OpenMW support for other games: Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout and more

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Capostrophic
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Capostrophic »

Nah, it's my own unrelated endeavor, which is probably going to be completely different underneath, but at least totally mergeable.

In some distant future.
monyarm
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by monyarm »

Capostrophic wrote: 26 Aug 2019, 23:47 Nah, it's my own unrelated endeavor, which is probably going to be completely different underneath, but at least totally mergeable.

In some distant future.
I checked your code, noticed your also adding support for other Non-Bethesda Nifs like Civ4, might want to check out SMT: Imagine, and Catherine, both by Atlus. They both make use of Nifs, and of a Nif feature i haven't seen elsewhere, which is textures bundled into the Nif itself.
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Azdul
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Azdul »

Capostrophic wrote: 26 Aug 2019, 23:47 Nah, it's my own unrelated endeavor, which is probably going to be completely different underneath, but at least totally mergeable.

In some distant future.
Please do merge it. Each NIF has version information, so reading NIF files in later formats shouldn't interfere with reading Morrowind NIFs.

And it will be useful in a myriad of different ways:
- OpenCS could in the future export / import models in different formats - currently it is severely limited and requires closed source tools
- original models from TES IV / V mods could be used in Morrowind mods (assuming that original model creator gives his blessing)
- future open source Oblivion engine as a fork or evolution of OpenMW
- documentation / reference point for other open source engines that try to achieve the same functionality (e.g. SugarBombEngine)
- finding errors in existing models in OpenCS - which is the major source of crashes
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Capostrophic
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Capostrophic »

monyarm wrote: I checked your code, noticed your also adding support for other Non-Bethesda Nifs like Civ4, might want to check out SMT: Imagine, and Catherine, both by Atlus.
These are just the versions I came up with the names for, SMTI should be supported by NifTools - I'm using nif.xml "spec", also used for NifSkope - and thus will be supported by my thing, at least partially. Catherine I don't know, it's not present as an example of a game using a specific NIF version in the spec. But even though I'm reimplementing the spec "completely", Bethesda games are the target group. Non-Bethesda games are just useful as "milestones".
Azdul wrote:so reading NIF files in later formats shouldn't interfere with reading Morrowind NIFs.
True, but once they suddenly become widely used they can cause crashes and unstability, and weird reports from users that decide to load in some FO76 models or something. And it's easy to spam the tracker with "Implement NiCoolNewRecord type"-like things, difficult to just reject due to "you've seen the warning that non-Morrowind mesh formats are unsupported".
Azdul wrote: - OpenCS could in the future export / import models in different formats - currently it is severely limited and requires closed source tools
- original models from TES IV / V mods could be used in Morrowind mods (assuming that original model creator gives his blessing)
- future open source Oblivion engine as a fork or evolution of OpenMW
- documentation / reference point for other open source engines that try to achieve the same functionality (e.g. SugarBombEngine)
- finding errors in existing models in OpenCS - which is the major source of crashes
1. Doubtful, since NIFs are being phased out in favor of more free software-friendly formats (OSGB/OSGT, Collada, etc.), but shrug. OpenMW-CS is not intended to be a 3D model editor.
2. I'm sure Bethesda would prefer if they were only used in mods for their respective games (so in Oblivion running in OpenMW, for example). Some modded assets still include Bethesda content it can't reliably allow to be used in everything. That said, they probably have nothing against making assets in more recent NIF formats specifically for the purpose of using in older games as long as they're not derivative works.
3. That's the plan. Eventually.
4. I don't endorse SugarBombEngine in particular, but I can't forbid anyone to reuse and extend upon my efforts.
5. Well, you can already do that through preview. If you don't see a nothing with spam in the logs, then the model is probably fine.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Also, bear in mind that the Nif loader isn't the only thing required to make the assets of later games look right. For example, the lighting works differently in later games and there are different effects, so the shaders need extending with these features.
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XJDHDR
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by XJDHDR »

I am a little concerned for the people working on this extended support that they are trying to do too much at once by trying to add support for multiple Bethesda games at once. By doing so, they might get burned out and/or delay the addition of support for just one other game.

If I had the ability to contribute, my priority would be adding support for the Gamebryo games first (especially Oblivion which I feel is in the most need of a new engine as well as being the most similar to Morrowind) and getting that support to around the same level that OpenMW currently supports Morrowind before working on adding support for the Creation Engine games. That's just my opinion though; do what you want with it.

Also:
Azdul wrote:- OpenCS could in the future export / import models in different formats - currently it is severely limited and requires closed source tools
What are you talking about? Blender and NIFScripts are the opposite of closed source.
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Husaco
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Husaco »

XJDHDR wrote: 02 Sep 2019, 22:02 I am a little concerned for the people working on this extended support that they are trying to do too much at once by trying to add support for multiple Bethesda games at once. By doing so, they might get burned out and/or delay the addition of support for just one other game.

If I had the ability to contribute, my priority would be adding support for the Gamebryo games first (especially Oblivion which I feel is in the most need of a new engine as well as being the most similar to Morrowind) and getting that support to around the same level that OpenMW currently supports Morrowind before working on adding support for the Creation Engine games. That's just my opinion though; do what you want with it.
I haven't seen any really wasted efforts like 4 projects with 4 different implementations of mechanics that barely changed across Bethesda's games. In fact the only work I've seen that concerns other games is just things like what Capostrophic's doing, supporting the Nif format more fully, which is more or less futureproofing and can be taken advantage of by any such project. Obviously it would be a shame if people's efforts were so diffuse that nothing much gets done on the whole, but there's equally nothing wrong with being less than laser-focussed where work could be saved some years down the line.
XJDHDR wrote: 02 Sep 2019, 22:02
Azdul wrote:- OpenCS could in the future export / import models in different formats - currently it is severely limited and requires closed source tools
What are you talking about? Blender and NIFScripts are the opposite of closed source.
NIFScripts I thought was limited and unfriendly to use, and supporting the particular specification that Morrowind uses was even more of a headache (all the more reason to work on supporting other ones). I'm not a modeller though.
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psi29a
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by psi29a »

People are going to work on what they want to work on. FOSS is a bit like herding cats. Someone has an itch, they scratch it... not necessarily looking at what 'needs' to be done.

To be fair, OpenMW is in pretty good shape if you just want to play Morrowind. What is really delaying a '1.0' release at the moment is that we want to also deliver a working OpenMW-CS that people can use to create content for OpenMW (and Morrowind).

All the other stuff isn't necessarily for other Beth games, but the ability to use more modern tools to create assets that OpenMW can use but not Morrowind. This opens up a whole new world for Morrowind modders who don't have to worry about back-porting their Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout assets. It should just work.
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Azdul
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Azdul »

XJDHDR wrote: 02 Sep 2019, 22:02What are you talking about? Blender and NIFScripts are the opposite of closed source.
I'm talking about texture tools from Nvidia and Adobe. But it was few years ago when I've tried to make new models and textures - so maybe open source tools are already mature enough.

Anyway - when you install the most popular mods and study debug output of Oblivion engine, you'll see hundreds of various issues with mods NIFs. There are either unsupported record types, or expected data is missing. So I assume that even with latest available tools working with NIFs is still difficult and error-prone.
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Capostrophic
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Re: Elder-scrolls IV Oblivion

Post by Capostrophic »

I'm already mostly working with Oblivion assets though since the leap between Morrowind and Oblivion is probably about equal to one between Oblivion and say New Vegas assets. Can't make one area of later assets work before making the same area work in the earlier assets, Bethesda really built upon and extended their previous modified formats (which is slightly annoying since 6 of BGS games use the same official format version but different "bethesda" versions).
Non-Bethesda games aren't even a priority since they probably won't ever be able to run "as intended".

It should be possible in principle to make OSG support BC7 DDS textures for assets intended for SSE and FO4 since video cards can decompress the format in hardware. Not sure if this was one of the things Azdul referred to.
jonwd7's 2019 nif spec seems sturdy enough for now.

Also, a slightly outdated (last Friday) cool chapel screenshot since it seems that chapel footage generates the most hype.
Image
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