openmw.org

This is a new feature, that I came up with a while ago. The old CS tries to keep the edited esp file in a valid state all the time. It doesn't do a very good job at it. Some things that are more time consuming are not checked at all or only under certain conditions. Also, this restriction causes some problems for certain editing operations.

I am trying a different approach here. We generally allow the user to perform any editing operation he likes, even if that temporarily makes the plugin unusable. And then we offer a tool that examines the ESX records and lists all possible problems. And when I say all, I mean all. Eventually. Obviously we need to code that first.

I attached a screenshot of this feature in action. Please ignore the table and window layout. These aren't final. Polishing comes later (or now, if there is a volunteer *nudge* *nudge*). Also, since we don't have icons yet, I am currently using numbers instead. The 1 in the first column of the upper table means "Global Variables" and the 3 in the second column in the lower table means "deleted record". I hope we will get those icons in the near future. If not, we will just use text.

The verification tool runs in a separate thread, which means that it does not block the editor. While it is running, you can continue to view your plugin (no editing though) and you can also start to review the problems while they are still piling up in the result window.
A double click in the result window automatically takes you to a subwindow that show the problematic record.

Will you have this able to compare different plugins to see their conflicts? or I suppose you would see what is over riding what and would be able to change the which gets overridden?

Will this make figuring out why OpenMW crashes when loading, for instance, if the target plugin is missing something OpenMW needs? (in the past this has sometimes happened when working with the Example Suite)

Will you have this able to compare different plugins to see their conflicts? or I suppose you would see what is over riding what and would be able to change the which gets overridden?

No, that is a feature for the post-1.0 editor. This tool only works on a single plugin and the base (a master and zero or more plugins compressed into one).

Will this make figuring out why OpenMW crashes when loading, for instance, if the target plugin is missing something OpenMW needs? (in the past this has sometimes happened when working with the Example Suite)

Eventually. As I wrote before these tests need to be written first and we might not ship the 1.0 version of the editor with all of them. Missing records are actually easy (already implemented for globals). But there are a lot of other things we need to check. Once everything is implemented, the editor should be able to find any kind of problem, except for broken resources files (because that is outside of its scope).

That sounds really great Zini! Nice work!

quick question, will the editor be ready before the actual release of the v1.0 engine? If so, how many months, and will modders already be able/allowed to use it?

Or three quick questions ...

It's done, when it's done. I hope we can get the editor ready close to the release of OpenMW 1.0, but that depends on how much contributors we have (so far none, unfortunately). I certainly don't plan to write the whole thing on my own.
We will release previews alongside the normal OpenMW releases, once the editor is in a somewhat more presentable state.