Welcome to another OpenMW release commentary!
The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.42
of our open source reimplementation of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.
As always, this video will cover changes in our engine.
If you want to know more about progess on our editor, OpenMW-CS, there is a second video available.
Before we start, I want to point out two important facts about the OpenMW project:
First of all, OpenMW is already in a fully playable state.
As of now, you are able to complete the main quest,
finish the expansions' questlines,
advance through the ranks of all factions,
and hunt down each and every single side quest in the game.
Looking at our main goals for version 1.0, there are only a handful missing features
-- mostly AI-related stuff and some eye candy --
separating us from a complete reimplementation of Morrowind's original engine.
And the best thing is: Since OpenMW is a new engine created from scratch,
we are free to eliminate every design bug of the vanilla engine
and improve certain aspects of the game without the need for dirty hacks or third-party software.
To sum things up: OpenMW has almost reached its main goals for version 1.0 and is already fully playable.
Secondly, there seems to be some confusion about OpenMW's versioning scheme,
making people think that the version number is equal to a percentage value.
That's definitely not the case!
Instead, OpenMW uses the so-called "Semantic Versioning".
A version indicator consists of three numbers:
The first one represents the major version
and is increased when there are changes that make OpenMW incompatible with earlier versions.
As I mentioned before, we haven't reached all of our main goals yet
which is why we always have a leading "0" regardless of compatibility issues.
The second number indicates the minor version
and is increased with every release until we hit a new major version.
In fact, this release is the 42nd minor release of our engine.
Finally, the third number marks maintenance releases
which patch our engine in the rare case of severe errors introduced by a former update.
Oh, and we often skip this number in order to save time we then put into OpenMW's development.
Okay, enough preliminary information
-- grab your towels and follow me through the change log!
OpenMW version 0.42 fixes various issues with the lighting.
For example, your character's preview in the inventory window now properly displays light particles
which is particularly visible with equipped light sources.
Our last update introduced shadows for items in your inventory.
Unfortunately, these shadows weren't cleared in certain GUI windows, e.g., the Alchemy window,
making them stay forever unless you restarted OpenMW.
This bug has been fixed.
Another issue is the maximum number of light sources which can affect an object at the same time.
This number is currently set to 8 -- which is a limitation of our fixed-function rendering pipeline.
When the number of light sources in-game exceeded 8, OpenMW previously prioritised the sources by distance from the camera.
As you can see in my slightly extreme test setup,
this makes the light coming from the more powerful yet remote braziers pop up in a very annoying way.
With this release, OpenMW also takes the intensity of light sources into account
which vastly improves the lighting in most vanilla situations
-- and even in my test setup.
In the original engine, magic projectiles emit light.
This feature has finally made its way into OpenMW
-- a nice addition to the fixed magic effect sounds and animations from the previous release.
Please note that I had to turn down the in-game light in order to present this issue.
Why are there torches and light spells in Vvardenfell when nights are brighter than in modern cities?
In the past, enchanted arrows only triggered their effects when hitting an actor.
The vanilla engine, however, also allows you to aim area effect arrows at the ground in order to hit enemies nearby.
We've adopted this behaviour in version 0.42.
And if you try to be clever: Indirect hits are still considered your fault.
Moving on to water-related issues.
Listen!
Can you hear the wind blowing through the rocks at Azura Coast?
Ah, nice.
And the sound of water rush
-- hey, wait!
There are no passive water sounds in OpenMW!
Don't worry.
Our sedulous developers have already implemented that feature in version 0.42.
Much better, don't you think?
Slaughterfish are the most annoying creatures in Morrowind
-- right after Cliff Racers, of course.
Simply jump in a pool of water and watch those bloodthirsty little bastards coming right after you.
I guarantee you: When this happens to you for the third time, you'll just leave the water and make for the dry and waterless Ashlands.
However, this wouldn't solve your issue in previous versions of OpenMW
because the game would still think you were in combat even after getting out of the water.
In order to prevent any player from turning paranoid, the current release fixes that issue.
There aren't and have never been flying Slaughterfish chasing their enemies over the island in OpenMW!
Ehm, yeah.
In Morrowind, your character may summon creatures to fight alongside their master for a certain amount of time.
Some of these servants formerly ignored and were ignored by water creatures -- e.g., the abovementioned Slaughterfish.
This bug is fixed now.
Still no reason to leave your home without a spell of Water Walking.
You will also realise that armed creatures didn't automatically equip shields in the past, heavily compromising their own defense.
The current version solves that issue.
Many of Morrowind's quests require your character to escort an NPC from point A to point B.
Especially at larger distances or with many enemy encounters, you may want to camp every now an then in order to recover.
In the past, this would make your companion stop following you, if you saved and reloaded your game afterwards.
This behaviour has been fixed in the current release.
Moreover, player followers or escorters weren't attacked by enemies in previous versions of our engine.
This issue has been fixed as well.
I'm curious what Fargoth's opinion on that matter is.
In order to demonstrate the next issue, I have re-enacted a typical fight scene in Morrowind:
My character is surrounded by roughly a billion Cliff Racers which are all eager to get their share.
-- But watch how our most beloved enemies tear each other apart instead; a well-crafted former feature of OpenMW.
Alas, the current version vastly improves the combat AI to prevent that kind of friendly fire.
Good luck on your future adventures on Vvardenfell!
A last note on combat:
You may use the Command spell effect to make enemies fight alongside your character for a certain amount of time.
Unfortunately, this mechanic was previously broken in OpenMW.
With version 0.42, the spell effect works as intended.
And don't ask what that Cliff Racer is going to do once the spell effect wears out.
*sigh*
Let's be honest, Vvardenfell isn't the most vivid place to be.
At least, NPCs wander around in their default locations, dropping some lines now and then.
However, in the, ehm, subconscious effort off making the world more dynamic,
OpenMW developers took the NPCs' wandering to extremes by forcing an almost non-stop movement.
The current release reduces the NPCs' walking quota to a more vanilla-friendly level.
-- We'll see how that step affects the overall healthiness on Vvardenfell.
In the past, many players encountered dramatic FPS drops in certain areas
because of flaws in our physics system, namely the collision handling.
With a bit of trial and error, the performance impact can be seen even on my super-fast new PC setup.
We have since rewritten parts of the physics code in order to improve collision detection and movement solving
which drastically improves OpenMW's performance in these situations.
Moreover, actors get stuck less often now and your character's movement in narrow places feels much smoother.
Another issue with collision could make your character get stuck in doorways or unable to climb certain stairs.
The switch from cylindric collision shapes to capsular ones in version 0.42 fixes these issues.
Finally, your character was able to move through dying actors in previous versions because there was no collision applied to these anymore.
Actors now keep their collision shape until the death animation has finished playing, preventing you from further dishonouring their corpses.
Okay, we are done with the mundane changes of this release.
Let's move on to the real blockbuster:
With version 0.42, OpenMW provides distant terrain!
This feature makes it possible to reveal much more of Morrowind's terrain in-game while keeping your FPS at a high level.
Please note that distant terrain, of course, only affects TERRAIN.
-- Static objects, or even creatures and NPCs, need dedicated methods for simplifying meshes or textures and aren't displayed at greater distances.
In order to enable distant terrain in OpenMW, head over to your local OpenMW directory,
open the settings.cfg file and add the Terrain section to your settings.
Below that, add a new line where you set "distant terrain" to "true".
OpenMW will now render terrain up to the viewing distance which is set in the Camera section.
You may calculate this value by using the displayed formula.
If you want to know more about OpenMW's settings, check out our online documentation at readthedocs.io.
You can find a link in the video description below.
Back to distant terrain:
When this feature activated, the engine loads and unloads terrain on the fly.
As you can see, there are several levels of detail which are loaded depending on the distance from the camera.
This is even more visible with OpenMW's greatest feature:
the wireframe mode!
I've recorded the same scene several times using different view and cell loading settings.
As you can see, the transition between fully loaded cells
-- i.e., all objects are loaded and all scripts and AI routines are running --
and additionally loaded distant terrain is quite obvious, especially for a low number of loaded cells.
However, the performance impact is quite small considering the amount of rendered terrain because, yes, there are no additional objects, scripts, or AI routines.
When you further increase the amount of loaded cells, the distant terrain becomes a real horizon, making the transition much smoother and less distracting.
The only thing I miss is a proper fog shader -- and guess what: Several community members are already working on fog shaders for OpenMW.
To cut a long story short:
If you like greater view distances and have a decent PC, distant terrain on a grid of 7x7 loaded cells leads to very good results.
If you don't like how Vvardenfell seems to shrink at greater view distances or if your PC is a bit older,
distant terrain on lower grid sizes may be an option but will eventually lead to empty land in the distance.
You'd be better off waiting for some kind of distant statics to arrive.
Oh, and I should mention that the current implementation is much more sophisticated than the distant terrain previously featured in the Ogre3D version of our engine:
It looks better, loads faster, uses less memory, and does not suffer from glitches.
-- A great addition to OpenMW's graphical capabilities, and another big step towards version 1.0.
That's all for now.
We already have a good amount of solved issues for version 0.43, so expect a new release in the not too distant future.
On a side note, TES3MP, a fork of OpenMW focussing on introducing multiplayer capability, has been making great progress.
While things are still in closed alpha testing right now, a working implementation of NPC and creature synchronisation has already been achieved.
Moreover, players are able to solve quests together as their factions and journals are also being syncked now.
If that weren't enough, plug-ins are also synchronised,
and recent tests show no issues playing even the most complex mods, such as Tamriel Rebuilt, as long as the mods themselves are compatible with OpenMW.
Stay tuned for a TES3MP release in the near future.
If you want one of the upcoming releases to be version 1.0, consider contributing to our project:
We always need players who test our engine and report bugs or make feature requests.
We also need developers to implement these changes.
If you are skilled in C++ and want to work on our engine or on our editor, OpenMW-CS, please register at our forums and introduce yourself.
You could also help us with code documentation at the beginning and start coding yourself when you've become familiar with our code structure.
Finally, to all of you:
Please spread the word about our project.
We know that our engine lacks the fancy graphics of Skywind and that it will reveal its full potential only after version 1.0 has been released
-- but first we have to get there, and every help is welcome!
Don't forget to check out the, once again, very short release video for our editor, OpenMW-CS.
We hope to get more progress on the editor's side in the future.
Also consider reading through the official release notes for more in-depth information, and visit our forums on openmw.org.
See you next time; and as always:
Don't panic!
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,
That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer.
"I play the whole game like this, personally."
"If you haven't played through the main quest yet with pathgrid rendering on in wireframe mode, you're missing out."
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