The usual things going on:

• Mountains of bugs fixed. (Almost three dozen bugs disappeared from the tracker just this week!)
• Since we’re nearing completion, we’ve taken a good look at how we can optimize OpenMW. As a result, the game runs noticeably smoother now.
• Pvdk is working on the Morrowind installer for those of us who are not on Windows systems. These little side-projects might not have a direct result on the gameplay, but are still part of OpenMW and will need to be in good shape.
• Scrawl discovered a few new absurdities about Morrowind…

Sorry for the rush. The next news post will be as fat as deep-fried butter. ;)

I’m tempted to say that OpenMW hasn’t changed all that much, but that wouldn’t be true. The changes are huge, but the nature of these changes are the same as those of last week. Let’s just say another mountain of bugs has been fixed.

It’s worth pointing out that this “mountain” is quite high! We’re not talking Wetterhorn-size – it’s more like K2! But instead of getting caught up in analogies, let’s focus on the facts.

The amount of fixed bugs are in the triple digits. Seriously, check the bug tracker if you don’t believe me. The big bug brawler is Scrawl, but other developers, such as MrCheko, have also put in a lot of effort to reach this new high score.

So what else? I’m afraid not too much. Work is being done on supporting nested data in OpenCS (eg. a list of what’s in an NPC’s inventory nested inside his/her properties window). It’s quite interesting because it makes finding these lists in OpenCS a lot more intuitive. It’s not finished yet, though.

Welcome back.

The project advances like Armstrong in his best years on doping. What, you think cycling is boring? Yeah, it bores me too, but it does make the analogy pretty applicable.

You see, at this point development of OpenMW is repetitive, like the seasons in a year, so each week I need to write about the same things. Scrawl continues his fight against bugs, Greye refactors AI code, Pvdk works on the launcher (as well as the Morrowind installer), Zini is making changes to OpenCS – and it’s nigh impossible to tell you about the nature of these changes if you don’t already know how these applications are structured.

But lucky me, I still have some interesting stuff to share.

First, if you wanted to be the first person to finish Morrowind on our engine… you’re too late! Rebel-rider beat you to it… and found some really weird bugs along the way.

Second, Scrawl mentioned that he is struggling with some mods that are not quite well-made. Initially we just nodded our heads as if we understood what he was talking about, but we didn’t expect to see things like this.

Yes, apparently some mods have “junk data”. Poor Scrawl. :(

If you haven’t noticed yet, we have just released 0.30.0. Great news, right? Everyone who can read English has been lucky enough to be able to enjoy the changelog, but our Polish-only readers aren’t that lucky as Sir_Herrbatka has simply been short on time. So instead of the full changelog in Polish, he did the next best thing and gave his readers a quick overview of Zini’s forum post on the progress of the project.

As seen here we are pretty close to becoming feature complete. All is going well and I don’t really have much to say about OpenMW.

OpenCS is another case. We still lacking manpower. It seems right now sirherrbatka and I are doing the bulk of the work, which is just not enough. I certainly don’t want to distract the OpenMW development by pushing people towards OpenCS. But if there are any inactive or retired OpenMW developers, I would be very happy to see some un-retire themself and help us out a bit (new people are also welcome, of course).

So that’s where stand now. Honestly, I’ve gotten the feeling that our newsposts have gotten a bit stale. Until version 1.0.0 rolls around, I won’t have much to tell you in terms of exciting changes in the project, let alone the nitty-gritty details of their implementation. On the other hand, there is still lots of work to do to bring whole thing to a fully playable state.

That means that there’s no reason for us to stop working! Scrawl is super(radio)active; like a superhero straight from the silver screen, he is squishing bugs one after another. Didimaster also fixed lots of bugs and Puppykevin is working on adding facial animations. If you have tried our alpha releases, you know exactly what we mean by that.

Zini implemented a very important function in the editor: OpenCS now supports record references, which is a fundamental and necessary function for the further development of OpenCS.

The biggest news I want to share with you doesn’t concern OpenMW, but Lgro, developer during the day, master of martial arts at night and our reliable admin all the time: He is getting married! So I wish him happiness and prosperity in his new way of life. And just a note to all the female readers who are now undoubtedly wailing loudly and gnashing their teeth after seeing Lgro slip away: I heard Scrawl is still available!

Anyway, feel free to add your own wishes for Mr. and Mrs. Gromanowski.