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A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 15:52
by lambda
Started a morrowind game in openmw with a fairly long list of mods. On arch linux, with latest v0.40 (any more details needed just ask). For the record here is the list of data paths:
Spoiler: Show
And here is the list of masters and plugins:
Spoiler: Show
There are some mods that, as reported in the wiki, do not work (e.g. Illuminated Order) or have problems (e.g. Uvirith's Legacy). Others are bound to have problems because of the absence of MCP fixes and tweaks (e.g. BTB improvements -- see following posts). We'll see how it goes.

First, the good. Played very little still, but GCD (in Huskobar's version) is working fine and am already level 3. Game rock stable. In a similarly heavily modded game played through wine, I had periodic crashes (say about once in an hour). Things as simple as clicking Charles the Plant in Jobasha's store or casting area dispel crashed. Now with openmw, learned for the first time that there is such a thing as "meteor slime". The graphic quality is great, at least for what I am used to (e.g. the water is beautiful, even though I had to lower the texture quality to low to get a bump in fps); the only weak point is that the view distance is lower than what I could get with the original install plus the fps_optimizer.

In the next two posts, I will go over the bad.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 15:54
by lambda
In this post, I will comment on what I view as bugs, or mod issues that I would like some help to debug.

Bug(s):
1. maybe I am missing something, but I cannot use relative paths (e.g. "~/public/games/openmw/mods/mashed_lists") as openmw-launcher does not find the relevant files. Have to use absolute paths.

2. which windows have been pinned is not saved, so that when I (re)load a game I have to re-pin them all over again. Only annoying, but I count this a bug as the engine should keep track of whether a window is pinned or not.

3. cannot unlock door with open spells via telekinesis: cast tele, aim some unlocked chest, cast an open on touch spell and nothing happens. Since I am playing a glass cannon mage relying on open spells to get in places and steal stuff, this is really annoying.

The following are mod related errors, which while possibly not openmw errors, I still would like help to debug and fix them.

1. On loading lgnpc_tel_uvirith get the error:

Loading content file LGNPC_TelUvirith.esp
ESM Error: String table overflow
File: ~/public/games/openmw/mods/lgnpc_tel_uvirith/LGNPC_TelUvirith.esp
Record: SCPT
Subrecord: SCVR
Offset: 0x116e0

Have no idea what the heck this means or even if this implies that the mod is borked.

On loading lgnpc_paxredoran:

Failed to insert info 3094391802581972
Failed to insert info 5629234373267530058

2. Some interior cells are unusually dark (e.g. South Wall cornerclub, Balmora Temple, etc.). The candles in it do not give off any light; the log occasionally spits out:

can't find emitter node, wrong node order? in meshes/l/light_de_candle_01.nif

The only mod that messes up with light meshes is Mesh Improvements but commenting out the relevant data path makes no difference. Furthermore, I noticed the exact same problem when cleaning Improved Skilled Magicka: it cleaned out "redundant" AMBI, WHGT from CELL: seyda neen, census and excise office. But then the Censis Office was likewise unusually dark with the candles giving off no light. In a nutshell do not know what the heck is going on or how to fix it.

3. While in Balmora, I get the following error in the logs:

Error in Objects::playAnimationGroup: Unable to find roht_mg_balmoratelvbanner

and in Ald Ruhn:

Error in Objects::playAnimationGroup: Unable to find roht_mg_aldruhntelvbanner

The names point to the Rise of House Telvanni mod, which indeed replaces the OutsideBanner script with its own (uncapitalized names) roht_mg_balmoratelvsign_script and roht_mg_aldruhntelvsign_script scripts. But I have no idea what exactly is triggering this error or what I can do to debug and fix it.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 15:54
by lambda
The following are not openmw bugs per se, but "annoyances", both in the interface and gameplay. Mainly due to not having the MCP tweaks and fixes available, so I do not expect them to be addressed before v1.0 is out (but maybe some kind soul out there will address it before that).

Interface:
- (MCP Better Typography) the book font is too large with few words per page. Also applies to the journal.
- (MCP Shortuct Key Improvements) have to shift-lmb to move the whole stack, when moving the whole stack should be the default action and thus bound to lmb. Really annoying. Also, missing the ability to hit space to close dialogue and book windows.
- (MCP Spell select by Name) if you are like me and have a long list of spells you really need better ways to navigate around it.
- (MCP Do Not Loot on Dispose) another handy convenience.
- the owned status of items is also shown in the barter dialogue which is odd to say the least.
- the order of the quests in the journal makes no sense.

Gameplay:
- (MCP Permanent Barter Disposition) no permanent disposition losses makes it easier to deal with merchants. One can simply spam the offer button with no fear of repercussions.
- (MCP Potion Weight Rebalance) with 45 Alchemy and a journeyman set I am making pots weighing 0.1. Ridiculously good.
- (MCP Enchanted Item patches) I understand the need for a cooldown on enchanting for it to not displace spellcasting altogether, but more damaging to my game style (I am playing a glass cannon mage) are two MCP patches that deal with the value of soul gems and with recharging items. For the first, getting an item worth 90k gold in the second mage guild quest is already pretty ridiculous, but when you can get a bunch of common soul gems, summon ancestor ghosts, easily soul trap them and then sell the filled gems for a few thousand gold each is just wrong. To add insult to injury, the awkward way in which BTB added filled soul gems to vendors glitched and, upon buying a filled cliff racer lesser soul gem, it somehow "contaminated" the other empty soul gems filling them up. The recharging patch, makes recharging items with soul gems more reliable, which is sorely needed in BTB as auto recharging items has been disabled.
- Analogous comments could be made with respect to spell making, e.g. area affect spell effects should cost way more than they do in vanilla.
- (MCP Detect Life Spell Variant) detect animal should detect NPCs.
- (MCP Allow Scroll Enchant Price Modifier) Not a bug per se, but an unimplemented feature. The GMST fMagicItemOnceMult is needed so that we can have reasonable prices for cast once enchantments. Until then, no scroll enchanting.
- not technically a bug since it is vanilla behavior, but it is not a crime to harvest owned plants.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 17:00
by weedfreak
lambda wrote: There are some mods that, as reported in the wiki, do not work (e.g. Illuminated Order) or have problems (e.g. C's Legacy). Others are bound to have problems because of the absence of MCP fixes and tweaks (e.g. BTB improvements -- see following posts). We'll see how it goes.
I play with many of the same mods, also on Arch with few problems. The LGNPC Tel Uvirith problrm has been reported to LGNPC site, there are several script errors in it and the next release should have corrections. The odd error you noted does not seem to affect the mod operation though the other script errors may.

There will be problems using code patchers as the code in openMW engine works differently than the Bethesda procedures. This may be the main reason why MCP modules are not working as expected.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 17:46
by Svetomech
He didn't say he uses MCP (can you even do that with openmw.exe?), he only mentioned the corresponding MCP features that could be incorporated into the engine post-1.0

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 17:49
by Atahualpa
lambda wrote: 2. which windows have been pinned is not saved, so that when I (re)load a game I have to re-pin them all over again. Only annoying, but I count this a bug as the engine should keep track of whether a window is pinned or not.
AFAIK, the windows settings (position and height) are globally saved (and can be seen in your local settings file). I guess that this is the reason why the pinned windows aren't saved in the first place -- to avoid pinning throughout different character builds. We'd only need to add flags for every window in order to keep track of the pinned status, which would solve your issue.
lambda wrote: 3. cannot unlock door with open spells via telekinesis: cast tele, aim some unlocked chest, cast an open on touch spell and nothing happens. Since I am playing a glass cannon mage relying on open spells to get in places and steal stuff, this is really annoying.
I didn't know that this is possible in vanilla Morrowind. Sounds logical though.
lambda wrote: Interface:
- (MCP Better Typography) the book font is too large with few words per page. Also applies to the journal.
Maybe we could change that. But scaling the font could mess up things, e.g., images or other layout-related stuff.
lambda wrote: - (MCP Shortuct Key Improvements) have to shift-lmb to move the whole stack, when moving the whole stack should be the default action and thus bound to lmb. Really annoying. Also, missing the ability to hit space to close dialogue and book windows.
You can already use the Escape key to close windows. As for the stacking shortcuts: take/transfer item and arrow enchantments.
lambda wrote: - (MCP Spell select by Name) if you are like me and have a long list of spells you really need better ways to navigate around it.
- (MCP Do Not Loot on Dispose) another handy convenience.
These would be nice to have (as an option, of course).
lambda wrote: - the owned status of items is also shown in the barter dialogue which is odd to say the least.
It's generally odd to know the owner of each and every item you have "acquired" during your journeys. Maybe someone is willing to adjust the Owned option to only apply to the inventory window.
lambda wrote: - the order of the quests in the journal makes no sense.
Damn, you're right.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 18:33
by Capostrophic
Atahualpa wrote: I didn't know that this is possible in vanilla Morrowind. Sounds logical though.
Allofich disabled telekinesis for activators as his testing showed that in vanilla Morrowind that wouldn't work.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 19:42
by Atahualpa
Capostrophic wrote:
Atahualpa wrote: I didn't know that this is possible in vanilla Morrowind. Sounds logical though.
Allofich disabled telekinesis for activators as his testing showed that in vanilla Morrowind that wouldn't work.
We have to differentiate between activators and containers here. In vanilla Morrowind, you are able to cast a telekinesis spell, aim at a container from within the telekinesis spell's range and cast an Open spell on it. This is currently not possible in OpenMW. (I've just tested it with vanilla and v0.40.0 using the spells "Telekinesis" and "Open" on the small case at Arrille's desk in Arrille's Tradehouse.)

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 18 Sep 2016, 20:03
by Capostrophic
Well then. Relevant issue and pull request.

Re: A few notes on openmw

Posted: 19 Sep 2016, 08:09
by Allofich
I don't think that any of the changes I made would have had an effect on what the poster is talking about. I didn't change anything about how telekinesis interacts with treasure chests. This will need to be added in as something new.