What are the rules for referencing game assets?

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mattwla
Posts: 59
Joined: 17 Jul 2017, 14:45

What are the rules for referencing game assets?

Post by mattwla »

So, I just started messing with OpenMW source, I am enjoying myself!

I have some ideas for adding functionality, not for the main OpenMW branch but for myself and friends and maybe others who might be interested.

One such idea is tweaking AI behavior depending on what class they are (farmer, assassin, etc. etc.)

Is it okay to reference such game assets (specific AI class names) in the code? Does it break any agreement with Bethesda? I remember reading a guideline on this but I couldn't track it down in the wiki or the FAQ.

Thanks,
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lysol
Posts: 1513
Joined: 26 Mar 2013, 01:48
Location: Sweden

Re: What are the rules for referencing game assets?

Post by lysol »

This is interesting. I hope Zini's plans are to put the AI in editable text files so that you can easily mod and distribute them after 1.0 aka "the great de-hardcoding". This way an AI like this wouldn't be a legal problem anyway.

Can't answer your question though.
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Capostrophic
Posts: 794
Joined: 22 Feb 2016, 20:32

Re: What are the rules for referencing game assets?

Post by Capostrophic »

Referencing IDs directly from code is possible, but is not advisable (read: DON'T), because OpenMW isn't supposed to be a Morrowind-only engine (though it basically is right now). I believe that the thing you want to implement is combat style records, like in Skyrim, so that modders and game developers can use them for their NPCs or in mods for Morrowind - however ESM format must not be changed in any radical way until after 1.0 release - for now omwaddon files that you create with OpenMW-CS are "backwards-compatible" with original engine if you rename them so that they have esp extension, though there may be issues with the plugin afterwards.
Of course I'm not Zini or scrawl or something, so don't quote me on that.

Edit: in general - don't reference Morrowind-specific things unless they're absolutely needed at the current state of development.
mattwla
Posts: 59
Joined: 17 Jul 2017, 14:45

Re: What are the rules for referencing game assets?

Post by mattwla »

Thanks for the input, sounds like I really shouldn't hard code any npc class references. Maybe I could add a new AI attributes to the npc object, and those values are set by scanning an XML.

So there wouldn't be a reference to "assassin" in the hard code, but there will be a bit of code that scans the NPCs class and checks if it is referenced in an ai_traits.xml, and if it is it loads the traits up into the NPC object. This would also allows modders to add their own classes with their own AI tweaks.
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