Wake up call

[Okulo]

Okay, first off, a message from the voluminously voiced WeirdSexy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aST2MJd2Tis

Man, you gotta love that resolved bugs list. Makes me smile whenever I see it, at least. But let's move on to what happened in the past week.

Well, last week some websites picked up on the Android port that one of our community members was doing as his own sideproject. The articles written on it mostly (incorrectly) claimed that the port was officially part of OpenMW - one even said that the Android port was OpenMW. All this attention caused some undue stress for the poor guy in question, so let's explain what is happening here, just so everyone is clear on what this Android deal is.

OpenMW is an open-source project. This means that everyone can take the current code and do with it whatever they please. Think of it as if you're writing a book and everyone is reading along as you're writing. People are free to take the story you have written so far and create their own story or make some changes so that the story is more to their liking. In a way, you have your book (which is the "main story") and the books of others (with their stories that have "branched off"). Suppose you would read someone else's variation and you liked it. What you then could do is take these changed scenes and incorporate them into your own book (merging the two works, as it were), while still continuing on your own story.

That's what happening with OpenMW too. SandStranger took the code of OpenMW and made some changes to be able to port it to Android. From time to time he will show the code to the maintainers of the OpenMW project, and they will incorporate it into the main branch. That doesn't mean that OpenMW is officially working on the Android port, but there are people out there making an effort. The work is being done, so why not accept the work into the main project?

So in short, the Android port is not officially OpenMW, but the contributions to that end are very welcome.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's move on to other stuff.

A few new features have been added. If you have tried OpenMW, you will undoubtedly have noticed that in a stunning display of Bizarro ventriloquism, everyone in Vvardenfell is capable of talking with their mouths wide open, but without moving their lips. Well, that show is over. Everyone is now properly flapping their gums when they are talking. They also now understand that if they are your follower, you may accidentally hit them in combat. So rather than immediately turning hostile, they will let a certain amount of hits slide. There has been change on the enemy's side of combat as well: If you're already in combat with an NPC, they won't (continuously) report you.

On the editor front, some headway has been made as well. Tooltips have been added to graphical buttons, so if you don't know what a button does, you can just hover over it and a short description will be shown. Some discussion is now happening on the forums concerning icon design.

There's also a discussion going on about the fonts we use in OpenMW. Markelius's opening post in the thread should give you a nice and detailed overview on the subject matter, but the long and short of it is that we need a font that (1) has an open license, (2) looks properly like the font that Morrowind uses, (3) has support for international characters and probably some more stuff. Just check out the thread and weigh in if you think you know something useful that we don't.

Well, that’s it for this week. Check back next week for the latest news on the project!

[psi29a]

Hold up on there hoss, SandStranger is still with us and has joined us as a developer. So while scrawl did some of the work in the beginning, SS has now forked OpenMW and started sending pull requests which are reviewed by everyone here and Zini signed off on his first PR. Despite all the drama, the OpenMW on Android is still being worked on. Obviously, the more the merrier.

I think for now, you'll have to follow his wiki instructions to make your own apk files.

PR: https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw/pull/2 ... t-51351505

SS's OpenMW fork: https://github.com/sandstranger/openmw

[lysol]

Hold up on there hoss, SandStranger is still with us and has joined us as a developer. So while scrawl did some of the work in the beginning, SS is has now forked and starting sending in pull requests which are reviewed by everyone here and Zini signed off on his first PR. Despite all the drama, the OpenMW on Android is still being worked on. Obviously, the more the merrier.

PR: https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw/pull/2 ... t-51351505

SS's OpenMW fork: https://github.com/sandstranger/openmw

That's great! I felt sorry for the guy, I hoped that he would continue, mostly for his own sake. It was his hobby project after all, nice that some wannabe journalists couldn't stop him from having some fun.

[Okulo]

Fanastic news, let me change that. I saw that pull request, but I figured it was something to help any future attempts at an Android port along.

[andrano]

Very nice to hear that, it was a bit sad to see what happened to SandStranger, I'm glad he joined the project
It's also good to hear about the AI improvements (somehow this is not visible in the public section of the forum, as opposed to the work on the editor for instance).

[Okulo]

It's also good to hear about the AI improvements (somehow this is not visible in the public section of the forum, as opposed to the work on the editor for instance).

Probably because it's not discussed on the forums. I'm getting these things from various sources such as the IRC channel and our github page.

[andrano]

Thanks for the information, it makes the summary even more useful

[Okulo]

I hope so. My personal philosophy is that these newsposts are the world's window into the project and not just "We did x, y and z. Bye now." It's just that people don't want to have to dig through endless logs on several websites and hang out on IRC all day, but the people working on OpenMW have always been a big advocate for transparency.

My personal aim then is to be the bridge between the fans (of which I am one) and the developers. That means that you get to hear what's happening in our community and what's going on behind the scenes. If you have any feedback or want to know about a certain subject, I'd love to hear it.

[raevol]

My personal philosophy is that these newsposts are the world's window into the project and not just "We did x, y and z. Bye now." It's just that people don't want to have to dig through endless logs on several websites and hang out on IRC all day, but the people working on OpenMW have always been a big advocate for transparency.

+1. Great work.

[laxon]

Awesome update, great video and I am super stoked that SandStranger chose to stay.