Application to OpenMW

[mikazo]

Hey everyone,

I just found out about OpenMW from the Slashdot article yesterday. I loved playing Morrowind back in high school and it reminds me of the time I wasted a whole summer just playing Tribunal all day. I've tried playing the game again since then but it doesn't always stick with me. I think that working on OpenMW would be a good new way to get involved in the game again.

So regarding what I could contribute, I'll give a little background. I just finished my Bachelor of Computer Science university degree last month. My development experience is mostly Java and C, and I currently have a full-time job developing software in C. My C++ is a little rusty, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to pick it up again. I understand the importance of considering algorithm complexity, finding memory leaks, and following good software development practices. I did want to develop video games at one point, but sort of out-grew that desire in favour of other software.

So with all that said, I don't have huge amounts of free time to devote to OpenMW, but I'd still like to contribute in some way. I would most likely be of more use working on engine logic, hunting memory leaks and bugs, implementing algorithms, etc. as opposed to developing 3D graphics and sound-related stuff. I'm just working on setting up the development environment right now to see how far I get. I'm running Windows 7 x64 and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Hopefully this platform is sufficient to be able to contribute something useful.

Now that my application is out of the way, I have some questions for you the current OpenMW developers and project managers. How often do you intend to release in the future? What would be expected of me as a contributor? Why do you devote your free time to this project? And lastly, favourite Elder Scrolls race?

Like I mentioned before, I don't have a whole lot of free time, but if there's any small way I can start out contributing, hopefully something that isn't super urgent but will improve the overall quality of OpenMW, I'd like to help out a bit.

Thanks for considering me!

-mikazo

[Zini]

Now that my application is out of the way, I have some questions for you the current OpenMW developers and project managers. How often do you intend to release in the future?

Until we reach OpenMW 1.0, we will try to stay with about one release per month. Obviously it entirely depends on developer activity, if that is possible.

After 1.0, we will probably do maintenance releases (1.0.1, 1.0.2, ...) as needed. The next line of development (1.1.0) will most likely be a bit slower.

What would be expected of me as a contributor?

First read the new developer documentation (there is a pinned link somewhere in this forum section). There is a checklist.
Developers with limited time are not a problem. Just make sure to let us now, if you have to take a longer break while you are having an active task.

Why do you devote your free time to this project?

People have different reasons. Me, I am one of the developers of a large MW total conversion project (U9: Redemption). We ran into serious problem with the original game, so we needed a replacement.

And lastly, favourite Elder Scrolls race?

Difficult. Bretons, maybe.

Like I mentioned before, I don't have a whole lot of free time, but if there's any small way I can start out contributing, hopefully something that isn't super urgent but will improve the overall quality of OpenMW, I'd like to help out a bit.

We are almost completely out of small tasks. Well, we have some small to medium sized, but these require very good knowledge of the code base. I suggest you start with the checklist and try to familiarise yourself a bit with the code. Afterwards we can look again for a first task for you.

[Zini]

Oops. Missed one.

This task should be suitable for you.

For more information see the forum thread. The formulae for alchemy are still worked on. But you could start with the refactoring anyway.

[mikazo]

Hi Zini, that task sounds like a really good starting point for me. I'm just trying to get my dev environment set up and then I will begin looking into it. Thanks for your answers!

[sirherrbatka]

welcome!

[Zini]

It seems you are not registered on the bug tracker yet. Please fix that, so I can assign the task to you officially.

[ElderTroll]

Welcome to the project! It's always exciting when a coder joins.

[mikazo]

Sorry, didn't realize I had to register there too. Thanks for the warm welcome! I look forward to working with everyone, it seems like a pretty organized project with a good group of people!

[mikazo]

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to get my development environment set up properly, so I haven't had a chance to work on my first task yet. I've been at it all week but have had no success. I got to the point where I can build openmw, but it throws an unhandled exception when I run omwlauncher.exe

I have consulted the "Development Environment Setup" page on the wiki, but is there any further documentation somewhere about which libraries are static .libs, which are .dlls, which are x86 or x64, and which need to be built from source? I've used many combinations of all the different libraries and all the settings I just mentioned, but it seems that nothing is 100% compatible, and something is preventing me from getting it to run properly. It might be more useful for me to start setup over at this point, but I'd really appreciate some pointers or some descriptions of working configurations that others have set up.

Thanks a lot and I hope I haven't caused too much delay!

-mikazo

[Zini]

That is all we have, I am afraid. Windows is still an exotic minority platform around here, but we have a few people working with it. If you post what problems you have, you might attract their attention and get some useful hints.