Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

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Chris
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Chris »

wareya wrote: 08 Oct 2018, 07:43 OpenMW should be close enough to vanilla Morrowind engine-wise that speedrunners might be willing to speedrun OpenMW.
They don't even speedrun the latest version of vanilla Morrowind. They stick to an old version that has a weapon-swapping bug that super-bufs the character, using the mouse wheel to get crazy speed/levitate and health bonuses (needed to move around fast and not die from using Sunder and Keening without Wraithguard).

Any game can be something to speedrun, so long as you target the appropriate category. The typical glitched Any% category is pretty much defined by using any bug imaginable to break the game and get the ending sequence as fast as possible. This is dependent on their being a wealth of bugs to exploit, which OpenMW will likely never aim to have compared to vanilla. There can also be categories for no major glitches and/or no sequence breaking, or categories for no glitching and/or 100% (i.e. playing though the main quest line or full game, as intended, as fast as possible; which can be just as fun or interesting as watching how many bugs per second someone can pull off). Of course, what constitutes a glitch would be hotly debated, so would probably be sub-categorized as no alchemy glitch, no absorb exploit, etc.

But the point is, anything can be speedrun with whatever rules you want. Morrowind's speedrunning claim to fame is glitched Any% being beat in under 7 minutes, with the current record leveraging bugs that even vanilla fixed with its later patches. You can very much speedrun OpenMW, just as you can speedrun the latest version of vanilla, so long as expectations are set appropriately.
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wareya
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by wareya »

The GoTY version can be used for the "no major glitches" categories.
terabyte25
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by terabyte25 »

wareya wrote: 09 Oct 2018, 00:06 The GoTY version can be used for the "no major glitches" categories.
Isn't "no glitches" pretty shallow in meaning?
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wareya
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by wareya »

It's "no major glitches", not "no glitches".
terabyte25
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by terabyte25 »

wareya wrote: 10 Oct 2018, 02:01 It's "no major glitches", not "no glitches".
What counts as a major glitch?
Chris
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Chris »

terabyte25 wrote: 12 Oct 2018, 01:59 What counts as a major glitch?
That would largely depend on the people putting the competition together (who collects/verifies the results and such). One could assume the fast-weapon-switching bug in early vanilla versions would count as a major glitch, as well as the alchemy feedback exploit. But the people who organize it would clarify what known bugs are or aren't allowed, and the person doing the run could ask about the glitches they intend to use.
Clement
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Clement »

The alchemy feedback loop is not a glitch it is a game mechanic exploit. Major glitches are obvious game-breaking bugs: constant effect glitch in Morrowind 1.0, the "soul trap" glitch used here (but it can work with other target spells, I understand), or going out of bound when loading a cell. Fortifying spell getting stuck when switching weapon or casting target spells are obviously not intended by the developers (the first one was fixed in a patch, and OpenMW is not reproducing them), whereas fortifying intelligence making you better at alchemy is an intended part of the game.

I guess minor glitches are other bugs with less influence or too hard to forbid. I cannot imagine forbidding diagonal walking although it is obviously a bug and not an intended feature (and fixed in OpenMW).
Chris
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Chris »

Clement wrote: 12 Oct 2018, 10:26 The alchemy feedback loop is not a glitch it is a game mechanic exploit.
Semantics. An exploit is considered a glitch, unintended behavior the code fails to adequately account for and correct, and allows for a significant buff that would otherwise not be possible in the given time frame or with the utilized materials.
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Ravenwing
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Ravenwing »

I hadn't really read most of this thread until today because I don't really care personally how this is implemented. I'm not saying how people feel about this is irrelevant, but which implementation anyone prefers, is. Since we've established the OpenMW implementation does in fact deviate from Vanilla, there's really only one question that needs to be answered. Is the cleanliness of the code worth the deviation?

I don't know where the original post is, but in our old FAQs we had a quote from Zini about project decisions:
Zini wrote: First I don’t feel any obligation to copy any non-functional behaviour. There is absolutely no point to mimic a crash or any other kind of failure mode. There is also no point in mimicking limits (like the if-then nesting depth limits in scripts), if an implementation without these limits isn’t more work.
Generally with anything that does not work at all in Morrowind we have complete freedom in deciding how to handle it. Note that this does not include any bad game mechanics. Bad is not equal disfunctional.
Second, we can change anything that is not part of the in-game experience, e.g. the commandline options and the configuration files for OpenMW look completely different from what Morrowind is using. The launcher is another example for this case.
Third, we are not obliged to choose the same implementation path as Morrowind (where we know or can guess what MW is doing). It still should look the same to the player, but what is under the hood can look completely different.
And finally fourth, there are a few edge cases where we actually might diverge slightly from Morrowind on purpose, when it makes the implementation a lot easier or a perfect copy is a clear no go, because something has absolutely no future and a perfect copy would mean we would have to rip out the whole thing after 1.0 and reimplement the part from scratch.
In general I would agree with Wareya that this clearly falls under the first category of bad mechanics, but not dysfunctional. Bethesda clearly intended this behavior.

If this were only ever going to be a Morrowind engine, I think the answer would perhaps more clearly point towards using Vanilla behavior.. However, since this is meant to be a general purpose engine, having a single case exception to an otherwise universal rule seems kind of batshit. It's not like programming the Vanilla behavior would be particularly hard, but this still seems like something that would fall under the fourth section, because a perfect copy makes things unnecessarily sloppy and would have to be ripped out post-1.0.

Still, the vast majority of people playing, at least for now, will be playing Morrowind. The deviation is also not insignificant. At this point in the logic process, I'd say there should be a toggle so people can choose. However, this is not much better, because this should still be removed post-1.0 for generalizing the engine. Furthermore, the fact that a ready-made mod exists that restores Vanilla behavior, I think, seals the deal.

Our paradigm has always been, if it can be put in a mod rather than built into the engine, it should be. Normally this is for functionality the other way around, to allow non-Vanilla behavior. But having sloppier code to then mod around in a more roundabout way just to achieve what simpler code would in the first place, makes this seem like the more logical method.

The only possibility I can still see for needing Vanilla behavior is the point Wareya brought up about existing mods being compatible. Unless anyone can actually think of any mods that do this or why a mod would, I see no reason to let this veto the current behavior. Generally if a mod is going to conflict with birthsigns, it's because they didn't like the Vanilla implementation, sooooo...

I do think any deviation such as this should be well documented, with our reason why and a solution linked to (in this case a link to the mod) for those who want to maintain the total Vanilla experience.
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Jemolk
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Re: Fix The Lady Lover and Steed Birthsigns

Post by Jemolk »

Ravenwing wrote: 13 Oct 2018, 06:32 In general I would agree with Wareya that this clearly falls under the first category of bad mechanics, but not dysfunctional. Bethesda clearly intended this behavior.

If this were only ever going to be a Morrowind engine, I think the answer would perhaps more clearly point towards using Vanilla behavior.. However, since this is meant to be a general purpose engine, having a single case exception to an otherwise universal rule seems kind of batshit. It's not like programming the Vanilla behavior would be particularly hard, but this still seems like something that would fall under the fourth section, because a perfect copy makes things unnecessarily sloppy and would have to be ripped out post-1.0.

Still, the vast majority of people playing, at least for now, will be playing Morrowind. The deviation is also not insignificant. At this point in the logic process, I'd say there should be a toggle so people can choose. However, this is not much better, because this should still be removed post-1.0 for generalizing the engine. Furthermore, the fact that a ready-made mod exists that restores Vanilla behavior, I think, seals the deal.

Our paradigm has always been, if it can be put in a mod rather than built into the engine, it should be. Normally this is for functionality the other way around, to allow non-Vanilla behavior. But having sloppier code to then mod around in a more roundabout way just to achieve what simpler code would in the first place, makes this seem like the more logical method.

The only possibility I can still see for needing Vanilla behavior is the point Wareya brought up about existing mods being compatible. Unless anyone can actually think of any mods that do this or why a mod would, I see no reason to let this veto the current behavior. Generally if a mod is going to conflict with birthsigns, it's because they didn't like the Vanilla implementation, sooooo...

I do think any deviation such as this should be well documented, with our reason why and a solution linked to (in this case a link to the mod) for those who want to maintain the total Vanilla experience.
This is pretty much where I stand as well, especially the part about a single-case exception to an otherwise universal rule being pretty batshit, and that no hypothetical mods would be/are broken by current behavior (and as someone who spends inordinate amounts of time browsing mods, especially anything that adds permanent buffs and spell effects, I think if such a thing existed in anything shy of a total conversion mod, I would have stumbled across it by now). The fact that the fix is so straightforward via mods only makes the choice easier IMHO. OpenMW isn't likely to ever be the engine for "pure vanilla" runs anyway, the original engine handles those fine. It's just when you start adding bunches of mods that things go haywire fast. Adding another to fix things for people here is an annoyance I can sympathize with, but overall less destructive to the engine's usefulness than you may think.
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