FaQ accuracy about mod combalibility

[sjek]

There has been kinda lot of remarks made about vanilla mod combalibility with stricter syntax rules of openmw. As it is important for engine stability, anyway people's reference faq with it's statement about full mod compalibility. There really should be some kind of update to it.

"Support some existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon and some user created mods (in case they don’t use external programs or [insert criteria here])."

"and as much the scripting language can be bundled without replicating the vanilla engine error and crash trone nature"

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/147558 ... p=23876770

Ideas for the good text formatting ?

Is there any kind of wikipage yet to sum up the differences ?

I think the scripting features page could be extended. The differences are on development forum what have looked in multiple posts.

[K0kt409P]

How about:

Support all existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon and all user created mods, unless they require external programs (such as MSE or MGE) or their functionality depends on bugs in the original engine.

[sjek]

Sounds good. Only part that how you define a bug .?

Would the "bugs that broke the original engine and resulted to crash" not supported ?

mainly as some of the bugs in original engine has been implemented as game mechanics as nearly all mods depends on them.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Scripting_Pitfalls and well.. the other ones.....

Something like uesp cripting wiki that could be more maintained after 1.0? as the optimisation will take it's toll in between with all bugtracking.

[ezze]

Still it would be inaccurate, OpenMW did introduce some bugs from the original shitty implementation just for mod. For example, the abot post is about this.

[scrawl]

The FAQ states the eventual goal. For the time being this is still an alpha. We might add more compatibility hacks later and/or a totally different approach to scripting (i.e. using the original compiled bytecode rather than compiling the source).
However in the meantime there's no reason why the mod authors can't just fix their mods (if they're still around, anyway). Also, the OpenMW scripting errors often uncover things that weren't working like the author intended them to in the vanilla engine, so they would want to fix the errors anyway even if they don't care for OpenMW.

Case in point, I rejected that particular bug because:
- It is not gamebreaking, the quest can be completed fine, just some reward options can not be accessed.
- The quest could not have been working as intended in the vanilla engine either, albeit with a different error (just one choice not available?).
- Sslaxx has reached out to the author and there is recent activity on the mod thread, so I am assuming the issue can be fixed on their side.

[Tinker]

Seems my post that was similar to scrawls went missing, but mod compatibility is a two way street, I work with several modders who are pleased to get their work improved in vanilla as well as OpenMW, we catch a few bugs in OpenMW on the way which is also positive. I do not see any rush to make OpenMW compatible with mods where the maintainer refuses to correct syntax errors in his scripts.

[sjek]

get their work improved in vanilla as well as OpenMW, we catch a few bugs in OpenMW on the way which is also positive. I do not see any rush to make OpenMW compatible with mods where the maintainer refuses to correct syntax errors in his scripts.

I think we all agree more or less with that argument and has been seen little fightings but in the faq side althought zini's comment and rest of the test puts openmw clearly in development stage, roughly the first thing that people see in the faq page:

Both OpenCS and OpenMW are written from scratch and aren’t made to support any third party programs the original Morrowind engine uses to improve its functionality.
To give you a better idea of what this project is about, here are some of the aims for the future of the OpenMW engine:

Be a full-featured reimplementation of the Morrowind engine.
Run natively on Windows, Linux and MacOS X.
Support all existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon and all user created mods (in case they don’t use external programs).

https://openmw.org/faq/


If person doesn't know about bugtracking or just have a fast thought that puts hype on and there's questions and would say that those keeps popping up all the time. That faq section makes believe that all mods works just like that with vanilla scripting.

The FAQ states the eventual goal. For the time being this is still an alpha. We might add more compatibility hacks later and/or a totally different approach to scripting (i.e. using the original compiled bytecode rather than compiling the source).

Something like that shortened ? The eventual part sounds good.

As of scripting the alpha stage could be written also in scripting wiki page (it might be already in some way) Nevertheles would like to put the scripting under more general test like that multimark mod to see where's the current implementation is.
For example how's that multimark mod would work in openmw althought this could be made as different topic.

[Dragon32]

Hey I'm the dude who brought this up over at Bethsoft. I think sjek cut to the core of my concern here:

<snip>
roughly the first thing that people see in the faq page:

Both OpenCS and OpenMW are written from scratch and aren’t made to support any third party programs the original Morrowind engine uses to improve its functionality.
To give you a better idea of what this project is about, here are some of the aims for the future of the OpenMW engine:

Be a full-featured reimplementation of the Morrowind engine.
Run natively on Windows, Linux and MacOS X.
Support all existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon and all user created mods (in case they don’t use external programs).

https://openmw.org/faq/
<snip>

The goals of the project as described in its FAQ don't match reality.

I don't believe this really gets it:

How about:

Support all existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon and all user created mods, unless they require external programs (such as MSE or MGE) or their functionality depends on bugs in the original engine.

Does Morrowind's lackadaisical enforcement of its own scripting syntax count as an engine bug?

I know that not everyone reads documentation and so whatever wording is used won't catch everyone who installs OpenMW and then finds that not all of their mods work. At least being up front about the challenges being faced will mean that some people are aware of what's going on and that not all mods will work. Or will ever work without someone other than the mod author rolling up their sleeves.

<snip>
However in the meantime there's no reason why the mod authors can't just fix their mods (if they're still around, anyway).
<snip>

That's it: it's a twelve year old game.

<snip>
Also, the OpenMW scripting errors often uncover things that weren't working like the author intended them to in the vanilla engine, so they would want to fix the errors anyway even if they don't care for OpenMW.
<snip>

MWEdit has much more rigorous syntax checking than that in the TES Construction Set but not everyone uses it.

There're bound to be mods which work fine in Bethesda's Morrowind which won't work in OpenMW.

I'm not going to tip up here and tell you guys what to say on your FAQ page but what about:

Support all existing Bethesda-created content, including Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and all user created mods1, unless they require external programs (such as MWSE, MWE or MGE)

Footnote:
1 = Some user created mods may not work without errors in OpenMW as they do in Bethesda's Morrowind. OpenMW enforces greater quality control over the content it runs than does Bethesda's Morrowind. Some mods which function perfectly in Morrowind may display errors when you attempt to run them in OpenMW or may not run at all. We aim to minimise the number of mods which will be affected by this.

Not sure if these abbreviations need to be included, for info:
MWSE = Morrowind Script Extender
MWE = Morrowind Enhanced
MGE = Morrowind Graphics Extender (which begat MGE XE)

Shame superscript doesn't work...

I guess the "Support all existing Bethesda-created content" means ensuring that all the plugins they created would need to be checked, if they haven't already been.

[scrawl]

There are no changes to the FAQ required. It clearly says:

aims for the future of the OpenMW engine

and we aren't in the future yet, nor has an 1.0 version been released.

[sjek]

Then it's how you define future. As a word it's clear meaning but as in back to the future movies it's relative and more so in people's minds so gonna about more of eventual support as it's more knotted to openmw timeline than in general timespace. Nevertheles getting to 1.0 will take it's time so it's also taste guestion.

And for the scripting that goes more to the weekend. Looking for mwse mwe and such mods whitch are already possible without vanilla limitations should be simple enought for starters