Distant Lands and OpenMW

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BloopsCrusts
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Joined: 27 Mar 2020, 18:37

Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by BloopsCrusts »

Unfortunately, I don't have $50,000 to put up. So I guess it will probably not get done. I do what I can, as do you developers. If anyone wants to make distant land their mission, the bounty stands.
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cc9cii
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by cc9cii »

Don't lose hope, it will happen one day. If something like Oblivion kind of distant lands and statics were done would that be good enough? I don't think that will be technically very challenging (but as has been stated elsewhere it is a matter of priorities - but since I'll be implementing it for Oblivion someone can probably port that over to Morrowind). Existing scripts for generating the distant meshes may need to be tweaked I think, and someone will need to generate a suitable texture to go with it if they don't exist already.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Unlike Oblivion, Morrowind's statics aren't actually static - a script or console command can remove, move or add them at any time, and there are several parts of the game that rely on that. Anything that runs outside the game is going to have issues with things either being missing or being there when they shouldn't be.
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cc9cii
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by cc9cii »

I cannot remember if there are any dynamically modifiable static objects in Oblivion that is visible from afar (maybe the player statue?)

In any case the Oblivion game files have the ability to support it. The newer REFR records can have XESP subrecord that specifies, among other things, enabled/disabled status. This can be put in the save file (the only trouble using this option might be the need to scan all the changed REFR in the save file). Another way is to check the changes in the QUST records in the save file (this might be useful even with Morrowind).

I noticed that the Unofficial DLC patch includes a low-poly model of the Frostcrag spires so I suspect that the game uses it somehow.
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psi29a
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by psi29a »

@BloopsCrusts: Thank you for the offer of the bounty and I'm glad that it stands.
Here is a list of bounties that already exist:
https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/1 ... nmw-openmw

It very could well be that someone might feel motivated to do the work and collect the bounty.

I've even flirted with the idea of trying to make OpenMW a full-time job but the risk is just too high when you have to look out for rent/mortgage/children/partner.

The work itself is non-trivial. Someone with a lot of time on their hands and no experience is going to have a bad time. ;) Someone with a lot of experience will likely not have a lot of time because they are likely earning a high salary working in their field. That leaves us volunteers who do this for fun if and when we have time.
Time4Tea
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Joined: 01 Jan 2020, 00:27

Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by Time4Tea »

psi29a wrote: 30 Mar 2020, 11:34The work itself is non-trivial. Someone with a lot of time on their hands and no experience is going to have a bad time. ;) Someone with a lot of experience will likely not have a lot of time because they are likely earning a high salary working in their field. That leaves us volunteers who do this for fun if and when we have time.
Just throwing out an idea, but maybe a good way to start could be for some of the experienced developers, such as yourself or AnyOldName3, to write down some of what you know. For example, create a wiki page for 'Distant Statics' and write some things about what would be the preferred method to do it in OpenMW (and why), and maybe a top-level overview of how it would be done in the code: what files would need to be edited; which subsytem of the code; what sorts of classes would be involved. Could also post links to relevant learning resources.

Could do a similar page for Groundcover and any other high-priority desirables.

Then, if there is someone that has some coding experience and time, but not the 3D graphics experience, it would give them something to start with, if they decided to try their hand at it. I'm trying to think about what might be a good way to make some incremental progress.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by AnyOldName3 »

The high-level stuff does exist on the forum, but the intermediate and detailed stuff doesn't. Doing the thinking to determine what that actually would be would be a significant amount of the work, so it would still take a significant amount of time, and it would be much less effective than doing it as a discussion once we actually had someone who was interested.
Time4Tea
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by Time4Tea »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 30 Mar 2020, 18:18 The high-level stuff does exist on the forum, but the intermediate and detailed stuff doesn't. Doing the thinking to determine what that actually would be would be a significant amount of the work, so it would still take a significant amount of time, and it would be much less effective than doing it as a discussion once we actually had someone who was interested.
Ok, that's fair enough. Although, things can get lost in a forum and it's not always straightforward to pull things together from multiple threads.

It seems like what OpenMW needs is something like a Software Engineering college student that wants to break in to coding 3D graphics for the video game industry, who could take on distant statics as a college project. It would be great experience for their resume.
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psi29a
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Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by psi29a »

Time4Tea wrote: 04 Apr 2020, 13:40 It seems like what OpenMW needs is something like a Software Engineering college student that wants to break in to coding 3D graphics for the video game industry, who could take on distant statics as a college project. It would be great experience for their resume.
Find us one... :)

The fact is, Morrowind is niche so there is relatively little interest. However, we have said, repeatedly that OpenMW is not Morrowind exclusive. This implies (and has been explicitly stated) that OpenMW want's to support other games such as Oblivion, Skryim and Fallout. With that in mind... the scope becomes a lot wider (less niche) and more interesting.

Keep in mind, many decisions about OpenMW are made with this in mind... we want to not only support Morrowind, but have a (generic) solution that will work with other games too and not just tethered to Morrowind's way of working. This really gives Morrowind purists a heart-attack. That's alright though, they still have Morrowind.exe, MGE:XE and MWSE to keep them happy.
CMAugust
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Joined: 10 Jan 2016, 00:13

Re: Distant Lands and OpenMW

Post by CMAugust »

Since you touched on the subject of later games, perhaps we should discuss how that will look. For those who aren't aware, all post-Morrowind titles include LOD files pre-generated by the Construction(Creation) Set(Kit) for the engine to read. Will OpenMW eventually have the functionality to read this LOD data, or will it ignore them altogether in favor of this generic solution? A solution which, I might add, is still hypothetical. One person only has attempted it, with promising results, but it wasn't considered good enough; that person has since left, nobody has picked up where he left off, and there's no indication any of his work will be useful as a stepping-block for whoever tries next.

Be that as it may, if OpenMW will in fact be given the ability to read LOD data of later games, it might be pertinent to start researching that now - perhaps even extending it to read MGEXE distant data, if they're similar enough, or else designing a lodgen feature within OpenMW-CS. Again, if subsequent games and their construction sets have this functionality which OpenMW intends to support/copy anyway, this is a conversation that ought to happen if it hasn't already.
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