Dynamically Changing Terrain and/or Texture

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TriangleTooth
Posts: 5
Joined: 30 Nov 2017, 14:01

Dynamically Changing Terrain and/or Texture

Post by TriangleTooth »

Hi all,

I've been following the development of the project for some time and I came to wonder. A feature that has seemingly been lacking even in modern TES titles is that terrain is always completely static. This means you can't have things like the terrain texture changing due to say, changing seasons, or roads being built in-game. It also disallows for reshaping of the land as a result of actions taken in the game, such as construction of mines or an island that only appears during a certain quest.

While there are some ways around the latter (use statics) and it's less useful than the former, I'd be interested to know if OpenMW could support either of these features. It would be nice if when a quest involves something like building a stronghold, colony, village etc. the roads can appear dynamically with the rest of the construction. It'd also be nice to have a seasons mod where fallen leaves appear under trees, the ground becomes less green, and/or snow appears during winter (this could maybe be done with decals but that seems performance intensive).

Just wondering because it seems like this might be something that needs support from the engine to avoid hardcoding things like terrain texture.

Anyway, I'm very glad with what's already achievable in the project. It seems almost ready to be fully released, maybe within a year or so at most?
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