Marked Improvements, ?fixes

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Zini
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Joined: 06 Aug 2011, 15:16

Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Zini »

I see a problem here, if anyone uses an old mod (that expect the Morrowind behavior) and a new mod (that expect the OpenMW behavior) one of the two will not work correctly.
I think it would be better add a new function altogether like UnlimitedScale...
Nope. That would force everything that does not use the rescaling-misfeature to have a script. Objects that have a script can work around it already, so that would be mostly pointless.

This kind of problems is unavoidable anyway. There will be a lot more changes like this and it is the responsibility of the content developers to use these features in a reasonable way. I don't expect them to be utilised in any Morrowind content stack. Any TC on the other hand should be able to use them freely.
Tarius
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Joined: 24 Oct 2011, 19:29

Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Tarius »

ezzetabi wrote:
Tarius wrote:
ezzetabi wrote:Wait a second... You mean that "abot", is not just any bot... but THAT abot? The one of "Water life" and "Where Are All Birds Going?"... Well, I just loved your work. It made the land of morrowind so much better. Thanks.
Dont fan mob him. He regularly posts in the bethsoft forums. And hey, I am the guy who remade the Oblivion ayleid ruins for MW for the mod Province: Cyrodiil.
There are lots of good mods around, but "Water life" and "Where Are All Birds Going?" improved the whole game for me. Better immersion is what I seek more in mods.
Zini wrote:I just implemented the re-scaling to [0.5, 2]. Since there are mods that depend on this mechanism, we have no choice but to reimplement it. But it will be one of the first things we get rid of after 1.0, controlled via a new GMST, so we don't break compatibility.
I see a problem here, if anyone uses an old mod (that expect the Morrowind behavior) and a new mod (that expect the OpenMW behavior) one of the two will not work correctly.
I think it would be better add a new function altogether like UnlimitedScale...
Eh, I have done smoothed meshes. But eitherway, abot has done more than I have. Now I wont say more before this goes too far off topic.
Chris
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Joined: 04 Sep 2011, 08:33

Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Chris »

Zini wrote:This kind of problems is unavoidable anyway. There will be a lot more changes like this and it is the responsibility of the content developers to use these features in a reasonable way. I don't expect them to be utilised in any Morrowind content stack. Any TC on the other hand should be able to use them freely.
In the particular case of scaling, I still stand by what I said. Restoring a save game shouldn't leave any traces around for the scripts or whatever to detect its been reloaded. A save game saves the game state, and the scripts and stuff work on the game state.

Any valid reasons there may be to detect a save game reload with vanilla MW (usually some setting not getting saved) shouldn't apply with OpenMW (i.e. we should save them). To the scripts, loading a save game should make it seem as though the game was never left. The only other reasons I can think of for detecting a save game reload basically amounts to screwing around with players if they dare use a save game, which I am vehemently opposed to allowing. Save games should always be in the user's hands.
ezzetabi
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Joined: 03 Feb 2012, 16:52

Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by ezzetabi »

Psycho Mantis do uses the same game to give the player a customized dialogue. It is very specific example, but I can imagine uses of detecting reloads.
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Zini
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Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Zini »

In the particular case of scaling, I still stand by what I said. Restoring a save game shouldn't leave any traces around for the scripts or whatever to detect its been reloaded. A save game saves the game state, and the scripts and stuff work on the game state.
That would be the reasonable thing to do (and it is certainly what we aim for with OpenMW). Surely you are not surprised that MW does not care about what is reasonable. I can't come up with an example right now, but I am fairly certain that there are several parts of game state that are lost during a MW save-load-cycle.
ezzetabi
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Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by ezzetabi »

For example: if you set an ability or a skill to a non integer value the correct value stays in memory, but if you save and reload only the integer value is restored.

So, if you increase a skill of 0.5 twice you get your whole point gain only if you did not reloaded in the middle.
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Zini
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Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Zini »

Thanks. That is something I do not intend to replicate, unless someone can up with a mod that is actually broken by this change. In this case we will do the same as with the scaling.
Chris
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Joined: 04 Sep 2011, 08:33

Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Chris »

Zini wrote:Surely you are not surprised that MW does not care about what is reasonable. I can't come up with an example right now, but I am fairly certain that there are several parts of game state that are lost during a MW save-load-cycle.
Sure. What I'm saying though is that I don't think we should worry about what vanilla MW does here. With a proper system, loading a save game would put the game into a state where it essentially believes it never left. It'll basically be seen as one continuous play session that never stopped, so barring any bugs on our side, the only things that can break are things that are already broken (if a mod can't handle an unbroken play session, something is obviously fubar with it).
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Zini
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Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Zini »

In general, yes. Still, I don't want to break existing save-load detectors. There may be legit uses for this mechanism (even in the presence of a bit-perfect restore from save) and mods may do other crazy stuff with it, that they need even with a perfect restore. It is just easier to allow this mechanism as an option in OpenMW and then not worry about possible compatibility problems anymore.
Chris
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Re: Marked Improvements, ?fixes

Post by Chris »

Zini wrote:Still, I don't want to break existing save-load detectors.
We're going to anyway, once we start having mods that want to scale objects beyond the 0.5...2.0 limit. Then we'll be in the messy world of conflicts as some mods want to scale objects as they see fit, and others rely on veritably broken behavior. Best to just nip it in the bud, than to encourage (read: not discourage) poor practices, IMO. It's going to happen, if OpenMW has the success you're striving for, so why do more work now that's just going to cause more work and headaches in the future?

And if we absolutely need a save-load detector, with valid use-cases presented, then it would be better to do it properly. A signal or a global variable that's set for the first frame after load. No need to do extra work now, and if it needs to be done, it can be done cleanly in a way to not cause conflicts.
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