1.0 roundtable

[Zini]

I meant to do the 0.41.0 thread in the first half of this week (probably tomorrow). But I guess someone was faster than me

Okay then, we can as well handle the topic in a separate thread. As you have noticed I made some changes to the tracker. The opwnmw-0.41 milestone contains only OpenMW tasks and finished OpenMW-CS tasks. All other OpenMW-CS tasks have been moved out (mostly to openmw-cs-1.0).

For long time I was hoping we could release OpenMW 1.0 and OpenMW-CS 1.0 at the same time (this approach has a lot of advantages discussed elsewhere). However that meant that we dragged our feet with OpenMW 1.0. The new roadmap should at least make the situation a bit more clear.

I intend to at least partially direct newcomers to OpenMW instead of OpenMW-CS from now on. Hopefully that will speed up development a bit.

And this is the situation with OpenMW 1.0: We have indeed only a small number of tasks left. But most of them are on the hard end of the difficulty spectrum (not surprising that the easier tasks got picked off first). Therefore the low number of tasks is a bit misleading. There is still a considerable amount of work to do.

[Holgar]

Just a casual observation from an outsider. Consider this..

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." - Leonardo da Vinci

As with any creative endeavour, it's never really finished. If you're only wiling to accept perfection, there will never be V1.0. At some point, it becomes ready for release and any little issues that are still hanging around, or happen to pop up, can be handled in maintenance releases.

ahm, with all respect to you Sir: I won't second that. Obviously, the point is not blowing up the release condition of 1.0 to features and features. *But* the developers here have to decide *what* should be implemented and make *clear decisions* what not.

My two pennies: Distand Land and Shadowing are so much a subject of experience to the mean Morrowind player, that he will miss them what ever you tell him how good your job was done;) /€dit: eehm: I saw Hrnchmd somewhere on the list here. Is he active ?

*Bugfixing* is not e secondary term. There is no more annoying thing in the gaming world but grand releases with a payed beta phasis in consequence. I remember softly, how long this Linux Kernel 1.0 needed to be released. Why: The Developers were absolutely shure, that they had to do an absolutely good job. I got my first hand on a Slackware 0.99somethingpresomething else kernel down in 1994. They wanted to make it perfekt. They knew, it *has to be perfekt*. But obviously, you also have to say, what will *not* be in that kernel and forget about that until past 1.0

So, the only thing I can tell here is: Make yourself clear what you are doing.
Make clear what you *want to do*
Make clear, what you *can* do

And then:


....... just do it

Greetings from the fan community

[clocknova]

Out of curiosity, what is the timeframe for reimplementation of shadows and distant land?

[Holgar]

Out of curiosity, what is the timeframe for reimplementation of shadows and distant land?

Best Guess: 1.0

However: You shouldn't put such pressure on the developers right now. They guessing for themselves

I'm especially waiting for that news relating to hrnchmd

*tapping with those toes tipping*

[Holgar]

I meant to do the 0.41.0 thread in the first half of this week (probably tomorrow). But I guess someone was faster than me

Okay then, we can as well handle the topic in a separate thread. As you have noticed I made some changes to the tracker. The opwnmw-0.41 milestone contains only OpenMW tasks and finished OpenMW-CS tasks. All other OpenMW-CS tasks have been moved out (mostly to openmw-cs-1.0).

For long time I was hoping we could release OpenMW 1.0 and OpenMW-CS 1.0 at the same time (this approach has a lot of advantages discussed elsewhere). However that meant that we dragged our feet with OpenMW 1.0. The new roadmap should at least make the situation a bit more clear.

I intend to at least partially direct newcomers to OpenMW instead of OpenMW-CS from now on. Hopefully that will speed up development a bit.

And this is the situation with OpenMW 1.0: We have indeed only a small number of tasks left. But most of them are on the hard end of the difficulty spectrum (not surprising that the easier tasks got picked off first). Therefore the low number of tasks is a bit misleading. There is still a considerable amount of work to do.

zini, it's a great honor to meet you here. But all I can tell is, that there should really be a closed forum, where you and your friends should diskuss things relating to you and your friends.

So long and thank you all for this tremendous work


€dit; obviously had to be: closed, not "dis"closed forum

@Joke: I tried to delete this dubblepost and didn't.

So sorry about that

pppHB ;? If you can help please do!

[silentthief]

Just a casual observation from an outsider. Consider this..

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." - Leonardo da Vinci

As with any creative endeavour, it's never really finished. If you're only wiling to accept perfection, there will never be V1.0. At some point, it becomes ready for release and any little issues that are still hanging around, or happen to pop up, can be handled in maintenance releases.

agree with that. The definition of 1.0 meaning no bugs is only a must if the development ends at 1.0

If openMW went 1.0 we would most likely see a huge influx of users (potential devs possibly, bugtesters guaranteed). I think we should try not to send out a flawed product, but even commercial products come out and have bugs found later that they patch.

just throwin in my 2 cents

ST with 2 cents to share

[lysol]

Bugs aren't really a problem with OpenMW to my experience. I don't think we need to worry about 1.0 being really buggy, there aren't any huge annoying bugs in version 0.40, and there hasn't really been any huge bugs since, I don't know, the flying slaughterfishes (when was that anyway? 0.29?). My point is that OpenMW is at its current state so bug free that I wouldn't mind at all if it was a commercial product I just bought. Version 1.0 is so close right now that there probably won't be that many new bugs introduced.

But I'm not a dev, so I shouldn't say too much.

[Atahualpa]

In the end, we have to come up with a list of things do be done before v1.0 can be released. Why don't we take AnyOldName3's list as a starting point?

[...]
This is my current idea, but feel free to copy and/or edit it if you think it aids this discussion.

Must (mandatory requirements that are fundamental to OpenMW):

• Have all the features of vanilla Morrowind

Should (important requirements that could be omitted):

• Fix every perceived bug in the vanilla engine (not things that might just be bad game design or that could be fixed by a mod).
• Allow the vanilla game and most standard mods to work without alteration.
• Have a mostly-functional editor.
• Have a mostly-functional launcher (e.g. maybe make it possible to add data files directories from the GUI and modify more graphics settings without actually starting the engine)

Could (optional requirements only to be added if someone wants to and has time):

• Allow graphical improvements over vanilla Morrowind (e.g. distant land)
• Have a 'good' example suite
• Have extensive editor documentation aimed at users

Want (bells and whistles that are nice to have, but probably should be post-1.0, if ever, unless they're trivial to implement)

• Allow greater modding freedom than vanilla
• Add all the features of popular exe tweaks for vanilla (e.g. MWSE script compatibility, SSAO, anything MCP lets people tweak)
• Enhanced physics, AI etc.
• Support for every other Gamebryo game ever, and hell, why not Unreal, CryEngine, Unity, IdTech etc. too!
• Bring about world peace

[...]

I would like to add Proper Shadows to the Must list and move Distant Land to the Should list.

[raevol]

I meant to do the 0.41.0 thread in the first half of this week (probably tomorrow). But I guess someone was faster than me

I realized I might have jumped the gun right after posting, but the ensuing discussion was constructive, so thanks for putting up with my rash behavior.

For long time I was hoping we could release OpenMW 1.0 and OpenMW-CS 1.0 at the same time (this approach has a lot of advantages discussed elsewhere). However that meant that we dragged our feet with OpenMW 1.0. The new roadmap should at least make the situation a bit more clear.

Thank you for clarifying this issue, I've seen it mentioned in other places on the forum. I support this as the best decision. I would have liked to have the two released simultaneously as well, but it's just not going to happen.

And this is the situation with OpenMW 1.0: We have indeed only a small number of tasks left. But most of them are on the hard end of the difficulty spectrum (not surprising that the easier tasks got picked off first). Therefore the low number of tasks is a bit misleading. There is still a considerable amount of work to do.

So I'd like to formulate a plan for tackling this. My strategy would be this:

1. Establish standards for documentation (I think DestinedToDie [edit: I meant DavidD] and psi29a may have started/finished this?)
2. Do a call for help on our documentation.
3. Once our documentation is at a good spot, identify and prioritize our remaining "big ticket" development tasks
4. Do a call for help for development

My personal view is that if we sit on our hands and wait for another scrawl to bless us with an inordinate amount of work, the project is going to stagnate and die off. I'd really like the team's support on this, so that we can coordinate PR and onboarding for documentation contributors. Thoughts?

Bugs aren't really a problem with OpenMW to my experience. I don't think we need to worry about 1.0 being really buggy, there aren't any huge annoying bugs in version 0.40, and there hasn't really been any huge bugs -snip-

I strongly beg to differ, because:

If openMW went 1.0 we would most likely see a huge influx of users (potential devs possibly, bugtesters guaranteed). I think we should try not to send out a flawed product, but even commercial products come out and have bugs found later that they patch.

Until the game is stress tested (yes single player games can be stress tested) we won't really know what our bug situation looks like. When our daily PPA was working I was playing regularly, and regularly finding new bugs. But this is best discussed here: http://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3339

Edit: @Atahualpa you're basically doing #3 on my list. And I like your list a lot. We just need to manage getting manpower to get things done.

[Holgar]

I]
[...]

I would like to add Proper Shadows to the Must list and move Distant Land to the Should list.[/quote]

With respect to my own little esp:
Distand Land is a major feature