Hot on the heels of 0.12.0, the OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.13.0! Release packages for Ubuntu are now available via our Launchpad PPA. Release packages for other platforms are available on our Download page. This release notably includes functional NPC dialogue, and beautiful sky!

Please note:

– On OSX, the path to the application cannot contain spaces, or the launcher will not work properly.

Changelog:

– NPC Dialogue window and mechanics implemented
– Reimplemented sky rendering, added weather effects
– Wireframe mode added
– Fix for sounds broken in 0.12.0
– Fix for 3D sounds
– Added sounds for weather, doors, containers, picking up items, and journal
– Various code cleanup and improvements
– Fixed an Ogre crash at the Dren plantation
– Several launcher improvements
– Added fade to black effect for cutscenes
– Added backend for equipping items
– Fix to stop ASCII 16 character from being added to console on its activation in OSX
– Fixed collision shapes being out of place
– Fixed torch lights not being visible past a short distance
– Fixed some transparency rendering problems

As you’re probably aware, we recently debuted OpenMW 0.12.0. to gamers across the world. It was delayed by bugfixes and documentation, but not nearly as much as some of our previous versions. We are very proud of it, but as the saying goes, “There’s no rest for the wicked,” and this first post-0.12.0 week proved quite productive for the team! So let’s talk about this week’s news.

The website received two new features thanks to Lgro. The first is the link on the top right of the page that says “#openmw”. This will take you to our irc channel at freenode. The second new feature is a button that swaps languages for the news section. These both continue our trend of lowering barriers for user engagement with the team and our community.

Up next, Werdanith finished cleaning up the soundmanager which allows for the addition of new features! Scrawl got right to work and successfully added water and rain sounds. Werdanith is in the planning stage for enabling sound effects for picking up items.

Gus continued his work on dialogues, a task made possible after Zini got dialogue scripts working. This is good news as dialogues are one of the main feature for version 0.13.0

Our leader Zini has taken two new tasks. The one that interests me most is item equipment. Once it is implemented the current “underwear party” you’ve seen in the 0.12.0 demo video will come to an end, and NPCs will begin dressing more modestly as we finally see jhooks1’s fine work on animating clothes (robes were especially tricky).

Meanwhile jhooks1 continues refining the physics system and already the changes are extensive. J’s using the physics of Project Aedra (another Morrowind reimplementation) as a model and should soon have a solution to the issue of players falling through floors.

Pvdk continues working on the launcher. A regression on linux platforms has been addressed and will soon be fixed. Also the launcher will no longer spawn unnecessary consoles on windows platforms.

Corristo is also active, but his engine work is not visible to end users, but are indeed necessary.

K1ll and BrotherBrick are preparing an Ubuntu ppa for openmw. Lot’s of work have gone into making it work correctly and risk free, but it’s almost done for all you Ubuntu users out there.

The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.12.0! Release packages are available on our Download page. This release notably includes NPC and Creature animation, though no A.I. has been implemented, so animations must be activated through console commands. Please review the following:

Regressions:

• Sounds other than music not working
• Scroll and button background graphics in launcher not working in Linux package

Important notes:

• You must remove all old openmw.cfg files in order for the automatic detection of Morrowind installations to work.
• If the data path is set manually and it contains spaces, it needs to be put inside quotation marks.

Changelog:

• Various rendering fixes and optimizations
• Refactored engine class
• Automatic package building
• Various build fixes and cleanup
• Various configuration fixes and cleanup, including detection of existing Morrowind installations
• Basic NPC/Creature animation support added, must be activated from console
• Basic implementation of Journal Window added
• Fix for local scripts continuing to run if associated object is deleted
• Fix for crash when taking screenshots
• Fix for crash when visiting Akulakhan’s Chamber
• Added catching of exceptions thrown in input handling functions
• Fix for NPC Activation not working properly
• Allow the player to move away from pre-defined cells

Good day to you all!

OpenMW 0.12.0 has been in feature freeze for a while now and is currently being packaged up neatly for your consumption and joy. Thank you packagers! It will likely be available in a matter of days, so just hold on another 48 hours…

Testing and fixing packages on our three supported systems has eaten up a lot of time, but exciting work has continued on OpenMW 0.13.0. Its progress has been so remarkably fast that I dare say development is going smoother than ever before.

Scrawl has finished work on the sky for now. Weather effects are limited since they composed of particles and we haven’t implemented particles just yet. The sky looks very impressive, just like in Morrowind. Once again, I’m very happy with the progress in this area. It was a fast, smooth and elegant job and the result is a beautiful working skybox (we kicked cealum to the curb!). Take a look at this screenshoot.

And now! Quote of the week:

I have only the tiniest understanding of what you guys are talking about. Let me be more clear by “understanding” I mean it’s like waking up in a UFO and overhearing two aliens speak to each other about some an amazing glowing device in the room. You know they are having a discussion about said device because occasionally one or the other points at it. It’s like that level of comprehension…

ElderTroll expressing his feelings on the forum thread where the massive work being done by Yacoby and Scrawl on terrain rendering is discussed. These two are doing a truly fantastic job. Yacoby had a succesful idea for a workaround for vertex colours (quote: “OMG! I don’t believe that it’s working!!!!!!!!!!1111oneoneoneeleven”) which had not been working previously, but which are needed for terrain rendering. Meanwhile scrawl implemented terrain material, which improved performance.

It brings me great happiness to say that terrain rendering is finally feature complete. Its inclusion as an enabled feature in OpenMW depends on the release of Ogre3d 1.8 as we can’t put an unstable lib as requirement for a stable OpenMW. The wait for Ogre 1.8 gives the team the ability to do performance improvements like shortening loading times and generally polishing it for version 0.14.0.

Werdanith the brave has started exploration of the Dwemer ruins containing the soundmanager code. The code was not touched for aeons and is in pretty bad shape. The situation is similar to that of the rendering refactoring that happened a while ago ─ without refactoring no new features.

Jhooks1, our Isaac Newton, continues his work on physics. That’s another 0.14.0 task and with its release months away,  I’m very hopeful that the major kinks will be sorted out.

Also, the above post should be free of the most scandalous spelling and grammar mistakes thanks to ElderTroll who volunteered to correct the news section. A number of users on forum said the errors are charming and adorable, but those compliments come from a bunch of ugly nerds. So sorry guys (which certainly most, if not all, of you are), but I don’t care about your opinion :P

PS
This image is from yacoby. You can see terrain and sky enabled. It’s amazing!