OpenMW 0.21.0

[Zini]

On to 0.21.0. These roadmaps are getting too big for me to list every single issue on them each month. So once more, only the highlights.

The two core problems (animations and init importer) from the previous months are still with us. We made some progress, but nothing usable yet (come on people, I know we can do it). btw. pvdk, you can send your pull request, if you want. The next branch has been up since a few days.


Further more we have the usual assortment of bugs and long running tasks. We also have for the first time a couple of editor tasks. These are of low to medium difficulty and should allow people with mid-level Qt knowledge to jump right in. I hope we are getting a few contributions in this area, because I definitely do not intend to write the editor all on my own.


We have reached a point where we can reasonably tackle optimisations. so here are some issues for that:

More Batching

Our current batching strategy is very primitive. And it doesn't even work in all cases (changing statics).

Experimental DirArchives improvements

Profiling so far has indicated that we may have at least two independent bottlenecks in cell loading. This should fix one of them. Or not. Only way to find out is to implement it and to measure.


And two more miscellaneous tasks I want to highlight:

Determine required ini fallback values and adjust the ini importer accordingly

Partially my fault that we are ending up with this. My original suggestion when the ini importer was written was to add fallback settings as we start to make us of them. Stupid. We need to add them all before we add the auto import on first startup or our support forum will be flooded with help requests.
This unfortunately makes this task a must for 0.21.0.

Unify case smashing/folding

Most annoying task in a long time. Probably very time consuming, but not hard.


I doubt that we can have another release within a month. This pesky Christmas is getting in the way again. We should aim for end of January.

[raevol]

I know we can nail animations! We can do it guys!

[Zedd]

I'll add some extra notifications about OpenMW on the Qt boards. Maybe I'll just spam the whole forum with it...

[cdoublejj]

If you do animation that's gonna make for one hell of an update video.

[Chris]

If you do animation that's gonna make for one hell of an update video.

Now that the latest OpenAL Soft release is out of the way, I should be able to start helping with that again. Though I make no promises about actually accomplishing anything that works properly.

[Zini]

Anyone else, anything? Or everybody on vacation already? The github repository has been uncomfortably quiet for a while. There are still 59 open tasks on the 0.21.0 roadmap.

btw. we have been getting a lot of bug reports regarding disposition. It seems our implementation might be conceptually wrong.

[gus]

Sorry, exam time for me until 2nd week of january. Still, I'll probably be able to code some stuff during my exams. Just not at the same rate. Plus, I've to think about how to implement some stuffs.

[Dgdiniz]

Hi, I'm out for some time. Sorry guys....

Is there some work for me? I need help to find a task. What do you suggest?

Thanks

[Zini]

We are very short on tasks now, but actually there is one, that I missed before. What about the batching task mentioned in the original posting. I think that one is still free. If that is not too your likings the only other options are bug fixing or the editor.

[WeirdSexy]

Would it be good for me to post an announcement to the Steam group when we have release candidates? Might get a few fresh people to test them out each release. I could post guidelines of what to actually test as well the basics of what doesn't work, so we don't have people saying "I can't draw my weapon" or whatever the case may be.