Nehrim and OpenMW

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TheInternet
Posts: 23
Joined: 06 Nov 2013, 02:38

Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by TheInternet »

Hi, I'm a long time lurker, first time poster.

You'll probably all know of Nehrim, the total conversion for Oblivion. Personally I thought it was better than Oblivion itself. Unfortunately it's not the most stable of games, as we know GameBryo has it's faults.

I suspect Oblivion support is a very long way off (post 1.0+) and this got me thinking that if we can't bring OpenMW closer to Nehrim, perhaps we can bring Nehrim closer to OpenMW?

I came across this project:
http://www.projectmanager.f2s.com/morro ... Stroi.html

It converts Oblivion landscapes, and some other things, to the Morrowind format. Perhaps this could be utilised to port Nehrim to OpenMW. According to that site, no land above 467m can be rendered in Morrowind due to a game bug, but presumably OpenMW doesn't have that limitation. I could well be wrong.

I've never used the construction set of either game. This idea was motivated more out of need than anything else (I'm on Linux at the minute which makes Nehrim harder to play) and I'm willing to learn those tools, though I suspect the MW construction set will have a hard time with the detailed map of Nehrim.

Scripting, I don't know anything other than a bit of C++. But I suppose Oblivion and Morrowind have totally different scripts, it would be like when this game was converted from D to C++. And combat, I don't know how you do it in OpenMW, If it's hardcoded then the Oblivion-style combat system won't be achieveable.

Apologies for the waffle of a first post, and this isn't a "Please do it for me". I haven't asked for SureAI's permission. I probably should, but perhaps it's better to start something before asking for permission for something I haven't even tried yet.

I appreciate any input, however I won't be on the forum much for a week or so as I'm a shift worker and the next week has a busy schedule (those shelves don't stack themselves...) This is just something to collect ideas and see who's interested and what is and isn't possible.

Thanks. :)
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Zini
Posts: 5538
Joined: 06 Aug 2011, 15:16

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by Zini »

I suspect Oblivion support is a very long way off (post 1.0+)
Not going to happen. We are the OpenMW project, not a generic OpenTES project.
It converts Oblivion landscapes, and some other things, to the Morrowind format. Perhaps this could be utilised to port Nehrim to OpenMW. According to that site, no land above 467m can be rendered in Morrowind due to a game bug, but presumably OpenMW doesn't have that limitation. I could well be wrong.
There are limits on the height variations within a single cell. But I am not aware of any global limit in OpenMW. If there are, we will fix that eventually.
Scripting, I don't know anything other than a bit of C++. But I suppose Oblivion and Morrowind have totally different scripts, it would be like when this game was converted from D to C++.
I haven't done any oblivion scripting. But yeah, from what I know the scripting languages have substantial differences. At least a partial rewrite would be required.
And combat, I don't know how you do it in OpenMW, If it's hardcoded then the Oblivion-style combat system won't be achieveable.
OpenMW 1.0 combat will be identical to MW combat, but we will introduce more flexibility later.
TheInternet
Posts: 23
Joined: 06 Nov 2013, 02:38

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by TheInternet »

Thanks for the feedback Zini. Nehrim has sone extreme height changes, but perhaps the limit for Oblivion in-cell is similar. I suppose toconvert the scripts would be a lot of work, but perhaps some can be automated. I've just considered the physics - presumably OpenMW won't have a complete physics system like Havok, but most of that can be replaced with scripted scenes they could do something similar.

Apologies for the shortness of the reply, I'm in work. I'll look into things more when I get home. I'll install Nehrim, try and convert the landscape and see how I get on with loading it into OpenMW.

Cheers, m'dears.
wheybags
Posts: 207
Joined: 21 Dec 2012, 19:41

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by wheybags »

This isn't going to be possible with openmw.
It is possible that some day, someone will write an openob, and it is also possible that they will use some openmw code, but it would be a seperate project.
Trying to do anything on this front at this time would just detract from the goal of getting openmw to 1.0.
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Mistahtokyo
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Joined: 07 Sep 2013, 18:31

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by Mistahtokyo »

Zini wrote:There are limits on the height variations within a single cell. But I am not aware of any global limit in OpenMW. If there are, we will fix that eventually.
This piqued my interest. You're saying that, although there will be an in-cell limit where there can't be too much of a height difference, there should no longer be a general height limit across multiple cells? So something like a 2x scaled Morrowind heightmap with a properly vertically scaled Red Mountain could then be possible?
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Zini
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Joined: 06 Aug 2011, 15:16

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by Zini »

As I said, I am not aware of any limitations in the content file format (I haven't worked on this part myself though, therefore it is possible that I am missing something).

But if you scale up the original MW heightmap you might go beyond the per-cell limit (which is actually a per-pixel limit, that then translates into a per-cell limit).
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silentthief
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Location: Currently traversing the Ascadian Isles

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by silentthief »

in Morrowind, there was a maximum height limit for land (guessing there was a maximum lowpoint also, but just assuming). any land above this gets flattened to the height limit. strangely enough, this occurred in the morrowind exe playfile, where as the CcS allowed you to make land higher.

ST
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sirherrbatka
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Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by sirherrbatka »

Why theory? Simply try and check if it breaks ;-)
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Zini
Posts: 5538
Joined: 06 Aug 2011, 15:16

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by Zini »

Yes, but that is only the MW implementation. Irrelevant in this case. The only limits we need to be concerned with are the ones in the esm/esp formats.

I just looked that up. It seems that the base height of a cell is given as a float. We may get precision issues, if we go to high, but there is no (reasonable) limit.

The actual per-pixel hight offsets are floats too, but we also have the normals, which are actually 8-bit ints. I guess the per-pixel limit comes from these.

Also, the code for the LAND record is a mess (would have broken the editor, if we had implemented LAND records there already). More cleanup, I guess.
Gez
Posts: 38
Joined: 21 May 2013, 14:20

Re: Nehrim and OpenMW

Post by Gez »

IIRC, Crystal Scrolls was intended to become a generic OpenTES engine in the distant future (after the Morrowind part was completed), but the project is now basically abandoned. I think Project Aedra is also Morrowind-only. I'm not aware of any OpenOblivion projects (or OpenSkyrim, for the matter).
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