
• Fall damage is no longer erroneously applied twice (#4608)
• The pseudo duration of instant magic effects has been adjusted in the spellmaking menu to match vanilla spell cost calculations (#4611)
• A zero division occurring in ‘NiFlipController’ nodes without textures has been removed (#4614)
• The flickering frequency of light sources and some light-related calculations have been fixed (#4615)
• The sneaking offset in first-person view is now also applied when switching to sneak mode in midair (#4617)
• Sneaking is no longer possible while flying (#4618)
• Recharging enchanted items now always increases the Enchant skill regardless of success or failure, like in vanilla Morrowind (#4622)
• NPC record entries Reputation, Disposition and Faction Rank are now loaded as unsigned variables (#4628)
• Sneaking stance no longer affects speed if the actor is not actually sneaking (#4633)
• ‘GetPCJumping’ scripting function has been reworked to match vanilla behaviour (#4641)
• “%Name” string replacer can now be used in creature dialogue (#4644)
• Force-equipping a weapon now resets ongoing attack animations (#4646)
• HUD no longer displays an “item condition” for throwing weapons (#4648)
• Levelling up no longer fully restores health but rather applies the gained health points (#4649)
• Actors no longer fall from cliffs or run into obstacles when backing down from attackers (#4656)
• Enabling collision with ‘ToggleCollision’ scripting instruction (“tcl”) now snaps the player character down to the ground (#4669)
• The number of known ingredient and potion effects is now determined by the modified rather than the base Alchemy skill (#4671)
• Pitch factor handling for crossbow animations has been streamlined to more closely match vanilla behaviour (#4672)
• Journal can no longer be opened while the Settings window is open (#4674)
• NPC fast-travel destination records without any data no longer crash the game upon loading (#4677)
• Declared but empty script variable lists no longer crash the game upon loading (#4678)
• The chance of a successful spell absorption is now multiplicative rather than additive, which is how the magic effect is designed in vanilla Morrowind (#4684)
• Calling ‘Say’ scripting instruction with non-existent sound as argument no longer breaks script compilation (#4685)
• Creatures that lack unique sounds now make use of fallback sound generator records (#4689)
• Loading bars no longer obscure message boxes but are instead moved to the centre of the screen (#4691)

Editor Bug Fixes:

• ‘Revert’ action now properly updates subviews (#3249)
• A native colour picker is now used on all operating systems, fixing major issues on macOS (#3681)
• ‘Undo’ and ‘Redo’ actions now keep assigned shortcuts (#4110)
• Lock status of newly opened subviews is now correctly initialised (#4520)
• Instance dragging, which was broken in 0.44.0, has been fixed (#4593)
• Skeletons of animated objects are now properly initialised (#4654)
• The Colour entry in Light Source records is now displayed as a coloured box instead of an integer number (#4668)

Other:

• Windows builds in ‘Release’ mode no longer automatically open a command prompt window (#2490)
• Race condition in terrain code has been fixed (#4584)
• Skinning and AI optimisations (#4605, #4621)
• Support for Rapture3D OpenAL driver has been added (#4606)
• Record verifying functionality in OpenMW-CS has been revised (#4643)

Can you please add mention of the version you are talking about and link to the original source? Is that 0.46.0?

 

[Drax]

Lol, I had just downloaded the previous version

 

[Yosharian]

Looks great, imma hold out for v1 though I think

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Still no shadows despite their advertisement leading up to this release. Disappointing.
Oh well, it's not really worth using OpenMW right now anyway.

 

[glass blackbird]

I believe nightly builds have shadows

 

[Drax]

I started a playthrough yesterday. So far it's working like a charm.

 

[glass blackbird]

Yeah, they even mention that in their release trailer. Shadows don't have amazing performance at the moment so I assume that's why they're not in the release version, but just download a nightly and you can enable them in the ini

 

[jungl]

This shit is 20 years too late.

 

[Drax]

Go away.

 

[m_s0]

Anything major missing or bugged?

Or, what's the most major system or feature that's not up to snuff at this point?

 

[unfairlight]

Some quests, scripting and gameplay behaviours are still iffy to my knowledge. It's probably still possible to complete it on OpenMW.

 

[taxalot]

My only expectation of this is for an Android build so I can play this on the shitter like I can now play NWN on the shitter thanks to Beamdog.

For the rest, the original Morrowind is already perfect.

 

[octavius]

Will it support a working "Radiant AI" system, or the abilty to mod in a more dynamic game world?

 

[catfood]

Will it support a working "Radiant AI" system, or the abilty to mod in a more dynamic game world?

This. In my opinion that's the single biggest flaw of Morrowind in that it has a completely static world. I would be interested in this mod only if it allowed for some NPC behaviour, no matter how basic and scripted it is.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Will it support a working "Radiant AI" system, or the abilty to mod in a more dynamic game world?

Will it support a working "Radiant AI" system, or the abilty to mod in a more dynamic game world?

This. In my opinion that's the single biggest flaw of Morrowind in that it has a completely static world. I would be interested in this mod only if it allowed for some NPC behaviour, no matter how basic and scripted it is.

It's open source, get contributing you lazy bums.

 

[ADL]

Will it support a working "Radiant AI" system, or the abilty to mod in a more dynamic game world?

This. In my opinion that's the single biggest flaw of Morrowind in that it has a completely static world. I would be interested in this mod only if it allowed for some NPC behaviour, no matter how basic and scripted it is.

There's nothing stopping anyone from modding in roaming factions fighting over territory and stuff like that. Especially with the addition of

• AI processing range can be configured via an in-game slider and a configuration option (#4647)

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

there's mods like morrowind comes alive and such that help with the static problem.