openmw.org

I've been having a conversation with Kingpix about the great success of his project (310,930 youtube views). He basically explained that the popularity of his project exploded with some popular news sites (Kotaku, Bethblog,...) releasing an article about his project and showing the trailer. I think the OpenMW project is almost ready for a big step like this and would like to start a discussion for all the members (although it could be considered a penguin of chaos job). What we need is a good video about OpenMW, not just a release trailer, nor a faq, but a damn cake, that everybody wants to eat (I'd call it 'OpenMW trailer' ), and a well written article about our project (engine, editor, example suite) discussing it's history, specs, differences with vanilla morrowind, possibilities,...
I know it's a bit early until we get there, but it's a good time to start discussing it, we have to realize the importance of this step in OpenMW history.

Some of the things we should discuss. (I have not much time, so it's a very basic quick list)

The Trailer:

-Will it only contain in game footage about the original Morrowind game and the example suite? We could put some commentary about it from our lead coders, put some artwork in it.

-If we only show in game footage, won't people think it's just a mod, while it will be so much more than that.

-Will we only make one trailer? We can make one with in game footage, one explaining the project and one about the history (people love history video's, and to be honest, I think it's worth one).

-...

The Article:

well, basically, what will we write about .



More and more people will be visiting this site, so I think we should put more on it. This is a huge project, and there is a lot we can share, we would do good with putting more from the wiki on this site. For all the visual artists on the forums, the more artwork we have (for the example suite, etc.) the better.

I think one of the things you could mention in the article is the modding possibilities more importantly the graphics over haul modding capabilities that how it could run better and faster than the old one with such mods.

How different do you want it to be than the v20 video that's on the front page and the FAQ video? Just from reading your description you seemed to describe those two.

well, I don't think when we are close to releasing of v1.0 we will only be bringing out a release commentary video.
v1.0 means the project's first part is finished and I am not planning to do this with some site updates and just a release commentary video (no offence SexyWeird, i love your video's ). It's important to make this big, write a very good article about it for the news sites and get some kind of trailer out there that will attract even those who never played Morrowind (I'm repeating myself, and i feel i was very clear already). A perfect example is the Morrowind Overhaul project, I've spoken with Kingpix about their success and I suggest we try to do it the same way. If somebody has something to say about this, although it's very early to discuss this, I'd really appreciate it.

Not much to contribute here. I would love to see a good trailer eventually. But I don't see how we can pull it off (at least not for 1.0). When we reach 1.0, playing OpenMW will mostly look like playing MW. That is probably not something people are getting excited about. The real advantages (less bugs, more platforms, more potential for modding in the future) would be hard to present in a video of this type.

I think the main thing that will/should attract people to OpenMW is it's full modability. Once OpenMW is out, showing the possibility of this feature using the example suite will probably be the biggest advertisement we can use. Isn't a big modding community prior to players for the 1.0 version? Like you said, version 1.0 is going to be just like Morrowind, and with MGSO and other graphical tweaks not working on our engine, there is no particular reason for a player to be interested in playing Morrowind once again, on the OpenMW engine.

So what will have to be done when we get there? If my understanding is correct it would be a good move to let the v1.0 release be accompanied by an already optional plugin which features some kind of a test room showing the player modded elements of the game which were previously almost impossible to mod. The idea is that these are to be very easy and basic changes which don't ask for a lot of work from our side, but is revolutionary for the modding community of Morrowind, just to let them drool all over the place (like a custom HUD maybe? ).

The point is these things won't be available in OpenMW 1.0. In terms of modding capacities OpenMW 1.0 will not be notable better than MW. There are a few drive-by improvements (particularly in the area of scripting), but you would need to be an experienced mod developer to appreciate these. OpenMW 1.0 is only the foundation upon which the future modability (is that even a word?) will be based.

We could have such a trailer for OpenMW 1.1 though, which will have the first batch of enhancement beyond the limits of MW.

I think a 1080p video of someone launching OpenMW in Ubuntu and then playing with full functionality for a bit would make me squeal.

raevol wrote:I think a 1080p video of someone launching OpenMW in Ubuntu and then playing with full functionality for a bit would make me squeal.

Someone else is going to have to do it or we are going to have to optimize OpenMW quite a bit. My computer just wouldn't produce fluid video.