OpenMW Faq Video

[ElderTroll]

weirdsexy's idea for an informational video deserves its own thread. People should write one commonly asked question about the project. @weirdsexy, feel free to not include some of them as I'm sure there might be some facetious or sarcastic ones.

Here goes mine:

Q: Is this a mod?

A: No, OpenMW is not a mod for the Morrowind game engine, but an all new game engine. Think about it like this, there are game assets; the 3d models, the textures for the 3d models, sound effects, scripts, etc and these are then loaded into a program called a game engine which puts them into a playable form. OpenMW is a new game engine capable of loading Morrowind's game assets.

[Idles]

I think a lot of confusion may also come from the rationale behind OpenMW. Most people on the internet probably aren't familiar with how old software can become unusable as time passes, computer hardware changes, and operating systems change.

Q: Why create OpenMW?
A: While players love Morrowind's art design, story, characters, and may other aspects, its game engine is poorly regarded. The original game engine runs badly on old machines, badly on new machines, and suffers from crashes and instability. One of our goals is to ensure that Morrowind players will continue to be able to enjoy the game and its user-created mods on a more modern, improved game engine that will perform better on modern operating systems and newer hardware.

[Tarius]

I think a lot of confusion may also come from the rationale behind OpenMW. Most people on the internet probably aren't familiar with how old software can become unusable as time passes, computer hardware changes, and operating systems change.

This most likely.
Its kinda funny, but just yesterday I was trying to open a couple zipped files that had last been zipped over 10 years ago. I am lucky I still have a copy of pkunzip laying around(from that long ago) or I wouldnt have been able to get the files in them.

Question:
What new features will be included in the 1.0 release?
One of you will have to answer this question. Even though I have been paying attention to this project, I only have a rough idea of what new stuff will be included in the 1.0 release; I know it wont be very much though.(Although, I would love it if mapping was included as that wont have any bad effects on anything, if the engine checks for a map texture and doesnt find one, it would just not use one)

[raevol]

Q: Do I need to own Morrowind to play OpenMW?
A: Yes. You can play a stand-alone TC that has all of its own assets without owning Morrowind, but to play Morrowind itself or any mod that depends on Morrowind's resources, you need to own the original game.

I think this is an important one to re-iterate, even if it is answered in other questions.

[Lazaroth]

Will it have multiplayer?

Is this legal?

What are the computer specs needed?

What platforms will be supported?

How can I contribute?

Will you support other games in the future?

[ElderTroll]

Please edit if anything is untrue, oversimplified, or poorly phrased.

Will it have multiplayer?

The OpenMW team currently has no plans to add multiplayer. We are focused first and foremost on making Morrowind, its expansions, and user created modifications playable. This in itself is an enormous undertaking and we must remain focused on this primary goal. However, having said that, OpenMW is an open source project and one of the core reasons we work on this project is to allow modders to create more ambitious projects. So, if a person or a team wants to develop multiplayer using OpenMW than we'd be quite happy.

Is this legal?

Yes, in the U.S. it is is legal (different countries have different patent laws). We are doing clean reverse engineering of the Morrowind Engine. We asked Bethesda to release the formulas that govern skills, attributes, and other effects and while they would not release these to us, representatives of the company have wished our project luck on several occasions. We do not distribute any Bethesda owned game assets. That is why you must buy a copy of Morrowind, which you can on steam, to play it with the OpenMW engine.

What are the computer specs needed?

I am not sure what the minimum hardware requirements are yet. But much of our code is not yet fully optimized. So the game should eventually run much smoother than it currently does.

What platforms will be supported?

We currently support Windows, Linux, and OS X. If maintainers for other operating systems were to join the team than this could expand.

How can I contribute?

There are many ways to contribute. The best thing to do is to go to our forums and look at our two sections for applicants. There is one for new developers and another section for non-coding contributors. Obviously, if you are a computer programmer with C++ experience we would love to have you. But there are many other ways to meaningfully impact the project. First, tell people about the OpenMW project and that it makes you excited. Next, we need more bug testers to find and report when OpenMW is behaving incorrectly. If you speak multiple languages you can translate our blog posts so that we can reach a greater audience.

Will you support other games in the future?

By this do you mean other Gamebryo engine games? Morrowind was built using the Netimmerse/Gamebryo engine. The same engine used for Oblivion and Fallout 3. Again, the OpenMW team is concerned only with making Morrwind, its expansions, and its user created mods functional. If other people want to modify the engine or fork the engine than they can as long as it remains compatible with the GPL V3.

[psi29a]

What are the computer specs needed?

Your hardware (and drivers) must support SM3 (Shader Model version 3) and above to run OpenMW. OpenMW will likely not run on the same hardware you ran Morrowind on.

[Zini]

Question:
What new features will be included in the 1.0 release?
One of you will have to answer this question. Even though I have been paying attention to this project, I only have a rough idea of what new stuff will be included in the 1.0 release; I know it wont be very much though.(Although, I would love it if mapping was included as that wont have any bad effects on anything, if the engine checks for a map texture and doesnt find one, it would just not use one)

OpenMW 1.0 will provide all features that are provided by Morrowind plus a few graphical enhancements minus most of the artificial limitations (e.g. number of plugins or not being able to use variables in certain script instructions).

The OpenMW team currently has no plans to add multiplayer. We are focused first and foremost on making Morrowind, its expansions, and user created modifications playable. This in itself is an enormous undertaking and we must remain focused on this primary goal. However, having said that, OpenMW is an open source project and one of the core reasons we work on this project is to allow modders to create more ambitious projects. So, if a person or a team wants to develop multiplayer using OpenMW than we'd be quite happy.

Let's say "we will consider" instead "we'd be quite happy". Properly supporting multiplayer would require extensive changes to the code that could mess up the single player development process quite a bit. I don't think multiplayer will be an option before OpenMW 2.0 or even 3.0. At least we would need to clean up most of the cruft first, that is left from the early days of OpenMW development.

[Sadler]

One more question that may be frequently asked:

"Is it playable now? From what release it will be mostly playable?"

[WeirdSexy]

I'm going to be honest, I sortof forgot that I said I would do this

Ok, so when I started writing a script for this, it turned out to be more of a continuous "speech" than a one-by-one Q&A. I think formatting closer to a traditional FAQ would be much better, so I'll begin reformatting what I have in that style. I will enter what I have in an additional post once I'm done. Keep the suggestions coming!

Also, I'll try my best to get this done this week. I will be going out of town starting somewhere around August 3rd and will be unable to make videos for a week or two... my apologies if 0.17 comes out in that time.