How many engines?

Not about OpenMW? Just about Morrowind in general? Have some random babble? Kindly direct it here.
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lgromanowski
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How many engines?

Post by lgromanowski »

sir_herrbatka wrote: It seems that at the moment we have 3 projects:

Openmw
Crystal Scrolls
Project Aedra

Gosh, almost like DOOM. Is this really ok?
Petrell wrote:
sir_herrbatka wrote:It seems that at the moment we have 3 projects:

OpenMW
Crystal Scrolls
Project Aedra

Gosh, almost like DOOM. Is this really ok?
Well while projects all three projects intend to recreate Morrowind game engine they do seem to have different goals and different development approach.

Crystal Scrolls primary aim is cross platform compatibility. It also uses The Crystal Space 3D engine. Project also seem to be dead/dormant as last commit is from 325 days ago. It was a one man project so when (s)he stopped working on it, the project stopped.

OpenMW project aims to recreate Morrowind engine using quite few open source tools like Ogre, OpenAL and Bullet among others. Project seem to have most devs from the three and is the most active project of them all. Project also has wiki and forums that two other project lacks.

Project Aedra aims to add multiplayer (among other things) so it's development needs to take that to account at some point. The developer seems to aim to build everything froms scratch and there doesn't seem to be any plans for cross-platform compatibility or portability. While the development seem do develop the fastest, it may go the way of Crystall Scrolls at any time as it's one man project as well. There is also no web page, forum (well there's what SF provides), wiki or any other documentation about the project either. It does seem to render both interiors and exteriors however (from screenshots).

I don't see three separate projects a major problem as long as one of them reaches completion at some point. Obviously projects would benefit from collaboration where ever possible so each project does not have to invent the wheel so to speak.
sir_herrbatka wrote: I count on openmw rather than other 2 projects too. It uses great tools (MyGUI, OGRE, Bullet), in fact this tools are so great that making any of these would be big project on it's own.

The only thing that bothers me is MONSTER script language. I hope that Nico will be able to finish it :)
Zini wrote: Are we still planning to use Monster for scripting? I can't see any remains of it in old_d_version. It being deleted might indicate, that it isn't relevant anymore.

IMHO having two scripting languages in the same engine is wasteful, especially since the new Morrowind scripting engine is capable and extendible enough to handle all scripting requirements.
Vance987 wrote: The other engines don't really catch my interest like this one does. Crystal Scrolls is in like... alpha stages, and the other one wants to make everything from scratch and put in multiplayer that would probably screw up the whole game. I don't see how morrowind could be a successful multiplayer game. The thing that makes it great is 'cuz it's 1 player. Although.... I would like to have at least 1 friend tag along with me.... but not online. Too much lag.
sir_herrbatka wrote: Actually multiplayer in MW may rox - but not if you want to make another WoW.

It would be great to play with your friend - to be in one wide land, travel, fight, do quests... But I can imagine also epic, multiplayer quest mods where we have prepared characters for players and great plot. Maybe even quest with single player parts.

And maybe even neverwinter style role-playing, with one guy in the role of game master. :)
juanoleso wrote: yeah, I always thought that a co-op mode of morrowind would be fun. I can see puzzle dungeons where it would take two characters to explore being interesting.
nicolay wrote:
Zini wrote:Are we still planning to use Monster for scripting? I can't see any remains of it in old_d_version. It being deleted might indicate, that it isn't relevant anymore.
You are more or less correct. Monster itself is in need of a complete rewrite now, and so it's been pushed way down on my priority list atm. With MW scripts already implemented I think OpenMW can manage very well without it.
sir_herrbatka wrote: Well, I hope that game rules wont be hard coded...
Zini wrote: Currently they are. Having programmable game rules isn't just a matter of having a scripting system. E.g. for a programmable attribute system we would need a dynamic data structure, that can accommodate a variable number of attributes, and a dynamic GUI. We need to modify file formats and probably a lot of other things I haven't thought of yet. That's a huge amount of work and it can wait past 1.0.
sir_herrbatka wrote:
E.g. for a programmable attribute system we would need a dynamic data structure, that can accommodate a variable number of attributes, and a dynamic GUI.
I understand... mostly...

But this means that you will have to do more coding - create all game rules in C++, hack the game engine, implent more functions in scripting language, and then recreat game rules. :cry:
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