The best from Skyrim to morrowind

[DarkAnsem]

While Morrowind was a way deeper RPG experience than Skyrim and Oblivion together, Skyrim (unlike oblivion) had several redeeming qualities. I wondered if they could be "ported" into Morrowind.

*better animations: exactly what it says on the tin. being a newer game, Skyrim has better animations and more charismatic creatures (such as the Seeker).

what, instead, OpenMW does NOT need from Skyrim:
the terrible handling of shadows and its horrible SSAO and AA. gpu-eaters.

[Chris]

*Concentration/FF/ritual spells: more complex magic system is (for me) always a welcome addition, especially if one considers how terrible is it in oblivion.

I'd like to see single-handed spells, which can be put into either hand (or both). And spells that take varying amounts of time to charge up and cast. Another interesting idea might be sustained spells... spells which can be toggled on an off by recasting them, and which lower your maximum magicka when active (as an alternative to certain spells that you would otherwise just constantly recast).

*better music handling: skyrim allowed for a higher degree of music customization (specific area music, specific music for boss battles). I wonder if this could be done in OpenMW too. also, XWM format was better than the low-quality morrowind mp3/wma.

We already handle any format that can be thrown at ffmpeg. I believe that includes XWM, although Vorbis (lossy, but better than mp3) and/or FLAC (lossless) would be preferable. Could even use something like Speex or Opus (formats designed to compress voice) for speech.

More customization in the playlists would always be nice. As would be the option of removing combat music triggers.

*better animations: exactly what it says on the tin. being a newer game, Skyrim has better animations and more charismatic creatures (such as the Seeker).

The big issue there will be actually creating animations. Animations in general have always been a problem for Bethesda and modders. While we could enhance and add possibilities on the technical side of things (animation blending, procedural animations, inverse kinematics, etc), we'd need really good animators to get the most out of it.

*better lighting: not exactly sure about this, but Skyrim's lighting is very pretty, no other words to describe it.
again, it's a newer game.

I think this is an area where we can just hop, skip, and jump past Skyrim without a second thought. MGE XE manages to do better than Skyrim, and we should be able to do better than even that since we can add features properly (deferred shading is one in particular I'd like to see; fast per-pixel lighting, no practical limit on the number of active lights in a scene, no more ugly seams... though it would require a GF8/9 card, or whatever AMD equivalent, or better to really do properly).

[DarkAnsem]

I'm very glad you think so
how about the other points?

*concerning animations:
agreed. making animations is a pain. and skyrim had pretty, but little functional ones

*about magic:
all great ideas I did not think to explicitly say, even if I did think of a few do you think you could add them?

*about lighting:
would also light rendering be faster thanks to multithreading, like shadows should be?

[Davefilms]

Please, please allow new or replacement music that is encoded in FLAC and vorbis.
The Movies game uses Ogg Vorbis quite well.

[psi29a]

OpenMW can handle any music format supported by the ffmpeg/avtool libs, which is pretty much all of them.

[Mistahtokyo]

I could have sworn I read somewhere that there was/were someone/some people that offered to create animations if a better system was developed, so I'm not too sure that's too big an issue. What I really want that not many people seem to notice is higher poly terrain mesh. Even if we were to replace all the models, they always stand out against the jagged surface, especially in hills/cliffs. Oblivion had a higher poly mesh, it was and immediately noticeable improvement.

[Gez]

I don't like .xwm, it's too Microsofty. You want a good codec for audio, you look at Opus.

A higher poly terrain mesh wouldn't be very useful without a landmass overhaul mod. The mesh density will have to remain that of the data files, unless you perform some fancy interpolation.

If you look at Skyrim, you'll notice that the terrain is actually quite low-res. They cheat by making sure you never see it, though: it's covered by meshes. Noclip a bit below the ground in an exterior and you'll see what I mean.

[psi29a]

A higher poly terrain mesh wouldn't be very useful without a landmass overhaul mod. The mesh density will have to remain that of the data files, unless you perform some fancy interpolation.

Use procedural generation (fBm,noise) to add a bit 'salt' to the current landmass. This would generate a higher poly terrain mesh based on existing landmass.

[Mistahtokyo]

A higher poly terrain mesh wouldn't be very useful without a landmass overhaul mod. The mesh density will have to remain that of the data files, unless you perform some fancy interpolation.

Use procedural generation (fBm,noise) to add a bit 'salt' to the current landmass. This would generate a higher poly terrain mesh based on existing landmass.

This. I'm also pretty sure Vality7 had some better quality heightmaps (or at least has the tools/knowledge to make some) for Vvanderfell.

[DarkAnsem]

any updated news on this? sorry for the lack of community support, I've been doing my legal apprenticeship. would love the OpenMW devs to share an official word on first post list tho.