Is OpenMW playable?

[psi29a]

We are at a cross-roads at the moment. OpenMW itself is mostly 'finished' with our goal of making nearly 1:1 (one to one) with Morrowind, we're now just adding 'features' that make OpenMW nicer than default Morrowind. What is holding us back from 1.0 is our editor: OpenMW-CS which is still very much alpha.

The question that the devs have, do we release OpenMW now as 1.0 and keep OpenMW-CS in development there by splitting the two applications into different projects? Or do we continue developing OpenMW and OpenMW-CS forwards with our currently versioning scheme... 0.47... 0.48... (semantic versioning).

The reasoning behind this is that... "1.0" is just a psychological barrier that has NO basis on the quality of OpenMW itself, it could have been 1.0 years ago... we just kept going. Fixing bugs as we go, adding new features as we go... hell, we even have a support new NIFs from Oblivion, branches that have support for Fallout3, Skyrim and etc. There is even the tes3mp branch that we'll eventually merge in, once we get our Lua implementation in place. As you can see... we've not stopped development. For us... "1.0" is kinda... nebulous and doesn't hold any meaning since we can keep on developing.

[Time4Tea]

I'm at level 26 on my OpenMW playthrough at the moment (including Tamriel Rebuilt), which I started about 3 months ago. I've been playing it on Linux - the engine is fantastic and far more capable than the original one. In fact, I can't think of a single bug I've seen that is attributable to OpenMW. I've seen more bugs attributable to Bethesda.

So having good save files is really important... The pressure I have felt historically is that if you dont get all the mods you want right away, or use mods you want to get rid of can very easily break the game.

During my playthrough, I was experimenting with different mods, plugging them and unplugging them, and nothing has broken. For example, I started with a groundcover mod and then removed it because it was tanking the FPS. I've also been playing it with silly view distance settings that I was told would break it - rock solid. I haven't yet found anything that can break this engine, and I have tried.

[psi29a]

I haven't yet found anything that can break this engine, and I have tried.

Try harder! We can't fix stuff that isn't broke!

Seriously... for non programmers, what we _really_ need is people to test ALL the mods and report bugs... either here or on our tracker or on discord. So it is very problematic that people only play when something is "1.0" because then we can't fix any issues as no one reports anything. In this way... WE NEED YOU, dear players to help us make the engine better! Try and break it! That's the whole point.. unlike companies that pray you don't break their game, we want you to break ours! It's how we all get a better engine.

[Time4Tea]

Try harder! We can't fix stuff that isn't broke!

Amen. Ha ha!

Yes, I get the impression there is some 'psychological stigma' with the fact that the project isn't yet 'at 1.0', that seems to be making some people assume the engine isn't finished ... (when in reality, it's better than the original)

[mikeprichard]

In my experience as well, OpenMW (even in now-obsolete build 0.45, let alone the latest nightly builds) has already far surpassed vanilla Morrowind; not only does it have essentially all features of vanilla, it also fixes many, many vanilla bugs, adds several new features, and (some separate problems with certain generally less popular mods aside) is rock-solid stable.

As said above and elsewhere on the forums over the past year, the only "blockers" for some users finally making the upgrade from vanilla to OpenMW today are 1) the psychological barrier of OpenMW not yet having the "1.0" label, although the devs have reasons for not yet applying that label as psi explained above, and 2) a few features that OpenMW will eventually implement much more elegantly than the hacky MCP/MGE had in the old days (especially e.g. distant lands and statics, as already discussed in great detail in several other topics, including viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6747 and viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4621).

I think everything's already been said, so I'll leave it there. Thanks as always to all OpenMW developers for the amazing work they continue to contribute on an unpaid volunteer basis.

[lysol]

Psi cleaned up and unlocked this thread, since there were some good discussions going on here. I just want to add that the author, RounIcarus, is permanently banned. If anyone believe this is unfair (since this thread was cleaned up), just read this thread or this thread and you'll understand it all.

Now, with that said, nevermind me, please continue the discussion here.

[BeatoDim]

Wow. I've just read through that other 'Rebuttle' thread, and man, talk about not being able to take criticism.

[mikeprichard]

Wow... with no intended sarcasm, that user seriously needs help. He/she seemed to be set off by having long-held misconceptions about the development of Morrowind's lore proven false, but such an extreme level of emotional investment in a video game is very worrying. In any case, thanks to lysol for efficiently resolving the situation.

[Time4Tea]

Wow... with no intended sarcasm, that user seriously needs help. He/she seemed to be set off by having long-held misconceptions about the development of Morrowind's lore proven false, but such an extreme level of emotional investment in a video game is very worrying. In any case, thanks to lysol for efficiently resolving the situation.

I totally agree. I can't see anything anyone has posted in this thread that could be viewed as offensive or inflammatory.

Talking about testing/breaking the engine, yesterday I tried zooming out to the 'third person' view while my character was levitating, and the same running animation was being used. So, as I was flying around, it looked as if they were running through the air. Is that the same in the original? (I can't remember and I don't typically use the third-person view).

[Capostrophic]

Are you you didn't have the collision for your character disabled?