openmw.org

Engine is rapidly becoming closer to playable but set of people, able to test it, is still limited to owners of original game. It would be great to have small set of completely free data files and little game base enough to test all basic functionality without need for Morrowind installation. Note that this is different from what is currently covered by this Wiki page: basic set of free textures and world objects is meant to be used for running game only, not for testing.

That wiki page does not fully cover what the test cell needs to have. Distribution of the test cells (esp) needs to be allowed under OpenMW's license which is GPLv3. What you describe is exactly what the wiki page describes, so I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

No one has put any serious work into creating a test/example cell yet. I know pvdk (it was pvdk, right?) and I both have started the project in the past. We'll get around to it eventually though.

Edit: Looking over the list again, it's really outdated or just plain unfinished. The test cells needs to have every discernible element present in a full game. It needs to test exterior cells (at least two). It needs to test multiple interior cells. It needs to test every single skill. Character creation. Spell casting. Weather. It needs to test invisible functionality such as ESM, ESP and ESX (in the future) functionality and draw from resources in both BSAs and from open data files in folders. That list is extremely flawed. In general it should be re-labeled as a test suite as it should have multiple masters and plugin files (small ones) that test everything.

Greendogo wrote:That wiki page does not fully cover what the test cell needs to have ... The test cells needs to have every discernible element present in full game.

I am trying to say that mentioned wiki page covers too much. From users standpoint having "every discernible element" is unnecessary; it'd be great to already have something minimal, to just run game with it, as early as possible, better now than latter. This would allow even people who have no clue about Morrowind to test OpenMW engine right now, on early development stage.

Greendogo wrote:That wiki page does not fully cover what the test cell needs to have. Distribution of the test cells (esp) needs to be allowed under OpenMW's license which is GPLv3.

Why do people get the impression that when you are shipping a project under the GPL then everything in it must also be GPL? We already have multiple licenses for fonts and there is nothing wrong with that. We could even have a restrictive license for a resource since it's not a derivative work. A test cell is a resource, and the GPL is pointless to use for resources (well, except the scripts maybe) since most provisions do not apply, that's why creative commons was invented.

Shame that morrowind had no demo.

If someone can make it, it would be cool. If not? Well, we can go along as nothing bad happens.

AlexanderR wrote:I am trying to say that mentioned wiki page covers too much. From users standpoint having "every discernible element" is unnecessary; it'd be great to already have something minimal, to just run game with it, as early as possible, better now than latter. This would allow even people who have no clue about Morrowind to test OpenMW engine right now, on early development stage.

Sure, that would be nice, but that's not the only thing that the test cells are for. The test cells should also be examples of what the engine can do. This would allow someone who did not own Morrowind to do several things with the engine, including test every feature of the engine in quick succession on their own hardware, making beta testing the engine quicker and more portable. This also allows a prospective game designer to evaluate the potential of OpenMW for a game project without needing to own Morrowind.

It's not just about having fun with the engine, though that's certainly a big part of it too.

werdanith wrote:Why do people get the impression that when you are shipping a project under the GPL then everything in it must also be GPL?

I didn't say that the resources need to be GPL, but their use needs to be allowed under the terms of the licenses both OpenMW is under and the licenses of the resources themselves. In relation to my statements, what I meant was that OpenMW is not licensed by Bethesda to use their stuff.

All of the original Morrowind resources are unusable. But usually any given community resource, such as a fan created model for the interior and exterior of a building or a texture pack are all fair game for our purposes.

I agree with Sir. I think it is a great idea, but it needs a champion and many of the folks involved with the project are probably already busy. The great thing about open source/volunteer projects is you can say, "You know, that's a great idea you've suggested. When are you going to get started on it? Oh you don't want to do it? Well, we'll put it on the shelve of ideas and maybe someday someone with time can dust it off and get to work."

ElderTroll wrote:-snip-

This

Why not just use some mod? That's possible right?
There's infinite mods that add land and interiors..

There are, but they all rely on Morrowind.ESM, at least. Perhaps Zini's total conversion project could be used, I'm not sure.