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Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 02:42
by Chris
Darklocq wrote: 10 Mar 2018, 22:01
  • are written for the Bethesda engine, and presuppose its glitches (being present and behaving exactly as known to behave in the Bethesda engine), not OpenMW's glitches, which are often divergent;
I'm not sure what you mean, "presuppose its glitches, not OpenMW's glitches". Bugs in the game data is bugs in the game data, regardless of the engine it's on. Can you provide an example (real or hypothetical) of what you're talking about?
  • generally have MS Windows .EXE installers;
The one linked to here is a plain zip file with an esm. Very few mods are actually distributed as exe installers given the presence of mod managers.
  • seem to be incompletely tested, totally untested, or known-problematic when it comes to, say, patching the bare original game in an MS Windows VM then importing it into OpenMW;
A mod can only be tested by people using it. Besides, the people who are behind MPP are well-versed in Morrowind modding, they aren't in the habit of releasing shoddy work.
  • when working, are going to directly modify the vanilla game data, which is antithetical to OpenMW's modding model
Huh? That's what modding is, modifying vanilla game data (in this case to change buggy data into less buggy data). They don't directly modify the original game files, they work like any other mod.
  • and will interfere with debugging OpenMW itself (i.e., one may submit bug reports others cannot reproduce, because the underlying game data is significantly different)
Any bug report should include the list of mods used. And if a mod or combination of mods causes a problem in OpenMW, so long as it works in vanilla and doesn't rely on external tools like MWSE or MGE, it likely is a bug that should be looked at.

[qoute]
  • and often depend on MWSE, MGXE, and other MS Windows "co-executables".
[/quote]
I have never seen an unofficial patch mod rely on a script or graphics extender. The one linked above certainly doesn't.

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 11:10
by Darklocq
Chris wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 02:42 Can you provide an example (real or hypothetical) of what you're talking about?
How many do you want? Start with these three, just off the top of my head:
  • #2222: Mercantile, Disposition, and "Fatigue" (stamina) are supposed to have a positive effect on buying and selling, but this is broken for selling. Every project that's tried to address it does so in a different, inconsistent way, and OpenMW people haven't started yet. We don't have any inkling of what the algorithm is (even UESP doesn't, despite having figured out the exact math for a lot of other stuff), so reverse engineering what it really should be is anyone's guess. Worse, the unexpected effects are not even consistent – they just happen with about 95% of merchants. You'll eventually run into a merchant with whom being fresh, charismatic, and a skilled negotiator actually does give you the best price when you sell.
  • #3109: Bethesda did not even follow its own internal documentation, and implemented at least one scripting command wrong; consequently, some mods are following the observable behavior while others follow the documented/expected behavior, and stuff breaks. Different projects enforce one behavior or the other, so mods have to be patched specifically to work with one solution or the other.
  • #2787, #3854, #3988, et al.: Things with no collision bounding box work fine in Bethesda, but in OpenMW they fall through the floor if not already at water-table height, will walk right through slopes, and cannot be hit with weapons or on-touch/on-strike, but can hit you. Worse, when anyone dies, they can fall through walls and slopes in this engine, and become inaccessible, because they have no collision during at least part of the death animation. The theory is that Bethesda is auto-generating collision based on mesh size to prevent such things, but no one's really sure.
the people who are behind MPP are well-versed in Morrowind modding, they aren't in the habit of releasing shoddy work.
Has nothing to do with shoddy work by people working with the Bethesda engine; has to do with OpenMW and Bethesda implementing many things differently. See our own documentation's lack of encouragement of about such projects: "you may set up MGSO on your vanilla Morrowind installation, then import your data and mod list to OpenMW, and hope for the best", and so on. That's fine for hardcore playtesters, but players don't want to do something that should work and just "hope for the best". They just want it to work.
Any bug report should include the list of mods used.
Except not. The devs don't ask for this, and it's generally not done. People try to ID an issue with a particular mod, not some enormous load order no one is going to replicate. I can only think of a single bug report in which the devs have wanted a big pile of mods to test something with, and in that case it was to test potential limit on total number of mods, not any particular mods.
  • and often depend on MWSE, MGXE, and other MS Windows "co-executables".
I have never seen an unofficial patch mod rely on a script or graphics extender.
[/quote]

Then you have not read https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title ... _utilities. MCP in particular isn't compatible yet is a dependency for innumerable third-party mods.
They don't directly modify the original game files, they work like any other mod.
Those that use installers just dump stuff directly into .../Morrowind/Data Files and subdirectories thereof. I'm sure you already understand this, and I don't have time to argue with you circularly over trivia.

I'm sure we both have something better to do. Like maybe fixing the firehose of errors/warnings that Verify generates with regard to the vanilla game files. You may not consider it worthwhile to resolve that problem. I do, because it is a constant thorn in the side of me and anyone else trying to debug why any given third-party mod has issues in OpenMW. That is sufficient for me to act. If you're happy and willing to install something like MPP and just "hope for the best", and want to report back what your results are after months of playtesting, have at it. I would bet you real money that Verify will continue spitting out a large number of complaints after you install it, so your "solution" isn't going to be a solution for the no. 1 thing I'm trying to solve, even if it may deal with all sorts of other stuff like Journal typos, and texture seams in the Grazelands and yadda yadda. I know of precisely zero patching projects that take into account OpenMW and it's unique issues.

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 16:01
by AnyOldName3
The things you listed at the top are engine issues, not content issues, so need fixing in the engine, not a content file.

Your next thing covers one engine difference (the handling of normal maps/environment maps) and a bunch of engine bugs or missing features. You can't fix these mods by releasing a patch for Morrowind's content files as that's not where the incompatibilities lie. Finishing our engine and making new versions of old mods which rely on non-vanilla engine extensions to use the OpenMW equivalent features is the solution here.

Issues aren't supposed to end up on the tracker until the user has already made some effort to narrow down which mods are causing them. Usually, when people have problems, they'll make a forum thread and should include their full mod list. People help them try and figure out the problem and if it's a genuine bug, it'll get put in the tracker. Otherwise, we'd have hundreds of duplicate issues regarding shiny rocks on the tracker as everyone who'd encountered it would report it.

You've linked to a list of things that aren't content file patches and used it to try and refute a claim that there are no content file patches which depend on engine extenders. That's not how it works. The things you listed are all either likely to have their functionality replicated by OpenMW (potentially in an incompatible but cleaner way as whoever does the work has source code access so doesn't have to try and change the behaviour of an existing executable file) or aren't really related.

I've seen exactly one Elder Scrolls mod that changes content files instead of the engine itself which uses an exe installer, and it was a total conversion mod, and had there been another engine for that game, it would have just worked.

I think a big problem here is that you've misunderstood what can and can't be accomplished by a content file (an esp/esm/esl/omwaddon/omwgame file). Lots of the things you've listed are either bugs and missing features in OpenMW or are its lack of support for mods which rely on extensions to the vanilla engine. OpenMW is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for the vanilla engine, but isn't supposed to be compatible with engine modifications for the original engine. If a mod requires MWSE, it's never going to work with OpenMW, for example. That isn't necessarily a problem, though, as post-1.0, OpenMW is likely to provide similar functionality to MWSE built in. It won't be identical as supporting MWSE functions directly will introduce a lot of the vanilla engine's limitations into OpenMW, but it should become possible to port mods.

If you want to get the CS to stop spitting out errors about scripts, you'd be better off starting with the less buggy scripts included in the Morrowind Patch Project than with the vanilla scripts. You're also probably better off submitting your improved scripts to the MPP people so they can include them than creating a new mod.

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 18:44
by Darklocq
AnyOldName3 wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 16:01If you want to get the CS to stop spitting out errors about scripts, you'd be better off starting with the less buggy scripts included in the Morrowind Patch Project than with the vanilla scripts.
Badly missing the point. I should not have to install a massive code-patch mod, not thoroughly tested by anyone we know of in this engine, and created by a project working with a totally different engine, just to stop OpenMW-CS barfing up 200 or so errors and warnings about the base game files. That's like doing a liver transplant ("hope for the best"!) to deal with a sore thumb.

I'm well aware of the distinction between an engine bug and what's a scripting bug. I'm also aware from direct experience that scripting (or mesh tweaks, or whatever needs to be done in a particular instance) can quite often get around engine bugs, since I keep doing it and others keep doing it, to get mods that don't work to finally work, and to get even the base game to behave better.

If you want to continue to argue that MCP isn't actually a Morrowind code patch project, feel free go to their website and argue with them about their name. Not how I care to spend my time. Making the game – without massively altering it – work better, and making the CS work better, are what I care to work on.

"Issues aren't supposed to end up on the tracker until the user has already made some effort to narrow down which mods are causing them." No one in this thread has said otherwise. "... refute a claim that there are no content file patches which depend on engine extenders": No one actually made such a claim.

I'm not going to argue with you about this stuff any further. Instead, I've already produced some small .omwaddon files that fix a bunch of the errors/warnings OpenMW throws up about the original game data, and am going to look into resolving more of them. I still have no idea what to do about the pathgrid issues, and a few other problems reported by Verify don't mean much to me yet, but I'm good at figuring such stuff out, with or without help (preferably with!).

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 20:07
by Capostrophic
I'll reword what others have said.

No, Morrowind Code Patch is in fact not "a patch project". You confuse it with Morrowind Patch Project. Morrowind Code Patch modifies Morrowind.exe and doesn't change the content of Morrowind at all. It doesn't have a website either. To clarify: Morrowind Code Patch for Morrowind.exe nor whatever you do with OpenMW source code cannot "fix" the issues reported by OpenMW-CS verifier.

Morrowind Patch Project changes the assets of the game and is fully compatible with OpenMW. It uses ESM format, to which omwaddon format is virtually identical. On the contrary, it's possible to fix issues reported by OpenMW-CS verifier using ESM format, as these are bugs in Morrowind content files.

Morrowind is completely unrelated to OpenMW and using "OpenMW Code Patch" name is misleading, moreover, twice.
1) OpenMW is not a game and neither it is Morrowind, as you surely understand.
2) How is it code patch if the code of the game is not changed? Hacky scripting work-arounds don't qualify for this at all.


"totally different engine"
OpenMW is a FOSS reimplementation of Morrowind engine per its definition. They're supposed to be pretty close from modding standpoint. If Morrowind engine supports something ESM format-based without any third party utilities and extenders, OpenMW 1.0 must support it too (with exceptions being extremely rare). Period.

">Issues aren't supposed to end up on the tracker until the user has already made some effort to narrow down which mods are causing them.
No one in this thread has said otherwise."

You did.

">Any bug report should include the list of mods used.

Except not. The devs don't ask for this, and it's generally not done."


"No one actually made... a claim [that no content file patches depend on script extenders]."

AnyOldName3 did, and it's, um, true. You, in an attempt of argumentation for your claim there are content file patches that do depend on third party utilities and extenders to work, linked a list of mods that either are third party utilities/extenders which don't affect Morrowind assets directly or depend on such tools from wiki. There are no content file patches in that list.

Don't you dare to redistribute derivative works based on Morrowind content files later while being allegedly affiliated with OpenMW.

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 11 Mar 2018, 20:47
by Chris
Darklocq wrote: 11 Mar 2018, 11:10
  • #2222: Mercantile, Disposition, and "Fatigue" (stamina) are supposed to have a positive effect on buying and selling, but this is broken for selling. Every project that's tried to address it does so in a different, inconsistent way, and OpenMW people haven't started yet.
This has nothing to do with content files, since it's a problem in the original algorithm. A new algorithm needs to be developed that can be optionally toggled on, which isn't something you can do from an esm/esp/omwaddon.
  • #3109: Bethesda did not even follow its own internal documentation, and implemented at least one scripting command wrong; consequently, some mods are following the observable behavior while others follow the documented/expected behavior, and stuff breaks. Different projects enforce one behavior or the other, so mods have to be patched specifically to work with one solution or the other.
If the vanilla engine implements a script function differently to its documented behavior, any mod that relies on the documented behavior would not work correctly in the vanilla engine, so I don't imagine many mods would actually do that. That OpenMW behaves incorrectly with that function is a bug in OpenMW's code, again not something an esm/esp/owmaddon can fix.
  • #2787, #3854, #3988, et al.: Things with no collision bounding box work fine in Bethesda, but in OpenMW they fall through the floor if not already at water-table height, will walk right through slopes, and cannot be hit with weapons or on-touch/on-strike, but can hit you.
Again, not something you can fix in an esm/esp/omwaddon. This is a clear bug in OpenMW.

It's important to note that the things you listed would not result in verification errors in OpenMW-CS (which you said is the main driver behind this project of yours). Those reports you linked to are also open reports, meaning OpenMW recognizes the problems and is just waiting for someone to make an appropriate fix.
Has nothing to do with shoddy work by people working with the Bethesda engine; has to do with OpenMW and Bethesda implementing many things differently. See our own documentation's lack of encouragement of about such projects: "you may set up MGSO on your vanilla Morrowind installation, then import your data and mod list to OpenMW, and hope for the best", and so on.
Because MGSO incorporates some mods that rely on MWSE and MGE, and/or may trip over bugs in OpenMW (bugs which are slowly getting fixed). This is also not a patch project that has anything to do with your stated goal, but a big overhaul that incorporates many additions.

At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if you're arguing for the sake of arguing, since you keep trying to argue things that don't have anything to do with the original complaint.
MCP in particular isn't compatible yet is a dependency for innumerable third-party mods.
A number of MCP fixes are already included in OpenMW either by default or as options, and I'm sure we'll accept more that the community has grown a reliance on. If there's another that "innumerable third-party mods" require, feel free to make a feature request.
Those that use installers just dump stuff directly into .../Morrowind/Data Files and subdirectories thereof.
Like I mentioned, very few mods are exclusively distributed that way. The one mod with an installer I've run into, Better Bodies, actually lets you choose where to extract files so you can extract it into its own directory like OpenMW recommends (it also run fine in Wine so, while not ideal, it wasn't a blocker for non-Windows systems).

Re: Starting an OpenMW Code Patch project

Posted: 28 Jun 2018, 04:29
by mojoswagger1980
OpenMw really doesnt need a code patch like the one you are referencing . Honestly if the pickpocketing mechanics worked without rediculously buffing it id call it good.