Gaming engine for indie games

[indiedeveloper]

I'm a big Morrowind fan and love this project.

I'm hoping that you will be able to answer some of my questions because you guys have lot of experience with Orge3d. I haven't done much investigating, I've found the Skyline gaming system, but do you guys know of any RPG style open source gaming solutions?

Do you think that your project could ultimately be an open source gaming solution? I know you are specifically designed around reading gamebyro type data, but you have still made your own libraries for common game mechanics like attributes and combat. I'm sure there are licenses around Nif and esp/esm formats, but with some back tracking the game could read in the more native Orge3d formats again. Same with data. Probably some intellectual property around the formatting of data, but if its open source other people can structure they own data formats.

Would be interesting to find out if your team was thinking along these lines. There might be solutions out there already (if you can recommend any?), but it seems that lots of hard work has been put into the project, so would be interesting to see if it could be used for other games.

[Rhys]

AFAIK openmw could also use it's own formats in the future, ie new save file and new esm/esp format which will be created by a new construction set and contain extra features... but this may be wrong.
Also openmw should theoretically support meshes that ogre3d can support but currently it's target is to get the morrowind data working correctly including animations, so a lot of focus is put on workability of .nif animations.

In the end I think you could use openmw for a new RPG but it will play largely like a Morrowind total conversion. The difference of course is that you can edit the game engine if you want complex new features or mechanics (or graphics).

[Chris]

It's my intention to allow use of Ogre's native .mesh and .skeleton formats. It's just a lot of work to get NIF files working correctly, and more work still to get it working in a way that doesn't make assumptions about it being from NIF files... though as it is, using .mesh and .skeleton files may require another file that can specify the extra data that is associated with models and animations (Ogre's file formats don't seem to have a way to specify custom data properties to be used at run-time).

[indiedeveloper]

Thanks for the replies.

It would seem that a layer between the reading/writing of esm/esp/nif could be the answer. As you say if you can have the construction set read/save to its own format, that would be a massive boon for people wanting to create their own games.
Some simple database system could be picked as an alternative.

Its interesting that you must have started with a product (Orge3d) and it would have natively been able to read its own mesh type, but your team would have had to create code that can read in nifs instead. I take it is not possible to re-construct a branch that was at its original state? Probably overly simplified hope on my behalf.

[Chris]

It would seem that a layer between the reading/writing of esm/esp/nif could be the answer.

We will be able to create esm/esp files with our own editor, and make a new game from there. And there's tools for creating Morrowind-compatible NIF files with Blender.

Its interesting that you must have started with a product (Orge3d) and it would have natively been able to read its own mesh type, but your team would have had to create code that can read in nifs instead. I take it is not possible to re-construct a branch that was at its original state? Probably overly simplified hope on my behalf.

Morrowind used NIF files, so if we didn't support those we'd have to get modelers and animators to create replacements. Which would be more work, with generally lower/inconsistent quality, and largely defeat the purpose of being able to play Morrowind with OpenMW. Like I mentioned previously, NIF files can't be directly converted to Ogre's .mesh and .skeleton formats because there's extra (and sometimes game-specific) information in them that needs to be preserved, and those formats can't preserve it.

[sirherrbatka]

At the moment it seems that with openmw engine you will be able to build first person perspective rpg game - not a rts or space fighter simulator...

[indiedeveloper]

Morrowind used NIF files, so if we didn't support those we'd have to get modelers and animators to create replacements. Which would be more work, with generally lower/inconsistent quality, and largely defeat the purpose of being able to play Morrowind with OpenMW.

I'm an Elder Scroll modder/3D modeller so know the ins and outs of what is required. But my original thought process was how to make the OpenMW available as also an open source RPG gaming engine. With no references to any proprietary software. Admittedly who ever used it would have to change some game mechanics other wise it would be a direct play of Morrowind, but anything is possible for interested parties when its open sourced. I'm talking creating own assets for a completely different game universe.
This is of course after you have the nuts and bolts sorted for the actually Morrowind implementation.

[gus]

But my original thought process was how to make the OpenMW available as also an open source RPG gaming engine. With no references to any proprietary software.

It is already the case. The only dependency of OpenMW toward proprietary software are some GUI file that you can easily replace, and that our editor isn't finished yet. But that's right i'm not sure, are there kind of license for using the NIF format?

[Sslaxx]

NIF could very possibly cause some problems licensing-wise, if you were planning to go commercial. You'd be best sticking with OGRE's own native formats in that instance.

[indiedeveloper]

I would say there will be licensing around the Nif format, that's why I was hoping that you might have an easy way of reconnecting back to some of Ogres native formats. I understand that you have probably gone a reasonably long path of integrating particular Nif values into the game engine itself, so if somebody was to recode back to another format, some in depth time/knowledge would probably have to be applied. But then again maybe not, I haven't look at the code (not that I would be able to decipher what is going on anyway! ), but it could be that your connection layers to the Nifs are reasonable stand alone so that extracting mesh information can be easy to switch over.