Project Aedra and The Crystal Scrolls

[lgromanowski]

I just realised there are two other projects with seemingly identical mission statements,
Project Aedra:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aedra/

And, The Crystal Scrolls:
http://crystalscrolls.sourceforge.net/

Wondering why are there three separate attempts to create an open source Morrowind, why not just collaborate and get the project done quicker?

I just realised there are two other projects with seemingly identical mission statements,
Project Aedra:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aedra/

And, The Crystal Scrolls:
http://crystalscrolls.sourceforge.net/

Wondering why are there three separate attempts to create an open source Morrowind, why not just collaborate and get the project done quicker?

Already discussed here.

A one man project is not something I'd hold my breath for, even if they are as widely talented as I am and have even more time, experience, and motivation than me. Just hearing the other two described immediately calls to mind my own similar projects. Guess what? They aren't going anywhere, and just aren't a safe bet for completion. This is why I joined a team. I want to complete something.

The multiplayer one is silly. I'm tired of multiplayer. I like my Single player RPGs single player.

To be honest, what I want is what OPENMW opens the door for: Morrowind++. The game was fine, and will be finer once it has more better and more extensible systems behind it.

A one man project is not something I'd hold my breath for, even if they are as widely talented as I am and have even more time, experience, and motivation than me. Just hearing the other two described immediately calls to mind my own similar projects. Guess what? They aren't going anywhere, and just aren't a safe bet for completion. This is why I joined a team. I want to complete something.

The multiplayer one is silly. I'm tired of multiplayer. I like my Single player RPGs single player.

To be honest, what I want is what OPENMW opens the door for: Morrowind++. The game was fine, and will be finer once it has more better and more extensible systems behind it.

Yeah, completely agree.

note that project Aedra seems to use it's own custom render engine. OpenMW uses ogre 3d, with MyGui, Cealum, Bullet... How many work would be required to create all of this greate open source tools?

Project Aedra attempts to have ultra-performance. I don't think that it will run faster than openmw if both projects would be completed (this won't happen). Note that most of computer power that MW uses is not used to render graphics, but to handle whole world. And this is why old code was able to render cells so freaking fast.

To be honest, what I want is what OPENMW opens the door for: Morrowind++. The game was fine, and will be finer once it has more better and more extensible systems behind it.

Nothing to add, all is said!

oh yes. I'm looking in the same direction pogzy

MW is a good game - but not coz of it's game mechanics. It's all about the world. In fact game rules are sometimes dumb (stealth) but this not so important. While oblivion have improved many of game mechanics it's world was so poor that i don't want to play oblivion any more.

And now we may have cross platform, open source Morrowind engine a long with TR. The game will become much more than just GOOD, it will become true marvel - there will bo no match for morrowind!

And later openmw can become base to all kinds of indie rpg, like RPG Maker.

This is increadible project. Thanks to developers ofc

Yes right, but in fact it could be better.

The world is huge, OK, that's fine, hours and hours of play & discovering.

There are so many quests, ok nice.

But look at the quest system,
1 you talk to someone,
2 he/she tells you :
- a place to find,
- somebody to kill,
- sb to find,
- sb to convince,
3 you do the job
4 you come back to the quest giver it say him ok done
point 2,3 & 4 can be recursive loop some time
5 you are given a reward

I played it for years, but sometimes it seems quite repetitive to me. My secret dream is Open MW can improve this point by creating a more sophisticated, more creative, more surprising quest system that enables the user to be still suprised after months of playing.

Random generated dungeons could be a step in this direction, may be inner games mecanism within the main game (like riding animals, mage flying comp or stuff like that) could multuply the potential of mod creators and the game life.

The issue you are pointing out is true not only for morrowind but for almost every cRPG. And it's easy to expalin why:

How many quests have morrowind? Many. And every needs some job to work. cRPG creating is hard work. You can create intresting quest but it requires so much time and work... and good idea. I don't see a way to make it automatic.

Actualy i would be totally happy with random, DF like quests but with more attention to the plot. For example every character in game can have some kind of relationship map - it can hate, love, desire something etc. It would be greate to create random quests based on this relations AND making quests that are changing something, it would be greate to see random generated quest like:

Kill xyz coz he injured my child.
Killed xyz.
Reward.
Wife of xyz sends assasins.
Find wife of xyz and convience her to stop trying to kill you.
she wants you to steal some stuff.
guy was a member of thieves guild.
Thieves guild will try to steal your iteams...
But you can pay them to stop bothering you.

oh yes. I'm looking in the same direction pogzy

MW is a good game - but not coz of it's game mechanics. It's all about the world. In fact game rules are sometimes dumb (stealth) but this not so important. While oblivion have improved many of game mechanics it's world was so poor that i don't want to play oblivion any more.

And now we may have cross platform, open source Morrowind engine a long with TR. The game will become much more than just GOOD, it will become true marvel - there will bo no match for morrowind!

And later openmw can become base to all kinds of indie rpg, like RPG Maker.

This is increadible project. Thanks to developers ofc

This is dead on. I think that post 1.0 you should obviously improve the game mechanics to the level of oblivion, but more importantly, push what makes Morrowind great - the world. The thing that makes those repetitive quests fun is the world. Improve weather effects (distant weather effects), shaders, sound etc, and quests will be more fun automatically. I just think that's what Morrowind is about - exploring, observing, soaking up the world.

improve the game mechanics to the level of oblivion

Don't make me bring my cynical, snarky side out. Trying to be professional, here.

EDIT: Total posts on our forum is now 1337. You're welcome.

improve the game mechanics to the level of oblivion

Don't make me bring my cynical, snarky side out. Trying to be professional, here.

EDIT: Total posts on our forum is now 1337. You're welcome.

hehe, well you know what I mean, better sneak mechanic, regenerating magicka etc.

hehe, well you know what I mean, better sneak mechanic, regenerating magicka etc.

There are mods for that. Although it's not out of the realm of possibility that with a new lease on life, someone may deem fit to remake the more widely-used balance mods as a single configuration or a single mod for OpenMW.

I don't belive in "upgrades" of game mechanics as a hard coded solutions:

1) Not all of us may like it.
2) There are (and will be even more!) guys that have some ingeniouse ideas, far better than us.

It would be better to provide more flexible system than more advanced system.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere but I believe the best solution is to provide flexibility through choices. A simple configuration file allowing the choice of old or new "fixed" rules would be ideal. On top of a completely moddable engine of course.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere but I believe the best solution is to provide flexibility through choices. A simple configuration file allowing the choice of old or new "fixed" rules would be ideal. On top of a completely moddable engine of course.

This is the 800 pound gorilla in the corner for this project. I'm not sure how the other 8 people registered on Github feel about it, but by virtue of this project leaving the google usergroup and coming onto the real internet, someone's going to have to let their baby go if they want an open source project and not a "Convenient Source" project.

Not to be caustic, but it's a distinct problem. It doesn't taste nice at all because it's going to be repeated over and over and if we don't want to look like asses, we'll have to smile and take it, or learn to chill out. To be honest, I think I'll burn out rather quickly if I can't find some sort of middle ground of fitting in and doing what I think needs to be done.

At one point, and perhaps at several, we'll have to have rather unpleasant discussions about a lot of things. It's going to require some serious courage and strength to navigate without seriously hurting things.

This is the 800 pound gorilla in the corner for this project.

I'm not sure that I understand the concern - at least not for a while.

I had the impression that there's a general consensus that the goal for OpenMW v1.0 is to provide a "standard" re-implementation that maps as closely as possible to the original Morrowind. Per the wiki: The big one-oh. OpenMW 1.0 should be a polished product that plays more or less like the original. It does not have to be perfect, just passable. It does not have to be bug free, but it does have to be feature complete.

If any "improvements" are considered subjective by any of the team members, the resolution for v1.0 code is trivial: OpenMW should behave as Morrowind did.

(Once OpenMW v2.0 begins, this thread would be entirely different...but I'm looking forward to worrying about that.)

If any "improvements" are considered subjective by any of the team members, the resolution for v1.0 code is trivial: OpenMW should behave as Morrowind did.

I'm not sure if OpenMW team should make ANY gameplay "improvements" on their own. Making things stable, well performing and advanced in technical terms is great task on it's own.

And I think that OpenMW is not about doing game but about providing engine for game and possibility to do whatever you want to do with game. It's like Little Big Planet when it comes to about how users created content is important.

That was my point exactly. A fixed bug is about the only "gameplay improvement" I would think is definitely appropriate for v1.0

Yes, I felt the urge to agree with you

But I think that even after 1.0 there is no point for making gameplay improvements (note that I'm talking about graphic, multiplayer etc.).

So yes, for now we all have the same opinion.

personally, I think that the exploits/cheats that are rampant in MW should be blocked. I dunno if this is considered a gameplay improvement, but I don't think that you should be able to cast a spell that would technically be useless (as in the spell effect would not DO anything), and have the spell be permanent. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the soultrap glitch (explained here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Soultrap)

ST

I think that this exploit is just one of the milion MW bug

Fix bugs, add some modern stuff to engine, add few variants of multiplayer, extend modability and that would be it.

I raised this question sometime last week: what about things that didn't work properly or not as intended? How do we know if it is or not? How do we figure that out and what do we do about it?

Stuff, that doesn't work as intended we keep. Stuff, that doesn't work properly (for some value of 'properly') we change. That must be decided on a case-by-base basis. I guess, if we can't clearly decide, we should go for the solution that is less work.

Here's my stance on this, as it has been for a while:

OpenMW 1.0 will play more or less like the original. That means original game rules as far as we can reasonably approximate them, support for original mods and addons, original level of graphics, sound, gamplay, combat, physics and so on. Discussion and planning of additional features is highly encouraged and wanted, after all creativity and dreams is some of what keeps us going on this project, however no-one should expect those changes to be worked on seriously until after 1.0 is out.

Also note that as far as I am concerned, "more or less" means more or less. Should we stay perpetually at v0.999 until we have a perfect replication of the "Sneak" original formula? No, I don't think so. But there should be some form of working "Sneak" function before we pass the 1.0 milestone.