Morrowind System Comparison Chart

[Ravenwing]

As progress continues to be made on the different major projects involving playing updated versions of Morrowind (MGSO, Skywind, and OpenMW), I thought I'd put together some kind of comparison chart for the features and benefits of each. Now I know we all care very deeply about OpenMW, but I am trying to at least be fair towards the others. I happen to be very excited about both OpenMW and Skywind, albeit for very different reasons.

Maybe a version of this could go in the FAQs or Wiki for public reference, but it's far from publishable and I'd like to see what people think. My goal is for this to be a tool to educate people on the many features and current progress of OpenMW, while also allowing them to decide which of the "Morrowind systems" (for lack of a better term) is best for them. What I especially need help with is more features to list. I'd rather have more features now and have to pare some down than forget any important ones. I think I have most of the ones for OpenMW since that's the community I'm most part of, but I'm sure I'm forgetting many. I'd also like any features the others have that we don't have in an effort to be unbiased. I'm not worrying about formatting yet, so try to ignore the lack of order.

Here's a link to the Google Sheet for it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[DestinedToDie]

...but Skywind doesn´t play Morrowind. It plays an imitation of it in the Skyrim engine. And MGSO doesn´t play Morrowind either, it´s just an icing on top of Morrowind. I know we know the difference here, but as an educational material the way you represent this is certainly confusing.

Here´s how I would put it.

Vanilla GOTY: Vanilla game + vanilla engine
MGSO: Vanilla game + graphic mods
Skywind: Morrowind game remake from scratch + Skyrim engine
OpenMW: Vanilla game* + new engine from scratch

* Can also be a standalone game unrelated to Morrowind.

[ezze]

And what does it mean "Can play and build games without Morrowind" all the engines can play other games changing assets and data... (unless there is some kind of hashing check in the source code that it's impossible to change.)

[psi29a]

And what does it mean "Can play and build games without Morrowind" all the engines can play other games changing assets and data... (unless there is some kind of hashing check in the source code that it's impossible to change.)

Not necessarily true, some things are hard-coded into the engines requiring that the data be 'just so' and as a result would compel you to use their IP.

OpenMW works around this by providing default "non-Bethesda IP" related content (strings/text/story elements) in the engine as place holders.

The great "de-Hardcoding" post-1.0 will allow us to distance ourselves even further away from Bethesda/Morrowind.

[Ferik]

I was under the impression that Skywind will support many Skyrim mods out of the gate such as combat overhauls, HD texture packs (to some extent), many visual effects mods, and many other mods that don't do anything to alter the world or Skyrim only content like Dragons.

So even if existing Morrowind mods don't work, there is partial support for existing Skyrim mods.

Also the Skyrim engine can use multiple cores. The verdict on the exact number is out. Various sources say 2, others say it can use up to 4. I think it might depend on the type of CPU. It can definitely utilize 4 threads to varying degrees.

[lysol]

OpenMW also supports multiple cores though.

[Atahualpa]

1. Skywind isn't an exact copy of Morrowind. AFAIK, the team aims to stay true to Morrowind but there will be changes, e.g. in landscaping, some dialogue, random quests, game mechanics which are limited by the Skyrim engine.

2. You must own a copy of Skyrim to play Skywind. Morrowind isn't needed here. (I think DestinedToDie already said that.)

3. Also, be careful with the term "utilises multiple cores" because it makes people think that OpenMW is able to multi-thread each and every task, distributing work load over all CPU cores. IIRC, our multi-threading is really limited at the moment.

4. "Fixes most original bugs" followed by a "P" for "partial support" is a bit blurry. Better say "Fixes vanilla bugs" and change OpenMW's status to "IP" (in progress).

[Ravenwing]

...but Skywind doesn´t play Morrowind. It plays an imitation of it in the Skyrim engine. And MGSO doesn´t play Morrowind either, it´s just an icing on top of Morrowind. I know we know the difference here, but as an educational material the way you represent this is certainly confusing.

Here´s how I would put it.

Vanilla GOTY: Vanilla game + vanilla engine
MGSO: Vanilla game + graphic mods
Skywind: Morrowind game remake from scratch + Skyrim engine
OpenMW: Vanilla game* + new engine from scratch

* Can also be a standalone game unrelated to Morrowind.

All true, and I do appreciate a technical differentiation. I would intend this to be a graphical supplementation to a more nuanced and detailed description and comparison of each. For the general user however, they're going to be asking, "How is this different than what I'm currently using?" Which would generally be MGSO. Or they're wondering why they should use this instead of Skywind when that eventually is released as well. Sure, Skywind isn't technically playing Morrowind, but the team is duplicating the main quests and locations with some creative license, effectively recreating a Morrowind experience for the casual user. Your division of the engine from the game assets is probably the best, most concise ways of describing the fundamental differences between these however.

@psi29a Yes, that's more of what I was going for with that statement. For instance, the Civil War Overhaul for Skyrim had a really hard time revamping that questline because so much of it was hardcoded. A true total conversion mod probably wouldn't really run into that many problems because it wouldn't be calling any of the original game's assets, but OpenMW also eliminates any legal baggage with trying to release your own game on it. I don't really like my wording for that one, but it's hard to be specific and concise.

I was under the impression that Skywind will support many Skyrim mods out of the gate such as combat overhauls, HD texture packs (to some extent), many visual effects mods, and many other mods that don't do anything to alter the world or Skyrim only content like Dragons.

Very true, the wording was unclear in my statement. I meant that people who currently use Morrowind mods would still be able to use them as that's a very common question we get. I've changed the wording to specify Morrowind.

OpenMW also supports multiple cores though.

I already state that in the table, I think Ferik was just pointing out that I don't have it under Skywind. Ferik, does it normally use multiple cores? I thought that was a ini modification you had to make manually, and I was under the impression that it didn't even make a serious performance difference and caused other bugs. If it natively uses it then I'll add Yes, otherwise I'll add Partial.

Are there any other features you all know of that I should include? I didn't include everything we specify in our wiki for the sake of brevity and the fact that some features are too difficult to explain concisely. I still feel like I'm missing a ton of stuff though.

[Ravenwing]

1. Skywind isn't an exact copy of Morrowind. AFAIK, the team aims to stay true to Morrowind but there will be changes, e.g. in landscaping, some dialogue, random quests, game mechanics which are limited by the Skyrim engine.

2. You must own a copy of Skyrim to play Skywind. Morrowind isn't needed here. (I think DestinedToDie already said that.)

3. Also, be careful with the term "utilises multiple cores" because it makes people think that OpenMW is able to multi-thread each and every task, distributing work load over all CPU cores. IIRC, our multi-threading is really limited at the moment.

4. "Fixes most original bugs" followed by a "P" for "partial support" is a bit blurry. Better say "Fixes vanilla bugs" and change OpenMW's status to "IP" (in progress).

I think I just addressed 1.

I'll add "requires Skyrim" to the list, but they say on their website that you need Morrowind, Bloodmoon, and Tribunal, I think more for legal reasons than anything.

I see your point for 3 and 4. I couldn't remember the specifics of multithreading for OpenMW. Do you think I should say Y or NA for Skywind for 4?

[Ferik]

I just played around in Skyrim for a bit and then checked my CPU Core loads in Sysinternals Process Explorer. I have hyper-threading so that might skew things a bit. My first thread was definitely taking most of the load at roughly 50% usage, but my last thread was hovering around 28, and the other six were varying somewhere around 18-20 and all were showing TESV.exe as the process they were running.

It definitely takes advantage of that second thread to some extent, and is pretty poorly optimized for the rest, but it at least uses them.

2. You must own a copy of Skyrim to play Skywind. Morrowind isn't needed here. (I think DestinedToDie already said that.)

From the FAQ just for clarity

https://tesrenewal.com/skywind-faq

A: Currently, Skywind is not available for public download due to its alpha state. When it is released you will need the following:

TES III: Morrowind, including the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions installed correctly on your system.

TES V: Skyrim + Dragonborn and Dawnguard expansions (not hearthfire)

YOU NEED LEGITIMATE COPIES OF BOTH GAMES - even if you defeat the copy protection somehow, pirated copies of the games DO NOT WORK RIGHT with Skywind and you WILL have problems. Also, please do not post "help me" threads about pirated games; you will be banned from the site.

I'm not sure how they're going to do it, but you do require Morrowind.