Revamp OpenMW PR content

Anything related to PR, release planning and any other non-technical idea how to move the project forward should be discussed here.
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silentthief
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by silentthief »

Ravenwing wrote: 30 Jul 2018, 05:42
lysol wrote: 27 Jul 2018, 11:34 Of course! The russian Morrowind community is huge, so having more up-to-date russian info is great.
At the risk of sending this thread off topic, any idea why that is? I assumed I noticed just because this was the main gaming community I'm involved with, but it does seem like our Russian population is larger than in the general gaming population.
Not sure why Morrowind was so popular over there, but the talky morrowind project seemed to have been first introduced there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD_wm2VFIBg

Now there is work on this in English as well (with mixed results)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMkwMlQcHOQ

ST
(PS - not trying to thread jack - just throwing vid of a cool concept from Russian MW fans)
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Ravenwing
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by Ravenwing »

silentthief wrote: 01 Aug 2018, 15:09 Not sure why Morrowind was so popular over there, but the talky morrowind project seemed to have been first introduced there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD_wm2VFIBg

Now there is work on this in English as well (with mixed results)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMkwMlQcHOQ

ST
(PS - not trying to thread jack - just throwing vid of a cool concept from Russian MW fans)
Lol that first link I was like, that sounds pretty good, but I'm also not familiar enough with the sound of Russian to tell how awful it probably is. Aaaand then the second link haha. Too bad, would help attract more people to try the game if dialogue was voiced.
lysol wrote: 01 Aug 2018, 12:14 Svg is probably a better format, but imgur didn't support it.
Yes! That's my point, people can't spread it around as easily lol
lysol wrote: 01 Aug 2018, 12:14 Anyway, I threw together a flowchart the other day. Just a test of the concept really. Any suggestions, except "make it look less like crap"?

https://imgur.com/a/21ZqGCG
Looks pretty much the same as one I drew up by hand. Prefer some of your wording though lol. Also could use a "decrapping" haha but haven't had a chance to throw it into mermaid. Pretty sure we'll be stuck with ugly if we use that though sooo...

I'm at a loss as to what else to add, because it really comes down to, do you need MGE and/or MWSE? Yes, no. But at least it keeps the graphic simple.
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Starsheep
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by Starsheep »

Following my recent reply in the negative perception of OpenMW in the modding community, I'd like to bring a new point to this topic:

Shall we include in our public relations plans to attract/recruit/seduce/enslave new contributors?
Even though the project gained momentum in the past few months, it feels like it would be beneficial to have more hands on board and speed up the semver-ish holy grail of "1.0"

Where and how? I don't know tbh.
Just shedding some light on that matter
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Ravenwing
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by Ravenwing »

Starsheep wrote: 02 Aug 2018, 11:25 Following my recent reply in the negative perception of OpenMW in the modding community, I'd like to bring a new point to this topic:

Shall we include in our public relations plans to attract/recruit/seduce/enslave new contributors?
Even though the project gained momentum in the past few months, it feels like it would be beneficial to have more hands on board and speed up the semver-ish holy grail of "1.0"

Where and how? I don't know tbh.
Just shedding some light on that matter
I certainly don't disagree. Unfortunately I personally am not equipped for this kind of thing, but am very happy to help someone who is. Pre-1.0 I don't really know how to do this because most of it is complicated at this point and would be hard and not very rewarding to jump in on (I imagine). Post-1.0 I don't think we'll have this problem to begin with. One of the things some would be devs are angry about (like NullCascade) is that many PRs get blocked by Zini. Largely I think this will be less of an issue post-1.0 because Zini has been afraid of feature creep, which won't be as much of a concern. Once 1.0 is out, he'll be much more open to random stuff that helps users and modders (presumably, don't want to speak for him).

One of the best areas to focus on for new devs is the OpenMW-CS. I believe this is our biggest blocker for 1.0, and there's a large list of features that need to be taken care of for it to be functional. Not sure how to attract devs for this though :/
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Atahualpa
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by Atahualpa »

Unfortunately, OpenMW has quite a high entry barrier for coders - which is not very surprising given its complexity. E.g., it took me dozens of hours to dive into OpenMW-CS's source code, several dozens of hours to make me familiar with Qt programming, and, again, dozens of hours to carefully implement a handful of features/fixes. (Of course, I'm not a professional programmer, but I have dealt with lots of code in my life.)

So - how do we convince people to spend endless hours with our codebase? Especially since the creativity of tasks is limited by Zini's strict principles regarding pre-1.0 development. Well, I don't really know, but we should be honest when it comes to recruiting new developers. OpenMW, at its current state, just needs to be done - no more, no less.
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wareya
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by wareya »

Game engine programming might indeed be the penultimate boss of programming, second only to kernel/driver hacking. It's not specific to OpenMW, it just comes with the territory.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by AnyOldName3 »

As an example of the impenetrability of some of our code, I'm currently trying to figure out our animation system so I can work out why animated meshes are disappearing when near the camera when shadows are enabled. Even with my familiarity with OSG and our code and having a general understanding of how animation works in games, it's still taken me a day and a half to get anywhere.
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Atahualpa
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by Atahualpa »

wareya wrote: 03 Aug 2018, 23:12 Game engine programming might indeed be the penultimate boss of programming, second only to kernel/driver hacking. It's not specific to OpenMW, it just comes with the territory.
Yes, but as AnyOldName3 said, some parts of our source code are particularly frustrating. Apart from that, the other main problem remains: OpenMW's current status (pre-1.0) does not offer fulfilling coding tasks with lots of freedom but rather enforces "implement that and nothing more" approaches. - Which, of course, isn't a bad thing per se but may discourage new developers.
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raevol
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by raevol »

lysol wrote: 01 Aug 2018, 12:14 https://imgur.com/a/21ZqGCG
Ok, now that I'm actually looking at it, this is an awesome PR tool. Yes a little difficult to read the text, but this is exactly what we need to be able to give to people in a lot of situations.
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lysol
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Re: Revamp OpenMW PR content

Post by lysol »

Yes, I also think it might be useful. I'll make a good one in inDesign or something when we decide this is finished. Any suggestions? I mean, layout-wise, this is pretty much what I had in mind.

Anyway, another thing, we had a short discussion on IRC about maybe having a list of selected good articles from the "press" about OpenMW. The discussion came up after a fan on IRC had made a very long a thurough article in French on a French Linux site. Maybe the list could be in the media page?
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