OpenMW 0.20.0

[Zini]

Not that much has changed since the last release. We have most the GUI task taken care of, but apart from that 0.19.0 was pretty much a bug fixing release. Therefore we are dealing mostly with the same roadmap as last time.

Unfortunately that leaves us with the same two issues (or groups of issues) as last time. Quoting myself:

1. Animation and NPC rendering, plus movement which is tied in to animations: We have a discussion about that going on in another thread right now.

2. The whole ini importer topic: This is plaguing us for quite some time now. More complex than I initially thought. Will require some changes to the launcher (both the way it works and the UI). Also, a lot of work. I really hope we can find someone to take this group of tasks, because it becomes tiring to drag it along.

If we don't make substantial progress in these areas soon, they will start to wear us down. Note, that it would be a huge improvement to get melee combat into 0.20.0 (which requires proper weapon rendering, unless we want to look totally silly). Together with the death implementation of 0.19.0 and the dialogue improvements I am currently working on, this would turn OpenMW from a tech demo into a somewhat playable game (for sufficient small values of "playable").

On the plus side we already have 8 finished tasks for 0.20.0. We are making nice progress and I don't expect another delayed release. Having 0.20.0 out in a month from now should be very well doable.

[WeirdSexy]

Not to mention that 0.20 is a nice round number and this release should happen right about at the end of the year. Sure would be a nice time for such huge improvements. No pressure guys!

[ElderTroll]

That potential is very exciting, zini. Maybe jhooks1 could work on animations as well or is he still working on the physics implementation?

weirdsexy is right that it'd be psychologically gratifying to have that jump in features correspond with 0.2x.0 line of release.

[psi29a]

This would be nice to finally have:
https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/449 <-- Allow mouse outside of window while paused

[Zini]

This would be nice to finally have:
https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/449 <-- Allow mouse outside of window while paused

Highly non-trivial, unfortunately. Neither OIS nor OGRE do have the necessary API for it. Most likely we would have to write separate implementations for each target platform.

[psi29a]

*sad face* Openmw-future for you my friend...

I'm surprised that this isn't already included because of how convenient it is and how common it is in modern (within the last 9 years) games.

[Zini]

Let's keep it in 0.20.0 anyway. I agree that this is a particular desirable feature.

[Greendogo]

@BrotherBrick: Is that only when the game is paused using the ESC menu, or also "paused" as in the inventory/character/map screen? I'd imagine the latter would be particularly annoying during normal play, while the former would, indeed, be very handy. Perhaps clarify in the feature description on the tracker?

[psi29a]

@BrotherBrick: Is that only when the game is paused using the ESC menu, or also "paused" as in the inventory/character/map screen? I'd imagine the latter would be particularly annoying during normal play, while the former would, indeed, be very handy. Perhaps clarify in the feature description on the tracker?

When hitting Esc and getting the game menu is the 'pause screen' because you cannot do anything in game. However I can see the confusion because the game loop itself is also paused while working with the in-game windows/tasks.

[TorbenC]

Highly non-trivial, unfortunately..

Doesn't trivial mean unimportant, so non-trivial would mean.. important... Highly important, unfortunately? Just wondering.