0.39 YAQP

[greetasdf]

Hey guys - Yet another question post

First-off: It's amazing, I played Morrowind openmw and it was like it was fully playable?! Incredible, on first sight I could not see any bugs (besides some (maybe verbose) console output when casting restoration). Thank you so much for all of your work. 1.0 is supposed to be next in August (before the video maker is on holidays? ) - I know you guys have an idiot more on the forums asking obvious/unproductive questions, but hey, here's two more:

1. Can the omwsaves be edited manually (easily) and if yes how? Plaintext is hardly identifiable and hexeditors too much work. The reason behind this would be to sync the savegame with a friend - and maybe 'grep' all the changes she/he made to the file even if we play independently and share later. (I'm sure without multiplayer some people can relate to playing a character together, leaving notes etc.)

2. I know there have been some compiles for Android - but is there any chance this may be revived? I guess no one really can answer that but - how hard would it be in principle to compile a Linux version for Android?

thanks in advance

[SquireNed]

Hey guys - Yet another question post

First-off: It's amazing, I played Morrowind openmw and it was like it was fully playable?! Incredible, on first sight I could not see any bugs (besides some (maybe verbose) console output when casting restoration). Thank you so much for all of your work. 1.0 is supposed to be next in August (before the video maker is on holidays? ) - I know you guys have an idiot more on the forums asking obvious/unproductive questions, but hey, here's two more:

1. Can the omwsaves be edited manually (easily) and if yes how? Plaintext is hardly identifiable and hexeditors too much work. The reason behind this would be to sync the savegame with a friend - and maybe 'grep' all the changes she/he made to the file even if we play independently and share later. (I'm sure without multiplayer some people can relate to playing a character together, leaving notes etc.)

2. I know there have been some compiles for Android - but is there any chance this may be revived? I guess no one really can answer that but - how hard would it be in principle to compile a Linux version for Android?

thanks in advance

I can't speak to your first question, but you probably can transfer savefiles across games. As for multiplayer, it may not be so far out for OpenMW as you might think.

As for #2, it's been a sore point for a while. There are some legal issues (basically, Bethesda gets antsy depending on how OpenMW is presented, and the media will happily leap on things that OpenMW doesn't say it does), but mostly it comes down to technical issues. OpenMW uses a full OpenGL setup that does not necessarily translate well into the feature set supported by (most? all?) Android devices, and even once some of the issues get sorted out there have been some heated discussions about how to get it functionally playable; OpenMW on a touch screen is nearly inconceivable, and if you've ever messed around with the controller setups for OpenMW you'll quickly find that it would get annoying as the *only* way to play.

[GeorgeTheWarp]

Hey guys - Yet another question post

First-off: It's amazing, I played Morrowind openmw and it was like it was fully playable?! Incredible, on first sight I could not see any bugs (besides some (maybe verbose) console output when casting restoration). Thank you so much for all of your work. 1.0 is supposed to be next in August (before the video maker is on holidays? ) - I know you guys have an idiot more on the forums asking obvious/unproductive questions, but hey, here's two more:

1. Can the omwsaves be edited manually (easily) and if yes how? Plaintext is hardly identifiable and hexeditors too much work. The reason behind this would be to sync the savegame with a friend - and maybe 'grep' all the changes she/he made to the file even if we play independently and share later. (I'm sure without multiplayer some people can relate to playing a character together, leaving notes etc.)

2. I know there have been some compiles for Android - but is there any chance this may be revived? I guess no one really can answer that but - how hard would it be in principle to compile a Linux version for Android?

thanks in advance

I can't speak to your first question, but you probably can transfer savefiles across games. As for multiplayer, it may not be so far out for OpenMW as you might think.

As for #2, it's been a sore point for a while. There are some legal issues (basically, Bethesda gets antsy depending on how OpenMW is presented, and the media will happily leap on things that OpenMW doesn't say it does), but mostly it comes down to technical issues. OpenMW uses a full OpenGL setup that does not necessarily translate well into the feature set supported by (most? all?) Android devices, and even once some of the issues get sorted out there have been some heated discussions about how to get it functionally playable; OpenMW on a touch screen is nearly inconceivable, and if you've ever messed around with the controller setups for OpenMW you'll quickly find that it would get annoying as the *only* way to play.

Well, it is sad that there are legal issues with bugtesda concerning the mobile port, since OpenMW doesn't violate their EULA by any ways. It was made by clean room reverse engineering, and I highly doubt we would be infringing on their "license" that way. But y'know, big companies being what they are, they like being sour.

[greetasdf]

Thank you for both of your responses.

I see, the touchscreen requires 'heavier' modifications - that's the problem. Personally, I wouldn't push the boundaries too far with companies just because they tend outresource people/small projects, but that's really up to you guys to decide. Sad, I mean, it would be almost too good to be true anyway (but then again whole openMW seems to be that way (just to mention one overthetop feature 'no cell loading'?!).

Any wise words on asynchronous savegame syncing? Is it maybe possible to translate the file into plain text? That would allow for uploading and textdiff, that would be pretty easy/feasible to me! @multiplayer: AFAIK multiplayer isn't planned for 1.0 and 1.0 isn't here yet so... I'd rather put my hands on something more tangible!

yes, this post has a fiery icon :-O

[GeorgeTheWarp]

Thank you for both of your responses.

I see, the touchscreen requires 'heavier' modifications - that's the problem. Personally, I wouldn't push the boundaries too far with companies just because they tend outresource people/small projects, but that's really up to you guys to decide. Sad, I mean, it would be almost too good to be true anyway (but then again whole openMW seems to be that way (just to mention one overthetop feature 'no cell loading'?!).

Any wise words on asynchronous savegame syncing? Is it maybe possible to translate the file into plain text? That would allow for uploading and textdiff, that would be pretty easy/feasible to me! @multiplayer: AFAIK multiplayer isn't planned for 1.0 and 1.0 isn't here yet so... I'd rather put my hands on something more tangible!

yes, this post has a fiery icon :-O

Well, actually even with the native save style it might be rather easy to do, either with things like Megasync or even a python script that uploads your save to Google Drive and syncs with all your computers. I wouldn'T try out scripting it, but it certainly is possible. I'd do a 5 minutes timer based sync tool and upload it to the wiki, if I were you. *wink wink*

[psi29a]

that there are legal issues with bugtesda concerning the mobile port, since OpenMW doesn't violate their EULA by any ways. It was made by clean room reverse engineering, and I highly doubt we would be infringing on their "license" that way. But y'know, big companies being what they are, they like being sour.

Just to clear the air...

There is no legal issue with OpenMW and Android. I should know, I've talked with the lawyers and with Bethesda about it. Let me repeat that: OpenMW on Android, or any platform really, is fine.

Bethesda doesn't have a legal leg to stand on, but we're OK with the arrangement that was made on not promoting Morrowind running on Android. OpenMW running our ES or Template on Android however is just fine!

You're more likely to run into legal problems decoding s3tc textures on your android however. If you don't have a license to decode, then you're likely breaking the law.

Sandstranger is the only person who is actually doing anything in that space at the moment. Feel free to compile it yourself and/or help SS out. We don't offer any Android builds because it just isn't that well supported, not that SS hasn't done great work, just that it doesn't have the support as our 3 official builds do.

So you want an Android, iPhone or WindowsPhone version? Find or sponsor a developer that wants to work on it. We'll accept merge requests.

[greetasdf]

@savegames:
well I was thinking more of an 'intelligent offline merging approach', maybe even in-browser, to get around the whole uploading etc issues. So you could simply use a pastebin to sync (since the savegames are fairly small) and use some rules to merge it.

Of course it would be more elegant to have a bag of 'the old player's items' or something but, I'm aiming at the simplest solutions here =)

edit: I guess I will look into the source sometime to see if I can get an easily-readable version (like xml) out of the savegames. But I guess THAT can take a while

@Android: I get the part where 'you want it you make it/compile it' - obviously that's simply what I would have done after looking at the github repo and wiki of 'how to do it'. It's not my area of expertise unfortunately. However I do know it's usually not fairly difficult to port native Linux tools to Android (especially when rooted) and the list on how to compile it on Android seems really complicated, so that's why I was asking, to know how shallow/deep this project is (or how difficult to get into). I really don't get the iPhone/WindowsPhone comment... seems outlandish to me compared to porting a linux-to-linux version. But then again, you guys know probably more about this stuff than me.

@Arragement: So, in layman's terms: You may compile it but there was some sort of team arrangement not to publish it?

@contributing people: thanks for your effort, you guys are awesome

[psi29a]

Layman's terms: We can promote OpenMW on Android, just not showing Morrowind running on Android.

To be fair, Morrowind is their IP. Maybe they want to keep their options open to have their own port. We didn't have to come to this arrangement, but I thought it best to 'play ball' with them since they haven't got all "lawyerly" with us.

End result, OpenMW is still developed and can run on Android.

[greetasdf]

Layman's terms: We can promote OpenMW on Android, just not showing Morrowind running on Android.

To be fair, Morrowind is their IP. Maybe they want to keep their options open to have their own port. We didn't have to come to this arrangement, but I thought it best to 'play ball' with them since they haven't got all "lawyerly" with us.

End result, OpenMW is still developed and can run on Android.

thanks for clarifying. I looked into the source but... it's huge. Can anyone point me to the right folder for the savegame function?

thanks!

[ESplayer]

I'm surprised save games aren't just essentially mods that can be stacked and edited with the construction set?