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What does OpenMW do that MGE doesn't? It makes the game (along with some texture and mesh replacers, of course) look pretty damn good already.
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OpenMW: Porting Morrowind to an open source engine
- Thread starter deuxhero
- Start date
What does OpenMW do that MGE doesn't? It makes the game (along with some texture and mesh replacers, of course) look pretty damn good already.
sea
inXile Entertainment
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MGE also makes it run rather shitty, since half the graphics operations are still done on the CPU because Bethesda cannot into programming. Cranking up view distance, resolution, etc. only makes the pitiful engine chug even more.
DraQ
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theSavant
Self-Ejected
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By the time this port will be finished, stable and playable (~ 4 years from now), and with nobody interested in extending or modding Morrowind at all, the team could have created their own full-fledged fantasy game with license to sell. But everyone his own learning experience...
Yes, developing an engine is the same as developing a game.
deuxhero
Arcane
They don't have any assets, mechanics, plot, level design or quests, plus they wouldn't get free beta testers.
DraQ
Arcane
Take into account that open engine allows modding access to stuff that was previously hardcoded, removal of deeply burried bugs, fixing bad design, expanding mechanics - this sort of stuff.
Graphics is by far least important here.
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Oh I know full well the potential here (can't wait for it to be truly playable), but it was IDtenT who emphasized the improved graphics - they are indeed about the last thing on the list when it comes to how this project could improve Morrowind. If you are so inclined, graphics can already be improved by a massive degree, but a lot of what you mentioned, and more, can't ever be fixed by hacking away at the original game; it's just fundamentally broken at some parts.
I hope it doesn't take too long, the Ultima IX remake Titans of Ether is using this now. :/
Average Manatee
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Guar
Novice
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Ultima IX: Redemption
The OpenMW project leader, Zini, was (is) also the lead scripter in Redemption. If any of you remember the Middle Earth mod for Morrowind, he was a scripter for that as well if I remember correct. Since he took over OpenMW development (due to limitations when scripting Redemption), progress has been great. They aim for one release every month. Here is the changelog for the latest stable release (0.22).
They are wrapping up 0.23 right now. They have also started work on OpenCS, which will replace the Morrowind Construction Set.
The OpenMW project leader, Zini, was (is) also the lead scripter in Redemption. If any of you remember the Middle Earth mod for Morrowind, he was a scripter for that as well if I remember correct. Since he took over OpenMW development (due to limitations when scripting Redemption), progress has been great. They aim for one release every month. Here is the changelog for the latest stable release (0.22).
They are wrapping up 0.23 right now. They have also started work on OpenCS, which will replace the Morrowind Construction Set.
By the time this port is finished we'll be buying helmets in bethesda's browser based MMO World of Elderscrolls Online.
It has a bright future~
Projects like this (as in, not having legacy source code to start with) either
a) never get completed
or
b) lose compatibility with most data files of the game they're modeled after, and take on lives of their own
Subconsciously there isn't a whole lot of enthusiasm a person can muster when they realize they are wasting their lives on merely recreating something that, to a large degree, already exists. And motivation is crucial for everyday participation in such grueling tasks.
All in all, it will require the amount of effort that goes beyond tremendous, and, most likely, the project will halt with great anthusiasm.
a) never get completed
or
b) lose compatibility with most data files of the game they're modeled after, and take on lives of their own
Subconsciously there isn't a whole lot of enthusiasm a person can muster when they realize they are wasting their lives on merely recreating something that, to a large degree, already exists. And motivation is crucial for everyday participation in such grueling tasks.
All in all, it will require the amount of effort that goes beyond tremendous, and, most likely, the project will halt with great anthusiasm.
Yeah, original game was good enough as it was.
They already admitted that their construction set might not be using the containers that Morrowind provides. This doesn't mean that Morrowind containers would become incompatible, but yes they are adding scope beyond what the engine provided Bethesda.
Why I pointed out the improved graphics earlier is because it's the one thing they can change (apart from bug fixes) inside the current scope of this project. Remember that this is a re-engineering of the engine, not a mod.
theSavant
Self-Ejected
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I can see no reason whatsoever here. It's a dead end. It's better the developers realize it now before wasting their lives on it. Time to put off the nostalgic pink glasses.
>We hope OpenMW 1.0 will draw a lot of attention; in the form of new developers and even more importantly a massive amount of new testers.
Why should any developer come to this project when there are game engines like Unity, which allow to instantly jump into game development (and not engine development), which is proven to be stable and reliable on a whole lotta hardware configurations and many platforms, which consists of technologies and middleware that work seamlessly and are integrated with each other, which includes a quality toolset that is extendable by any user(one of the most important things!), contains a clean asset pipeline, can actually sell their game in the end?
Yeah, the thing with these Open Source Game engines is that they mostly thrown together by different open source libraries, which themselves are buggy, unstable, and only work on very few systems flawlessly (e.g. graphics shaders). Yes I experienced that. Exactly that. No matter where you go - just take look on devmaster.net and try some engines for yourself...
There is no support when one of the component dies (of course you can do everything yourself... spending additional years to bugfix them), most have a bad asset pipeline, no existing toolsets (which you need to implement yourself before any developer will be attracted to this - that's a goal of this project, isn't it?), often lack usability, different technologies (network layer, gui layer, rendering engine etc.) are not seamlessly integrated with each other leading to further issues, contain hardly any documentation (very important, as there are engines like e.g. NeoAxis Engine which look good on the first place but are practically dead because of the non-existing documentation. The mentioned people did exactly that: create an engine out of existing Open Source libraries and hacking them in a way so it works halfway... now after 10 years they consider to go open source...).
And besides, why should any developer be interested in working with a "The Elder Scrolls Construction Set" from 12 years ago, aside from the graphics (and even then they would use the Skyrim Creation Kit)? Source Code access? Overrated.Is it the open world engine? Then you have to consider this: most indie companies with < 10 people will never have the resources to implement a sandbox game like Morrowind in the first place. And where are the larger companies looking? Yeah, there are looking for an engine that is tested and stable and doesn't need additional years of work just to get the engine running.
Again, it's a totally dead end in every aspect. Of course I have read from the MiddleEarth Project from the beginning, but the project itself was a neverending story from anyone's eyes who has created a game from start to finish himself. I recall how proudly they announced how many square miles their terrain has... but then think about this: you must fill the world with something interesting, with gamecontent etc. And that's the thing which requires most of the work. Not only showing some procedurally generated terrain...
If this project will ever get finished in 2020 - and I doubt it will - nobody will be interested in it anyways at that time. It had its time until at maximum 2005 but afterwards hardly anyone was interested in Morrowind anymore, but some die-hard MW fans. And yeah, there was the "Morrowind Overhaul" but it was also too late to attract players anymore (and it still looked worse than Oblivion...). If things take too long, the fanbase, modders and developers move on to new grounds.
And as shihonage said: someday they will realize how pointless it is to re-iterate something that already exists. The motivation will eventually die.
In my opinion what these developers should do now at best is:
Stop the attempt to port Morrowind and focus on the game engine, so they have at least something to show. Polish the game engine, create a nice toolset, make the engine usable by developers. Make the engine work with huge worlds (such as Morrowind, which basically is tiled terrain), maybe integrate multiplayer capability, make it stable and reliable on many hardware configurations, create a documentation.
This way - and only this way - the work on the engine can have a future. But all this Morrowind-Porting is a total waste of time.
>We hope OpenMW 1.0 will draw a lot of attention; in the form of new developers and even more importantly a massive amount of new testers.
Why should any developer come to this project when there are game engines like Unity, which allow to instantly jump into game development (and not engine development), which is proven to be stable and reliable on a whole lotta hardware configurations and many platforms, which consists of technologies and middleware that work seamlessly and are integrated with each other, which includes a quality toolset that is extendable by any user(one of the most important things!), contains a clean asset pipeline, can actually sell their game in the end?
Yeah, the thing with these Open Source Game engines is that they mostly thrown together by different open source libraries, which themselves are buggy, unstable, and only work on very few systems flawlessly (e.g. graphics shaders). Yes I experienced that. Exactly that. No matter where you go - just take look on devmaster.net and try some engines for yourself...
There is no support when one of the component dies (of course you can do everything yourself... spending additional years to bugfix them), most have a bad asset pipeline, no existing toolsets (which you need to implement yourself before any developer will be attracted to this - that's a goal of this project, isn't it?), often lack usability, different technologies (network layer, gui layer, rendering engine etc.) are not seamlessly integrated with each other leading to further issues, contain hardly any documentation (very important, as there are engines like e.g. NeoAxis Engine which look good on the first place but are practically dead because of the non-existing documentation. The mentioned people did exactly that: create an engine out of existing Open Source libraries and hacking them in a way so it works halfway... now after 10 years they consider to go open source...).
And besides, why should any developer be interested in working with a "The Elder Scrolls Construction Set" from 12 years ago, aside from the graphics (and even then they would use the Skyrim Creation Kit)? Source Code access? Overrated.Is it the open world engine? Then you have to consider this: most indie companies with < 10 people will never have the resources to implement a sandbox game like Morrowind in the first place. And where are the larger companies looking? Yeah, there are looking for an engine that is tested and stable and doesn't need additional years of work just to get the engine running.
Again, it's a totally dead end in every aspect. Of course I have read from the MiddleEarth Project from the beginning, but the project itself was a neverending story from anyone's eyes who has created a game from start to finish himself. I recall how proudly they announced how many square miles their terrain has... but then think about this: you must fill the world with something interesting, with gamecontent etc. And that's the thing which requires most of the work. Not only showing some procedurally generated terrain...
If this project will ever get finished in 2020 - and I doubt it will - nobody will be interested in it anyways at that time. It had its time until at maximum 2005 but afterwards hardly anyone was interested in Morrowind anymore, but some die-hard MW fans. And yeah, there was the "Morrowind Overhaul" but it was also too late to attract players anymore (and it still looked worse than Oblivion...). If things take too long, the fanbase, modders and developers move on to new grounds.
And as shihonage said: someday they will realize how pointless it is to re-iterate something that already exists. The motivation will eventually die.
In my opinion what these developers should do now at best is:
Stop the attempt to port Morrowind and focus on the game engine, so they have at least something to show. Polish the game engine, create a nice toolset, make the engine usable by developers. Make the engine work with huge worlds (such as Morrowind, which basically is tiled terrain), maybe integrate multiplayer capability, make it stable and reliable on many hardware configurations, create a documentation.
This way - and only this way - the work on the engine can have a future. But all this Morrowind-Porting is a total waste of time.
Gord
Arcane
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- Feb 16, 2011
- Messages
- 7,049
Well, I doubt their goal is really to produce an engine that will attract developers to use it in their own projects.
When they talk about attracting devs, they likely mean devs that will help in advancing the engine for the purpose of improving what OpenMW can do for sake of porting and improving Morrowind.
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.
Because coding something (which is an excellent portfolio for entering the industry) so that you can experience that nostalgia in the future is inherently a bad thing for everyone involved.
I agree that there is a problem here, but it's a problem of license. They're stuck with GPL so it will fail as a development platform. That's not to say they don't get fellow nostalgics to play ball - which is very likely.
Care to tell me which one of these will deprecate itself before this project does:
Programming language: C++
Graphics: OGRE
Physics: Bullet
Sound: OpenAL and Audiere
GUI: MyGUI
Input: OIS
There will be a custom built construction set. Again its viability does come down to the fact that the license is restrictive and will ultimately hold it back. What we might find is that somebody sells texture packs or the like for the engine, but games (seeing as it will have to bundle the GPLed engine) not so much.
Everything old is shit.
Are you retarded or just purposefully obtuse? A GPL engine would gain zero traction. The inexperienced devs behind this project would be unsure of objectives. Porting Morrowind is what makes it so god damn easy, because it's a set goal with set requirements. It requires absolutely zero original thinking to do this. Can you honestly think of an easier way to set goals other than to have assets that already exist (not imagined assets that somebody will build for your GPLed engine
) be compatible?
DraQ
Arcane
Indeed.
The idea is obviously that the engine will have to be open source. You can't do that without building a lot of things yourself.
theSavant
Self-Ejected
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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.
You don't get it either, do you? You must integrate all these components reasonably to get them work with each other well and work seamlessly. You must test them, adjust them, test them again, and again test them... make them reliable and consistent on multiple hardware configurations. Why do you think it takes so much time for companies that a game engine is finally usable? And besides it's a whole different thing to make an engine usable by your own team than to make it usable for modders. Again, look at NeoAxis Engine... they also put together their engine out of OpenSource components and it's still a mess.
Are you retarded or just purposefully obtuse? A GPL engine would gain zero traction. The inexperienced devs behind this project would be unsure of objectives. Porting Morrowind is what makes it so god damn easy, because it's a set goal with set requirements. It requires absolutely zero original thinking to do this. Can you honestly think of an easier way to set goals other than to have assets that already exist (not imagined assets that somebody will build for your GPLed engine
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.
DraQ
Arcane
So is Doom, Unreal, UT'99, Daggerfall, FFE and so on, right?
Old equals obsolete, game can only be good and worthwhile few months after its release.
Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
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