%----------------------------------------------------% %----- Part 5: How To Contribute To Our Project -----% %----------------------------------------------------% % %--- Intro % Welcome to part five of our FAQ series. This will be the last video for now but future updates may further expand this series. Today, we will deal with one of the most important topics: How you can contribute to our OpenMW project. % %--- How can I contribute to your project? % Q: I'm eager to help you. How can I contribute to your project? A: There are many different ways to help OpenMW reach its goals. You could spread the word about our project, help us with translation tasks, test our engine, or become a developer for OpenMW or OpenMW-CS respectively. And now for the details. By the term spread the word I mean any activity which aims at increasing OpenMW's awareness level. To achieve this, you could share our release announcements, videos, and news posts on other sites or forums. Moreover, taking part in discussions on related forums or on reddit would allow us to introduce more people to OpenMW and help us to fight misconceptions about our engine. Maybe you have a friend who loves classic RPGs? Why not ask him to start his newest Morrowind play-through on OpenMW? You see, there are many ways to support our project without overcommitting yourself. Another task for non-developers is translation work. Morrowind and OpenMW have an international community, and not everyone has sufficient English skills to fully understand what's going on with our project or what the hell this video guy is babbling about. If you are a confident writer, why not start translating stuff into your native language? There are news posts, release announcements, Wiki pages and video subtitles waiting for you -- just introduce yourself in our Join the team subforum, include a piece of translation for an arbitrary OpenMW-related text and become a fully-fledged member of our team. If you are interested in OpenMW, you are most likely familiar with Morrowind or, at least, plan to play the game using OpenMW. Since OpenMW is already playable, why not start your Morrowind play-through equipped with pen and paper in order to note anything which appears strange to you. You could also have our bug tracker and forums opened to quickly search for any issues you've encountered during your hours of gaming. When you've found a so far unknown bug, feel free to ask about it in our forums -- or directly file a bug report on our bug tracker. In the latter case, please note our bug report guidelines. Apart from testing the vanilla game, we also need people who test Morrowind mods on OpenMW. Remember that one of our main goals is full support of existing mods given they were created in a clean way. We already have a Mod Status Wiki page to keep track of tested mods but there are thousands of modifications which need to be tested. You could either do so by simply using a modded setup for your play-through or by selectively testing particular mods on a clean OpenMW installation. Again, please report your findings in our forums -- this time those for mod compatibility --, file bug reports if necessary and don't forget to update our Wiki page. Every forum member can assign him- or herself to the Wiki group in order to gain access to the full editing options. All of the aforementioned tasks do not involve any specific coding skills. However, we are in bare need of active developers for OpenMW. However, the majority of tasks left to do before version 1.0 will be released is about bug-fixing and optimisation. To make things even worse, most of these tasks are only suitable for advanced coders familiar with OpenMW's source code. So if you have any C++ experience and are willing to spend some time digging through our source code, you are very welcome to join our development team. This may not be the most exciting or rewarding time for developers but you could be among the team members who helped OpenMW take the last steps towards version 1.0. Let us finish this business as soon as possible and then enjoy the coding freedom of the post-1.0 era! An important part of OpenMW is our home-brew editor, OpenMW-CS. It will be the heart of future Morrowind modding and the starting point for any new game developed for OpenMW. Accordingly, my plea for new developers also applies to OpenMW-CS. Maybe you have got some skills in QT and some spare time to help us on the editor's side? Similar to the actual engine, we need to do the basic work before we can further expand OpenMW-CS's functionality and make it the world builder it is meant to be. Join our efforts and start coding in remembrance of all the Morrowind modders who suffered from the original Construction Set! % %--- Are there any further tasks which are not directly bound to OpenMW? % Q: Phew, many things do to. Are there any further tasks which are not directly bound to OpenMW? A: Well, there are two more tasks indeed: The OpenMW Game Template project and the OpenMW Example Suite. The first one is the attempt to provide game developers the minimum of assets they need in order to run OpenMW without any Morrowind dependency. This way, they will be able to create their personal assets and develop their contents in OpenMW-CS, while at the same time being able to test everything in OpenMW. The link to the corresponding forum thread can be found below this video. The second project is kind of a showcase world. OpenMW already has some features that weren't supported by the original engine -- and the Example Suite is the place where these features can be presented. Its main goal is to provide a world distinct from Bethesda's Nirn, including a small story-line, new items, new NPCs, and new quests in order to let players explore OpenMW's capabilities along the way. Both projects are in active but rather slow development, and especially the Example Suite lacks many contents. So all you creative people out there: You may not be an experienced coder or a patient game tester, but why not turn your passion into work? We need new meshes and textures, icons, splash screens, maybe concept art. And not to forget all the texts that need to be written: dialogues, journal notes, item and spell descriptions, or new in-game books. Come to our Example Suite subforums and ask what you can do! % %--- Is there a possibility to help you out in a financial way? % Q: Is there a possibility to help you out in a financial way? A: The OpenMW team does not accept any donations to our project. That said, it is perfectly fine to support certain developers but not on behalf of the OpenMW team. There is a Patreon account of our developer scrawl but it is on hiatus for the time being. Another Patreon account was created by DestinedToDie, our current Example Suite project leader. In the future, an option would be to make contracts for individual feature requests, e.g., via Bountysource.com. This way, coders would be able to pick a task, submit their solution and get the monetary reward on success. However, such a step will not be taken without a fundamental debate about partially monetising OpenMW's development. We are a hobbyist project after all! % %--- Outro % Congratulations, you have finally reached the end of this FAQ series. If there are any more questions about how to help our project, put them below this video, or visit our forums on openmw.org. See you soon for the 0.41 release commentary, thanks in advance for your help -- and, as always, thanks for watching!