openmw.org

As a general rule, porting assets between things that have specialized file formats (as the Elder Scrolls games insist upon) tends to be rather difficult. Unless OpenMW implements identical or near-identical .nif support (IIRC Morrowind uses its own format) it would be nigh impossible to port, and n...

As someone who is somewhat familiar with copyright law, the reason Bethesda doesn't want people merging assets is probably because they signed a license that they'd only use the assets in a certain game when they got their textures (assuming they didn't get them as a WMFH made by an employee; the re...

Oh thats actually more limits for mods than I expected. So I have this texture mod wich I could upload completely free of vanilla textures when I change something. But reading the last posts I assume that even normal maps for the vanilla textures are not allowed? Just as a reminder there are tons o...

If you are giving advice that could potentially get you in trouble, why would you be giving it to begin with? Really, the simplest way way is to simply say that anyone who follows your advice is on their own blah blah blah. I put in disclaimers everywhere I think problems could arise here, and ther...

Legal liability. I don't want to go to court because someone got their buttocks sued off because of my advice. Especially considering that I studied copyright law with someone whose personal convictions call for a much more limited copyright law, and I probably picked up a little bit of that (not th...

That's exactly OpenMW's legal status. It's also why OpenMW mods that include vanilla Morrowind content can be a little risky. A little risky for whom? Surely not for OpenMW. I mean, I could hypothetically create a mod that introduces child porn into the game somehow. That wouldn't make suddenly mak...

How's this: OpenMW is an engine that just so happens to be able to read Morrowind's data files? You don't have to, of course. You can make a whole new game for it and it won't have anything to do with Morrowind. What's more, this team creates tools to do so! That's exactly OpenMW's legal status. It...

Wait, can we make mods for OpenMW that can't be used in Morrowind that *don't* distribute any Morrowind assets? It's theoretically possible, for sure. The file format, for instance, is not protected under copyright (and Morrowind's about old enough that it's not eligible for any IP protection at al...

Understand that there is a difference between having a right to something and enforcing it. There is no penalty for not enforcing your copyright (other than it looking bad if you know about infringement, wait a while, don't send a C&D, and then file a lawsuit, as it's usually deemed as being an ...

We could actually make mods that aren't compatible with Morrowind's game that use the content, but we just shouldn't do so under the OpenMW banner and we should take care to ensure that they remain inoperable without a legal copy of Morrowind (to such a degree as the burden is on Bethesda to prevent...