Welcome to another OpenMW release commentary! The OpenMW team is proud to make you nice little christmas gift by announcing the release of version 0.41 of our open source reimplementation of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. As always, this video is going to cover changes in our engine. For the latest progress on our editor, OpenMW-CS, head over to the second release video. Version 0.41 solves a decent number of issues on our bug tracker -- 73 to be precise --, most of them being bugs or lesser features. Yes, we are still on the road to version 1.0. Anyway -- let's have a look at what's new. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- The current release improves the behaviour of invisible light sources in OpenMW. The original game uses these to apply glow effects to the player, e.g., when wielding the legendary sword Trueflame. The effect should now work properly in OpenMW as well. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- OpenMW's animation system has seen some improvements since the last release. In previous versions, the interpretation of animation commands deviated from the original engine. E.g., banners would always play the same animation loop in a storm instead of randomising their movement according to the corresponding script. This has been fixed now. Another bug occurred when an animation was interrupted before it had finished playing. The animation state would be set to the start of the animation but when triggering that particular animation again, the game would treat the animation as if it had correctly finished. Have a look at the doors in the Clockwork City of Morrowind's Tribunal add-on. Initiating the opening animation and quickly leaving the cell, I find my character confronted with a still closed door. However, when triggering the animation again, the closing animation plays. This is also the case, if I save and reload the game while the animation is playing. This nasty little bug -- which caused trouble in other situations as well -- is fixed with version 0.41. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- Now, let's take a bath with our Argonian friend Hul from Balmora. Did you know that Argonians learnt everything about swimming from Khajiit teachers? Well, at least in previous versions of our engine. The game simply played the wrong swimming animation for Argonian NPCs. A nice catch by our testers -- and, of course, fixed in the current version. In Morrowind, players have the option to use the Water Walking spell effect in order to grant their characters the power to cross water by foot. The original engine even lifted your character out of the water, if they didn't exceed a certain depth or dived beneath a rock formation. OpenMW didn't allow this in the past and also made the Water Walking spell fail silently instead of displaying an appropriate message, if your character wasn't allowed to cast the spell. Both issues have been fixed for the current release. Finally, characters walking on the water surface now cause water ripples, like they did in vanilla Morrowind. We are aware of the poor quality these ripples have -- but this is an issue for future releases. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- Earlier versions of OpenMW allowed your character to easily disarm NPCs. Basically, NPCs refused to auto-equip their weapons, making these a viable target for a pickpocket attempt. This exploit has now been fixed. Version 0.41 improves the AI's combat behaviour by making NPCs and creatures dodge attacks in a, ehm, more realistic way. E.g., your opponents will now perform sideward moves when threatened with ranged weapons. I know that this looks hilarious but it mirrors vanilla Morrowind's behaviour and is a first step to enhance the combat system. NPCs and creatures have also gained the possibility to flee from an unfair fight -- whether it is because of their low health, a completely invisible opponent, or a levitating Telvanni wizard. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- Spell effects are shown as little icons in the lower right corner of your screen and in the inventory's spell window as long as the effect is still active. Obviously, this approach penalises all instant spell effects which are only shown for a split second. However, the original game internally uses a one-second duration for some instant effects, namely: all Cure Disease, Cure Poison, and Cure Paralysis effects, the Dispel effect, and, to some extend, the Remove Curse effect. -- It's a mess! We've now adopted vanilla Morrowind's behaviour for the sake of consistency which results in perceivable indicators for the abovementioned effects. Players can use custom spells to combine several effects within a single spell. Casting such a spell should invoke the audio and visual effects of each and every spell effect it contains. The new version finally implements that feature -- which makes custom spells a viable option for New Year's Eve fireworks. The current version also fixes the Telekinesis spell effect to allow the use of on-touch spells from the extended activation range. This is a must-have for sneaky little wizard characters. Bound items are a great way to drastically increase your character's combat performance. With version 0.41, it is no longer possible to recast an active bound item spell. Another fix of many to imitate vanilla Morrowind's behaviour. More issues occurred when using bound armour. While bound armour increases your character's Light Armor skill in the original game, OpenMW made your Unarmored skill level instead. Also, successful blocks with a bound shield didn't play the appropriate sound. Both issues have been fixed in the current release. Oh, and walking around in zero-weight boots, e.g., bound boots, could get a bit creepy in previous versions as there were no footstep sounds. Version 0.41 fixes that issue. Zero-weight armour also was displayed as "heavy" in your character's inventory. We now mimic vanilla Morrowind's behaviour by not showing the weight of zero-weighted armour at all. Finally, inventory icons of items now cast shadows. We somehow missed that feature until now -- thanks to the reporter! -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- That's all for now. If you want to see more, check out the OpenMW-CS video of this release. You could also read through the official release notes for more in-depth information, and visit our forums on openmw.org. -- And if you have some free time during your Christmas holidays, why not give OpenMW a try? We can always use more testers who play the game and report their findings. See you again next year! And as always: thanks for watching.