image ©Maxim Nikolaev
OpenMW 0.17.0 Released! 2012-08-27 - raevol

The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.17.0! Release packages for Ubuntu are now available via our Launchpad PPA. Release packages for other platforms are available on our Download page. This version introduces a new player control system, potion usage, a Main Menu, and a multitude of fixes and improvements.

Check out our release video by WeirdSexy:

Known Issues:

Changelog:

The week in review 2012-08-26 - sir_herrbatka

The 0.17.0 release is set for next week, as we’re just waiting on just a few builds. Our superstar WeirdSexy gifted us with another excellent demonstration video. We’d be lost without that smooth voice… but our project is an international effort with K1ll‘s a juicy German accent, ap0 has both French lover and English down, while there is the true Norwegian Black Metal growl of Rebel-Rider…

Eli2 is making good progress on the editor. At some point the code will be mature enough for others to join the effort. Let me reiterate: we need the editor in order to add desirable post-1.0.0 features.

As for the Example Suite, greendogo had contacted many talented Morrowind modders asking to use their works. Westly has given us permission to use his custom races, vurt’s allowing us to use his nice trees, and in general we’re gathering a very nice set of art assets. If you are a Morrowind modder that has work that you are willing to let us use, please let us know on our forum. These assets may be very useful for future Total Conversion projects that don’t want to have anything in common with Morrowind (including actually owning the game). The Example Suite’s story thus far is deserving of a … B or perhaps even C grade.

Lgro is setting up a jenkins server. It will allow us to have automatic nightly builds of OpenMW, and allow you to test the newest features without compiling on your own.

I would love to write about the future plans but this has to wait until new version is released. That’s any moment so be patient like me!

The week in review 2012-08-20 - sir_herrbatka

Guess what, 0.17.0 is very close to release.

Zini completed the mw-refactoring task. This Herculean work improves the readability of the source code for new developers. This week Zini changed his Linux distribution from Ubuntu to Mint, we don’t know if he changed his desktop wallpaper from Ubuntu-orange to Mint-green, but speculation is rampant.

You will be finally able to see your character! The 0.17.0 release  for the finishing touches on player control. This includes the new camera which allows not only “First Person Perspective” and “Third Person Perspective” view, but “Vanity Mode” will turn on automatically when the player is idle. I couldn’t find a nice link about vanity mode, but it allows you to (or the game to automatically) rotate the camera while moving or stationary. You have _greye to thank for this awesome new feature!

That’s all for 0.17.0. Let’s move on to the OpenMW Example Suite.

OpenMW is getting close to playable and the OpenMW team needs the help of modding community to creating the OpenMW Example Suite. This suite will allow anyone, including those who don’t not yet own Morrowind, to test OpenMW. Therefore it cannot contain any Bethesda/ZeniMax owned art assets. We believe this suite will boost our user and developer base, resulting in people purchasing Morrowind and putting OpenMW to the test of running the original game. Our engine will provide greater modding capabilities to the mod community once completed, bring native support to Linux and Mac OS X, help out the project will be mutually beneficial.

Location and Setting
The suite will take place on a small island with a fishing village. There will be a dungeon and a crypt (which is already built, and has been the entirety of this project up till now). In addition, there will be a few wilderness areas like a pine forest and some small fields. The player will be a resident of the tiny island village who goes off to kill some monster, fetch some pretty object from the dungeon, or escort someone from the crypt.

Purpose
It’s called OpenMW Example Suite as opposed to OpenMW Tech Demo, because we don’t want a jumble of unrelated rooms strung together to display all of the engine’s abilities, like some tech demoes. Instead, it will be a micro-game that, aside from exhibiting the engine’s functionalities, is aesthetically pleasing and coherent. Through our small island, with its basic kill and fetch quests, we’ll be able to display the functionality of a tech demo. Additional quests and dialogue can be implemented until we have exhausted the feature showcase. Once each feature has been demonstrated at least once, we can consider the OpenMW Example Suite complete, with any future additions to it as icing on the cake.

Getting Involved
If you are willing to help, please visit this forum thread and acquaint yourself with the task, what’s already done, who can be of help to you. Thanks for your time. Cheers to keeping Morrowind alive! Below is a description of the tasks that need to be completed.

Up next is news on 0.18.0, which has already begun development.

Scrawl is making progress on the GUI and input system rewrite. We now have mouse sensitivity sliders: one for the GUI mode and one for the game itself (there is only one, but x and y axis can be adjusted through editing a file). Warning! The GUI sensitivity is updated in real time (meaning it does not need OpenMW to restart) so think twice before pulling slider to the very far left…

jhooks1’s work enables the use of set angle instructions for NPCs. He also fixed the jittery animations bug in 0.17.0 making them smooth as butter. You’ll have to wait until 0.18.0 to try it out.

Eli2’s work on editor has past the experimental phase. We want more developers to get involved, because it’s currently a one man project, but there is no need to rush… yet. We won’t really need the editor before OpenMW 1.0.0, because it’s only at that point that we will add new script instructions. However, a better designed editor would be an invaluable tool to the modding community even now

And thanks to all the users who reported bugs. Your help is invaluable to us making a superior and stable engine. If you find something wonky in OpenMW check our bugtracker to see if it’s been reported. If it hasn’t, either register on our bug tracker or let us know on the forum that something is going wrong.

 

The week in review 2012-08-12 - sir_herrbatka

Hi all.

We’re celebrating an anniversary on the site. It was exactly one year ago today, that we moved to our current forums. The forum migration involved moving all the archives from google cache and amazon to the new forum “archive section”, but we had no choice. Thanks go to Lgro, our website admin! You gave OpenMW something essential to its current progress. The old website and forum had been left without any administrator, were invaded by spam bots and suffering from frequent periods of down time. In fact, we still can’t close the old forum properly; it’s still out there somewhere, dark and gloomy. Like the inside of a dead snail’s shell… or the city of Moria. Readers, if you decide to go looking in the old forums… remember not to dig too deep.

Despite the departure of the creator and lead developer of OpenMW, the remaining team members decided not to give up. They started this new website, the new forums, and reorganized the project. And here we are, in what will hopefully prove the most productive year yet for OpenMW. So raise some glasses, “To new life… to our phoenix! Santé! Mazel tov! Prost! Skål! Na zdorovie! Salud! And cheers!”

Speaking of new life, here’s what’s happened since we last talked:

Edmondo, the maintainer of OpenMW for gentoo, fixed a few recent problems that were preventing OpenMW from running on Gentoo (We are once again using submodules). Gentoo users can once again install OpenMW.

There’s been progress on our editor, thanks to Eli2. Auto completion was added and filters can now be imported from files. Lgro also pushed some bugfixes and added support for different types of encoding.

_greye is halfway finished with the player control task (a rather large task composed of five sub tasks). He’s got movement and turning working, but camera nodes still need to be completed. Right now _greye is working on fixing bugs related to objects crossing cell borders.

Corristo implemented the correct Ogre main loop for OS X, so Mac’s enjoy the speed of the cursor being freed from the tyranny of FPS.

Gus is working on moving and creating objects.

Scrawl added the basic features of the main menu. It has Return, Options, and Exit buttons.

Jhooks1 got the new capsule box shapes collision method working on creatures.

Zini is working on yet another refactoring task, this time in the mw-subsystem. Refactoring code helps make it more organized, readable, and even efficient.

We are merging all the finished 0.17.0 features and fixes into the main branch of the engine and beginning preparations for our next release. Though thin in terms of new gameplay features, 0.17.0 includes major changes under the hood. For instance, the Shiny shader library makes shader development easier by allowing the same shaders to be run regardless of a user’s choice of the OpenGL or Direct3d rendering subsystems, graphics card, and OS. While, the new animations system that’s now in place improves performance.

If you have been following OpenMW, then you know what a picture like this means.

Picture

Here’s a link to the blog post the picture references that explains its meaning

We need a lot of testing this version. You can help out OpenMW by reporting bugs.

 

The Week in review 2012-08-05 - sir_herrbatka

Another week — once again brings things that moves our project toward playability and full compatibility with Morrowind. It’s true that we are once again progressing with nice speed.

Since animation task is closed both jhooks1 and Chris was left without a task, but happily not for long…

Jhooks1 currently returned to physics implementation — you probably noticed that collision with npc is flawed: It’s very easy to get stuck and in general behavior is very different then in Morrowind. This is not surprising at all since the way collision with npc works is itself not like in Morrowind. To make story short: while player character has it’s own collision capsule (sphere that replaces the actually body mesh for the collision) npc are still half baked and use the body mesh for physics. That’s the source of problems.

Jhooks1 is now busy with enabling the collision capsule also for npcs. That should solve most (if not all) problems in this area.

Meanwhile Chris is researching the morrowind feature not actually present in the vanilla game but often used in mod enthusiasts content: Billboard nodes. Most of you seen only billboard trees that adds a lot of eye-candy to the game, especially when compared with plain flora — but yet, the billboard nodes itself are more universal. Currently it’s hard to tell if this feature will be present in OpenMW any time soon since experiments didn’t brought ultimate insight.

greye continues being awesome. Dropping related job is finished and this week He is actually working on two branches. First off He started (and made a nice progress with it) task of player control. That’s a big road blocker for a few… sorry Did I wrote “a few”? For a countless other tasks and features that are yet to come!

gus is back! And He is programming again! I missed him a lot — He is a really friendly guy… and developing openmw makes him super cool.

gus works on Object_movement_creation branch to add new script instructions related to object movement and creations. In theory, objects should be able to cross cell borders. Although It’s not tested, now we have script instructions to test it… effects will be known next week.

This branch attacks roadblocker at least as large as player control. We must finish it before adding another large features.

Eli2 works on editor. Not just this week, but now it’s time to say that actually this is a really good job. Although a lot of it is actually mostly provisional It already looks pretty good: The filters are working, the list displays items. Personally I see the beginning of the editor I would like to work with: very simple approach, very minimal yet ergonomic design, more then just enough of planning.

We need the editor, sooner or later, and it would be better to have it sooner — before OpenMW 1.0.0 so We won’t need to hold work on long awaited modding features in the game data format only because there is no editor to work on this format in the first place. Everybody would love to have multiple exteriors and other goodies, right?

Although our multiple esm and esp support is still in embryonic state mark76 helps to test it a little. After returning from India and sharing the experience about it. He created a few small test plugins to expose complications in the current implementation. It can take a long time before issues will be solved and this long awaited feature will debut in the release.

Zini decided to add a brand new options “–script-console” and “–script-run”. The first one enables additional console only commands that are intended to test our engine (currently none) while –script-run allows to point a file containing script instruction that are about to be run on game start.

Sorcerer, a new developer that joined us recently works now on task of importing configuration from morrowind.ini to openmw.cfg file. The importer is functional right now and soon should be complete.

Scrawl does not work on OpenMW at the moment, but instead He focused on the shiny lib, supporting us this way. He implemented LOD material generator and although we are not going to use it before OpenMW 1.0.0 at some point it may become a really handy tool for us.