OpenMW Morrowind engine - [UPDATE: terrain plugin]

[gwathlobal]

I just remembered the original Morrowind had the music stutter problem as well. The "fix" was to turn DOWN hardware audio acceleration, believe it or not. I seem to remember doing this in the DXDiag program, and it worked.

Maybe a capsule representing the players shape would work?

HTH, a little.

Err... then why does it not stutter on the same machine?
BTW, what's HTH?

[jacmoe]

HTH

[brick]

Some updates:

We'll be releasing 0.6 very soon, where we've started using MyGUI. Here's a short video of MyGUI, all skinned up to look like Morrowind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Diu3kZTGY&fmt=18

We've also moved to a new home page at: http://openmw.sourceforge.net

Another new thing in 0.6 is the backend scripting language. We're using the Monster script language, which is being developed alongside OpenMW. Hopefully I'll get to make some more generic Ogre bindings for it soon.

[Lothar]

So far so good
GUI looks great and the new site too
Cheers

[trnrez]

Really interesting project. Keep up the good work this looks really promising.

[mickeyren]

Hi Brick!

I'm looking at your source - would you tell me where to find / which files does the rendering of the scene? Do you do any other geometry culling / optimizations besides OGRE's standard octree?

Since Morrowwind uses gamebryo, I can see that you use niftools to parse the Morrowind data and do you just throw everything to Ogre after that? How does the data end up as an OGRE entity - or something that eventually OGRE understands?

Thanks.

[brick]

Hi Brick!

I'm looking at your source - would you tell me where to find / which files does the rendering of the scene? Do you do any other geometry culling / optimizations besides OGRE's standard octree?

Hi mickeyren!

The scene node setup is for the most part done in ogre/meshloader.d and ogre/cpp_interface.cpp. The main function is meshLoader.loadMesh(), which loads one NIF mesh and creates a scene node tree from it. The actual instances of the mesh in the scene are created by 'cloning' this scene node tree and then moving it into place (see placeObject in ogre/ogre.d). It's made slightly more complicated because we're using two languages (D and C++) though.

There's virtually no custom optimizations yet, I'm saving that for much later.

Since Morrowwind uses gamebryo, I can see that you use niftools to parse the Morrowind data and do you just throw everything to Ogre after that? How does the data end up as an OGRE entity - or something that eventually OGRE understands?

Actually we're not using niftools, it's all custom code. (But I did cooperate with the niftools gang back when I was decoding the format.) After the NIFs are read in, they're pretty much dumped into Ogre like described above.

[brick]

We've just released version 0.6.

In this release you can check out the new GUI system (we're using MyGUI). It will soon be powerful enough to replicate (and then improve!) all the Morrowind windows and interfaces.

We have also implemented the Monster scripting engine fully, which is where we will define all the gameplay behavior of objects and creatures.

Ceck it out: http://openmw.sourceforge.net/jaws/inde ... nload.html

[Kikkoman_56]

Sounds pretty awesome so far, but i haven't downloaded it yet.
will do once i get home.
just a question?
do you plan on making projectiles (ie darts, arrows, bolts etc) move with proper physics?
It'd be cool imho, having your marksmanship affect your accuracy instead of just firing along the same flight path. I'm tired of darts and projectiles that visually look like they hit, but they didn't.

Also just a random idea, is it possible that openmw in the future could be modded in a way like garry's mod/Sandbox?

[brick]

do you plan on making projectiles (ie darts, arrows, bolts etc) move with proper physics?
It'd be cool imho, having your marksmanship affect your accuracy instead of just firing along the same flight path. I'm tired of darts and projectiles that visually look like they hit, but they didn't.

Yes, this is one of the things I hope we can use physics for. The damage done would still be controlled somewhat by your skills though, if we aren't to break with the original completely.

Also just a random idea, is it possible that openmw in the future could be modded in a way like garry's mod/Sandbox?

That would be cool - Ogre based physics sandbox set in the world of Morrowind! Not a high priority right now though

[reptor]

I am curious about the legality of this project - my bet is it isn't OK from a legal point of view.

Some time I wanted to do something like this as well for a commercial game but knowing that I would be standing legally on very shaky ground, I didn't do it.

I'm not opposing this project, just curious how it will go from a legal point of view. It depends whether the copyright owner gets angry or not.

[Sslaxx]

I am curious about the legality of this project - my bet is it isn't OK from a legal point of view.

Some time I wanted to do something like this as well for a commercial game but knowing that I would be standing legally on very shaky ground, I didn't do it.

I'm not opposing this project, just curious how it will go from a legal point of view. It depends whether the copyright owner gets angry or not.

Well, while they may not be ZeniMax's legal team, the guys at Bethesda Softworks both know and approve of (or, at least turn a blind eye to) this project.

[reptor]

Well, "turn a blind eye", I understand. But even then the people who run this project are on shaky legal ground. They are basically at the mercy of the copyright owner.

But I think in a non-commercial project the risk is quite small. It would be a whole different matter if the project would be commercial.

Me, I have this far decided not to start the project I some time wanted to start.

Good luck for the project. I like Morrowind a lot.

[jacmoe]

I don't think they're on any shaky ground.
If you read the topics @ the Elder Scrolls forum, you'll see that a representative of Bethesda posted his blessings.
Yes, they asked. And got a green light.
As much green light as can be given.

[reptor]

At their mercy. As the product's license likely disallows reverse-engineering etc. And that's the real license, which is shown in court, anything else is "at their mercy" sort of thing.

I meant in my previous post with "But I think in a non-commercial project the risk is quite small." exactly that they may "give their blessing" because it is not a commercial project. But still the project is at their mercy, because the real contract is the EULA of the product.

As I said I wanted to start a similar project but didn't because there is no guarantee that the project can legally exist. But I am just being uber-careful and trying to come up with something original.

Not wanting to drift this thread off-topic

[volca]

This also depends on country you live in - for example at Czech Republic (I live in) I believe some parts of EULA are not enforceable. This might even include the part about reverse engineering. But true, it always is a subject of speculations. (Although - there are techniques to get around such thing in a legal way - clean room design for example).
My project sometimes would require such speculatively legal practices as well (as it is an engine rewrite as well) - and the clean room design was chosen as a result of this need. So we have a colleague not working with code and design at all that only supplies specifications. If I do any work on this field, it always is blind data decomposition (I know it's slower, and it does not reveal everything), and am not touching any of the original code at all - which I believe is legal.

I wish OpenMW project luck! The progress you guys do is great, I think.

[reptor]

Volca, you are right, it depends on the country.

I've seen many EULAs which I think are not (entirely) enforceable here in Finland.

There is often some conflict with our legislation in the EULAs. And I've been told by a judge that whenever there is a conflict with our legislation in a contract, then that contract is not legally binding. It is a pretty simple and clear rule that I cannot make a contract which is breaking the laws that govern me. So, if someone gets me to sign, or otherwise agree to, a contract which is breaking our laws, that contract is invalid (without any notice from me).

So I could first "accept" the EULA, but if we go to court over it, I could say "the contract is invalid as it is in conflict with this law".

Some companies who have done their homework regarding this like Microsoft know it, they write a note into their EULA about it.

[brick]

I've made a coupe of new videos, showing Yacoby's new terrain plugin in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVirqwmhrMU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwMZeL74wA

The terrain plugin is currently a standalone program, but it will be integrated into the main OpenMW engine when it's done. It uses auto-generated mipmaps and terrain LOD meshes, and is quite a complex piece of software in itself.

Enjoy

[Sslaxx]

Quite a promising looking start going on there, brick! Nice one!

One of the commenters on YouTube asked if that's geomipmapping - is it?

[brick]

One of the commenters on YouTube asked if that's geomipmapping - is it?

Yacoby says:

The answer is it is actually Chunked LOD. I think it is a slightly less advanced implementation of Geomipmapping due to the fact it uses skirts to mask the changes in LOD level rather than changing the indexies. (I can't remember the exact difference in the two papers off the top of my head).

So I guess the answer is 'yes, sort of'.

[dajesse]

Hm lookin very good n promising, i hope that the graphical adjustment will be much different combined to original morrowind....7600 GS ran same as my new 9600 gt >)

So many possibilities within this project, impressed.

[iio]

Hm lookin very good n promising, i hope that the graphical adjustment will be much different combined to original morrowind....7600 GS ran same as my new 9600 gt >)

So many possibilities within this project, impressed.

Morrowind uses the CPU mostly so if you had the same CPU you wouldn't have noticed much of a difference.

[jacmoe]

We have also implemented the Monster scripting engine fully, which is where we will define all the gameplay behavior of objects and creatures.

I checked your Monster script today, and I really like the language.

However, choosing GPL as the license for a scripting language is utterly brainless.

AngelScript zlib
GameMonkey MIT
Lua MIT
Pawn zlib
Squirrel zlib
TinyScheme BSD

I am pestering you like this because I feel that your language deserves to be used.

[Sslaxx]

Agreed. Even LGPL+static linking exception would be a better choice than straight-up GPL.

[brick]

I checked your Monster script today, and I really like the language.

However, choosing GPL as the license for a scripting language is utterly brainless.

AngelScript zlib
GameMonkey MIT
Lua MIT
Pawn zlib
Squirrel zlib
TinyScheme BSD

I am pestering you like this because I feel that your language deserves to be used.

Sorry for the late reply, and thanks for the feedback!

You are absolutely right of course But the thing is that I'm looking for alternative income streams right now, and dual-licensing Monster as GPL+commercial is one of the options. Realistically the only way I can get close to finishing OpenMW, Monster and my other projects is to work on them full time, and in the future possibly to hire others to work on them as well.

I agree that the only way Monster can possibly work as commercial software is if it adds some very unique stuff that none of those other languages have. But hope and think I can do that. And if that fails the backup plan is to switch to zlib. I understand if that turns some people off in the mean time though.

Anyway, I'd love to hear if you have any specific thoughts on the language.

Also, I've just started a separate mailing list for Monster: http://groups.google.com/group/monster-script . Anyone who is interested in the language is invited to join.